Where do I start with July and August?
There was the Sony announcement about Sony no longer supporting physical media by 2028. There was the Sony announcement about the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita stores closing. There was the Sony announcement about 551 previously purchased movies from publisher StudioCanal through their video store no longer being accessible due to expiring licensing. There was the Crunchyroll announcement (who are also owned by Sony) that access to their online store for physical media will only be accessible to people who subscribe at the higher levels of their subscription service. There was the Xbox announcement that they're laying off 3,200+ employees and either closing or selling off five smaller studios they've purchased in the last six years. There's the ever-ongoing RAM shortage brought about by DRAM and DDR5 manufacturers focusing on manufacturing products for data center construction over consumer products. And the President of the United States is still a petty bitch who still doesn't fully understand why he took the United States into a war in the first place, and, unrelated, how tariffs work.
Video Games!
While I haven't finished any games recently, I have made a fair amount of progress in the games I have been playing. I just cleared 2,000 out of 3,072 books in Librarian: Tidy Up the Arcane Library! I'm nearing the end dungeon and lead-up to the final battle in Super Lesbian Animal RPG, and I'd probably be finished with the game with about 10 fewer hours if I played it more than when I'm lying in bed and tend to fall asleep while playing. You know the JRPG Grinding Sleeping Syndrome. I'm also only seven puzzles shy of completing Picross for a Cause. The last two puzzles I have to finish, one of which is the final puzzle, are absolute beasts; it's a 30x30 grid. What makes that puzzle really difficult is keeping track of all of the minor changes that end up happening when you solve the more difficult puzzles. I'm also near the endgame of Outer Wilds, or at least I think I am. My Ship's Log is missing only a handful of entries, but I still haven't completed the main story. It's one of those things that at times I think I know what I have to do and then it turns out that that's not the solution; such was the case with the Dark Forge, and I'm still trying to figure out how to get to the Southern Observatory but the underside of Brittle Hollow collapses before I can make it across the path lined with gravity crystals; can gravity crystals support a ship?
On the Switch, The Squire is making his way through LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga. Both Conklederp and I are playing with him. We're currently finishing up The Rise of Skywalker, but then we still need to go back and beat all three games in the original trilogy. But we just unlocked and bought Darth Rey (Sith Rey?), so he's pretty happy, even though he'll commentate how he thinks her in-game outfit isn't accurate because it's different from her minifig in the Dark Falcon LEGO set, while also naming all of the parts that make up her in-game minifig. On the Switch OLED (that I've been keeping at work and only playing physical games on), I'm on Chapter 17 or 18 in Triangle Strategy, so I'm pretty close to being done, and do I have a medium to long-length article about that game once I do finish.
I've been moving away from games received from Keymailer, partly because I would like to play more of the games that I've actually purchased. I do occasionally look to see what publishers are offering, and if something jumps out at me, I might request a code, but I'm being significantly more picky these days.
Lastly, by the time this goes to print, Conklederp and I will have finished the wonderfully short first season of Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, a prequel series to A Song of Ice & Fire. It's a great adaptation of George R.R. Martin's short story series of the same name, although the short stories have their own subtitles like "The Hedge Knight," "The Sworn Sword," and "The Mystery Knight." I'm not a Dunk & Egg scholar, but I've enjoyed what has been adapted from both the books and the comic series, as well as some of the additional content.
We'll leave it at that.
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
My Back is Aching So Bad