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.

Today's Notes 7/15/21: I'm Good... But Not Good Enough To Hang With Diamond Ranked

Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream lead off with Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid, and we started off hot, winning several matches in a row and pushing my rank up to being 678th in the World while being at Platinum League IV. That may not seem impressive, but consider my approach to fighting games is pretty basic and my timing for defense is terrible and I have no hope of escaping juggles... being in the top 1000 is impressive. Granted the team that has gotten me this far is the trio of Ryu, Chun-Li & Lauren (Red Samurai Ranger), as I focus trying to start fast and use the assists as frequently as possible to cause mix-ups... which does leave me open to be slaughtered when things go wrong.

That said, when things did go wrong it was more due to who I was matched up against players who are in the Diamond and Elite Leagues. For those that don't know there are 7 leagues in Battle for the Grid (Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Elite, Master) and each league has 5 levels going from V to IV to III to II to I. So at Platinum IV, I'm pretty much right as an average player, I can go head to head pretty evenly with most people in the same tier group... but match me up against those in the three higher tiers, I'm dead in the water. Now normally you wouldn't see those types of match ups happen... but Power Rangers Battle for the Grid doesn't really hide the fact that it does match ups based on who's playing and not their skill or ranked level. This can be very frustrating when I see that I'm matched up against the same dudes (or dudettes) over and over again. Most I could do is make them earn their pretty obvious wins.

Anyway we got some clips from that portion of the stream.

Twitch Clip: Earning a win

Twitch Clip: Opponent Left The Match... WTF Dude!

Twitch Clip: I Just Had My Butt Handed To Me

Twitch Clip: Team Work

Twitch Clip: We Almost Pulled That Off!

At the half way point, action switched over to Tom Clancy's The Division, where it turns out there was a Global Event happening, where we could shock the enemies. It was a pretty cool way to kill some time before Iceman was able to join in and we proceeds to start work on the 'play every mission on hard', but since I set the game at World Tier 1, we were basically tearing through the first half of the map since our in-game characters have some great gear! 

We did knock out one achievement last night:

1. Networking: Complete 20 Missions as part of a group.
   

Here are some clips from the Division half of the stream! 

Twitch Clip: We Ran So Far Away...

Twitch Clip: He Blew Up... In My Face!

Twitch Clip: He was going to go down eventually!

Twitch Clip: They are having a Tough time!

Yesterday we added Champions of Norrath for the PlayStation 2 to the collection, which was a spin off of the EverQuest MMORPG and had some pretty favorable reviews when it was released. What caught my attention was how often it was listed as a game 'trapped on the PS2', as many people have wanted to see a sequel or remake of it.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily work out lasted 28 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 415 kcal, and needless to say I did feel I needed to do some extra because that seemed pretty lack luster, so my total session went 40 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 589 kcal. We are now up to 69 (nice) out of 100 for the Evan's Best Friend achievement. If we manage to average 3 points a day for it, we should have that knocked out in 11 days.

UPDATE: Minutes after this blog was posted, my mail arrived, and today we added Capcom vs SNK 2: Mark of the Millennium for the PlayStation 2 to the collection. This game is still available digitally on the PS3 version of the PlayStation Network Store... but a physical copy of does make it a fine addition to the collection.

For tonight's stream, Star Trek Online will lead off as we'll do some things based around the endeavor quests and then we'll switch things over to do some stuff on the PlayStation 2. So similar to last Thursday just with slightly less-older games.

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