Shifting Gears On A Horizon

Good afternoon everyone,

First, woke up to learn that Angel Little, the day manager at the gig where I work passed away yesterday. With work being slow, this was a real kick in the head.

Last night's stream was a double header that went long because of the unique nature of how Gears 5, can be installed. Now for that portion of the stream we were joined by Iceman and LvStkr to being a three-person campaign run, however, while Iceman had the game installed on his console from when it came out, all the updates that came afterward weren't installed. So we delayed a bit with me messing around with Escape and Horde daily challenges.

Thankfully the install of the updates didn't take too long, and thus the plan of playing Act I of Gears 5 was achieved. Following a great recap of the events of Gears of War 4, Gears 5 takes place with JD, Marcus, Del and Kait enlisted in the COG which seemed surprising, but of course stuff starts going down following an attempt to get the Hammer of Dawn back online. JD went from being a bland hero, to being a real try hard, and the mystery regarding Kait's lineage is played up a bit more as the story becomes more about her in Act II... but we'll see more about that.

It was super fun to play with two folks on this, and the gimmick of the third person being Jack is a unique twist. I also get why the change for the chainsaw was made, with the grenade launcher variant of the Lancer.

Of course I am ahead of myself here, as that was the second half of the stream. The first half was focused on Forza Horizon 4 and it turned out I was able to bang out some achievements while messing around. Found the 'Insurance' story, and those were pretty fun to go through... even though the Racing Truck had zero-grip off road!

Big thanks to Hawleigh for the raid during the stream, in which they were playing Horizon Zero Dawn! You can check Hawleigh out over at twitch.tv/hawleigh! 

Following the stream we sent the fun over to Dont_Run_x who was playing Jump Force! You can check their stream out at twitch.tv/dont_run_x! 

Gears 5 Achievements

1. On the Razor's Edge: Got 5 kills while inside Hivebuster Venom
2. One, Two, Three Sorties: Completed 3 Objectives for Tour of Duty in a day
3. Not There to Buy a Timeshare: Launched the Rocket
4. And… He's All Yours: Upgraded Del's New Best Friend
5. Now I Gotta Get Up Again: Reinforced Carmine at the Plaza
6. I Was Born in a Crossfire Hurricane: Used Jack's Flash ability to stun 3 enemies at once in Campaign
7. A Mouthful of Boom: Headshot the Swarmak at the theatre
8. It Takes Three to Make a Thing Go Right: Completed an Act of Campaign in 3-player co-op
9. You've Got a Friend in Me: Made a new Ally in Gears Allies

Forza Horizon 4 Achievements

1. Muddied: Reach Round 10 in the Horizon Dirt Racing Series.
2. The Wonderful World of Car Insurance: Complete the first chapter of ''The Car Files''.
3. Simples!: Complete ten chapters of ''The Car Files''.

Twitch Clip Links

• Yee-Haw!
• Ultimate Speed!!!!
• The Spoiler Came Off... 
• Things I got to do to rescue some one!
• The Subtitles: 'Low Displeased Growl' 
• At least they run toward ya!
  

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout featured Hip Shape Focus Combo, Sway Back Combo and Straight Combo #2 for 31 minutes and a calorie burn of 454 kcal.

Did try to knock off two classic Street Fighter games off my list of things to do last night, one being the original version of Street Fighter II and the other being the original Street Fighter game itself. I was only 50% successful in those goals.

Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection Achievements

1. World Warrior: Beat Street Fighter II: World Warrior
   

Still with that one achievement I was able to to at least complete 7 of the 12 Days of Christmas Challenge set over at www.trueachievements.com, which is more than I thought I would be able to do. Also messed around with the Microsoft Solitaire Collection.

Microsoft Solitaire Collection (UWP) Achievements

1.  Grandmastering the Art?: Won a Grandmaster difficulty game in any of the 5 classic games

Made some progress on a commissioned fan fic that was requested based around an episode of WWE's RAW from 2019... and if you think my writing when it comes to this blog is bad, you should see how bad it gets when I'm trying to reach a 'desired' word count.

Because of how late the stream ended, I did not play any Final Fantasy XIV last night,but considering how salty I am still about the whole G-Warrior mech battle, I needed more time to cool off from that.

Which brings me to what's on tap for for tonight's stream and  I'm not 100% sure of what we're going to feature, Ironically Final Fantasy XIV is the leading candidate but I'm not sure at the time I'm writing this.

Regardless we will see you later today over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!