Today's Notes 5/28/21: Star Trek Online & More!

Good morning everybody,

Well I woke up unusually early today (a bit before 7 AM), and I already know there is no work today because usually Memorial Day ended up being a 4 day weekend before the Covid-19 Pandemic. 

Last night's stream of Star Trek Online was the first time in a while where we were able to dedicate the entire stream to STO because of the House United Content which featured two new missions. The first "Warriors of the Empire" basically introduces three patrols under the umbrella of a story mission, but this does has a ground portion that see the players going into the mycelial realm to help bring the Elachi into the final battle, since they were a big part of several missions over the last couple of years as it pertains to this story arc. The second mission, "A Day Long Remembered" is a major end point as the player takes part in the Klingon Civil War by being on the front lines, as J'mpok is basically STO's parallel to Donald Trump. This is probably one of the most ground combat heavy missions in STO's history making it a lot of fun. Of course, there was a new Task Force Operation, which is a crazy wild mess called "Remain Klingon" and unlike every other TFO, it actually connects with the story in that it shows what is happening in space. 

Now we did all of this using Zagreus, my Federation character, and so next Thursday, we'll go through it all again with Sorra, my Klingon Defense Force character. This is mainly to keep things even between both characters and to see what subtle dialog changes there are, because there are often are a few. For example, Sorra has gone to Grethor and met Gowan, so she would have a personal stake in making sure he was able to go to Stovokor. 

Of course we do have clips from last night which I'll list next

Twitch Clips: I have a surprise for them... haha!

Twitch Clips: We bring the thunder! We bring the noise! I'm A Spore Smasher!

Twitch Clips: We fight in the streets!

Twitch Clips: Mostly for that look J'ula gives Zagreus

Following the stream I messed around with a few things, played a little of Triple Play 97, and was amazed by the very obvious. With the rosters being set for opening day 1996, that means Curt Schilling is not on the Phillies roster at all. That said, I was pleasantly reminded that Triple Play 97 did have solid play-by-play announcing. Took me a while to figure out pitching, and it's probably going to take me while to remember the timing for hitting.

Also turned my attention to Power Rangers Battle for The Grid and ran a few online matches to try out Ryu and Chun-Li, and I can safely say this: they play nearly as they do in Marvel vs Capcom 3. There are a few differences, but anyone who has played say at least Street Fighter Alpha 2 will be able to jump into Battle for the Grid with Ryu and Chun-Li on their team and be able to hold their own.

Also loaded up Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons last night to get the final achievement in the game 

1. Whale Song: You practiced singing.

With that done, I'm basically out of achievements I could easily go for based on games I have currently installed on both the Xbox One and Xbox Series consoles. It's not like I don't have games I could play to get achievements, it's more of wanting to save those games to play them for the first time on stream. Granted I could go after the Xbox 360 version of the Mass Effect games achievements lol.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Session was 43 minutes in length, and involved a lot of step movements with the sets being the Left-Right Step Combo, Double Combo #2, Front-Back Step Combo (at the No Mercy setting) and closing out with Uppercut Combo #2. Also did  today's set using a Mesh Waist Trimmer which pretty much forced me to keep my abs tight, and needless to say, so it was certainly a different experience. Now I did miss a couple of punches and they were Left Uppercuts from the Orthodox stance, don't know what it is, but that is consistently a punching movement that I rarely get 100% on.  We're also up to 74 out of the 100 points needed for Martina's Best friend achievement. Also since work has been inconsistent lately, all of my workouts this week have been 40+ minutes, making this probably the most even week I've had, and we already past April's calorie burn today, as we're up to 21726 for the month of May. 

Now the reason I was using a Mesh Waist Trimmer is that since I started using the original Fitness Boxing last July and switching to Fitness Boxing 2 in December, I have lost 40 pounds, but as of late getting the pounds to drop have been a lot harder, so my mom figured it could help as most of my weight is in my mid-section. Every little bit helps as they say.

For tonight's stream, we'll be jumping back into Mortal Kombat 11 with the Aftermath story, which should probably take only take a couple of hours, but depending on that, we might go after the achievement for playing Casual Matches. 

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

 

Today's Notes 5/27/21: The Division, Fitness Boxing & More!

Good afternoon everybody,

Work continues to be slow as it's yet another day where I wake up, check the assignment chart and see no assignments next to my name because what's available has very limited hours assigned to it (as in the client is paying for really narrowed sample period). That is the slight frustration that comes with working in Market Research.

Anyway, last night's stream of The Division was going really well, as Iceman and I were on a good pace of getting a lot done, but then a thunderstorm that was supposed to end at 10 PM in my area lingered and knocked out the power. But as I said we got a lot done, and I discovered an odd mechanic regarding any achievement which involved dismantling 100 items in that they couldn't be 'mark as junk' and broken down in mass, they have to be done one by one. It's odd but whatever. Did pick up two achievements, both of which are related to the story of The Division.

1. I've Got the Power: Secure the Power Plant.
2. Fly on the Wall: Restore the JTF comm relay.
   

We also have a couple of clips from last night which I'll listed here.

Twitch Clip: Going Up And Down and Up The Rope

Twitch Clip: I Don't Blame Ya

When the power (and internet) came back up, I went ahead and picked up the upgrade for Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid to see some of the changes, and it looks like of of the huge changes was for server stability as I had no trouble finding matches when diving into online head to head action, even winning a couple of bouts and pushing much higher tiered players to their limit. Didn't get to try Ryu and Chun-Li, but going up against them I can safely say it's going to be easy to pin them down with Udonna (Power Rangers Mystic Force) and Jen Scotts (Time Force Pink Ranger) who have excellent range attacks.

Also loaded up Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons to chase down another achievement in that game.

1. Black Sheep: Every family's got one.

I do find it funny that involved carrying a sheep down to dump it into some ash to make it a black sheep. There is one more achievement needed in the game to get 100% completion for it, so I might go after it tonight off-stream.

We added two new PlayStation 2 games in my collection

The first is Rocky Legends, which is the lesser known of the two Rocky games released for the PlayStation 2. What makes it stands out is that it has a career mode where you can play as either Rocky Balboa, Apollo Creed, Clubber Lang or Ivan Dragon. The later of the four is notable because in it, Ivan defeats Rocky.

The other game we added was Mortal Kombat Armageddon, which was basically the closer of the PlayStation 2 era of Mortal Kombat games. It includes every MK character that has appeared in every game up to that point in the franchises history, so finding a main to tackle the arcade ladder will be interesting to say the least.

For Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session, it lasted 40 minutes but there was a patch update which actually corrected something, where it now indicated total number of actions, so this is the grand total of all punches, ducks, dodges, blocks, steps, etc, performed during a session.  Todays exercises included Body Uppercut Combo, Defensive Combo #1, Hook Combo #2 and Body Hook Combo. For the Body Hook combo I set a new personal best with it being set at the No Mercy Setting.  My time was just a hair off when performing Left Hooks from the Orthodox stance today.

As mentioned there was a patch update so Fitness Boxing 2 is now version 1.0.4. Some of the changes include addition settings for station animations so folks who hate how flashy the game gets in 'Zone' sections of sets can  turn that off; the icon sizes for actions, foot placement and the time remaining have been made larger and color for the combination lane was adjusted, instructor comments have been adjusted. So basically all little quality of game improvements have been made. 

I can safely say tonight's entire stream will be focused on Star Trek Online because there is actual new content to tackle, first two brand new missions "Warriors of the Empire" and "A Day Long Remembered” which probably will wrap up the long on-going Klingon Empire story arc that started with the addition of Discovery content to STO, and a new Task Force Operation “Remain Klingon”. So the plan will be to play the two new missions first and then the TFO and probably closing out with completing endeavors.

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

Today's Notes 5/16/21

Good afternoon everybody,

Yup, slept in again!

Last night's stream of Mass Effect: Legendary Edition saw me settle into my usual groove of hitting a lot of side missions before doing a major story one, but this did resulted in getting the series of missions dealing with the Geth incursion being dealt with early, and thus giving Tali the data she needs to make her believe it's really Shepard in Mass Effect 2! We also picked up Liara, and as a result ended up getting her and Tali's squad mate achievements done back to back. We'll resume Mass Effect on Monday night! Also here is list of the achievement's we knocked out last night.

1. Medal of Exploration II: ME1: Land on 4 uncharted worlds
2. Medal of Exploration III: ME1: Land on 8 uncharted worlds
3. Search and Rescue: ME1: Locate Dr. T'soni in the Artemis Tau cluster
4. Quarian Ally: ME1: Complete 5 missions with the quarian squad member
5. Asari Ally: ME1: Complete 5 missions with the asari squad member

Of course we have a few Twitch clips from last night as well which are included below! 

Twitch Clips: Flip Mother (BLEEP)er HAHA!

Twitch Clips: Critical Mission Failure

Twitch Clips: It Should Be Possible....I'm The MAKO!!!!

Twitch Clips: Shepard's Maturity (aka Tea-Bagging A Geth)

Twitch Clips: Shepard Meets The Press

Speaking of achievements, I loaded up Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons last night and went back to find achievements that I missed on the first play-through. 

1. A Sad Tune: You made someone feel better.
2. Windpipe: You made the inventor dance.
3. Love Birds: You re-united the two love birds.
4. Take a Break: You took a break from adventuring.

The Take a Break one is a bit odd considering it involves leaving the heroes' father riving in pain while they go skip stones!

Today's Daily Fitness Boxing 2 session was 45 minutes, and since it's the weekend we did an addition 19 minutes of free exercise to make sure I hit my weekend day goals. It is funny how we threw more punches today than yesterday, but yesterday we probably burned more calories! 

We've have a new addition to our collection with Fire Emblem: Three Houses for the Nintendo Switch, which arrived this afternoon!

The Overwatch Anniversary event starts up on May 18, which means I won't take any chances hoping for getting the archive missions on Sundays, I'll tackle the wins for the weekly rewards off stream during the week. And speaking of Overwatch, we'll be playing it tonight!

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

Highlights For The Week Of May 9 2021

 Here are highlights of things that happened over on http://twitch.tv/fredcasden for the week of May 9, 2021. This week we featured Overwatch, Fitness Boxing 2: Rhythm & Exercise, Day of the Tentacle, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, Mario Kart 8, Tom Clancy's The Division, Star Trek Online, Cobra Kai: The Karate Kid Saga Continues & Mass Effect Legendary Edition. 

Today's Notes 5/12/21

Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream featured the game Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, a indie game that came out a few years ago. As noted before, it was gifted to me by long time friend of the channel ShadowStrkr on Monday night, and since we had an open night because of the upcoming release of Mass Effect Legendary Edition, we went ahead and played Brothers last night. Now here's the funny thing, I installed the game on my Xbox One the previous night, and when I went to play it during the start of last night's stream, it crashed to the desktop several times. Ended up having to uninstall it and do a power cycle to clear the cache to get it work, which is just weird!

Anyway the game itself certainly has that big epic fantasy vibe, with beautiful landscapes, giant creatures and a musical score that carries the story along. The controls took a while to get use to with the left analog stick and left trigger buttons corresponding to the older brother and the right analog stick and right trigger for the younger brother. This game is built entirely around puzzles, most of which can be solved logically. The real difficulty comes when having to move both brothers at the same time, such as in chase sequence involving an invisible Goliath of some kind. Since we played it on the Xbox One, we did unlock several achievements along the way to finishing the game.

1. Wishing Well: You threw someone's ball down a well… Shame on you.
2. Bunny Buddies: You made the bunnies play nice.
3. Falling Star: Make a wish.
4. Call of the Giants: You sounded a giant horn.
5. Behind the Curtain: You found a secret.
6. Turtle Soup: You helped the turtles to the sea.
   

Most of these achievements involved going off the main path, so another play through will be required for the remaining six (Or just chapter jumping off stream to get them)

Twitch Clip: RunrunrunrunrunRUN

Twitch Clip: Yoink!

Speaking of Mass Effect, there was this neat little thing I found yesterday to make our own 'covers', so here's mine. Those who have seen my previous runs of the Mass Effect trilogy know that these are typically the squad mates I end up using the most over the course of the games... plus you have to have Mordin for obvious reasons.

After the stream, I messed around more with Mortal Kombat 11, which is on my Xbox Series console, and since discovering the game is built around letting it play itself for farming purposes, the grind was put in for several achievements.

1. Get Some: Perform 2 different FATALITIES with Jax
2. Deadly Encounter: Perform 15 different FATALITIES
3. Hat Trick: Perform 2 different FATALITIES with Kung Lao
4. Sacrifice: Perform 2 different FATALITIES with Kotal Kahn
5. I Want It All: Komplete the Novice, Warrior, or Champion Klassic Towers with 10 different kharacters
6. More Power: Use 50 Konsumables
7. No Bag Boy: Perform 2 different FATALITIES with Liu Kang
8. Family Values: Perform 2 different FATALITIES with Cassie Cage
9. Konsumed: Use 100 konsumables
10. Kollecting Bounties: Perform 2 different FATALITIES with Erron Black
11. Thrashed: Perform 2 different FATALITIES with Baraka
12. Pound Town: Perform 2 different FATALITIES with Jacqui Briggs
13. My Magic Shoes: Run 5 miles in the Krypt
14. MURDER!!!: Perform 30 different FATALITIES

I am curious as to why the developers made such an exploit, but hey, it's easy achievements for me to unlock, so who am I to argue! Besides when I stream Mortal Kombat 11 it'll mostly be for the story mode.

We added two more games to the collection yesterday as well, Cobra Kai: The Katate Kid Saga Continues and Xenoblade Chronicles : Definitive Edition, both for the Nintendo Switch. They were both on sale recently at 50% for the physical versions of the games, So they made for nice pick ups.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was about 31 minutes and we're up to 91 points out of 100 for Bernardo's Best Friend achievement. I did have a little trouble getting some left uppercuts to register, resulting in three missed combo sequences. Weight is still hovering around the 249-250 pounds mark.

For tonight's stream we'll be back to The Division, with the focus on clearing out stuff in the next area of the map, what ever that was from the end of last Wednesday's stream. We may be joined by Iceman at some point as well, which means things could get extra silly. 

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

Today's Notes 5/11/21

Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream was really good, particularly in regards to achievement hunting. The game for the night was Day of the Tentacle, and the remastered version that came out a few years ago has Steam achievements, and on the initial play-through in 2019, we came across 50% of them, so last night was about getting the majority of what was left, which involved learning that there were certain object combinations that could be use (such as combining a fork and cat while using Laverne).

Here's the full list of what we managed to get last night.

1. Music Appreciation Award: Reach yesterday without turning the stereo off
2. Rap Sheet: Forger: Try to sign the contract yourself with the quill pen
3. Alas, Our Lazy Speechwriters Didn't Cover This: Talk to Washington, Jefferson, or Hancock while they're outside
4. Master Plumber: Flush 50 objects through time
5. That Should Have Worked: Hoagie uses battery with Chron-o-John instead of plug
6. Now You're Pushing It: Try to microwave the hamster again after he's thawed out
7. Can't Win and Chew Gum at the Same Time: Laverne tries the chattering teeth on her human during the human show
8. ESRB Violation: Laverne thinks about eating the cat
9. Rap Sheet: Fraud: Try to alter the contract with Booboo-B-Gone
10. You Call That a Hint?: Try to wash the dirty car with the brush
11. Missing Pink: Try to mix the red paint and the Booboo-B-Gone
12. I'm Sure He'd Never Notice: Try to swap the textbook with the stamp album
13. That Joke Never Gets Old: Squirt five different people with disappearing ink
14. And Then the Universe Implodes: Try to mix the disappearing ink with Booboo-B-Gone
15. Voiding the Warranty: Try to put something metal in the microwave
16. And Then the Universe Explodes: Try to mix the decaf and caffeinated coffees
17. Most Annoying Guest Ever: Ring the front desk bell 100 times 

Now there are two achievements left but they are both tied to playing the Maniac Mansion game which I'm not to keen on, maybe that'll be an excuse to play Day of the Tentacle again next year.

Twitch Clip: Laugh Darn You!

Following DOTT, we had extra time so we loaded up Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on the Switch for a few races, and went up against other people from around the world... and promptly got my ass kicked. Still had fun, but yeah, Mario Kart 8 is not exactly a racing game I go out of my way to play because of the weirdness of the control layout.

Big thanks to long time friend of the channel ShadowStrkr for gifting me Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons!

After the stream I messed around with Mortal Kombat 11 and discovered a few things, one that the story mode is its own separate download for whatever reason... and two that this game has some the most exploitable ways of getting achievements ever, with the use of AI battles to run through the towers. Now I've played in Mortal Kombats 1, 2, 3 (Vanilla and Ultimate), Trilogy, 4, Deception, Vs DC Universe, 9 & 10.... so I wonder where along the line did Nether Realm Studios choose to eventually make a Mortal Kombat simulator. Anyway here are the achievements we unlocked last night

1. Blood In The Water: Spill 10,000 pints of blood
2. Kollected: Perform 2 different FATALITIES with Kollector
3. Bugging Out: Perform 2 different FATALITIES with D'Vorah
4. Princess Power: Perform 2 different FATALITIES with Kitana
5. Struck Down: Perform 2 different FATALITIES with Raiden

Twitch Clip: I'll take a 9th place finish

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session lasted about 1/2 an hour, solid work out of three ten minute exercises. We're up to 89 points on Bernardo's Best Friend Achievement, so things are on track to get it done by Saturday! Also forgot to get the proper screen shot for today's session, but hey the main screen one shows my streak of 309 days!

Not completely sure what we'll be doing for tonight's stream as of yet, we might dive into Brothers to see if I can get through that in a single night with a blind play through if I don't come up with anything.

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