Insomniac Games, the game studio that made Marvel’s Spider-Man finally announced on Twitter the release date for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. The game is set to release on Friday, October 20th. I first played Marvel’s Spider-Man back in 2018. I recently visited New York City for the first time that summer, so playing through Marvel’s Spider-Man felt like I was reliving my trip. Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is exclusively being released on the PS5 which I don’t have yet. I’m holding out for a Spider-Man PS5 bundle to be announced sometime soon. This is a game that I have been looking forward to, so I wanted to share a little bit of what I’m the most excited about.

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is going to introduce Venom to the franchise. At the end of Marvel’s Spider-Man, Norman Osborn enters a laboratory where in a test vial is Harry wrapped in a black webbed substance which is obviously the Symbiote. When I watched the end credit scene, I was pumped. How cool would it be to swing around New York City as a Symbiote?? Insomniac released gameplay of Venom and it looks really cool.

If that wasn’t worth the hype, there are also going to be new villains for Spider-Man to go up against. There are some hints that Kraven the Hunter will make an appearance. Besides Kraven, I’d like to see Black Cat appear in the main story as she was mostly seen through the DLC released after the first game. There is a part of me that wants to use some PTO during this time, so I can sit and play this game undisturbed.

I cannot wait for October. My goal is to play Marvel’s Spider-Man right before the sequel releases, so I will be fresh on all the Spider-Man lore.

I have been looking forward to Gotham Knights since the game was originally announced. I loved the idea of being able to play as members of the Bat Family, especially Batgirl. I was hoping for Gotham Knights to be Batman Arkham Knight 2.0. I think many other gamers were thinking the same thing based on comments I had been reading online. As of right now, Gotham Knights is rated 6/10 on Steam and 73% of gamers liked the game. I can only speak for myself in saying that I enjoyed playing through Gotham Knights, but I don’t think the game is as good as I wanted it to be.

Gotham Knights has an incredible opening sequence featuring Batman fighting against Ra’s al Ghul. During the fight, Batman is mortally wounded. With no way out, he sets off the Batcave’s self-destruction sequence, trapping himself and Ra’s in the rubble. The Bat Family (Red Hood, Batgirl, Nightwing, and Robin) come together to become the Gotham Knights with the intent of continuing what Batman started. While following up on one of Batman’s leads, they discover a scientist, Kirk Langstrom, murdered. This sets the Knights on a path of lies and treachery in uncovering The Court of Owls an elite group operating in Gotham. If that wasn’t enough, Talia al Ghul and the League have also been making an appearance. Can The Knights prevent an all-out war that could leave Gotham in ruins?

I already know that this review is going to be biased. I loved playing as Batgirl. She was easily my favorite. If I wasn’t playing as Batgirl, I would alternate between her and Nightwing. I did try to give the other heroes a chance, but Batgirl always remained supreme. I think being able to interchange between each of the Bat Family helped as each of their powers was better equipped for certain combat scenarios. I think one of my favorite powers to unlock later was Batgirl being able to pull up her own drones that would fire on enemies. It was very powerful and I activated that ability a lot.

The combat in Gotham Knights didn’t feel as smooth as it was in Batman Arkham Knight. There were times when the game would glitch during an intense fight scene which was annoying. I would have to grapple away until the game would be better and then try and start over in the fight. I do feel that the characters in Gotham Knights could handle firepower better than Batman Arkham Knight. There was more stealth in the Batman games whereas in Gotham Knights, I could enter a combat scenario even if the enemies were carrying assault weapons. As someone who isn’t a stealthy type of gamer, this worked well for me.

I think the biggest gripe I would have about Gotham Knights is the leveling system. In order for the Bat Family to gain more equipment or powers, there was a need to level up in the game. This got old really quickly. There were times when certain missions, the Bat Family would have to be at a certain level. I would try and play through the level even if I was a little bit below the suggested level and it made a difference. It was much more difficult and intense. I was playing through the game on Medium, as I like the challenge without it being too much. The leveling system was grueling in my opinion and I felt I had to do side quests to level up quicker when really I would have preferred to finish the main story first without interruption. I wish Gotham Knights wasn’t made as an RPG and instead, a story that gets increasingly more difficult as the levels progress.

At this point, I haven’t actually finished the full campaign. I have the last bit with the Man-Bats attacking Gotham. I tried to get past them and it was brutal. The Man-Bats are difficult and there are three of them. Additionally, if the Bat Family uses all their health packs, they don’t get any more unless they go back to their hideout which may reset the progress made, but I’m not 100% sure on that. It was enough that I needed to take a break from the game. I honestly may drop the difficulty mode to get past this section.

I had a fun time playing through Gotham Knights. It wasn’t the Batman Arkham Knight sequel I was looking forward to, but I’m still glad it exists and I enjoyed playing through the game.

I have talked about the Curse of Strahd campaign on my blog before. I have been playing in this campaign since January 2022, so almost a year and a half. Our group changed from meeting every other Thursday to every Thursday to help speed up progress through Curse of Strahd. While this campaign has been ongoing for a while, I still enjoy playing as my character especially since she’s been unlocking blood curses. The pinnacle of Curse of Strahd is when the players finally accept Strahd’s dinner invitation. Our group has been avoiding Strahd for a while, but after finding out some lore for another side quest we were working on, we realized we had no choice but to accept Strahd’s invitation to dinner at Castle Ravenloft.

**Slight Spoilers for Curse of Strahd**

Our group accepted Strahd’s invitation to dinner and was greeted by Strahd’s guard or assistant, Rahadin. As a side note, Rahadin is a pretty evil character and I’m hoping our group has a chance to encounter him and bring him to his demise. Anyway, Rahadin led us to dinner where Strahd gave his imposing villain speech. Suddenly, our group was locked in and I couldn’t help but laugh. Of course, Strahd locks us in his castle, so we can fight for our lives and entertain him. The only good thing about this was the artifact we were looking for is in Castle Ravenloft. Before entering the castle, our group kept throwing out ideas on how to steal this artifact, and now Strahd locking us away gives us the opportunity to do that.

Castle Ravenloft is essentially an adult version of a Scooby-Doo mystery. I faintly remember several Scooby Doo old cartoon episodes where the gang would discover hidden pathways in the mansions they were exploring. One of the first traps was when we went to the prison cells and this pressure plate was activated. Our group was then thrown up toward the upper floors of the castle. I tried to climb out of the box we were in and saw concrete. Thankfully, I was able to head back down, otherwise, I would have taken 8 d10 of bludgeoning damage. Major yikes.

Will our group make it out of Castle Ravenloft? I genuinely don’t know. The fight against Strahd could get ugly and while I already mentioned fighting Rahadin, he will probably be an intense fight. The one thing I will say is that I’m grateful that my character has made it this far because honestly, there were several close calls. No matter what happens, I will be happy with the outcome.

Gen Con is in three months and I’m getting more excited as it gets closer. Event registration is coming up shortly, so I’m looking forward to signing up for demos and other events that Gen Con is hosting. There are so many vendors to see and one that I have had my eye on is Darrington Press. Darrington Press is a subsidiary of Critical Role, so it’s basically Critical Role’s board game publishing company. In Darrington Press‘s most recent announcement, they address that they will be at Gen Con this year.

In watching the announcement, Darrington Press will be at Gen Con as it sounds like they are promoting a new game called Queen by Midnight. Queen by Midnight is a deck-building game where players take on the role of princesses trying to outlast the night and become the new Midnight Queen. The game itself looks stunning. I love the clock design and how the time is set throughout the game. Deck-building games can be a hit or a miss for me, but I think Queen of Midnight has a lot of potentials. I hope that there will be demos of the game either as an event at Gen Con or at the Darrington Press booth.

In the above announcement, Matt Mercer did address that Critical Role isn’t doing a live show this year. Honestly, it makes sense. Critical Role has gotten so big and I don’t think there would be a venue at Indianapolis that would hold everyone who wanted to see their live show. Additionally, that must be a lot of work for the cast to organize and they probably want to promote more of their side gigs which include Darrington Press.

I’m looking forward to seeing Darrington Press at Gen Con. I would love to demo Queen by Midnight as it seems like an interesting concept and the art in the game looks so pretty. I’m counting down the days to Gen Con even though it will be here before I know it.

It was my brother’s birthday last weekend. I sent him a Happy Birthday text and asked him if he wanted to do anything to celebrate. My brother mentioned how it would be fun to have a chill board game night at home. I ended up driving over to my mom’s house and I brought a few games with me. My mom has been playing more board games with us, but depending on how complicated they are, she will either try them out or watch us play to pick up the rules. One of the games I brought was Marvel Villainous which I received as a Christmas present last year, but I haven’t had a chance to open it yet. Marvel Villainous was fun and felt true to the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole.

In the base game, there are five villains to choose from: Hela, Killmonger, Taskmaster, Thanos, and Ultron. I was a little surprised that Taskmaster was in the base game. While Taskmaster appears in the Black Widow film, I felt the villain wasn’t as prominent of a choice. If I had to pick, I think Loki should have been included before Taskmaster, but that’s just me. As a side note, Loki is in an expansion of the game. I knew immediately that I wanted to play as Hela first. My brother started with Ultron. Hela’s win condition was to have eight allies or Soul Marks in Odin’s vault. Reading through the win condition, that seemed doable to me, so I figured she would be a good villain to start playing as.

One thing I liked about Marvel’s Villainous is how the fate deck is a shared deck. The fate deck has events and heroes which can be played on an opponent’s board to slow them down on their win condition. In Star Wars Villainous, the fate decks were separate per character whereas, in Marvel’s Villainous, there was one deck. It felt accurate to Marvel being a shared universe where all these heroes and villains interact together. I liked how there were heroes such as Mockingbird who may not have had a strong presence in the movies. It felt more like an ode to the comics versus the movies.

I ended up winning the first round we played! I had a strategy going which was to add Soul Marks to the heroes and then once the heroes were vanquished, I could add them to Odin’s Vault. My brother tried to play heroes on my side of the board to mess with me, but that ended up working well in my favor. It seemed my brother had a good time playing Ultron.

Marvel’s Villainous was exactly what I expected it to be; a comic book villain showdown in a board game. I do want to pick up some of the other expansions. One of the more recently released expansions features Venom who I think would be a chaotic villain to play as.

One of my best friends told me about this board game that she liked. She played it at a friend’s party and raved about it. I love playing new board games and find it easy to play the same board games repeatedly. The game my friend was describing is called Wingspan. She loved it so much that she bought her copy and brought it over for a board game night. Wingspan was a fun game to learn and I would definitely be interested in playing the game again in the future.

The objective of Wingspan is to create a wildlife sanctuary and to score the most points in a series of rounds. Each player has their own board where various bird cards are played. In addition, players have their objective cards. Their objective cards help score points at the end of the game. For example, my objective was to have birds and predators of a particular nest type. Therefore, as I was playing bird cards, I played cards with the nest type chosen in the objective. For each turn, there are a few actions. Playing a bird card, gathering food, laying eggs, and drawing bird cards. Bird cards are a must because that’s how the sanctuary is built. In order to play bird cards, there are certain food costs to do so. That’s why gathering food is essential. Laying eggs helps to earn points toward the end of the game. Finally, if a player doesn’t have any bird cards in their hand, they may need to draw a bird card from either three displayed cards or a random card from the deck.

As Wingspan was being explained to me, I felt myself catching on pretty quickly. I liked the various bird cards and on each bird card, there was a fact about that species. Our group got into a routine where whenever we played a bird card, we read that particular fact on the card. Another component that I liked was the birdhouse. There’s a birdhouse model where the food dice are rolled into. I thought that was a nice touch to the feel of the game. Certain birds allowed players to re-roll food dice, so I found myself rolling the dice fairly often.

Another thing that I liked about Wingspan was how it wasn’t aimed at being cutthroat. Playing a game like Settlers of Catan, there are multiple opportunities to try and screw over other players by cutting off a road or food supply. In Wingspan, it’s more driven by independent goals, so players aren’t trying to cut off each other, but instead, focus on their individual sanctuary. I don’t mind playing Settlers of Catan every now and then, but I have to be in the mood for it. Wingspan feels more independently driven which I found that I appreciated.

In the end, I ended up in second place which wasn’t too bad. I was only three points away from winning the game. It’s interesting because it can be tough to tell who is leading in the game. I didn’t have as many birds in play as everyone else, but I ended up laying a lot of eggs which added up in points. I think it helps keep interest in the game because anyone can come back and win even if their board is drastically different from another player.

Wingspan is a great game to introduce to friends or family who may not play a lot of board games. It isn’t complicated and the game doesn’t take forever to complete. Now that I know how to play, I think it would take way less time to play through if I did play Wingspan again. Wingspan was fun and I hope my friend brings the game again to our future board game nights.

The Batman Rocksteady games are some of my favorite video games of all time. Rocksteady made playing Batman fun and I loved being able to run around and solve all of the riddles that were scattered throughout the game. When it was announced that Rocksteady would be releasing a new game titled Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League, I was all in. There is no video game studio more equipped to make a Suicide Squad game than Rocksteady. That is until a few weeks ago when gameplay for Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League was released and it doesn’t look very good. I wanted to talk about the gameplay and general first impression thoughts of the game.

My first initial thought when watching the gameplay was how this feels more like Fortnite than Batman Arkham Asylum to me. I don’t mind Fortnite as a game, but it’s not what I was anticipating Suicide Squad to be like. Another thing that I found odd was that the characters all seemed to have jetpacks to fly around the map. I will say it seems like Harley is using a grapple gun versus a jet pack, but still, it doesn’t feel true to her character. This could easily be explained in the story as they could have received that type of tech from Amanda Waller, although, it still doesn’t feel true to their comic book characters.

On a positive note, I do like that I could change between each character at any time. When I played through Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, I could only play as Peter Quill, so I like being able to switch between each character within the Suicide Squad. I know for a fact that I will be playing as Harley and King Shark the most.

The negative reaction was quick. In rewatching the gameplay video, I scrolled through comments and overwhelmingly, gamers are disappointed. It was recently announced that Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League was getting delayed due to the opinions of gamers online. I feel for Rocksteady. They set the bar so high that anything else they release will be heavily watched and critiqued. Gamers are a very opinionated group that only wants to see the Suicide Squad get the same love that Batman did in his games.

No matter what, I will be purchasing and playing Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League. This game has been something that I have been looking forward to for a while. I’m trying to keep reasonable expectations as it’s clear that this will be a different direction than the previous games. I hope that this delay will only improve the game and make it better than it is today.

On Thursdays, I’m still playing Curse of Strahd at Badwolf Adventure Studios. Our game was a semi-weekly game, however, the players voted on making sessions on a weekly cadence instead. This is the longest campaign I have ever been a part of and I have grown attached to Levinia, a half-elf Blood Hunter. She’s a level #10 which is also the highest I have ever leveled up a character. Besides offering sessions, Bad Wolf also allows for character commissions. I asked for a commission of Levinia because even if she were to die, I won’t ever forget her. The commission was completed in January and I’m pleased with how it turned out.

I’m in awe! Levinia looks so good! I felt that this image captured her character. In addition to having a digital copy of the art, Badwolf framed it for me too. I haven’t hung it up yet as I’m figuring out where I want to hang it in my house.

I cannot say enough positive comments about Badwolf Adventure Studios. I always look forward to our sessions and it’s helped me destress throughout the week.