Gaming Week 23: State of Play, Summer Game Fest & Wolverine
Week 23 delivered two back-to-back gaming showcases: Sony's State of Play (Wolverine! Tomb Raider!) and Summer Game Fest with Star Wars twice, AC Black Flag Resynced, and more.
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🎮 Two Showcases, One Week — Welcome to the Best Announcement Season in Years
Week 23 of 2026 refused to pace itself. Sony held a State of Play. Summer Game Fest happened. The gaming industry collectively threw everything at the wall and, to an unusual degree, most of it stuck. As a dad with genuinely limited gaming time, the challenge this week isn’t finding something to be excited about — it’s deciding which announcements to actually care about and which are just trailer dopamine.
Let’s cut through it.
Two distinct showcases, each with its own flavour. State of Play was Sony flexing PS5 exclusives and third-party partnerships. Summer Game Fest was the broader industry clearing its calendar for everything that didn’t fit a single publisher’s slot. Between them: a lot to process, a few genuine must-track announcements, and at least one “we’ll believe it when we play it.” Here’s everything filtered for actual dad relevance.
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🐺 State of Play: The Highlight Reel
Sony’s showcase delivered across several fronts, but let’s be honest — one announcement defined the evening.
Marvel’s Wolverine — The PS5 Game Marvel Fans Have Been Waiting For
Insomniac Games. The studio that rebuilt Spider-Man as a cinematic action series, delivered one of the best superhero games ever made with Miles Morales, and then raised its own bar again with Spider-Man 2. Now: Wolverine.
As a Marvel fan, this is the announcement of the year. Everything we know about Insomniac’s approach — the weight of the combat, the character-driven storytelling, the visual commitment — maps perfectly onto Logan. This isn’t a licensed cash-grab. It’s a PS5 exclusive being built by the best superhero game studio in the business, and the showcase footage backed that up with brutal, grounded-feeling combat that still manages to look spectacular.
The tone is clearly darker than Spider-Man — Logan’s berserker rage and the context of being the Wolverine is not the same moral universe as Peter Parker’s. Insomniac seems to understand that and is leaning into it. No firm release date yet, but this is the one to track above everything else this year.
God of War — The Norse Saga Gets Its Next Chapter
Sony confirmed the next God of War chapter. Whether this is a Ragnarok story expansion or the beginning of a new mythology arc, the franchise has earned the benefit of the doubt completely. Kratos’s evolution from rage-monster to deliberate father remains one of gaming’s best character arcs, and whatever Santa Monica Studio delivers next earns a day-one slot without question.
Tomb Raider — Lara’s Long-Awaited Return
Hot. That’s the word for this announcement. Tomb Raider is back, and Week 23 was the first proper showcase moment for whatever Crystal Dynamics has been building. The Survivor Trilogy is one of the best action-adventure series of the last decade, and the franchise deserves a proper current-gen chapter. The footage was brief but confident — the combat looks evolved, the environments are the kind of dense, layered spaces that made the originals memorable. The release window is still vague, but it’s real, it’s coming, and it’s high on the radar.
Rayman, Dune: Awakening, Control 2 — The Strong Undercard
Three more announcements worth tracking for very different reasons:
Rayman Legends Retold is the announcement the platformer faithful have been waiting for: a current-gen rebuild of the best 2D platformer ever made. Rayman Legends on Wii U and PS4 was already a masterpiece — the Murphy levels, the musical stages, the Kung Foot mode that destroyed friendships — and a Retold version for PS5 with updated visuals and presumably the full DLC package is exactly the right move. Pre-order is live. This one is a near-automatic buy for anyone with kids old enough to hold a controller.
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Dune: Awakening is shaping up as the survival game for people who thought survival games were mostly tedious. The Arrakis setting is visually extraordinary, the faction system looks genuinely complex, and the appeal for Dune fans who want to actually live in that universe goes beyond anything the films offered. This is the one for dads who burned out on Ark-style survival loops but want something with real world-building behind it.
Control 2 from Remedy Entertainment is the follow-up to one of the strangest and most atmospheric games of the last generation. The original Control was brilliant — a Brutalist government building full of paranormal horror and one of gaming’s best protagonists in Jesse Faden. If Remedy has preserved that specific weirdness and ambition, this could be exceptional.
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🎪 Summer Game Fest: The Industry Goes Wide
Summer Game Fest 2026 delivered the annual tradition of being the place where everyone announces everything that didn’t fit a single publisher’s slot. Filtered for actual dad relevance:
Star Wars: Zero Company + Galactic Racer — The Galaxy Gets Two Entries at Once
The Star Wars franchise is doing something ambitious: two very different games in 2026, aimed at two very different audiences.
Star Wars: Zero Company (August 2026) is the tactically-minded entry — a squad-based shooter set in the Clone Wars era, following a team of clone troopers on morally complex missions. Think XCOM meets The Bad Batch, with the kind of gritty authenticity that suggests the developers actually understand what makes Star Wars compelling beyond the lightsaber choreography. The strategic layer looks deep, the Clone Wars setting is underused in games, and August can’t come soon enough.
Star Wars: Galactic Racer (October 6, 2026) is pure nostalgia delivery — high-speed podracing in the style of Episode I’s Boonta Eve Classic, rebuilt for current hardware. The N64 original was a childhood touchstone, and if this captures even half of that arcade electricity with modern visuals and DualSense haptics, it’s an automatic purchase for anyone who grew up with the prequels.
🏴☠️ Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced — The Best One, Done Right
Black Flag was always the best Assassin’s Creed. The pirate open world, the naval combat that felt genuinely different, the sea shanties that still play in your head in the shower twelve years later — it was the entry that understood freedom better than any AC before or since. Ubisoft is rebuilding it from the ground up for current-gen hardware.
This is the rare remake that actually makes sense. The original holds up in spirit but shows its age visually, and the naval combat would benefit enormously from the DualSense’s adaptive triggers and modern spatial audio. The shanties in 3D audio alone could justify the purchase. If Ubisoft doesn’t fix what wasn’t broken and just upgrades everything that showed its age: unmissable.
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Monster Hunter Wilds: Ascendance — Capcom Plays the Long Game
Before Monster Hunter Wilds (the upcoming sequel) even ships, Capcom announced a major expansion: Ascendance, arriving in 2027 with a new storyline, new monsters, and a new Hunter rank. This is Capcom’s commitment signal — they’re telling the community now that the investment in Wilds is an investment in years of content, not just one release cycle.
For dads who finally clawed back enough time to properly sink into Monster Hunter World, this news is simultaneously exciting and slightly terrifying.
Stranger Than Heaven — With Tupac
Possibly the most unexpected announcement of Summer Game Fest. An action game built around the life and music of Tupac Shakur — not just a licensed playlist, but his story and lyrics woven into the game’s narrative and world. The genre sounds like action-RPG with rhythm-combat elements. No release date yet, but the concept is unlike anything else on the calendar and deserves to be watched closely.
Mafia: The Old Country — Man of Honor DLC (August 14, 2026)
The Mafia series has always been about character first, and its story universe keeps expanding. Man of Honor is a standalone story expansion for Mafia: The Old Country, reuniting players with Enzo in what looks like a personal arc about loyalty, family, and consequences. If you’ve followed the franchise, this is exactly the kind of DLC worth the price of admission.
📚 New on Dadnology: The Living Novel Hub Expands
Beyond the showcase announcements, Week 23 also saw three major new guides launch on Dadnology — a comprehensive expansion of the Living Novel Hub:
- The Best Cinematic Third-Person Action Games — the linear, movie-like blockbusters for dads who have 15–25 focused hours.
- The Best Open-World Story-Driven Games — vast worlds for dads who want to lose a full weekend (or three).
- The Best Action-RPGs with Strong Stories — choice-driven sagas where your build and your decisions matter across 60+ hours.
If you’ve ever been paralyzed by the question of whether to start with Ghost of Tsushima or Red Dead Redemption 2, these guides answer it cleanly. All three are live now.
🎯 Who Should Care About What
For the dad who can’t track every announcement:
| You are… | Your priority is… |
|---|---|
| Marvel fan with a PS5 | Wolverine — track it, it’s the one this year |
| AC veteran who loved Black Flag | Black Flag Resynced — strong pre-order candidate |
| Star Wars fan (tactical strategy) | Zero Company — August, mark the calendar |
| Star Wars fan (arcade speed) | Galactic Racer — October podracing fix |
| Monster Hunter veteran | Wilds: Ascendance — 2027 already on the radar |
| Wants something genuinely different | Stranger Than Heaven — keep a close eye |
| Action-adventure completionist | Tomb Raider — patience required but it’s coming |
| Family co-op platformer fan | Rayman Legends Retold — pre-order now, thank yourself later |
If you can only commit one pre-order this week, it’s between Black Flag Resynced (the nostalgia bet) and Marvel’s Wolverine (the quality guarantee). Both are safe. Both are very different games. Choose your mood.
Dadnology Take
Week 23 was the week the gaming industry remembered how to generate genuine excitement. State of Play and Summer Game Fest collided in one week and between them covered almost every corner of the dad-gaming audience: the Marvel fan, the AC nostalgist, the Star Wars completionist, the survival-game skeptic who might just be converted by Arrakis. Wolverine is the headline, but Black Flag Resynced might actually be the sneaky game of the year if Ubisoft respects what made the original special. And Star Wars getting two very different games in the same calendar year is exactly the kind of franchise management that actually works. Now if we could just get a release date for Wolverine.
❓ FAQ
What was the biggest gaming announcement of week 23, 2026?
When does Star Wars Zero Company release?
What is Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced?
Is Monster Hunter Wilds: Ascendance a full new game?
Disclaimer: This review and its visuals were created with the help of AI. Some links may be affiliate links – we may earn a commission if you make a purchase, at no extra cost to you.
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