I was having a conversation with my husband last week, and he mentioned how several retailers are pulling Xbox from their stores. This was news to me, and when I asked him why, he said it was because Xboxs aren’t selling like they used to. After a brief search, Microsoft denied that retailers were pulling Xbox consoles from shelves, but Costco apparently has. I may be out of touch with console gaming in general, but I find it shocking that Xbox isn’t selling well. Will Xbox remain competitive as a console? Or will Xbox become a thing of the past?

Xbox will always have a special place in my heart as my first console was the Xbox 360. I received it as a Christmas present in 2007, and I wouldn’t be the gamer that I am today without Halo 3, Gears of War, and Bioshock. Back in the day, Xbox had exclusive games, meaning games that could only be played on the Xbox. Halo is the most obvious, and I believe Bioshock was an Xbox exclusive at first. Exclusive games help sell consoles. There’s a reason why PlayStation has sold consoles since they have Uncharted, Marvel’s Spider-Man, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, and Last of Us. Last of Us technically isn’t a PlayStation exclusive, since it can be played on PC, but it can’t be played on Xbox, so I consider it an exclusive game in that way. If there aren’t any games that are specifically tied to Xbox, why would gamers buy an Xbox when they can play that game on PlayStation, amongst the other exclusive games?

The other thing Xbox had going for it was Xbox Game Pass. Xbox Game Pass is a subscription that allows gamers to download games from the game library. I used Xbox Game Pass quite a bit myself. Xbox Game Pass recently increased the price from $19.99 to $29.99 a month. You might say to yourself, It’s only a $10 price increase, who cares? However, it’s a 50% price increase, which feels like a lot even if the dollar amount isn’t. Gamers were cancelling their subscriptions as a result. Listen, I’m more than happy to pay for subscriptions or services that I feel are worth the money. If something undergoes a price increase without anything to justify it, consumers have every right to cancel. I believe PlayStation might have its own version of Game Pass, but I have never used it, so I can’t speak to it. As someone who has barely played Xbox, I will be cancelling my Game Pass subscription, but not because of the price increase.

I’m wondering what will happen from here? Will Xbox cease to exist? Or come back with new rebranding? It would be the end of an era, that’s for sure.

I started Nancy Drew: Warnings at Waverly Academy several years ago. I never finished it and ended up uninstalling it because so much time had passed since I last played. When I finished Nancy Drew: The Haunting of Castle Malloy, I decided to install and revisit this game. Nancy Drew: Warnings at Waverly Academy is one of my favorite Nancy Drew games I have played.

Nancy is sent undercover to the Waverly Academy for Girls, as some of the girls have been receiving threatening notes from “The Black Cat”. One of the students was hospitalized after someone had slipped something she was allergic to in her food. Her family is threatening to sue the school, so they need Nancy to figure out what’s going on. Who is threatening the students and why?

One of the reasons I liked this game was the number of suspects. At the core of all Nancy Drew games is a mystery. In some games, there are only two or three suspects, so it’s not at all mysterious when one of them is revealed to be responsible. In this game, there are several students that Nancy meets who all seem to have a motive for being The Black Cat. It kept the game intriguing for me because I wanted to find out who was actually behind it all.

Out of all the Nancy Drew games I played, I find Warnings at Waverly Academy to be one of the most straightforward games. There are times when, if you don’t talk to this NPC at this time, you can’t advance in the story. Instead, Nancy has her side quests, and each side quest would unlock the next thing Nancy needs to complete. There was never a time when I felt lost as to what I had to do next, and I have felt that in other Nancy Drew games. I’d add this to a list of Nancy Drew games that would be best for beginners.

I can’t talk about this game without talking about the mini-games. It’s Nancy’s turn at the snack counter, where she makes snacks for the other residents. One of the students wants Nancy to play a game of Air Hockey with her, along with darts. The games were a nice change of pace from the tougher puzzles of the other Nancy Drew games. There’s a memory game on a computer in the library where I ended up getting the high score on. This unlocked an achievement for me at the end of the game.

Speaking of, I like how the newer Nancy Drew games have achievements on Steam. It makes me more likely to replay this game in the future to collect them all. In my first play-through, I unlocked three out of fifteen, so there’s much more that I need to do to complete them all. It’s a nice touch and adds more replayability for me that the older Nancy Drew games don’t have.

Nancy Drew: Warnings at Waverly Academy is a favorite of mine. This would be a game I’d recommend anyone new to the Nancy Drew games to play first. As far as what’s next, I have two games left on my Steam backlog. Once I finish those, I will buy more Nancy Drew games so I can hopefully get closer to saying I have played them all.

The last time I played a Nancy Drew game was last March. It’s been a minute! Last Saturday, I had no plans, which is pretty rare for me. It was the perfect time to get cuddled up under a heated blanket and play a Nancy Drew game. I had two to choose from, so I picked Nancy Drew: The Haunting of Castle Malloy since it seemed like a spookier game. I liked this game a lot! While the mystery itself was a little campy and slightly ridiculous, I found I had fun playing it, which is what matters.

Spoilers for Nancy Drew: The Haunting of Castle Malloy below

Nancy is the maid of honor for one of her good friends. She flies to Ireland and drives to the castle where her friend is getting married. On her way, she sees what looks like a ghost floating on the road. This scares Nancy, and she crashes her car. When she walks to the castle, her friend tells her that her fiancé has gone missing! Nancy decides to investigate, especially because she wants to get to the bottom of what she saw earlier.

This Nancy Drew game had a notebook where you checked off completed tasks. This is so useful. Sometimes these games can be complex, especially when there are puzzles and things to complete, so being able to sort what’s left is needed. In this game, I liked being able to explore the castle grounds. In some Nancy Drew games, Nancy is isolated in one spot. I prefer the Nancy Drew games where I can explore an area. I think it’s more fun and challenging, since there’s more to do.

In this game, I didn’t find a mini-game that I disliked. My favorites were making the drinks in the Irish pub, playing the drums in the Irish pub, and the ring sorting game. I also liked the horse puzzle, which involved sliding the pieces into their corresponding places. I laugh at the playing the drums mini-game because it reminded me of Guitar Hero, or a better analogy would be Rock Band. There would be notes that would glide across the screen, and you would have to hit them at the appropriate time.

I know I just said that there wasn’t a mini-game I disliked, but we have to talk about the Chemicals game. In the latter half of the game, Nancy discovers an underground bunker, and to escape, she needs to set off a rocket. To do so, she needs the rocket key, which is hidden in a chemical fume hood. To get the key, chemicals need to be moved into their appropriate places. What makes this mini-game frustrating is how sensitive it is. If you so much as flick the chemical with the pliers, it causes an explosion that kills Nancy. I wish I could look up the actual stats because I think I killed Nancy at least twenty times. If I’m honest, it’s probably closer to thirty. Once I understood how to play, I was able to move through it quickly. It’s not that I disliked this; I think if there were more instructions on how to play the game, I could have figured it out faster. I’d be curious if this game were to be remastered; that’s one of the first things I’d recommend adding.

The last thing I’ll add is the campy story. It’s revealed that the person haunting the mansion is not a fictional person or a projection. It’s an actual woman who has secretly lived on the property. If that’s the case, how is she flying around? She uses a jetpack. You read that right, this older woman is wearing a jet pack and flying around the property. I can’t help but laugh. There wasn’t really a mystery to solve; the groom ended up finding a secret underground bunker through a passage in the castle and got trapped down there, but no one was really up to anything nefarious. The mystery was unsatisfying, but you know what, it was kind of entertaining, so I’ll give this game that.

Nancy Drew: The Haunting of Castle Malloy was entertaining and one of the more enjoyable Nancy Drew games I have played. The next Nancy Drew game I plan to play is Nancy Drew: Warnings at Waverly Academy. After that, I’ll have to buy a few more Nancy Drew games to keep me busy. I think I’m over halfway through playing through them all, but I have a few more to go.

The gameplay trailer for Marvel’s Wolverine dropped, and I could not be more thrilled. Marvel’s Wolverine is being developed by Insomniac Games, the same studio that made the Marvel’s Spider-Man games that I have loved. I had no doubts that Insomniac could pull this off, and the trailer did not disappoint. This is the Wolverine game that we have all been waiting for.

I won’t share too much about the trailer as I really think you should watch it for yourself. I will say this: I’m glad that this game is going to be rated M for mature. It would be a disservice to fans if this game were toned down on the gore. Wolverine’s story is bloody, and while some superhero content is for kids, Wolverine and Deadpool are for adults. The trailer was so good, it felt like I was watching a movie.

I have had this game on my radar, and I can’t wait to play it next year.

Last month, I wrote about Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2 hiding two of the clans behind a paywall. I mentioned in that post that this is equivalent to Baldur’s Gate 3 hiding the Wizard and the Barbarian in extra DLC. I was annoyed, and I felt the decision didn’t make sense. Since then, there was an update posted on the World of Darkness Discord where it was announced that they were listening to fans and would have an update for this on September 17th. Sure enough, the update mentioned that they were moving those clans away from DLC and would be made available for the game upon release. I am happy with this decision because I felt it was the right one to make.

I won’t reiterate my previous complaints here. Instead, I wanted to say that I’m glad the fans were heard. Most companies wouldn’t care and would release the game as previously stated. I’m curious about how this impacted pre-sales. Were there mass cancellations of pre-orders, and did they have no choice but to do this? I’m leaning towards feeling that this was the case. I want Bloodlines 2 to do well. As a fan of Vampire and World of Darkness games, I’d like to see more players within the TTRPG and LARP spaces.

While this update was made, there are some gamers who have no interest in playing the game. That’s completely valid. For those who have played the first Bloodlines game, they feel that this game isn’t a direct sequel because of how different Bloodlines 2 is. I can’t speak to this because I haven’t played Bloodlines. There’s one creator I follow who wasn’t planning on covering the game, and he received death threats. I can’t believe I have to say this, but could we not?? It’s never okay to send death threats to someone you personally disagree with in fandom spaces. If someone doesn’t like something or doesn’t want to play something, that doesn’t take away enjoyment for you if you decide to play the game. I can’t believe that this is something that needs to be said, but here we are.

Will I pre-order the game? I am much more interested in playing Bloodlines 2, that’s for sure. However, do I trust this game to be released without any bugs? That’s the big thing. However, I want to show support for the change in the clans being moved to the base game. I don’t have any other big video game releases that I plan on playing, which means I will have plenty of time to play Bloodlines 2 if I choose to do so.

Last month, Vesper’s story came to a close as our campaign had its last session. I have been playing as Vesper for two years, starting in July 2023 and ending in August of 2025. I am getting emotional writing this and for those who have never played a table-top roleplaying game, you might find this to be silly. When you play as one character for so long, you become attached to their story. I included some of my own personal struggles into Vesper’s story and as such, I became attached to her. This post serves as a goodbye to Vesper, but also being incredibly thankful that I got to be a player in this campaign.

For our last session, Vesper finally got to face her ex-husband, Garrick. In Vesper’s back story, prior to the events of our campaign, Vesper was married to Garrick, an evil vampire. Vesper left her marriage and trained at a magical academy with the ultimate focus of going back to defeat Garrick. Garrick, in turn, became obsessed with Vesper and wanted to be reunited with her. Vesper felt that in order for her to move on with her life, she would have to face him, even though she was scared to do so.

In this last session, I rolled seven natural 20s. This means I rolled a 20, seven times on a twenty sided die. This was unreal. Some might say that I’m lying or making this up, but I swear I am not. The other players looked at the 20 in my dice tray and could vouch for me if I needed them to. When I say the dice tell the story, I mean it. In Vesper’s story, I rolled many natural 1s which serve as critical failures. These had dire consequences for Vesper, so to see myself rolling so many natural 20s meant the world to me as a player. I have taken the two dice sets out of my dice pool, those belong to Vesper now. They sit on my TTRPG shelf along with my Vesper character miniatures.

While it’s easy to focus on Vesper, I think when it comes down to it, I’m so thankful that I found my group. Throughout these two years, I have become close with the players in our group. We exchange gifts with each other and we get together outside of our campaign to hang out. I find myself messaging the other players on Discord and chatting about all types of topics. I never thought that when I joined this group, I would meet new friends. I figured this would be a game and that’s it. In our epilogue session, one of the players bought us Coca Cola bottles with our character’s names enscribed on them. How cute is that?? On top of that, our GM gave me a d100 and told me if I made it through the campaign, I could keep it. There’s significance here as I rolled a natural 1 on a d100. It almost killed Vesper’s now husband Cam, but he survived. The d100 is now sitting on my shelf and serves as a souvenir for Vesper’s story and what it means to both her and me.

I can’t write this post without shouting out Badwolf Adventure Studios. Badwolf is where I play every week and they created my character art which I have shared multiple times and will continue to do so. Badwolf helped to create Vesper and gave her story life which is something I am grateful for.

With all that said, I’m excited to say that our new campaign will begin soon, so while Vesper’s story is complete, my time with Badwolf will continue. Here’s to Vesper; the character who taught me so much and who’s story will continue to stay with me for many years to come.

At Gen Con last year, I purchased the Final Girl core box along with the feature film box, Camp Happy Trails. Both games are published by Van Ryder Games. What interested me about the games is that they are solo games. This means that you play them by yourself with no other players. It’s funny, you think that if this were a game I would play myself, I would have played it a lot sooner. I didn’t get a chance to open this until a few weeks ago. Final Girl was a fun and narrative-driven adventure with numerous replayability options.

Final Girl is a game in which you play as both the Final Girl and the slasher at the same time. The goal of the game is to either kill the slasher or kill the Final Girl. In the Camp Happy Trails box, there are two final girls: Reiko and Laurie. Both Final Girls possess distinct abilities that can be utilized in the game. There’s a bit of a deck-building component, as there are cards that the Final Girl can play to move around the board, search for items, and attack the killer. Some cards are free, while other cards are purchased with time, as in the time it takes to perform actions. There can be a lot to keep track of, but once I played a few rounds, it was easy to pick up.

I loved the dice rolling aspect of the game. For the Final Girl’s actions to work, you would need to roll the dice. Fives or sixes counted as successes, while anything four or lower did not. Depending on the successes rolled, it would impact how well things went. For example, I could play a Sprint card, which allowed the Final Girl to sprint around the board. If I rolled one success, they could go a certain number of spaces, but if I rolled two successes, I could move more. If I fail the roll, it could end my turn, or I could lose time, which meant I couldn’t spend as much to buy new cards. I like this component of the game. In my first game, I was rolling hot, but in my second game, I wasn’t rolling well at all. It completely changed the tone of the game.

One thing I don’t pay as much attention to is how the game is designed. In the Camp Happy Trails box, each side of the box pops off, and it’s the killer’s health and the game board. To put it back together, you slide it back into the box, and it seems like it’s magnetically held in place. It makes for easy storage and is easy to put the game away. This isn’t something I normally care about, but I felt it was worth mentioning.

In each game, I successfully killed the killer with both Reiko and Laurie. Once this happens, there’s a card in an envelope that you can open only when you kill the killer. It unlocks special items for both Reiko and Laurie, which can be used in other feature film boxes. I think this is neat. It allows for more replayability with both Reiko and Laurie, and the items are connected to them as Final Girls. I could see this being fun to include Reiko in another feature film box with her special item and trying the harder version of the game. Speaking of which, there are two modes to the game. I played the easier difficulty because I didn’t know what I was doing, but I would be open to trying the higher difficulty with each Final Girl to see how it varies.

I liked playing Final Girl a lot. I could see myself buying the other feature film boxes in the future. If I find myself at Gen Con again, I’ll definitely wander towards Van Ryder’s booth.

Last week at Gamescom, it was announced that Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2 was going to release on October 21st, 2025. In addition to this, there were pre-order bonuses for those who pre-ordered and for those who pre-ordered beyond the base game. It was revealed that two vampire clans, Toreador and Lasombra, were locked behind a DLC. For those who aren’t gamers, this means that the base game doesn’t include Toreador and Lasombra, and to get them, you would have to buy them as additional content. Internet reaction has been swift, and there are a ton of angry fans upset by this. I have talked about Bloodlines 2 before, so of course, it shouldn’t be a surprise that I address this.

Let’s talk about the clans locked behind a paywall. To try and explain this, imagine if Baldur’s Gate 3 locked the Wizard and the Barbarian in additional paid content. For a game that’s based on a TTRPG, I find it odd that the base game wouldn’t include all the clans. If anything, I’d understand if clans like Lasombra, Banu Haquim, or Salubri would be additional content since they weren’t pushed into the fifth edition of the game, but Toreador? Toreador is a hugely popular clan, and the fact that it’s not included in the base game is irritating. Let’s be clear, Bloodlines 2 isn’t the first game or franchise to not include everything in the base game. However, this feels like a major misstep to me.

Another critique I have been reading is the fact that you can’t create your own character. In Bloodlines 2, players play as Phyre, and while you can choose your clan, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of customization beyond that. This isn’t a deal breaker for me, I don’t mind playing as a pre-made vampire, as long as I get access to the clans that I want to play. With that said, I would prefer to at least be able to customize my appearance and hairstyle. It’s an RPG, and with most RPGs, character customization is a part of the game. I’d also add that I enjoyed the Vampire: The Masquerade visual novels on Steam, and I didn’t get to customize anything about the character.

Will I be pre-ordering this game? Nope. With that said, I rarely pre-order games. The last game I pre-ordered was Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, and that’s because I knew the game would be good, and it was. Will I play this game? I want to, but I don’t want to waste my money either. If I had to guess, I would lean towards playing it because I want to see if I like the story at least. No matter what, this game is disappointing and had the potential to be so much more than what it is.