We Had Some Work Yesterday; PS2 Variety Night

Good morning everyone,

Yesterday we had some work, not as many hours as I would've liked, but it knocked some rust off... too bad some of the usual features used for work wasn't working as they should've been. I'd really hate to go back to using my phone instead of the web browser set up, because it makes harder for me to hear the people I'm interviewing.

Congratulations to my uncle Freddy who is going into the Pennsylvania Boxing Hall of Fame!

Last night's stream was truly a variety night of games from the PlayStation 2 era, starting off with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Battle Nexus... and I forgot how bad that game was in regard to hit detection, the wonky A.I. and the bad camera angles. For whatever reason Konami really struggles with making TMNT games that weren't 2D brawlers. Chances are quite a lot of the VOD is going to be muted or cut because of how much footage this game used from the 2003 TMNT series.

Next was X-Men: Next Dimension, a fighting game that clearly has some inspiration from Tekken and Virtua Fighter. We went through the arcade mode as Betsy (aka Psylocke), and outside of Magneto, we didn't have too much trouble. Rather surprised Patrick Stewart supplied some voice work for the game. This game does have a story mode, so it makes it worth revisiting to see what that is like.

Over The Hedge was the next game we played, based on the movie of the same name, and while clearly aimed at younger gamers, it has a nice charm to do for a budget cash grab game.Based on the first couple of levels, I feel this game will be a hoot to play in co-op if I can rope in either my cousin Frances of my brother Leo into spending an evening messing around with it on stream.

Finally checked out Champions of Norrath: Realms of EverQuest, and its not a bad RPG,but it's clear it was meant to take full advantage of the PS2's online multiplayer capabilities. It might have local co-op so that might be worth diving into as a novelty.

We took a look at Death by Degrees and I have to wonder what Bandai Namco was thinking, They already had the bases for a decent brawling game in the form of the Tekken Force mode that was introduced in Tekken 3, but Death by Degrees certainly was not as fun to pick up on, due to the weird controls. Does look and sound great though.

Lastly we played Star Trek Encounters, which is in an arcade shooter game that uses some of the same assets used for Star Trek Legacy which was released on the Xbox 360 and PC around the same time. Much like it's more advanced sister game, the 'campaign' is not really fun, but using cheats to unlock all the ships means there is chaos to be had in its various game modes.

On a side note, I have to do something about how OBS is broadcasting things much darker than they should be in terms of the output color pallet.

For the raid we dropped in on Kalenal who was playing Final Fantasy XIV over at twitch.tv/kalenal

Tonight is the Super Bowl... and I know my mom would have been rooting for the Eagles if she could watch it... and I finally saw her death certificate... and reading it really hit me hard.

Finished the Mass Effect short story commission and have another one to start working on as well, so this series will be up to 22 chapters.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout featured Advanced Combo #1, Sway Back COmbo and Difficulty Challenge Combo #3

"What do you call a poor Santa Claus?" "St. Nickel-less."

Song of the Day: Sunday Best by Surfaces.

For tonight's stream, it's Sunday and that means Overwatch 2... and yes I will be wearing Eagles green, in fact I'll be wearing my mom's Eagles jersey that was originally owned by my brother.