Newsletter Update - November 2025

Heading into the Holidays and Ending a Major Year

Missing a Week

Before I start my updates, a quick apology for the random week off to start the month off. I ended up dealing with neck pain, most likely from sleeping on it wrong. It was so bad that there was a day I left work early due to the pain starting to give me a really bad headache as well. I think I needed the week off. There’s been a lot going on behind the scenes, and October was a rough month for my wife and me, as our daughter started acting out at school and we had to figure out how to handle it. So while I wish I did schedule it in advance, it was good for my mental health to have one less to worry about with the newsletter.

I enjoyed the Halloween season, but with all the crap around me in the world news, I’m looking forward to the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.

Final Spooky Season Update

One thing I didn’t get to finish is providing my updates on the spooky season movies I was watching. Quite frankly, I feel it was better to leave those on my social media feed, and while I had a much better spooky season this year than last year, I didn’t watch as many movies as I was hoping to. Still, I’ll quickly point out some solid horror films I saw since my last update that stood out.

Weapons - Finally, check this one out, and oh my God, what an incredible film. I liked the format they used, and at times it felt more like a mystery than a horror. It does still have my number one criticism of modern horror (jump scares), but this is a legit good movie, and Aunt Gladys is going to go down in movie history as a great movie villain.

Cat People - This is a classic I love watching every Halloween time. It follows a woman who claims to have a curse that prevents her from making love to her new husband. It has a lot of tension and well done characters. The build up to the finale is well-paced, and it features one of the most famous scenes in classic horror. There’s also a remake I saw for the first time, and while it’s very good, I did have some criticisms, such as its obsession with random nudity, and it’s much longer than the original.

Halloween Resurrection - This one has always been a guilty pleasure for me. Is it a good movie? Not necessarily. The premise is awesome, and there’s definitely a message about reality TV, but the execution could be better. Either way, the highlight is Busta Rhymes, who makes this enjoyable. I love using his quotes, and it’s also a view to that early to mid-2000s pop culture of my teenage years.

The Body Snatcher - A first-time watch that I really ended up loving. Boris Karloff plays a gravedigger who isn’t afraid to murder people to get bodies for his high-priced client. It’s suspenseful and is a different role for the infamous Frankenstein actor. I’m adding the movie to my traditional watches.

Gaming

Ghost of Yotei dominated my October. I originally planned to play this game mostly in a golden path style, with some side quests, but I ended up nearly doing everything. I’ll have a full review out as the article following this one, and spoiler alert, it's one of my favorite games of the year. Since then, I started The Outer Worlds, but my neck got in the way of sitting down and playing it. So far, I like it for the most part, and I do see the Fallout influence. I didn’t play the first game, so it’s all new for me. I will say, Obsidian sure does love long dialogues from every character in the game, which can get annoying. Overall, I’m excited to truly sit down and get longer play sessions with it for the month.

Two more games are coming out, and I’m excited about them. We have Winter Burrow on the way, and something about that game has me pumped. I know it's a cozy game, but I feel it’s going to be the type of game I really need right now. Of course, we then have Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, which has been one of my most anticipated games since it was announced back in 2017. There are other games I’m hoping to play before the year ends, including and Roger, Dispatch, and Keeper. I hope to get all these done by the start of 2026, as I want to kick off that month, finally getting rid of a blind spot and playing Cyberpunk 2077.

Plans

So, I’m planning to finish my Pop Vault series ranking the Walt Disney animated canon by the end of the year. Now that I have finished Strachey’s lists of the 1980s, I have some fun lists on that decade, including significant moments, favorite characters, and my personal favorite games of the decade. Also, look out for Game Awards content from predictions to reactions, as well as my own personal end of the year lists. I have a holiday movie watch, but my updates on those will be shorter and saved for maybe two articles total. Lastly, I really want to finally organize my Substack and make it easier to discover older articles, so I’m going to start working on that soon.

I hope that the holidays provide a solid period of articles and ideas for 1UP Vault and I’m happy to jump back on board.

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