Fall Guys, Singing On Twitch and RE5

Good morning everyone,

Last night's stream opened with Fall Guys, and we ran into the old problem of being put on teams that only have three members, which was really annoying. But we did win back to back shows, in one instance I had a dude pinned near the ledge and needed a teammate's help to push them off for the win, and in the other myself and a teammate were the final two in Jump Club, so that was awesome.

For the first time since the end of Twitch Sings we did some singing on Twitch via Let's Sing2023, which is available on several platforms. Picked up a cheap USB mic to plug into the back of the Xbox One, and it was fun to belt out some songs. It's too back Let's Sing has such a small song library and none of the features Twitch Sings had in terms of putting together parties online, but it is what it is.  On top of that, the game itself is poorly programmed in terms of picking up notes of what is singing (more on this below when I talk about Rock Band 4)

Iceman and I cleared Chapters 5-3 and 6-1 of Resident Evil 5 tonight, putting us in a great spot to finish the game next Wednesday. We got several achievements along the way, and for the most part stayed on our feet the entire time. I am convinced that if RE5 was given a remake with controls similar to Gears of War, it would be incredible fun.

Let's Sing 2023 Achievements

• Early evening: You got a bronze record
• The family is growing: You won 3 avatars
• Internet talent: You won 5 matches in WORLD CONTEST
• Eclectic: You sang 15 different songs
• Early days: You got 5 gold records

Resident Evil 5 Achievements

• Egg Hunt: Find all 4 types of eggs.
• Masters of Removing: Work together to save someone special.
• Completed Chapter 5 - 3: Complete Chapter 5 - 3 on any difficulty setting.
• Completed Chapter 6 - 1: Complete Chapter 6 - 1 on any difficulty setting.

For the raid we dropped in on DR_JB_JOVI who was playing Resident Evil 4 over at twitch.tv//DR_JB_JOVI, the raid was recommended by BangBangBang713 who redeemed the guide the raid reward!

The plan for tonight's stream is doing another session of Disney Speedstorm, mostly to see what the game is liked after people exploit the pay to win mechanics. 

I was told (after the stream) that Rock Band 4 is a much better singing option than Let's Sing 2023, so I did give that whirl this morning, and I can safely say it is far superior to Let's Sing 2023 in regards to being able to sing without having to push my vocal beyond reason. It will take a long time to actually build up a decent list of songs however.

Rock Band 4 Achievements

• Give It a Rest: As a Singer, used Overdrive at least 4 times in a single song.
• Seeing Stars: Earned 5 Stars on a song in Quickplay mode.
• One More Song: Played an encore in "Play a Show" mode.
• Tune Up: Calibrated your audio/video setup.

My fantasy baseball team is doing well this week, problems my opponents team is doing better.

Still need to come up with a way to get the television and what's left of another TV taken away.

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

American McGee's Alice Needs A Remake

Good morning everyone,

Today got off to a good start as a local junk collector came and asked if they could take some of the things I was looking to get rid of. Paid them a little extra to take a lot more than what they were wanting. But hey it's one less thing I have to worry about.

Last night's stream of American McGee's Alice went right up to midnight because the platform jumping and two boss fights took a while and multiple attempts to deal with. The Jabberwocky fight was just a nightmare to get through because of how it just stayed on me with its fire breath. Then there was the Demon Queen boss fight, in which I could barely see a damn thing. I did make liberal and frequent uses of the quick save options, which kind of spoiled the pace of the fight, but when I have doubt that I was actually making progress, I had to make sure things fell into place.

All that said, American McGee's Alice does deserve a remake, if it had the game play of it's sequel, Alice: Madness Returns, it certainly would have made things a lot more fun. At the very least it implement a better weapon switch option, because cycling through the weapons in tough situations really got old,I did find that the Ice wand to be the best overall weapon, as it can be used on a group of enemies. 

Some other notes, I enjoyed seeing the originals of the March Hare and Dormouse's appearances, not to mention their justified hatred towards The Mad Hater. The swimming sections were awful. For the most part I didn't need a guide to find my way, but I did end up using one because some things were exactly clear on what to do late in the game. 

Would I play it again? Probably not, since I got all of the achievements associated with it, and there is no incentive for wanting to go through it again at a harder difficulty setting

American McGee's Alice Achievements

• Dead Hatter: In American McGee’s Alice, Complete Behind the Looking Glass
• Royal Approach: In American McGee’s Alice, Complete Queen of Heartsland
• Full Recovery: In American McGee’s Alice, Complete the Game

For the raid we dropped in on pradoxgamerau as they were playing Pathfinder: Kingmaker over at twitch.tv/pradoxgamerau

The plan for tonight's stream is to play Fall Guys and Resident Evil 5, with the goal in RE5 to get through chapters 5-3 and 6-1. Hopefully Iceman and I have some good luck.

Got some writing done on the latest WWE commission short story request. I figure it's about 25% finished.

Still plugging along with Hades to get Megara's story to progress in order to get the final achievement.

I'm seriously looking into a way to do a karaoke stream, it's been a while since I've done any singing on stream. Would mean that stream could not be archived however... and would probably involve two microphones.

Recorded the 9th video in my series of vlogs going through my DVD collection, and goes over about 95% of my wrestling collection. It will be on my YouTube channel on May 17.

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

American McGee's Alice has some wonky controls

Good morning everyone,

Got some groceries yesterday and did some writing both on my own original idea story based on Persona 5 for my SubscribeStar followesr and on the latest WWE commission request. 

Last night stream featured more Alice Madness Returns, or rather, the game within the game, American McGee's Alice, which was the original game released in 2000 on Windows PC. Needless to say, I had a hard time getting used to the real wonky controls, trying to attack, jump and dodge is not exactly easy... so I can't imagine how anyone was doing it with a mouse & keyboard 23 years ago. The camera is decent so I can keep track of most enemies,

Near as I can tell we cleared about half of the game so far, based on the list of areas I found, and judging by the face it has only six achievements, so there is the potential of finishing the game on tonight's stream, which actually would be cool if I can pull that off. No guarantee though consider how screwy some areas were.

American McGee's Alice Achievements

• Madness Begins: In American McGee’s Alice, Complete Village of the Doomed
• Skool-Leaver: In American McGee’s Alice, Complete Fortress of Door
• Out of the Woods: In American McGee’s Alice, Complete Wonderland Woods

For the raid, we dropped in on PowerThumbz during their stream of Daymare 1998 over at twitch.tv/powerthumbz

Tucker Carlson was fired yesterday, and I can imagine he won't be the last considering some of the behavior of many of Fox's other personalities. 

I did watch Power Rangers: Once and Always... and I'll just say it, thank goodness Jason David Frank was not involved in it, because he would have taken away from the core story. In fact, the one person who would've added a lt would've been Amy Jo Johnson, but I'm really only saying that because footage of what she said during the memorial for Thuy Trang back in 2001 can be found on YouTube.

After 100 runs I'm still not sure how many more engagements with Megara I need to get her to pop up in Zagreus's chambers to get the last damn achievement in Hades!

Did mess around a bit with the Xbox version of Diablo III, as I am considering getting Diablo IV since that is going to have cross-play.

My fantasy baseball team is doing alright so far, granted it features a lot of Phillies on it... but hey, aftter a couple of weeks, at least I'm not getting blown out.

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

It was a busy Sunday

Good morning everyone,

Last night's stream of Overwatch 2 was very eventful, as we were joined once again by PandaSweet and BangBangBang. Played a variety of characters tonight, Orissa, Junker Queen, Reinhardt, Tracer, Torbjourn, Ashe. Moira, Ana, Brigitte and even picked up four plays of the game as Orissa, Tracer, Moria and Bastion.

Here's the thing, I'm surprised I'm doing fairly well as Tracer on the console side, don't get me wrong, I could in the right circumstances do well as her on the PC version, but it seems to me Tracer is a perfect to play as with a game pad.

Also surprised I got another achievement unlocked this week, and with it I broke past the 1000 gamer score mark for Overwatch. It's an odd streak, and I'm not purposely trying to get the achievements since trying to target certain goals in this game doesn't really help the chances for winning.

Overwatch 2 Achievements

• The Path Is Closed: Destroy 3 of Symmetra's Teleporters in a single Quick or Competitive Play game

For the raid we dropped in on maximilian_dood who was featuring Street Fighter 6 over at twitch.tv/maximilian_dood

Will I played Street Fighter 6 when it comes out? It really depends, I go hot and cold on fighting games all the time, and there's not really any characters in it that I want to play as. As a Sakura main, if she's not in it, then I'm not exactly motivated to play it.

The plan for tonight's stream will be to start up American McGee's Alice, which was included  as DLC for Alice: Madness Returns. 

I don't blame Microsoft for disabling sharing clips and screenshots to twitter. If Elon Musk want's to act like a complete bitch, then he should be treated like one.

Finished the short story commission based on the 2023 Anime Awards, and began work on a short story based on Persona 5, focusing on Tae Takemi. Also picked up another commission story request, and it's another WWE one... ugh.

Spent a couple of hours breaking down CDs and putting them and their liner notes into a binder. If I had to guess, I probably have another 400 to go through. That is going to take a while to do.

Watched Pulp Fiction yesterday, always a good movie. Still wonder what's in the briefcase.

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

Disney Speedstorm is a Pay-To-Win Game

Good morning everyone,

Last night's stream was supposed to featured Elder Scrolls Online, but Striker was unavailable, so instead we featured Disney Speedstorm, and I played a lot of ranked matches as Belle, getting up to the Silver League and Rank 6. I can certainly hang in most races against other players, averaging finishing in 5th place overall in most cases. Playing on stream certainly was interesting, as for the first time I did beat other players in a racing game, which was fucking awesome.

We did not unlock any achievements, because everything is grind base, as Disney and the Developers are both very optimistic over the shelf-life of this game. I'm not to keen on the Micro transactions style pay-to-win mechanics the game has, but that's part for the course. 

Case in point, once characters unlock a 2nd star they gain access to an extra race pick up for their special attacks. The only way to get characters to a 2nd star is to get shards, and most of the shards from what I can tell can only be earned from the loot boxes.

I'm certainly not going to sink any money into trying to rank up characters, as I'll probably continue to play it as a casual racing game, and get what ever little achievements I can earn along the way. We of course will feature Disney Speedstorm again on Thursday of this week.

For the raid we dropped in on x_lumineee during their s tream of Final Fantasy XIV over at twitch.tv/x_lumineee

The plan for tonight's stream is to play Overwatch 2, and as usual voice chat will be handle through the Discord / Xbox live 

With Embiid questionable for round two of the NBA playoffs, looks like it'll be another year where the Sixers are eliminated in the second round.

Yesterday overall was a meh day, as I stayed in bed for the majority of it... just didn't feel like doing anything until I had too. Just was in a real funk. Which means I didn't finished the short story commission I was working on... damn it.

I did put together part four of the series of videos of making a playlist based on vinyl albums I know, it is the longest of the four videos because I padded  the list by putting entire compilation albums on it

Also finally got the rug(s) down in the main part of the basement, plus got things now stored in the extra space underneath the basement stairs. Still need to figure 

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

We Finished Spider-Man, Next Up It's DLC

Good morning everyone,

Yesterday was another day without work, as they are still trying to fix the problems with the assignment we were all on. I'm covered, so at the moment I'm not worried, but I continue to look for new opportunities.

We finished Marvel's Spider-Man last night, and boy did I have trouble with the Doctor Octopus fight, mostly because I didn't see I could leap up off the roof to perch on some poles. Still, it was a very satisfying finished. We got every trophy in the base game with the exception of the one for getting all the suits, but hopefully with the game's DLC, I'll be able to unlock the ones I need that way, because I need base and challenge tokens. 

Of course, we'll be starting the DLC on next Friday's stream, and since there were three DLC releases, maybe we can do each one individually over the next three weeks. Maybe have some extended streams in order to get them all done perhaps? We'll see how it goes.

I of course, do want to talk about the Aunt May death scene, and with it only being three months since I lost my mom, that scene hit harder for me than for a lot of folks. I was fighting hard not to break down to start crying on stream, as I miss my mom every single day. Trust me when I say, there are days I feel so hopeless, and that scene unintentionally was a reminder of the empty feeling I have.

Marvel's Spider-Man Trophies

• Back in the Slammer: Take down each Prisoner Camp
• Superior Spider-Man: Unlock all Skills
• Mercenary Tactics: Take down each Sable Outpost
• I Heart Manhattan: 100% complete all districts
• Grounded: Defeat Electro and Vulture
• Sting and Smash: Defeat Scorpion and Rhino
• Staying Positive: Defeat Li
• End Game: Complete Act 3

There is a question of will I go straight to Spider-Man Miles Morales afte finishing all the DLC, and the answer is we'll probably put a game in between on Friday nights. I of course, reserve the right to change my mind on that!

For the raid we dropped in on TracyDoll during the stream of Friday the 13th The Game over at twitch.tv/tracydoll

The plan for tonight's stream is more adventures in Elder Scrolls Online with Striker, should be fun, depending on how long it takes us to get from point A to point B! 

Watched the first episode of the Higherlander TV series last night, it certainly was a great way of establishing the concept seen in the movies for a weekly program. Also was surprised at how far it was pushing the boundaries of what was allowed in syndication.

Got quite a bit of writing done on a commission request, with luck I'll finish it before tonight's stream.

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

Moved Furniture, Proved The Breakers A.I. Is Cheap

Good morning everyone,

With no work yesterday, I finally dedicated time to moving stuff to where the couch and deep freezer were taking up space in the basement. Also realized I had extra storage space under the basement stairs, which is where I'll be putting several cases of items.

Last night's stream featured the Breakers Collection, and anyone who didn't believe me about how fucking cheap Bai-Hu is a cheap boss for a fighting game that gets priority on everything will have proof of it. Granted I wanted to beat him using Rila, which made things harder for myself because of how her plays style is similar to Blanka's in Street Fighter. Eventually I was successful on that, adjusting the settings to make it possible for me, but even then it was a nightmare.

Also tried to play some matches online, but according to the in game lobbies, only two other people were playing. Breakers Collection is a dead game for online play.

Breakers Collection Achievements

• Just a Normal Day: Finished Arcade Mode on NORMAL (Difficulty Level 4-6)
• Path of Pielle: Finished Arcade Mode with Pielle (Any Difficulty Setting)
• Path of Rila: Finished Arcade Mode with Rila (Any Difficulty Setting)

For the raid we dropped in on Kalenal during their stream of Final Fantasy XIV over at twitch.tv/kalenal 

The plan for tonight's stream is to continue Marvel's Spider-Man, with the initial focus being on doing all the Silver & Prisoner Camps and Crimes before dealing with the rest of the main story 

The Oakland A's are no more, or will be no more, as it's confirmed the team will be moving to Las Vegas in a few years. Blame the team's owners all you want, but they tried for over 20 years to get a new stadium. So fuck Oakland, Viva Las Vegas!

Got a copy of Kena Bridge of Spirits for the PS4, looking forward to playing it down the line as it came highly recommended.

Spoke with the FnDanteSavage yesterday, had a nice chat getting updates on his son, talking games and other stuff.

Disney Speedstorm launched, and I gave it a show last night... and while it is a gorgeous racer, the controls and tracks are a little... odd, still I did throw down to get the founder's pack, so I do have a variety of characters to choose from.The Achievement list is incredibly grindy as well.

Next week's line up is looking like this:

Tonight: Marvel's Spider-Man (PS4)
Saturday: Elder Scrolls Online (Xbox Series)
Sunday: Overwatch 2 (Xbox One)
Monday: American McGee's Alice
Tuesday: American McGee's Alice
Wednesday: Fall Guys & Resident Evil 5
Thursday: Disney Speedstorm

Among the records I sorted through recently that were found, I located one album my dad was hoping would be among them. So that was kind of cool.

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