ReviewsFeatured review

Avowed, One Year On: The RPG That Keeps Pulling Me Back

Obsidian’s first-person RPG landed to a split verdict last year. Three hundred hours later, I think the quiet crowd had it right. Here is what the launch-week takes missed about Eora.

Dana Whitefield · July 28, 2026 · 9 min read

Read the review

Latest from the backlog

Reviews
Game Pass
Retro

Game Pass

July’s Game Pass Haul: Six Arrivals, Three Goodbyes

Everything landing on and leaving Game Pass this week, ranked by how fast you should get to it before the license lapses.

Dana Whitefield · July 25, 2026 · 6 min read

Retro

Revisiting Jade Empire on the Series X

BioWare’s forgotten martial-arts RPG runs beautifully through backward compatibility. Twenty years on, its combat still lands harder than I remembered.

Dana Whitefield · July 22, 2026 · 8 min read

Reviews

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Is a Turn-Based Triumph

A turn-based battler with a real-time heartbeat. Dodge, parry, counter: the most confident debut I have played on Xbox all year.

Dana Whitefield · July 18, 2026 · 7 min read

Game Pass

The Quiet Case for Playing Day-One Indies on Game Pass

The big launches get the headlines, but the day-one indie drops are where the subscription quietly earns its keep. Five I would not have bought, and loved.

Dana Whitefield · July 15, 2026 · 5 min read

Retro

Ninja Gaiden Black Still Humbles Me in 2026

The original Xbox action classic is still the toughest teacher in the genre. Playing it back to back with the remaster showed me exactly what modern design smoothed away.

Dana Whitefield · July 11, 2026 · 10 min read

Reviews

South of Midnight Is a Southern Gothic Worth Sinking Into

Compulsion’s stop-motion fable trades combat depth for atmosphere, and mostly gets the trade right. A short, strange game that stayed with me for days.

Dana Whitefield · July 8, 2026 · 6 min read

Independent Xbox coverage

One player, one backlog, no review copies.

Backlog Ranger is one person playing games on their own dime. No publisher perks, no review keys accepted, no comment threads to moderate. Just honest reviews, a weekly Game Pass roundup, and the retro deep cuts worth your next free weekend.

More about Backlog Ranger