We went to the Sea of Eden to Defy FATE

Good morning everybody,  

Last night's stream of Chrono Cross certainly was a tale of two halves, as the first chunk of the stream was all about finding the Level 7 Tech skills for everyone we've recruited up to this point... but it turns out Razzly can't get hers because of some bullshit plot point that is easily avoided depending on the order you cover the various major story points. See for Razzly to get her Level 7 tech skill, her sister Rosetta must die during during the Dwarves invasion of Water Dragon Isle... but since we were pretty quick about doing things, Rosetta lived which means Razzly won't have her level 7. Damn it! Still, we managed to get that done for nearly every one else, and recruited Turnip, Orlha and Skelly... which just leaves the issue of going through the trouble of recruiting Janice or not.

See to recruit Janice, you must defeat her monsters in three consecutive rounds aboard the S.S. Zelbess... and the only way to do that is to get the Forget-Me-Not pot late in the game and to go around looking for the strongest enemies possible and letting Sprigg get the final hit on them. If I choose to do this, we will have to put off possibly finishing Chrono Cross for another day, because getting Sprigg to land the final hit will be challenging at this stage of the game. I'll make up my mind on this before the stream... we could save going after Janice for a new game plus next year... or next time I play Chrono Cross use a PS1 or PS2 and access my old saves on the memory cards from 20 years ago!

Anyway, once the side quests were done we made our way to the Sea of the Eden and set about facing the first boss of the night, Vita. Vita has three forms it can take, depending on which island you visit last, and in this case, w were facing Vita Dos, because we went to the Future Island last. It's a pretty straight forward fight, just beat it down with the strongest attacks available.

From there it was into Chronopolis for the next boss fight, The PolisPolice, which is a White innate enemy. I got a little cute and took a team of Serger, Steena and Grobyc... so it was two white innate and one black innate. Equipping the white plate on Grobyc meant that any elemental attack done by boss enemy would heal him, and with black elements spread out among everyone, it was all about just wearing the enemy down. Serge got KO'ed by Grobyc's more than made up the difference 

Roaming around Chronopolis would lead to finding a few goodies including Grobyc's Level 7 tech skill, which meant I was going to put Norris in the party because they have a double team move... unfortunately, said move would be worthless against the final boss enemy of the night, FATE. FATE is extremely predictable... but at the same time it's attacks can be devastating. With it being a black innate enemy, that meant putting the black plate on Serge, so that any black element casted by FATE would heal Serge, so in short sort of the the same plan against the PolisPolice. Making sure everyone has white elements to attack with and others to heal and provide alternate damage to prevent the field from turning all black certainly kept the fight even, but this battle just comes down to who you bring, your equipment and luck.

Once FATE is defeating, the Terra Tower rises to begin the final leg of the game. We also learn that FATE was actually what was keeping the world from being destroyed, as the Dragons are revealed to be the true enemy, and Kid was the unwillling pawn. Now if I push to finish the game tonight, we will have at least 3 side quests to do, one involves getting Kid back and acquiring their level 7 tech skill, then it's pretty much a gauntlet to push towards the end game. Again it really depends on if I want to go after Jancie or not, but as I said I'll make my mind before the start of the stream.

 Twitch Clip Links

• Nikki Learns LimeLight
• Turnup & NeoFio Team Up For Some Tossed Salad! 
• Defeating Vita
• Defeating PolisPolice
• For The Future.... 
• Grobyc & Norris Team Up: PitchBlack 
• Defeating FATE

 After the stream we sent the fun over to MommyBee (twitch.tv/MommyBee) who was also playing Chrono Cross, and it's been nice to leave folks with someone playing the same game.

Yesterday we added two Funko POPs to the collection, both of which are Sara Ryder from Mass Effect Andromeda, but they are different version. The first Sara Ryder (N7) which is from the POP! Games line as #187 which was a Best Buy Exclusive. The second is Sara Ryder (Masked) which is also from the POP! Games line as #186, which was a Game Stop Exclusive. It's funny that for Mass Effect Andromeda of the two playable Ryders, they gave all three Funko Variants to Sara, but for the original Mass Effect Trilogy only BroShep got one... and not FemShep. Still I now have all three Sara Ryder Funko POPs in my collection.

Also arrive in the mail yesterday was Cowboy Bebop for the original PlayStation. This was a Japan Exclusive which means it's region locked, but since I have a region free PSOne on hand, we'll stream this at some point. This is a 'scrolling shooter', and is said to have a similar game play style to the like of StarFox on the Super Nintendo... which is a game I've never played. The biggest issue for me playing it will be figuring out the controls, since the manual and any in-game spoken dialog is in Japanese. I did see some existing footage on YouTube indicating that a number of in-game text is in English such as on the HUD and options menu. 

We also added Cowboy Bebop: Tsuioku no Serenade (or Cowboy Bebop: Serenade of Reminiscence), this was released on the PlayStation 2... and it also was a Japan Exclusive, so we can't test this any time soon until I find a PS2 that is region free. Anyway, unlike the first game, this is an action beat 'em up style game, so that should not be too hard to figure out despite the language barrier of the Manual and in-game spoken dialog being in Japanese. However, based on screenshots in the manual I can see that a number of menu options are in English, so that will help a little.

Overwatch Compeative Match Results (Tank)

1. D.va & Reinhardt - 27:39 - Win 5-4
2. D.va - 13:32 - Loss - 1-2
3. D.va - 16:03 - Win - 3-1 
4. D.va - 13:32 - Loss - 1-2
5. D.va - 6:58 - Win - 2-0
6. D.va - 10:30 - Loss - 0-1
7. D.va, Reinhardt & Wrecking Ball - 6:28 - Loss - 0-2
8. D.va - 14:02 - Win 2-0
   

Nintendo is throwing their weight around regarding what can and cannot be use for tournaments involving the Super Smash Bros. franchise and rightfully so... I mean why would they want to allow tournaments that use modifications that make the game being feature better than what was released? Yes it's a public relations hit when it comes to how close to the events Nintendo says 'no you can't do that', but that the same time, considering their track record, wouldn't it be better to just use what you know they are going to allow?

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout lasted 31 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 436 kcal. The exercises for today were the Sway Back combo, Straight Combo #2 and the Hip Shape Focus Combo. I experimented with turning the rumble function on the Joy Cons off to begin a test of if that function was causing issues with movement detection. So far it's inconclusive.

So yeah as already discussed we're continuing Chrono Cross tonight, so I hope you all have a great day.

And on that note we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

We Took Our Lumps But Had Fun

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night's Overwatch stream was a lot of fun, and big thanks to PandaSweet for joining on on the madness. We certainly took more losses than usual, but I did end up having 6 plays of the game, 1 as Tracer, 2 as Dva and 3 as Moira. All of this week's matches were Quick Play matches, so it was nice to deliver on big plays

Overwatch Quick Play Results

1. Moira - Loss
2. D.va - Loss
3. D.va - Loss
4. D.va - Win
5. D.va - Loss
6. D.va - Loss
7. D.va - Win
8. Moira - Loss
9. Moira - Loss
10. D.va - Loss
11. Moira - Win
12. Moira - Win
13. Moira & Mercy - Loss
14. Moira - Loss (Back Fill) 
15. D.va - Win
16. Tracer - Loss
17. Torbjorn & Mei - Loss
18. Tracer - Loss
19. Tracer - Loss
20. D.va - Win
21. Moira - Win
22. Moira - Loss
    

Off-stream, with 3 days left in the current competitive season (#30) for Overwatch, I did the five qualifying matches for a tank on the role queue category. I did have 1 Play of the Game. After the 5 matches where done I placed at Silver 1617. The last time I played ranked matches was Season 26 which was back at the start of the year, and I only did a handful of matches thin, where I placed at Silver 1567, so I had better luck this go round.Maybe I'll start doing more ranked stuff and document them in my daily blog. Anyway  Here are the results

Overwatch Ranked Matches (Role: Tank)

1. Havana: D.va - Loss - 0-1 13:31
   
2. Hollywood: D.va - Win - 2-1  - 14:02
3. Dorado: D.va - Loss - 1-2 - 10:30
4. Hollywood: D.va / Orissa / Reinhardt - 5-4 24:39
5. Blizzard Word: D.va - Win 1-0 7:28
   

Now who did we raid following the stream? Well we sent the fun over to SmoresDaFloof who was playing Final Fantasy VII (the classic version), you can check them out at twitch.tv/SmoresDaFloof!

Twitch Clip Links

• Shut Down!
• Just another Triple Kill with Dva's Ultimate
• Panda's Ultimate Set That All Up! 
• That's what I get for encouraging such madness! 
• HOW DID THAT HAPPEN!? 
• This time stay down!
• Blinking Over The Edge 
• Who else is on fire!

So Paige of the WWE said she is going to try and make a comeback... well considering how long it took the likes of Edge to make a comeback, it's possible, so maybe she'll be able to do it. But the road to getting cleared by WWE doctors is going to be a long one, and I wonder if that process will frustrate Paige to the point she'd leave the company and go somewhere with less incentive to do the right things medically for their talent (AEW). 

If there ever was a network that should be exposed for being a collective bunch of idiots, it's ESPN who deserve every bit of bad press they are getting for the debacle they allowed to be on their networks this weekend. Bishop Sycamore, which is an online charter school that just happens to have a barely year old football program, somehow worked their way into being the ass kicked victims of IMG Academy, which has a football program that has produced well over two dozen NFL players in its history. Apparently, EPSN couldn't be bothered to do a back ground check on Bishop Sycamore in their quest of chasing the all mighty attention of the NFL.

Considering the issue of running Road Rash 3D on Friday via the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3, I might go look into a back up for one of those systems, probably the PS2 since I could grab for a modified one to justify adding games that are region locked from that era to the collection.

Some may wonder why don't I just play these games via an emulator, it's because I'm not a fan of emulating games, things don't quite feel right, either with how a game looks and saving games can be problematic. If there was a PS1 or PS2 emulator that out there that didn't have those issues I certainly never found it. 

Dr Kawashima's Brain Training World Championship Competition #81 Results

• Dual Task: 41.73sec
  
  • Global Rank: 1427 out of 2695 (B-)
  • Age Rank: 167 out of 297
• Finger Calculation: 31.33sec
  
  • Global Rank: 1190 out of 1640 (C)
  • Age Rank: 140 out of 179
• Calculations X25: 31.68sec
  
  • Global Rank: 1986 out of 2736 (C)
  • Age Rank: 214 out of 292
• Photographic Memory: 69.79sec
  
  • Global Rank: 1931 out of 2486 (C-)
  • Age Rank: 216 out of 276 

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout lasted 31 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 470 kcal. The exercises for today were Hook Combo #1, Waist Shape Focus Combo and Block Combo. For whatever reason the left joy con kept having to re-sync, resulting in 8 misses, 7 of which were during the Block Combo resulting in a Fitness Age score of 25... and I can't remember the last time I had that many misses during a session! So I took out my frustration and did a little extra, so the complete session was 37 minutes with an estimate calorie burn of 540 kcal.

For tonight's stream we will be resuming Chrono Cross and I believe we will try and get the Level 7 Tech Skills for several characters to start with, just to make sure we're not missing big moves or combinations. Once that's done we're off to the Sea of Eden to continue the story!

So with that said we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

 

We Are The Kanto Champion

 

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night's stream saw us wrapping up Pokemon Let's Go Eevee,,, and the night began as it ended, with a battle against our rival named Rival. Yes that was his name because I'm super creative. 

First let's talk about Victory Road, all the check points you have to go through to make sure you have all the badges is a bit silly but it does build the anticipation of reaching the Indigo Plateau. The cave it self is a bit of a pain, but we didn't really explore it, as i elected to forgo catching Moltres in favor of focusing on the task at hand of getting through the cave as quickly as possible. I just didn't want to deal with the frustration of trying to catch it and it taking up a long amount of time.

So one we reached our true destination, it was time to face the Elite Four. With a team consisting of Eevee, Aloah Raichu, Charizard, Blastoise, Victreebel & Pidgeot, on paper I should have struggled against all four members of the Elite Four... but I made sure to give each one moves of mixed types, case in point Eevee has a psyche, normal, electric and water attacks, Raichu had electric, ground and fighting, and so fourth, Blastoise had water, ice and dark... and straight on down the line. Basically the plan was to use these six as basically rough match ups that could take a few hits 

For each of the Elite Four I went into each battle with the following plans

1. Loreli: Use Eevee and Raichu's electric attacks to devasate most of her lineup, leaving Charizard to counter Jynx
2. Bruno: Use Eevee's Psychic attacks to wipe out the three fighting Pokemon, leaving the Onyx and Poliwrath to be taken out by Victreebel and Raichu.
3. Agatha: No real plan other than to one versus each other team and use the most devastating attacks possible. Her team is extremely weak to Psychic attacks, but no way Eevee can be out their the entire fight.
4. Lance: Raichu on Seadra, Aerodactyl and Gyarados to start to them it out with an electric attacks, using Blastoise to shut down the Charizard & Dragonite with water and ice attacks.

While no member of my squad got knocked out there was some close calls, but everyone hung tough. Once we stomped through the Elite Four it was time to face Rival one last time. This was the only battle in the entire game where my opponent actually switched Pokemon in and out based on match ups, so it was a little more interesting than the standard battles against Pokemon gym leaders. But my plan was this.

1. Use Raichu on Rival's Mega-Evolved Pidgeot, since flying types are weak against electric types.
2. Use Charizard to roast Vileplume
3. Use Blastoise to wash out Marowak since it was weak against Water
4. Use Victreebel to crush the Rival's Raichu
5. Use Eevee's water and electric abilities  to take out Rapidash and Slowbrow 

There was no real need to use Pidgeot in the championship battle other than in case of an emergency situation, and it was an obvious conclusion that we were winning.... because even if we had bad match ups, we had the higher experience.... still we played the match ups and became champion! Woo-Hoo! 

So with Pokemon Let's Go Eevee done that opens up Saturday for another side quest game, and I have a lot of strong contenders to consider what will take its spot. Now once the credits rolled, we loaded up Pokemon Unite, playing a few matches winning a couple and was named MVP twice. Pretty good in that regard I think.

Twitch Clip Links

• You think you're big and bad?
• Ice Beam Is Super Effective And It's A Critical Hit 
• Charizard roasts the Rival's Vileplume
• Victreebel crushes The Rival's Raichu 
• Eevee finishes off the Rival's Rapidash! 
• Eevee with the winning blow on Rival's Slowbro! 
• We just drive it home! 
• Scoring And Knocked Enemies Out 
• We slam it in! 
• Oh we won! 

Following the steam we sent the viewers over to Kalenal (twitch.tv/kalenal) who was playing Final Fantasy XIV Online. If you're interested in FF14 and want to learn how to get an idea of what happens during raids, she's one of the best to watch!. 

Since it's Sunday we have a highlight reel featuring everything done over the past week. This week's games were Overwatch, Chrono Cross, Smite, Tom Clancy's The Division, Star Trek Online, Life is Strange, Road Rash, Road Rash: Jailbreak, Pokemon Let's Go Eevee & Pokemon Unite!

Yesterday we added X-Men vs Street FIghter EX Edition for the PlaySation to my collection... and that title should be an indication this is the version of the game that was released in Japan. It is a conversion of the arcade game X-Men vs Street Fighter, but due to the limitation of the Playstion, it was turned from a two on two tag game, to a standard one on one best two out of three rounds fighter that sees your partner being used as an 'assist' and to help boost up Super Combo finishes. Because this was the Japan version, it served as the perfect test for the modified PlaySation to see if it could play a game not meant for North America.... and the test was successful. Interesting enough, despite being a Japan-only release, X-Men vs Street Fighter EX Edition has a lot of things in English at least in terms of the basic menus. The only things in Japanese was dialog on the victory screens and during a characters 'victory' ending.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Daily Workout lasted 31 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 445 kcal.  The exercises for today were Weaving Combo #2, Beginner Combo #2 and Straight Combo #1, these are always selected by the game, but since I started keep track of them, there does seem to be some sort of pattern.

For tonight's stream we'll be playing Overwatch as we do every Sunday! We'll try to stay positive when dealing the randoms we got stuck wit.

So on that note we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

A Night of Road Rash & A Morning Of Smule

 Good afternoon everybody,

Last night the plan was to feature the Road Rash Trilogy of Games on the original PlayStation, which includes Road Rash, Road Rash 3D and Road Rash Jailbreak... things didn't totally go as planned. 

Anyway, we lead of with Road Rash, a game I have played before on an IBM PC back in the 90s that used Windows 95. Needless to say I have fond memories of that version of the game, in fact I still have the CD-Rom for that version! Anyway, playing it's PlayStation cousin was really cool, in fact it felt natural to play in terms of what buttons did what, and nothing felt over thought out. The biggest gripe I have with it is how loud the engine sound effects are, and the general lack of audio settings in the game's option menu. It was great seeing the different FMVs for when you win, lose or wreck your bike, as they really strike a great done. 

This game certainly holds up very well for being over 25 years old, but it did take some adjustment getting use to seeing when objects would appear ahead of you so that they could be avoided. It's not much of a problem on the Thrash Level 1 or Level 2, but one Level 5 when using the fastest bikes in the game it's real noticeable at how little time you have to recognize realize and react. I wouldn't mind seeing a remaster or remake of it, hell all Electronic Arts would have to do is look at what they did with it and duplicate it with some nice 3D models

Then we went to play Road Rash 3D... and it didn't work. It would load up, show the PlayStation Logo and get to the menus to navigate. But when going to do an actual race, it would not work, it got stuck on an infinite loading screen with no clear indication it was going to actually load the race I intended to play! I tired it on both my PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3, and no dice. I would have tried in a PlayStation One, but I need to find the correct power cable for it, So disappointed that we couldn't check Road Rash 3D out, but that's  the risk of old games, sometimes they work, sometimes they don;t... but from what I saw from the controls, it looks like EA was over thinking how to use every button.

However, I couldn't leave this alone, and since I needed an excuse to test a PSOne Slim I recently acquired to possibly handle games that are region locked to outside North America, I hooked it up and guess what... it was able to fully play Road Rash 3D. So at some point we'll do a PSOne night and will featured this particular game.

Anyway, we were able to play Road Rash: Jail Break, and boy is this an ugly game to look at with muddied visuals that really makes it hard to see what's coming. The controls are very similar to Road Rash, and the game-play handles pretty well. But there is no stand alone Race Mode, it's all tied to the game's campaigns. There are time trials which are kind of fun, but wanting to just play a racing game without having to worry about story progression or stat keeping is annoying. Still I probably had more fun seeing all the different ways I could crash as some of the rag doll physics were incredible to look at

Twitch Clip Links

• Groovy... A Winner Is You
• We should be closing in on the end 
  
• He clearly did not want to live!
• We gotta.... DUUUUUUUUUUUUDE!!!!!!
• Hell of a crash... 
• Who is leaving this stuff in the middle of the road?!
• We finished The Race
• WHYYYYY!!!
• The Hype Is Real! 
• The Return Of The Bunny
• Can we make it to first.... NO NO NO NO!!!! 
• Can we get there?! 
• Cut across shorty cut across
• DudedudedudedudeDOOTDOOTDOOT!

 Following the Stream we sent everyone over to DaWorstGamerEver 25 (twitch.tv/DaWorstGamerEver25) who was playing American Truck Simulator. I've known him since High School, he's a real good guy and I hope you'll check his streams out when he's live! 

We have a new art piece from DaemonsW0lf (www.darkwolfcreative.com / twitch.tv/daemonsw0lf), and all the instruction I gave was for them to have fun and surprise me. What they came up with was an incredible portrait of The Bunny looking bad ass and geared up to be in Tom Clancy's The Division.

We added another Funko figure to the collection, from the My Little Pony Vinyl Collectable Series, Dr. Whooves, who was basically an in-joke of working in the 10th Doctor into My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic without having to go through the BBC. It's a nice little figure that goes with with the similar Rainbow Dash figure I have in terms of book-ending Funko Row on my desk shelving. 

Picked up two Custom Game Cases for South Park: Chef's Luv Shack and WCW Vs The World from www.customegamecases.com because I really really hate having loose games. If I can get a proper case for them I shall pursue that. 

We have six new additions to the collection. Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne and Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga II, which complete the collection of games from that series for the PlayStation 2. For the PlaySation 4 we've added ZOne of The Enders: The Second Runner - Mars, Tales of Berseria, Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition,and Tales of Zestiria. Am somewhat kicking myself, because we added Tales of Berseria a few months ago... oh well, guess the 2nd one will remained sealed! We also have Tales of Vesperia for the Switch, so that will remained sealed as well. `

Finally caved in and messed around with Smule this morning because breaking out The Bunny last night for a few minutes was a reminder of how much I enjoy Twitch Sings. Now Smule may have a huge song library, but there appears a lot of alternate arrangements for everything. The biggest gripe I have is that since Smule is only for mobile devices, it makes it really awkward to hold my phone to balance the camera and sing at the same time. Anyway here are the links to some stuff I did this morning.

Smule Recordings

• As Tears Go By (Solo) 
• As Tears Go By (Duet)
• The Longest Time (Duet) 
  
• Sweet Home Chicago (Duet)  
• Fly Me To The Moon (Duet)  
• Can't Help Falling In Love (Duet)
  

Now this does raise some questions... how come the RIAA has no issues with Smule but had major issues with Twitch Sings?! Is it because some of the leadership at the RIAA have ties to Donald Trump who was trying to use the office of the President of the United States to target Jeff Bezos? All signs point to yes that was indeed the case. 

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Daily workout lasted 31 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 491 kcal. The exercise sets for today were Weaving Combo #1, Intermediate Combo #2 and Advance Combo #1.

For tonight's stream we are continuing Pokemon: Let's Go Eevee.. we have eight gym badges and our next destination is Victory Road. Could we possibly finish this game tonight? We shall see!

So on that note we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

Making Sure We Saved Kate

Good Morning Everybody,

Last night's stream lead off with Star Trek Online, and the endeavors this week weren't too bad, one was defeating 30 Undine ships, another was defeating 10 Mirror Universe Vessels in the Badlands, the third was defeating 15 specific types of enemies within Tzenkethi Battlezone... and the last was doing damage in space using Plasma weapons. The last one was super easy to do because Zagreus is set up to use Plasma Weapons. Also the next major 'event' has started within Star Trek Online, the No Win Scenario, completing it counts towards the year long progress that could get players a free Tier 6 ship or other rewards.

We then switched over to Life is Strange to play episode two Out of Time. This episode is notable for a few things... one is you get a real indication of just how much of a bitch Chloe Price can be when she doesn't get her way, and the other is the entire situation regarding Kate Marsh. Having played this game before, talking Kate down off the ledge is a big deal and it's why I was taking my time in going through every little detail... not to mention wanting to get the photo related achievements (I missed two... damn it!).

Now there is an odd detail about the Kate situation in Episode 2 that I'm not sure people notice, that if you walk with her after she is talking with that douche bag Mr. Jefferson (you can't tell I played this before), Kate will tell you to leave her alone as she storms her way to the front door of Blackwell Academy, and for obvious story reasons you can't follow her. I kind of feel this was missed opportunity for the developers of the game to give a choice of having Max choose to follow Kate or not, I get why they didn't since the way the whole thing plays out is for Max to learn she can move within a moment of time. Still it is funny to joke that Max is prevented from following Kate by a force-field (which is referenced in last night clips which you'll see below)

Episode 2 is also really important in to how every single little thing Max does or does not do matters, such as reporting Nathan to Principal Wells, choosing to or not get involved with David Madsen being stern with Kate in episode 1 has consequences in episode 2 and beyond. Even taking the blame for Chloe's joint in episode 1 comes back to haunt Max at the end of episode 2. Also I will admit, I clearly did not take opportunity to rewind on certain matters, in when Max has to sign her statement.

Now I kind of considered doing Episode 3 tonight as well, but I'm gonna save that for next Thursday, since I'm going through every thing step by step, it means each episode is taking longer than usual. Anyway, we were playing Life is Strange using the Xbox Series S, so that means we have achievements, and we got 9 out of the 12 for the episode.

Life Is Strange Achievements

1. Field Of View: Take optional photo #1 in Episode 2: Out of Time
2. Full Exposure: Take optional photo #2 in Episode 2: Out of Time
3. Image Stabilizer: Take optional photo #4 in Episode 2: Out of Time
4. Compressed: Take optional photo #5 in Episode 2: Out of Time
5. Dynamic Range: Take optional photo #7 in Episode 2: Out of Time
6. Colorized: Take optional photo #8 in Episode 2: Out of Time
7. Meter Made: Take optional photo #9 in Episode 2: Out of Time
8. Resolution Revolution: Take optional photo #10 in Episode 2: Out of Time
9. Out of Time: Finish Episode 2: Out of Time

Twitch Clips Links

• Funko Row
• Cored The Computer 
• A Deep Space Encounter
• We just need two enemies... that's all we need 
• Is that the Doomsday Machine?!
• The soda was spilled and then not spilled!
• A Picture of Hey-Zeus and of a Bunny 
• Lure In The Squirrel
• You totally do want to go that way Max! 
• What happens When Chloe Shoots The Gas Tank
• What happens when Chloe shoots the bumper
• We Walk With Kate... But Encounter A Force-field?
• Thank goodness for that...

Following the stream, we sent everyone over to BootifulMama who also was playing Life is Strange Episode 2, I selected them at random based who else was streaming it and they seemed cool! Check them out at twitch.tv/bootifulmama

 

 

I don't talk politics, but let me make it clear that in February of 2020, Donald J. Trump signed an agreement with the Taliban to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, which also involved releasing 5000 Taliban prisoners. The blood spilled over the past few days, just like that spilled on January 6 of this year, is on his hands and and on the hands of his supporter. 

 

We added two Funko POPs to the collection today, Becky Lynch (POP WWE #70 / Amazon Exclusive) and Bluto Toga Party (POP Movies #915 / Animal House). Both were cheap because the boxes were a little banged up. Now this is the second Becky Lynch one added to the collection, but the different between #70 and #65, is that #70 has Becky in her 'The Man' attire, and was as indicated an Amazon Exclusive.  

 

Apparently because of the shit that went down, Blizzard is renaming McCree in Overwatch, since the character was named after a douche bag within the company. It's a good move.... now as to what to rename him to is the big question. I'd go with Clayton, it's a nice generic 'Cowboy' name, and if used right can be used as the basis for a bunch of Back to the Future III references. If you don't know what I'm talking about, just remember that in Back to the Future III Mary Steenburgen plays Clara Clayton, the love interest for Doc Brown.

We worked in a bit of Baseball knowledge last night... is blowing a slow rolling ground ball foul before it reaches the third (or first) base bag legal? Technically it was when it was first done in 1940 between a game involving the Montreal Royals and the Jersey City Giants, when Bert Haas was successful in blowing a ball foul, the Giants didn't protest the play or the umpire call... not that it would matter because there was no rule to cover it at the time. However, the President of the International League Frank Shaughnessy would later add a rule deeming the play an illegal one. It is listed as Rule 2.00, OBSTRUCTION

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Daily Workout lasted 31 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 420 kcal. Today's exercises were Body Straight Combo, Uppercut Combo #1 and Triple Combo #1. We are continuing to stay with Lin as we're chasing after the Lin's Champion achievement.

 

For tonight's stream we will be doing another trilogy look back, as we'll be checking out Road Road, Road Rash 3D and Road Rash Jailbreak... all of which were games on the original PlayStation, so we're gonna use the PS2 for this stream. Of course the twitter poll I posted did see a last minute vote for Marvel vs Capcom 2.... so if there is time we'll work that in as well.

So on that note we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

 

A Chang'e Of Scenery

Good morning everybody,

From this point forward, I'm dropping the Today's Notes & Date from the posts, just a minor change because In part some of these entries are written the previous day.

Last night's stream lead off with Smite, playing only Arena matches because they eat up a fair amount of time and were going to switch over to play The Division in the second half of the stream. We played six matches total, winning three of the, so a nice 50/50 split much like with Overwatch. Big thanks to LvStrkR for joining in on a few matches as well! Here are the specific match results and which god I used. Stats are Kills / Deaths / Assists with the KDA being how many Kills & Assists I had per each of my deaths in that match

Smite Arena Match Results

1. Chang'e - Win - 9 / 6 / 13 / 2.58 KDA
   
2. Chang'e - Win - 6 / 2 / 12 / 6 KDA
   
3. Chang'e - Loss - 1 / 6 / 7 / 0.75 KDA
   
4. Chang'e - Loss - 3 / 9 / 13 / 1.06 KDA
   
5. Chang'e - Win - 4 / 6 / 13 / 1.75 KDA
   
6. Athena - Loss - 4 / 11 / 18 / 1.18 KDA
   

Now you made notices the obvious that I was using Chang'e. and that's because Smite has long term achievements, and one is to use each character enough times to having reach Rank 10, and with Chang'e I'm at rank 7 following last night's matches. With over a 100 characters based on deities in the game, it's something that will take awhile to do, and often I run hot and cold with my willingness to play Smite. Also playing as Chang'e allowed me to use their name as a pun for this entry's title.

With the Division this week, Iceman and I focused on the Underground, going into each to random generated mission with the goal of finding collectables as well as leveling up. There are specific achievements tied to the Underground DLC for The Division, and it's a good way to keep going back to that game. As always big thanks to Iceman for being apart of the fun! Did earn one achievement last night

Tom Clancy's The Division Achievements

1. Those Signature Moves: Activate any of the Signature Skills 100 times.
   

Twitch Clips From Last Night

• New Funkos In The Collection
• How I Deal With A Scam Call 
• We Opened The Gate! 
• Very Much So! 
• Tinder is completely Useless 
• Striker Picks Up The Spare! 
• Jamming Device Disabled 
• Confirmed: Guile's Theme Goes With The Division 
• The moment I realized I should have said "Holy S... It's Viper" while playing Chrono Cross 
• Shocking... 
• Dude I'm standing in front of this dude! 

Following the stream we raided LifeWithStan (twitch.tv/LifeWithStan) who was playing Subnautica, they are very upbeat and engaging, be sure to check them out! 

Off stream, played some Street Fighter V and I realized I can easily do another Street Fighter V stream focused on chasing one achievement based around doing the story mode with the original characters the game launched with. Also picked up an achievement as well!

Street Fighter V Trophies

1. Win Or Die Tryin': It's about time you cleared Survival Mode on normal difficulty. You know what happens if you refuse, don't you? Let's just say the only way you live is if you keep on winning!

We added four Funko Pops to the collection yesterday. Moira (Overwatch / Pop! Games #490), Killer Frost (The Flash / Pop! Television #1098), Alfred E. Newman (Mad Magazine / Pop! #29) and Ripley Holding Jonesy (Alien / Pop! Movies # 733). The Ripley is marked as being a limite Edition  to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Alien movie franchise which is pretty cool. Currently looking for two more Funko's to complete a display that is on my desk's shelving. Once it's complete I'll share a picture.

Found my PlayOverwatch page featuring all of my PC stats: https://playoverwatch.com/en-us/career/pc/FredCasden-1202/. Real nice to have all my stats out there for the world to see... unlike most players who hide their stats.

Added a modified PlayStation Slim to the collection as well, as a way to both preserve the PlayStation 2 and 3, as well as possibly being able to play games that were exclusives to the PAL or NTSC-J regions. I have one in particular in mind that folks may be interested in seeing if I can track it down reasonably enough. Though the more I think about it, searching for a modified PS2 would have been more logical.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Daily Workout lasted 31 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 544 kcal. The exercises for today were Left Right Step Combo, Advanced Combo #2 and Double Combo #2. For the Lin's Champion achievement were are up to 47 out of 50. 

I see that Spider-Man: No Way Home is basically taking elements from the god-awful One More Day story-arc... which just serves as a reminder to me that Joe Quesada can go fuck himself.

For tonight's stream we will lead off with Star Trek Online, and once we've completed the Endeavor Quests and do some quick Task Force stuff, we'll be playing episode 2 of Life Is Strange. 

So on that note, we'll se you later tonight over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

Today's Notes 8/24/21: Lynx Is A Cat-Dude But Serge Is A Dude

Good morning everyone,

Last night's stream of Chrono Cross was basically a continuation of where we left off the previous night of hunting Dragons. 

First on our list was the Fire Dragon, and we took Miki and Fargo with us. This was the second encounter with the Fire Dragon which meant it would transformer into a mech-version of itself. We prepared for this fight by making sure Miki and Lynx had plenty of blue elements to pummel the red-innate boss into the ground. This was pretty much a straight forward battlethat involved keeping Fargo healed because of his vulnerability as a blue innate facing a red innate 

From there it was off to face the Black Dragon, still keeping Fargo and Miki in the party, but loading up white elements along with Blue to hammer this once sleeping giant down. Now what some may not know is that the Black Dragon is completely optional depending on when you clear out the monsters from Marbule in the Home World. If you did not do that prior to this point, the Black Dragon would be a sleep. Goes to show where actions can be important in a game like this one! A key moment in this battle was having Fargo steal the Black Plate which came in handy in two battles that happened later on

 The toughest fight of the game in terms of needing multiple attempts with the pain in the ass Sky Dragon. Not only does it and Lynx cancel each other out, but the Sky Dragon has a move called Ultra Nova which can and will wipe out the party.  My first attempt involved Fargo and Miki, but said Ultra Nova move basically ended that. The second attempt involved replacing Miki with Irenes and again Ultra Nova became a factor. Attempt number three saw me stick with Irenes and Fargo, and realizing I had two revives which meant I could split them between Lynx and Fargo because of their higher health stats. Funny enough by the end, Lynx was dead and it came down to Fargo and Iarenes to seal the deal. Now I know for this fight everyone would say use the Black Elements, but here's the problem using them basically triggers the reaction of the Sky Dragon pummeling the party with white elements... and I remember that strategy only working in a New Game Plus run.

Once the Sky Dragon was defeated it was off to Guldove to present the dragon relics to Steena who joins the party. I made the choice to skip over the Criosphinx side quests since defeating it requires quite a bit of planning and luck, and is really only possible on a New Game Plus run. However, we did went to do the Dario side quest. Taking Riddel to the Forbidden Island, we found the 'Home World' version of Dario who has the Masamune which possesses him into wanting to kill her thus triggering a very tough fight. You see when facing Dario, you cannot under any circumstances use elemental attacks on him Instead only use physical attacks and stock the party with healing and defensive elements. Since Riddel is n the party make sure she has the Black Plate from the Black Dragon. Any of Dario's skills that are directed at her which are black innate will heal her, but this does leave her vulnerable to physical attacks. Still having her in the party with the likes of Lynx and Fargo serving as heavy hitters  means focus on keeping Riddel alive and wearing Dario down. The big trade off of this completely optional battle is that Riddel gets her Level 7 ability SnakeFangs and the Mastermune becomes your weapon to use for pretty much the rest of the game unless you can craft a rainbow weapon

Lastly it was off to Fort Dragonia in the Home World where roaming around we were able to find some power elements (ThundaStorm, Iceberg, Tornando and Volcano) before making out way to facing Dark Serge. With Fargo and Irenis in the party, it became a focus of using Blue Elements wherever possible to try and turn the field completely blue to summon the Frog Prince, and then just outlasting Dark Serge's onslaught. Equipping the Black Plate on Lynx is a good idea for whenever Dark Serge using any black innate abilities on him so basically getting a heal boost. After facing Dario, this tough fight is rather easy in comparison. After the fight was done, made sure to hatch the big egg to recruit Draggy before making way up to the top of the tower to have Lynx be reborn into Serge and then going off to Marbule to pick up Irenis' level 7 ability Siren Song.

Also side note: When Serge is reborn... he's buck naked... where the hell does he get a full set of clothes from?!

So with all that done this sets up Monday's stream of going to the Sea of Eden and dealing with everything there as well as hunting down the level 7 abilities of various characters..Anyway, here's the list of clips from last night's stream!

• The Fire Dragon Has Gotten Huge
• Lynx Slays The Fire Dragon
  
• Defeating The Black Dragon 
• First Attempt To Defeat The Sky Dragon Ends In Failure 
• Second attempt to defeat the Sky Dragon... Also Ends In Failure
• Third Attempt to Defeat The Sky Dragon... We Did It! 
• Back From A Break With A Alcapurria
• Defeating Dario
• We Have The Mastermune!
  
• Taking Down Dark Serge!
• Draggy Joins The Party! 
• Some body get him some pants! 

Following the stream we raided Phoenix_face (twitch.tv/Phoenix_face) who was playing Tomb Raider, not the original one, but the awesome reboot. I really have to do a console run of that game at some point having already played it using the Steam version twice on stream. 

Now prior to the stream, I lost power around 5 PM and I was in the middle of a having a real good match as D.va in Overwatch, power came back up at around 5:45 PM so we were able to start on top.

Saw the police report of the chick from Laurel Springs who ran into my fest the Saturday before last. It's amazing how simple the form is.

Apparently OnlyFans has dropped its plans to ban adult entertainment from its services as the backlash it was receiving was clearly large enough to make them realize that doing so would basically kill their business pretty much the same way it did Tumblr. 

As a fan of the original anime of Cowboy Bebop, it does bother me that John Cho is playing Spike Spiegel... I mean, Spike is supposed to be in his late 20s early 30s... and Cho is 49 going on 50 with it really showing! Sure he's in great shape, but lest face, Spike was modeled in part on Bruce Lee in his prime.This also throws off how the character of Spike will relate to Jet Black who was in his mid to late 30s in the Anime... if Spike is gonna be in his 50s, that means Jet is gonna be pushing a hard 60, thus changing the dynamic and flow of what fans like myself want with a live-action version of an awesome show. I'm gonna say it now... the live action Cowboy Bebop series is gonna be a fucking train wreck.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout lasted 28 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 423 kcal. The scheduled exercises were Body Hook Combo, Body Uppercut Combo and Uppercut Combo #2. I did do an extra set with Difficult Challenge Combo #2, so the total workout was 34 minutes with a total calorie estimated burn of 537 kcal.

For tonight's stream we will play some Smite before Iceman joins in for some more fun in Tom Clancy's The Division.

So on that note we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

Drace's Impossible Question: What franchise has produced the biggest roster of intensely f*ckable characters?

Over on twitter, one of my favorite fan fic writers Drace Domino asked the question, "In your opinion, what franchise has produced the biggest roster of intensely fuckable characters? Not your favorite one, not where your personal waifu lives, but the property that’s been the biggest hottie factory over the years". For me this is an impossible question to answer when I really sit down to think about it, but I'll through what I came up over the past hour.

Being straight up, as some know I spent a large part of my free time from 2004-2020 writing fan fics based around the world of pro wrestling with Kristi, and so I can easily say that the Professional Wrestling as a whole probably would be at the top of the list, since promotions typically will hire performers who have certain looks and appeal to bring in an audience. Hell a lot of people are upset at the WWE because they are turning NXT back into its intended purpose as a developmental show to help bring along the next wave of men and women that people will find appealing to watch and grow attachment too instead of being a 'super indy', but that's beside the point. The fact is sex appeal is a huge part of pro wrestling.

But going beyond that, let's talk about Star Trek where you will find a wide variety of characters that can easily fit the build of Drace's Question. Hell the original series alone basically had a 'babe / hunk' of the episode to various degrees, but then you factor in the Animated Series, the Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise...and then look at things beyond the shows. The Starfleet Academy PC game in the mid 90s certainly delivers with the characters of Faith Gage, Maggie Horn, Vanda M'Giia & Jana Akton. Now go look into the comics particularly when DC and Marvel there is a treasure trove of characters to pull from, but let's stick with the Starfleet Academy vibe where you got T'Priell, Kyethn Zund, Pava Ek'Noor Aqabaa & Kamilah Goldstein, 

But since we're moved in the realm of comic books with this, Marvel and DC Comics basically built up their their respective empires on the look and appeal of the men and women in the illustrated publications for close to 100 years now. From Superman to Wonder Woman to Harley Quinn to Nightwing to Spider-Man to Rogue to She-Hulk to Luke Cage, you really have no shortage of characters that one would consider doing the deed with, or imagining getting it on with others within their respective universe. Hell just look at the rosters of the Justice League and X-Men in any given year since the 1980s and you know there's a whole lot of fans figure out who's banging who.

But consider that Marvel has had a history of cross overs with Capcom, and this topic easily considers everything from the Street Fighter franchise, the Darkstalters franchise and so on. Hell fighting games in general have always been built around how characters look in addition to the game play. Consider how over the top the designs for many of the characters are in Street Fighter, and the backlash that came when Mortal Kombat 11's characters were 'tone down' in comparison to MKX and you realized just how much things like that matter to the core audience. Then you look at franchises like Dead or Alive whose entire premise is based around how fuckable the entire cast looks to be.

Then you got things like RPGs, JRPGs in particular... and big topic of interest whenever a new Final Fantasy game is announced is what will the characters look like, and hell folks had a fucking field day with the boy band looks of the Noctis and his buds in Final Fantasy XV, but then you go back and realize there were a lot of fuckable characters in every FF game, Tifa, Yuffie, Rikku, Lighting, Squall, Cloud, Tidus all instantly come to mind.  Hell just look at Chrono Cross, a game I'm currently featuring on my Twitch channel and realize that a good chunk of it's cast, male and female, folks would find fuckable. And let's not forget about Kingdom Hearts which combines the Final Fantasy aspect of things with Disney's beauties.

Disney has done more than it's fair share over the years, and everyone can easily find just about every character, male or female getting the Rule 34 treatment. Hell Frozen basically became a huge money maker for Disney based solely on Elsa's looks alone, but just go back to the 90s with the Disney renaissance of that period, from Aladdin & Jasmin to Eric & Ariel to Belle & The Beast, Disney knew what they were doing, and they weren't the only ones. Example: Everyone mocks the yellow jumpsuit attire of April O'Neil in the 1987 TMNT series now a days, but when you realize that outfit design showed off her figure combine with the fact in the first story arc you have Michelangelo basically copping a feel on her and that just speaks for itself.. Then you got My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and the very existence of its spin off Equestria Girls which is mostly based on the fact Hasbro realized what their audience included

I would be remiss if I didn't mention Overwatch, and that's a tough one where it certainly has a wild variety of characters but it's a real small sample size based on the game and it's expanded content in terms of books and comics. Hopefully that will be expanded upon in Overwatch 2.

Seriously, I could go down this rabbit hole all day trying to answer the question, because I didn't even go deep into Mass Effect, RWBY, Doctor Who, the Arrowverse... or just your typical anime with the likes the of Dragon Ball! 

Anyway, this was a fun little thing to write as it certainly got me thinking!