Mavel vs Capcom, Black and the Rage of Paladins

Good afternoon everyone,

Last night's stream lead off with Marvel vs Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes EX Edition on the original PlayStation. Part of the reason why because of Maxamillion_Dood (twitch.tv/maximilian_dood) posting a video claiming how it was a version of MvC that no one played... which is not true because I intetionally went out of my way to track it down to put together a collection of Japanese exclusive Capcom fighting games on the PlayStation. We went through the Arcade mode twice as Morrigan and Gambit, messed around with the Cross Over mode which actually saw Shadow Lady being used because the A.I. selected them. We also figure out a few things involving use of the 'Special Characters', who can act as counters and compensating for some of the main roster's limits. This game will be counted on this years tour as well.

We also played Black on the PlayStation 2, and it is still a good looking game from 2006, thankfully it has multiple difficulty settings... but I found it a bit odd with some of the control layouts, no sprinting (that I could figure out), and no reason sense of direction. Action sequences can be pretty epic from what I saw. Maybe we'll give it a dedicated attempt of finishing it at some point. Black does have one of the dumber starts up to a game I have ever seen with a start screen followed by a near 5 minute movie style intro of a black screen with text displaying who was involved with the music and live action sequences before the main menu is displayed.

Then we jumped to the Xbox One to play some Paladins, and we were joined by PandaSweet.... we did not exactly run into the smartest group of randoms, who were either disconnecting from matches, intentionally making selections of characters that did fit the need of the team. You don't see me get angry often, but Paladins was a bad way to end things last night.

Twitch Clips

• That was cool!
• Good use of a Grenade 
• Viva La This!
  

For last night's raid we dropped in on TracyDoll who was playing Friday the 13th: The Game and Evil Dead: The Game over on twitch.tv/tracydoll!

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout featured Left-Right-Step Combo, Triple Combo #1, Double Combo #2 and Body Straight Combo.

With how badly Paladins went during the stream, I felt motivated to play some Smite. mostly Arena matches. More losses than wins, but at least it nothing was sabotaged by stupidity.

SMITE Achievements

• Combo Breaker: Shut down 10 killing sprees in qualifying matches.

It's the start of a new week, which means we shall recap what we did last week which included Overwatch, Chrono Cross; The Radical Dreamers Edition, Fallout 76, Final Fantasy XIV, Persona 5 Royal, Black, Marvel vs Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes EX Edition and Paladins!

For some reason the Mariners are taking a chance on Justin Upton in a desperate attempt to add some life to their line up. What is it with teams trying to squeeze anything out of guys who are clearly at the end of their careers these days in Baseball? 

Finished another commission story request yesterday afternoon and I get another one this morning, this time to be set in the Star Wars universe. This is going to involve some very loose interpretations of the lore.

Happy Birthday to the late Doreen Mulman, who ran the Ghostbusters Fan Forum 20 years ago. They were the first site to ever host artwork and fiction that I wrote, obviously related to Ghostbusters.

If you're looking for tools to help with streaming or communicating from home with work, check out what Xsplit offers over at Xsplit.com, use the promo code CASDEN to save 10% on your order! If you're looking for just general stuff, of course you can swing over to Amazon using my affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3L8N1Yj.  

For tonight's stream we shall be playing Overwatch! So on that note we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

We Finished Chrono Cross The Radical Dreamers Edition

 Good morning everyone,

Well we finished Chrono Cross The Radical Dreamers Edition last night... and three achievements based on story points where not unlocked, two of which should have popped last night. Then there was the fact we did the set up for the good ending twice, sitting through the credits completely both time with that achievement not popping. Of course the poor optimization of this remaster certainly had me on the 'just get it done' way of doing things, as we used the battle boost and the fast forward options just to tear through major battles. Considering this is the second remaster from SquareEnix released this year that has had issues, I do hope that they are actually going to be more serious about things from their history being remade or remastered in the future considering how they sold most of their non-Japan based studios early this year. But you know what is great, since we did a play through of the original Chrono Cross last year, I went and looked that clip from August 31, 2021 of the final battle, and man my body language was completely different, as I looked completely done with the Radical Dreamers edition

I was not going to leave this alone, so off-stream, I uninstalled and reinstalled Chrono Cross The Radical Dreamers Edition, changed the appearance settings to classic and and re-ran the final boss battle again to get the good ending, and the achievement popped on the third attempt... then I went and got the bad ending. So that's two achievements knocked off the list.

Of course now I get to ponder about what will replace Chrono Cross in the weekly lineup, there are a few contenders, like the classic version of Mass Effect 3 for example, or maybe we can do something odd like revisit a TellTale Series game like Game of  Thrones.

Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition Achievements

• The Defiant: Defeat FATE, the mother computer of Chronopolis.
• Lucca's Legacy: Use Kid's unique level 7 tech, Hot Shot.
• The Long-Lost Element: Obtain Chrono Cross, the rainbow-aligned Element.
• The Devourer Undone: Defeat the evolved form of the Time Devourer.
• A New Future: See the good ending.
• An Unchanging Future: See the bad ending.
  

Twitch Clips 

• Its dead after all that
• Up from the depths... 40 stories high... 
• There we go, we cheesed it... worth it
  

For the raid last night, we dropped in on RoseMaryShorn who was playing Dragon Age: Inquisition over at twitch.tv/rosemaryshorn!This is of course a reminder to me to reinstall it and play the DLC quests.

Played a handful of matches of Smite last night, and focused on playing as Hera and I think I figured out a few things in Arena using her. Seems like I can use her from the back line a fair bit. Her shield is real useful. Also, Hera's achievements were part of the "A Necessary Darkness" expansion at this time both were still diamond level achievements.

SMITE Achievements

• Royal Assault: Unlock the SMITE Award "Royal Assault."
• Argus to the Rescue: Unlock the SMITE Award "Argus to the Rescue."

I managed to build up another decently long Xbox achievement streak of 19 days and 116 achievements going back to April 30th. It is my fourth longest streak to date. 

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout involved Intermediate Combo #1, Triple Combo #2 and Biceps Shape Focus Combo. Woke up a bit late so kept the basic workout streak going.

Have yet another commission fan fic request based around old WWE storylines, this time involving The Miz's dressing down of Daniel Bryan back in 2016. I got two ideas of how I want to approach it that could be interesting.

The new skins for the Anniversary Remix Event Volume 2 in Overwatch clearly had some thought put into what alternate color schemes would work. Probably the best one is Sombra's Neon Cat.

People are complaining about the Phillies being shut out for the fourth time in thirty-six games, to which I say... when all you have is the offense to carry a team, then shut outs are going to happen very frequently.

If you're looking for tools to help with streaming or communicating from home with work, check out what Xsplit offers over at Xsplit.com, use the promo code CASDEN to save 10% on your order! If you're looking for just general stuff, of course you can swing over to Amazon using my affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3L8N1Yj. 

For tonight's stream, we're back to Fallout 76, as we'll most likely will be joined by Iceman as we work our way through West Virginia in our quest to do stuff.

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

Finding Them Level 7 Tech Skills

Good morning everyone, and let it be known I woke up at like 6 AM for some no reason.

Anyway last night's stream of Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers edition saw a big focus on side questing after I dealt with defeating all of the dragon gods, which meant finding nearly every ones level 7 tech skills, and dealing with Dario and Criosphinx . Thankfully the Battle Boost meant these encounters were a lot more less worry-some than my play through of the original version of Chrono Cross last year. We also recruited the final characters that can be picked up in a single play through (Orlha and Turnip), which leaves seven characters that require two additional runs of the game to get (Nikki, Kid, Korcha, Razzly, Mel in the 2nd run, while using the 3rd for Pierre and Harle. Yes for those who don't know there is a way to finish the game with Harle in the party, it just require going after one of the other endings after Serge and Lynx trade bodies.

Of course last night's stream wasn't without its issues as we had two stream resets, which resulted in 5 minutes of loss footage, so there will be two VODs in the YouTube archive added for last night... with one being 25 minutes long and the other being over 4 hours long. Near as I can tell the issue was not with Xfinity.. at least with the first interruption.

Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition Achievements

• Call of the Void: Use Lynx's unique level 7 tech, Forever Zero.
• The Second Coming: Defeat Dario and reforge Serge's Sea Swallow into the Mastermune.
• The Enemy of the World: Defeat Dark Serge at Fort Dragonia.
• Flight of the Swallow: Use Serge's unique level 7 tech, Flying Arrow.
• The Ultimate Armor: Create a piece of rainbow armor.
• The Ultimate Weapon: Create a rainbow weapon.

Twitch Clip Links

• She Just Spits On Them!
• Dramatic Music Is Dramatic 
• Luccia's Level 7 Does A Fair Amount of Damage 
  

For last night's raid we dropped in on Kalenal who was playing Final Fantasy XIV over at twitch.tv/kalenal!  

Clippy turned out to be quite useful for my stream in terms of both doing shout outs and being a way to have clips play when I take a break. 

Played some Smite last night, getting three wins all as Discordia in Arena mode. The reason for playing only as Discordia for a bit was because of the weekly challenge of playing three matches as a Roman god. 

It's speculated the 76ers will not offer James Harden a max contract deal... and considering how he's played, that's the smart move. If he wants to continue his career as a big money earner in the NBA, Harden needs to prove himself.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout involved Straight Combo #2, Hip Shape Focus Combo, Difficult Challenge Combo #2 and Difficult Challenge Combo #3. Also since today's workout went 45 minutes you can kind of guess what isn't happening today.

But since I got yet another WWE fic commission request to work on, this time based around the feud between Randy Orton and Alexa Bliss in early 2021. I certainly was not watching during that time period, but I have a wicked idea that could be quite interesting.  

Speaking of WWE... I'm wondering if the whole Sasha Banks and Naomi 'walk out' is a shoot or not, because lets be honest, Sasha has a history of throwing temper tantrums if she didn't get her way, and Naomi has basically been protected because she was on Total Divas and married into the Anoa'i wrestling family.

If you're looking for tools to help with streaming or communicating from home with work, check out what Xsplit offers over at Xsplit.com, use the promo code CASDEN to save 10% on your order! If you're looking for just general stuff, of course you can swing over to Amazon using my affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3L8N1Yj.  

For tonight's stream we shall continue Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers as we're just going to try and blitz as much of the game as possible with the battle boost on. We're heading for the Sea of Eden

We Had A Group Of Six!

Good afternoon everyone,

Last night's stream of Overwatch was a lot of fun as we ended up having a group of six by the end of the night. Big thanks to BangBangBang, PandaSweet, BloodyClown, Beltizar and TeddyBeartJTs for all being apart of the fun. It was super cool having a group of that size, and really makes having a fixed night for Overwatch feel like a great idea. Of course the larger the group the more the 'match making' of Overwatch will try and make sure to have us face a team of a similar size, which would increase the difficulty. I ended up with four plays of the game with D.va, Torbourn, Reinhardt and Cassidy, as well as used Moira, Mei & Soldier 76 at various points.

The stream did see a full reset for some reason, which I think was caused more by an issue with Xfinity, so part of the stream was lost.

Twitch Clips 

• Well that is POG...
• Buckle Up! 
• A Sig-Dva Combo!
• We got it! 
  

For the raid, we sent the fun over to TracyDoll over at twitch.tv/TracyDoll  as they were playing Friday the 13th! This raid was requested via the channel points redeem on my channel by BangBangBang713!

Saw a list of highly recommended open world games, and the ones that caught my attention were Eastshade, Biomutant and Mad Max. The first two are to new to grab for the list, but Mad Max is old enough to have as an option. 

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout involved Hook Combo #1, Beginner Combo #2, Block Combo and Sway Back Combo.

Completed another commissioned fic based around the 2012 WWE story line involving John Cena and Eve Torres, and the client was quick with the payment, and as I said before, that is always nice to have happen.

Accidentally deleted all the clips used for the BRB scene from the month of April yesterday and I didn't realize it until I started OBS. Oops! But because of that mistake I finally decided to switch to Clippy for the BRB screen. This will also mean I'll have to he options of having clips of streamers who raid (or who are friends of the channel) play when giving a shout out.

If you're looking for tools to help with streaming or communicating from home with work, check out what Xsplit offers over at Xsplit.com, use the promo code CASDEN to save 10% on your order! If you're looking for just general stuff, of course you can swing over to Amazon using my affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3L8N1Yj. 

Now there was a chance for Tom Clancy's The Division 2 for tonight as a sudden fill in... if I knew about the Keenly College event a little sooner. Also according to Iceman, no one really expected it or for the event to be less than a week, because other wise, I would have tagged in the Division 2 over Fallout 76 for Wednesday

For tonight's stream we're back to playing Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition. Last time we played it we took down the Water and Earth Dragon... so our next objective will be Gaea's Navel to recruit Leah and to defeat the Green Dragon.

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

It was a community game night

Good afternoon everyone,

Last night's stream lead off with Paladins, and it was your usual mix bag of wondering why random players choose not to do the basic things, like getting items to increase their chances of actually being of use. We were joined by PandaSweet and Beltizar for several matches of fun. I did end up playing the new character, Lilith, for a bit, and I think I understand her kit, her LT can either be used to heal a teammate or damage an enemy, while her LB can activate an AOE of healing for the team or damage for the enemy, depending on who standing in it. Also her special abilities drain her health, so a bit of a balancing act is needed when using her her.

Then we switched gears and played RiffTrax: The Game, it is your standard JackBox Party game but with short film clips where we can be the like of Mike, Crow T Robot and Tom Servo (as those involved with the original Mystery Science Theater 3000 are involved with RiffTrax). Apparently not all clips are from typical Public Domain source material as there were clips from Charade which starred Audrey Hepburn. Boy in the Bubble which featured John Travolta and Son of Hercules included... the last of which being a film that was riffed on in the original MST3K era! We had quite a few folks join in the RiffTrax fun so we may do more of it in the future!. 

On a side note, while I unlocked the first 18 achievements playing against other players, the remaining 12 I was able to knock out solo with the use of a web browser and my cell phone, making it another game for 100% completion.

RiffTrax: The Game Achievements

• First Time Writer: Write your first riff in Write-a-Riff mode.
• Don't Be A Bungle: Receive no votes in a round.
• Tobor is Robot spelled backwards: Vote for the Riff Bot's riff.
• Foley Artist: Use a sound effect in your riff in Write-a-Riff mode.
• No Character Limit: Win a round with a riff that is at least 90 characters long.
• Aspiring Writer: Complete a game in Write-a-Riff mode.
• LateTrax: Submit a riff at the last second.
• Disembaudio's Revenge: The Riff Bot wins a game.
• Hi, Bob Executive!: Receive all of the votes in a round.
• Explicit Choice: Play a game with the Bad Word Filter on.
• RiffTrax Party!: Play two games in a row with the same players
• Super Traxian: Play five games
• The Ole Double Deuce: Win a game with double the points of second place.
• Onomatopoeia: Submit a riff in Write-a-Riff mode that's only sound effects.
• The Norman Krasner: Receive no votes for an entire game.
• First Time Picker: Pick your first riff in Pick-a-Riff mode.
• Professional Jokes: Use "Get New Riffs" within a Pick-a-Riff game.
• Aspiring Picker: Complete a game in Pick-a-Riff mode.
• QuickTrax: Submit a riff within 5 seconds.
• Synchronicity: Multiple players enter the same riff in a round.
• Word Mincer: Win a round with a one word answer.
• Self-Plagiarism: Win more than one round of a game using the same riff.
• Have A Roni: Win a game after being in last place at the start of the final round.
• The Riffing Turkey: Win three games in a row.
• Ultra Traxian: Play ten games
• More Dangerous Than Dynamite!: Win every round of a game!
• Friends Through Eternity: Play five games in a row with the same players.
• Verbal Communication Made Easy!: Submit a riff using a non-English text to speech language.
• Leave it to the Professionals: Use the "Riff For Me" option in every round of Write-a-Riff mode.
• Decuple!: Finish a game with the maximum number of rounds.
  

Twitch Clip Links

• Triple Kill!
• That's Two... oh right at the end... 
• That is none of your damn business!
• John Travlota What Are You Doing Here?! 
  

For last night's raid we dropped in on Oldish22 who was playing Path of Exile over on twitch.tv/oldish22!

Considering the fun we had with RiffTrax: The Game last night, I'm strongly considering its predecessor 'What The Dub' for a future expansion on things to do with the community.

James Harden is being roasted all over the place for being a shell of his former self, and I have a feeling we won't see him a 76ers Uniform next season.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout involved Uppercut Combo #1, Intermediate Combo #2 and Waist Shape Focus Combo.. We did do some extra exercises as well, since we are grinding for the final achievements... plus keeping myself at a nice and steady mid-240 lbs.

Got another request to do another commission request based around an old WWE story line. I  think I have some note still from a few things Kristi and I did that could put a nice twist on things. 

I am scratching my head trying to understand why the Padres picked up Robinson Cano... what does he bring to their team? It's not like he's going to regain his form from before he was busted for PEDs.

It's the start of a new week, so let's look back at things from last week which featured Overwatch, Chrono Cross, Smite, Star Trek Online, Fallout 76, Final Fantasy XIV, Persona 5 Royal, Fitness Boxing 2: Rhythm and Exercise, Paladins & RiffTrax: The Game!

For tonight's stream we'll be kicking off the new week with Overwatch! So we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

From the Isle of the Damned to Earth Dragon Isle

Good morning everyone,

Last night's stream of Chrono Cross The Radical Dreamers Edition saw a lot of progress made in terms of both advancing the plot and knocking out side quests. We made blatent use of the battle boost and fast forward buttons to try and make things move quicker particularly in areas with a lot of battles (Marbule). We did make sure to find just about everything major, and tried to make sure certain characters were used in key parts, such as Radius being in the party for the Garrai battle, plus having Zappa and Van met their counter parts, dealing with the Dead Sea, rescuing Riddle and doing things through the first two Dragon god battles (Water and Earth).

Of course we reached the point of the game where Harle leaves the party, and for over 20 years it has bugged me regarding how friendly she and Starkey are, because they have that one cut scene that implies they hang out a lot from the point Starkey is recruited.  If Chrono Cross had an anime or manga that expanded on things, it would answer a lot of questions, because I do know when some characters are not in use they are hanging out in some places.

Now a lot of people say the Dead Sea is where the plot of Chrono Cross goes off the rails, but I don't see it that way, I see that gang from Chrono Trigger saved the world, but doomed an entire time line of people in the process to be erased... and I firmly believe that the events of Chrono Cross are, without question the fault of Chrono, Lucca, Marle and the rest.

Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition Achievements

• Lunacy: Use Harle's unique level 7 tech, Lunairetic.

Twitch Clips

• Glide Hook Is The Final Hit
• Ride a Dragon, Drop An Elbow 
• Do what you can... ride a dragon!
  

For last night's raid we dropped in on YrGamerBunni who was playing Mass Effect 2 (The Legendary Edition) over at twitch.tv/yrgamerbunni!

The Capcom Fighting Collection will be coming out in June, which is awesome!

The servers for WWE 2K19 and 2K20 will be shut down at the end of June, goes to show the stupidity of yearly releases, when you cannot even get 5 years out of a game in terms of online play. And  this is why you will never see me pay full price for any game that puts so many achievements associated with online play.

Completed today's Daily Death for Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle, just three more to go for the last achievement! 

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout featured Difficult Challenge Combo #1 on No Mercy, Triple Combo #2, Intermediate Combo #1 and Biceps Shape Focus Combo. Managed to set a new personal best for Difficult Challenge Combo #1 as well.

Played some Smite last night as well, actually figured out a few things with Baron Samedi. Also did a couple of matches as Khepri, who I think I figured out, but not 100% sure.

Also got in a couple of matches in on Overwatch 2's Beta, and I can safely re-confirm Orissa is going to need some serious nerfs with how much of a charge tank she is at this point. Also was pleased to see the Quick Play with no Role Queue enabled to allow for some variety.

So there is apparently official statues of Tifa, based on her appearance in Final Fantasy VII Remake being sold of her in the Jack-O pose from the Guilty Gear series, and some folks are up in arms about it. I'm not because hell over the course of the past 10 years, there have been so much SFM, Blender artwork and videos made of Tifa that it was only a matter of time before someone at Square-Enix approved of a way to profit from it. There is a reason I use the line 'Because Japan' to explain some stuff in Persona 5! That said, it's not a bad looking statue, and it is what ne would expect from a character like Tifa put into that pose. But if you think this statue is fake... nope, here's the link to where one could pre-order it: https://www.favorgk.com/collections/newest/products/1-4-scale-jack-o-tifa-lockheart-ff7-final-fantasy-vii-resin-statue-nl-studio-pre-order

If you're looking for tools to help with streaming or communicating from home with work, check out what Xsplit offers over at Xsplit.com, use the promo code CASDEN to save 10% on your order! If you're looking for just general stuff, of course you can swing over to Amazon using my affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3L8N1Yj.

For tonight's stream, the plan is to feature the new content of Star Trek Online that is yet another revamp of the tutorial, which includes two new episodes and a new Task Force Operation called Forged in Fire, which is a rework of the old Assault on Terok Nor. I figure this would take about two to two and half hours to go through. Afterward, we'll probably load up Smite or Overwatch 2 for the back end of the stream.

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

A 5-Stack In Overwatch? Awesome Sauce

Good afternoon everyone,

Last night's Overwatch stream was a lot of fun as we ended up with a team of five! Big thanks to PandaSweet, BloodyClown, BangBangBang and Beltizar for being apart of the fun. We had a fair amount of wins and a lot of matches ended up being pretty good. I ended up with two plays of the game as D.va, In addition to D.va, I ended up using Reinhardt, Ashe, Cassidy, Moira, Ana and Mercy throughout the night. Perhaps one of the bigger highlights was when the 'It Goes With Everything' challenge point reward was redeemed, which (thankfully) lead to a clip of Guile's Theme from Street Fighter II playing. That clip is listed below.

The next Overwatch Rremix event will start May 17th, which is the day the current Beta run for Overwatch 2 will end. Big thanks to BangBangBang for letting me know about the news. Apparently the remix skins will be for Hanzo, Lucio and Symmetra, which the second chance to earn skins will be for Mercy, Ashe and Sigma.

Twitch Clips

• Got Him!
• Guile's Theme Goes With Overwatch 
• That's three!
• Whoa that charge out of nowhere! 
  

For the raid last night we dropped in on x9abenonymous9x who was playing Resident Evil over at twitch.tv/x9abenonymous9x!  

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout featured Straight Combo #2, Difficulty Challenge Combo #2, Hip Shape Focus Combo and Difficult Challenge Combo #3. Set a new personal best with Difficult Challenge Combo #3 with 698 perfect actions out of 704, with the remaining 6 being just OK.

The 76ers won last night to tie up the series with the Heat, and I know the playoffs should not be considered, but Embiid is showing how much of a difference maker he is. Unfortunately, much analytic-minded voters didn't look beyond a stat sheet and instead named Nikola Jovic the MVP.

My daily death streak in Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle is up to 9 days, we need 4 more for the final achievement of the game.

My Fantasy Baseball Team batted a combined .179 (40/224), with 5 Home Runs, 16 RBI, 4 Stolen Bases while scoring 21 runs. My pitching staff threw 40.1 innings, with an ERA of 4.91, winning 3 games with 1 save while striking out 36 batters with a WHIP of 1.51. Needless to say everyone played like garbage. Here's hoping for a better week.

Played some Smite last night and tired out Apollo, not sure exactly what the best combo of his abilities are.Safe to say I died... a lot. Still got an achievement out of it so that's good.

SMITE Achievements

• Serenade: Unlock the Smite Award Serenade.

The fact that Ronda Rousey is once again being given an dominant push means I will continue to not dedicate any serious time to keeping up with current WWE programming. Of course AEW is too much of a clown show to even worth a curious glance outside of video game news. 

If you're looking for tools to help with streaming or communicating from home with work, check out what Xsplit offers over at Xsplit.com, use the promo code CASDEN to save 10% on your order! If you're looking for just general stuff, of course you can swing over to Amazon using my affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3L8N1Yj.

For tonight's stream we shall be resuming Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition, as we're up to where the Death Door arc of the story begins.

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

Tekken, Dark Angel and Paladins

Good afternoon everyone, and happy mother's day to all the moms out there,

Last night's stream was a triple header, featuring two games from the PlayStation 2 era, the first being Tekken 4. As most know, I have played Tekken, Tekken 2 and Tekken 3 before on stream, so it was a matter of time of getting around to it. Visually, it holds up rather nicely, but I feel that its game play is not as good as the 3rd entry in the series. I was surprised that has a Story mode which is basically an arcade ladder that has a a long cinematic to advance the story for the characters you go through it as. Beyond that it has all the usual stuff, Tekken Force, Survival, Training Mode, etc. Because of Tekken 4 has unlock able characters, I think going through Story Battle might be a good way to randomly feature every so often.

Second game was Dark Angel: Vampire Apocalypse, which is a hack and slash RPG... I would say almost Diablo like to some degree. Released rather early in the PlayStation 2's history, this is a game that clearly would have been better on the original PlayStation. In fact during the stream I looked up that was being made for the Dreamcast. Game play wise, it's easy to learn, but is incredibly shallow. Visually it's just mediocre, but the music is a bit disappointing because when the music plays it sounds great, a kick ass metal style, the problem is the game goes long stretches without any music, which really takes me out of the game. Also I forgot to get a screenshot from the game, but nothing of value was loss since it is a game I can easily just throw into the PS2 at some point in the future.

Paladins was the usual nonsense, I've had some good matches and some matches that made me shake my head, plus several instances of people leaving matches. Bug we were joined by PandaSweet for several matches which made things awesome. Some characters I used was Ash, Tyra, Skye, Viktor and Ying.

Twitch Clips

•  At least we ended it on a Combo
•  Can we finish off the Spider.
•  Behold this!
  

For the raid we dropped in on purrpl3panda  who was also playing Paladins over at twitch.tv/purrpl3panda! 

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout involved Beginner Combo #2, Block Combo and Sway Back Combo. This was an unusual combination, but the combined time was over 30 minutes.

Finished another commissioned fic early this morning (at like 5 AM) based around a short lived feud in NXT between Mia Yim and Io Shirai, since I wasn't following pro wrestling as closely as I once did, it was pretty difficult to get something finished based around what little info I could find, and I certainly don't have the time to go watch the WWE archives on Peacock to see how these characters were being portrayed. 

Knocked off the last level of Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle last night, so I now have 54 of the games 55 achievements unlocked. The last one requires the Daily Death, which I should unlock by Friday.

Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle Achievements

• Jurassic Jason: Completed every puzzle level of Jurassic Jason.

A new week starts, but lets go back and look at what we featured over this past week which included Overwatch, Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition, Fallout 76, Final Fantasy XIV, Persona 5 Royal, Dark Angel: Vampire Apocalypse, Paladins and Tekken 4!

If you're looking for tools to help with streaming or communicating from home with work, check out what Xsplit offers over at Xsplit.com, use the promo code CASDEN to save 10% on your order! If you're looking for just general stuff, of course you can swing over to Amazon using my affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3L8N1Yj.

For tonight's stream, we're of course going to be playing Overwatch!

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

Oh so that's the new Battle Boost gimmick In Chrono Cross

Good morning everyone,

Well last night's stream certainly saw me start off pissed off with everything involving the Supreme Court of the United States and the stupidity of overturning Roe V. Wade. As I said before, conservatives want to 'save lives' only to use those lives for their own benefits eighteen years later. The entire rant will be included in the archive VOD on my YouTube channel when it appears on Monday.

Anyway, as far the game play of Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers edition, I realized that pressing R3 enables a battle boost to give full use of the elemental grid at the start and apparently provides enemies with a high chance of missing not just physical attacks, but elemental attacks as well. This became really useful in terms of dealing some bad match ups (the Giant Starky fight, where I took Harle and Zappa) as well as dealing with the Grand Slam portion aboard the S.S. Zelbess. Funny enough we ignored checking out the Grand Slam in last year's play through of the original version of Chrono Cross, so it was nice to recruit Janice. We also ended the stream at the perfect spot, where we reached the entrance to the Dead Sea, but realize we need to go to the Isle of the Damned first, which means Monday's stream will have a lot of action in it.  

On a side note it does appear some of the major slow down in frames during battle occurs on if the enemy is huge or overly complex.This is really down to bad Quality Assurance testing done by the development team of this version of the game.

Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition Achievements

• Grand Champion: Complete the Grand Slam.

Twitch Clips

• Sprigg Getting The Last Hit 
• They Be Mooniful... yes that's a word
• Finally knocked it out! 
  

For the raid we dropped in on Redneck_23 while they were playing American Truck Simulator! 

Work yesterday ended on a positive note continue the struggles to get anything done with the current assignment. On a side note, people who answer phones for businesses need to stop assuming someone is not going to do something on their behalf.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout featured Body Uppercut Combo, Body Hook Combo and Triple Combo #1. Never seen that combination of exercises put together before, as they were all 8 minute routines, making this one of the shortest daily sessions ever that wasn't set for 20 minutes.

More progress towards 100% completion of Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle was done following last night's stream. Got to appreciate those YouTube channels that are still posting solutions for the Daily Death for this game. 

Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle Achievements

• Golden Throne: Acquired the golden throne.
• Return to Crystal Lake: Completed every puzzle level of Return to Crystal Lake.

My fantasy baseball team was let down by the Yankees not having LeMahieu in the starting line up against the Blue Jays yesterday. That was just rude! Also the rain out of the Guardians-Padres and the Tigers-Pirates games took Straw and Hosmer out of faction for me as well And of course the Phillies lost to the Rangers last night as well...  ugh.

Twitch added more options for the Predictions feature... I really do have have to come up with some content to take advantage of it.

For tonight's stream we're back to playing Fallout 76, as I'll try and knock out some solo quests before maybe we're joined by Iceman to continue the joint quests we were messing with last week!

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

Where we are in Chrono Cross; the stupidity of Conservatives who are Pro-Life

Good morning everyone,

We had a great night of Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers edition, as we covered everything from Water Dragon Isle up through recruiting Radius. I did try to strategize a lot to preplanning for all the boss encounters by stocking up on various elements since we had to go through a dozen boss battles, not to mention various puzzles at some points. The real disappointment of not having more achievements based on dealing with bosses is real downer, as it puts a stronger emphasis on doing multiple New Game Plus runs. We also experienced major instances of frame rate dropping within the game during some sequences and battles. I do want to put some serious work in using Sprigg in battles to try and build up enough of a roster to try and recruit Janice, but this does put me at a heavy disadvantage. Of course what would make that easier is finding the Forget-Me-Not-Pot in Chronopolis, but that is much later in the game.

Also discovered another glitched achievement in this game upon reaching the labyrinth in Fort Dragonia... so this will certainly warrant another play-through to deal with the glitches and bugs on the achievement front... to go along with getting 99 stars and going for all the alternate endings.. Also I see a lot of notes about the Battle Boost system... which is a bit odd to me, but I will probably make use of it when facing the end boss of the game. On a side note, I looked up in my journal that it took 10 streams to finish Chrono Cross last year, tonight will be night four for the Radical Dreamers edition so we're about on the same pace.

Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition Achievements

• The Nemesis: Defeat Lynx at Fort Dragonia.

Twitch Clips

• Everybody Out!
• And it's dead! 
• Leena Defeats Lynx 

For the raid we dropped in on YRGamerBunni who was playing Mass Effect 2: Legendary Edition over at twitch.tv/YRGamerBunni!

Over 20 years ago, George Carlin did a stand up special that basically formed my view on abortion, you know the one, the one that points out the obvious that most of the people who are against abortion are people one would not want to fuck in the first place, that these people are anti-woman, wanting live babies to raise them to be dead soldiers, that these people do not want to help in anyway with the raising of these kids, and I can give a big example of that, because my younger brother went to the Head Start program, which was constantly under threat by conservatives in the early 90s to have its funding cut.

The argument of life beginning at fertilization, and that the unborn is more valuable than the woman whose body is at risk has always bothered me. If a woman wants to have a baby, that their choice. If they want to have an abortion, that is their choice. It is that simple, And for those who want to bring up the 10th Amendment, let's remember that most of the states below Maryland were fighting in favor of slavery, which is their attitude towards women. Oh they can't have slaves, so instead they want broodmares... in short, forcing women into slavery to birth children that the conservatives refuse to assist with!

And let's not forget how so many 'Anti-Vaccine' morons, mostly men, are saying that 'My Body My Choice' only apply to them, and how hard they fight for the 2nd Amendment, even though guns have resulted in an every increasing year after year death toll, particularly in and around schools.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily work out featured Beginner Combo #1, Front-Back Step Combo and Uppercut Combo #2. This was also the 666th consecutive day of working out I've done since starting with the original Fitness Boxing in 2020. Granted its day 508 of just Fitness Boxing 2, but we'll get to do the 666 joke again in 158 days, which is like October 8 of this year. With Bernardo's Contender unlocked, we'll now switch to Laura as the trainer for the next several weeks.

Fitness Boxing 2: Rhythm & Exercise EX Achievements

• Bernardo's Contender: Train with Bernardo for over 30 hours
• 92% of all EX Achievements acquired. 
  
• 14 out of 30 hours trained for Laura's Contender
  

Knocked out a commissioned fan fic based around the WWE's Mixed Match challenge yesterday, and it's always nice to get paid promptly for things like that. I really should set rates for things like that though.

Managed to knock out a bunch more achievements in Friday the 13th Killer Puzzle following last night's stream. The game does have 55 achievements and I already banged out 45 of them, so I guess we'll go for the full completion at this point. Granted one of the remaining ones requires a lot of luck in getting (a golden toilet seat), and another requires playing the 'Daily Death' 13th times. Getting those consecutive kills in Murder Marathon was rather mind numbing, but hey as of right now I just have to grind out the rest to get to 1000 kills.

Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle Achievements

• Grindhouse: Got 20 consecutive kills in Murder Marathon.
• Shock Absorber: Electrocuted Jason on a fence.
• Shocking Offense: Scared a victim into an electric fence.
• Death Toll: 3: Killed Brock, Suzi and Chad.
• Wasteland: Completed every puzzle level of Wasteland.
• Gorefest: Got 30 consecutive kills in Murder Marathon.
• Notorious: Reached rank 30 blood lust.
• Decimation: Reached a body count of 250.
• Beam Me Up: Went through a teleporter of each color.
• Future Shock: Completed every puzzle level of Future Shock.
• Kablooey: Blew Jason up on a mine.

The 76ers loss the Heat last night really shows the huge difference Joel Embiid makes when he's not available. Their failure to beat the Raptors in Game 4 and again in Game 5 is certainly going to be the defying games of post-season, no question about it.

If you're looking for tools to help with streaming or communicating from home with work, check out what Xsplit offers over at Xsplit.com, use the promo code CASDEN to save 10% on your order! If you're looking for just general stuff, of course you can swing over to Amazon using my affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3L8N1Yj. 

For tonight's stream we shall continue Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition, as we'll have an easier and more casual night we not to real worry about getting into a series of boss battles back to back.it's  

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

A Wild Night Of Overwatch, Square-Enix's major shake up.

Good afternoon everyone,

Last night's stream of Overwatch was pretty damn epic, as I picked up four plays of the game as D.va. We had a lot of fun as we had what is turning into our usual crew with PandaSweet, BangBangBang and BloodyClown. Characters that I used were the usual suspects of D.va, Reinhardt, Moira along with some use of Lucio, Mei, Bastion and Ashe. There was a bit of weirdness as I got knocked out of voice chat in game forcing a restart to get it working, then Panda had trouble with none of the alerts for enemy ultimate attacks were going off. That particular bug goes back to at least 2017 as I did do a Google search on stream, and saw so many complaints about it.

Twitch Clip Links

• Triple Kill and more!
• Four! 
• That's three!
  

For the raid we dropped in on Joliet4 who was doing a music stream featuring some of their original songs like Heartbreaker! You can find Joliet4 over at twitch.tv/joliet4 and listen to some of their songs over on Spoitfy by clicking HERE. 

Square-Enix sold three of its major studios and several of its properties to a company in Sweeden called Embracer Group. Perhaps the biggest shocker was the selling of Crystral Dynamics which basically brought new life into Tomb Raider franchise with the Survivor trilogy! Also on the sale block were Eidos-Montreal and Square Montreal, along with the rights to Deus Ex, Just Cause and several more games, It appears that Square-Enix wants to focus on things they can control in Japan. Now Embracer Group is also the company that acquired Gearbox as well as Cryptic Studios last December, so it really appears they want to make themselves the big publisher and developer of major titles and franchises. Really hope they know what they are doing. 

But the real question is why did Square-Enix do this? It's not shock to me that their attitude to the sales figures for things like the Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy was disappointed... not to mention the fiasco of Marvel's Avengers. From what I read, it appears Square-Enix looking to focus more on what they can control and oversee more directly in Japan... which makes me think that Deck Nine along with the Life is Strange franchise is probably going to be on the sales block sooner rather than later.

There is also the question on if Square-Enix is going to allow itself to be bought by Sony, and if so, making themselves 'cheaper' to purchase at a high price. That's been heavily rumored for a while now, but it makes the sale of three major studios look even odder... unless Sony gave a clear indication those three studios were going to be shut down and the games associated with them would be left to rot.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout featured Double Combo #1, Defensive Combo #2, Defensive Combo #1 and Hook Combo #2. Set a new personal best for Double Combo #1 set to No Mercy difficulty by getting a perfect score.

I'm going to make a prediction, Shotzi Blackheart will be released by the WWE within the next 12 months.

Knocked off a few more achievements in Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle following the stream, figuring some of these out really are a bit tough, and the urge not to just look at the solution is just hard to resist. Also trying to go for the Marathon streaks are tougher than I remember, my current best is 19.

Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle Achievements

• Cult Classic: Reached rank 15 blood lust.
• Jessi's Jumper: Killed a victim wearing a rainbow hoodie.
• Slayground: Completed every puzzle level of Slayground.

If you're looking for tools to help with streaming or communicating from home with work, check out what Xsplit offers over at Xsplit.com, use the promo code CASDEN to save 10% on your order! If you're looking for just general stuff, of course you can swing over to Amazon using my affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3L8N1Yj. 

For tonight's stream we'll be resuming Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition, as we're off to Water Dragon Isle and then for the long gauntlet of encounters that lead to the end of the first half of the game. 

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

A Random Saturday Night And The Real Reason Batwoman Has Been Cancelled

Good afternoon everyone,

Last night's stream sure had a rough start as we did have some sort of connection issue from Xfinity that resulted in the stream restarting. So we lost about maybe 20-30 minutes of footage. Still we did lead off with Overwatch 2 as I was going through every character in the training mode first to show off a few things. We did play a few matches, but the long queue times for Tank and Damage roles were rather silly. But something that I was repeatedly saying, when it comes to people not working on the objectives and damage role player not doing their job of taking out things like turrents will easily cost a team a victory. Characters Iused were Moira, D.va, Symmetra and Reinhardt.

Now yesterday I said I was considering maybe featuring Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle on stream, and we did, covering the 26 puzzles, with only the use of looking at the solution being needed once. The death animations are so over the top that one has to laugh at how some of the make Jason's weapons look like they are being used the wrong way. Picked up four achievements, which was nice. Also went back in off-stream to get the Daily Death puzzle done to start progress to achievements associated with that and picked up three more achievements.

We closed out the stream with SMITE playing three arena matches and picking up one win, and I actually played two matches as Yu Huang, who is the newest god added to the game. Funny enough I only played him because one of the rewards involved playing as a Chinese god, and I found his skills fairly easy to learn. Won't say I would main him, but I certainly would consider using him whenever I play and I want to play as a mage. Since I got one of his achievements on stream, but went back to get the other off-stream.

Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle Achievements

• Massacre: Reached a body count of 100.
• Swap Meat: Traded weapons for the first time.
• I < Mask> NY: Completed every puzzle level of I < Mask> NY.
• Last Resort: Completed every puzzle level of Last Resort.
• Heavy Breathing: Used each color of telephone.
• Untouchable: Killed a swat cop.
• Doom Boom: Killed a victim with a mine.
  

SMITE Achievements

• Phoenix Fire: Unlock the Smite Award "Phoenix Fire" 
• Dragon's Call: Unlock the Smite Award "Dragon's Call"
  

Twitch Clips

• The chaos! 
• Wrecked! 
• We figured it out! 
• We just got paddled! 
• An achievement? 
• Wicked cool 

We didn't do a raid last night, instead we hosted PrincessPashley as they were out doing some live karaoke for their stream over at twitch.tv/princesspashley!

It was announced that Batwoman series will be cancelled. Now as someone who was one heavily invested in watching the various super hero shows on the CW, I have to say that the decision does not shock me at all for a few reason. One, Batwoma has a history of problems starting with it first being on Sunday nights, the second being Ruby Rose's injury and departure, and the third being unable to grow its audience. Unlike DC's Legends of Tomorrow, which never had a large audience, Batwoman lost viewers consistently, a problem that existed in its first season, The decision to move Supergirl to Sunday nights to prop up Batwoman ended up hurting the Girl of Steel who lost HALF of its audience in the move to boost a show that was struggling from jump street. Granted no one at the CW was going to let Batwoman fail for many reasons even thought there was just cause for it to be cancelled two years ago.

So what is the real reason you ask? Simple its is because of the recent merger between Warner Media and Discovery, who no longer wants to be apart of the ownership of The CW, and with them wanting out, Paramount (the reemerged Viacom and CBS) don't want it either, so to sell the network easier, that means a lot of show are going to be ending because whatever media conglomerate purchases the remains of the CW are going to want to put their own shows on it that fit their idea of what the network should be. The purge is already happening, as DC's Legends of Tomorrow as cancelled yesterday, don't be surprised to see shows like Riverdale, The Flash, and Superman & Lois being cancelled within the next 12 months.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout featured Difficulty Challenge Combo #1, Biceps Shape Focus Combo, Intermediate Combo #1 and Triple Combo #2.

I am no fan of Stephen A. Smith, because he's the worst sports journalist to ever work in the Philadelphia area, but I do have to applaud him for how he buried Kyrie Irving of the Brooklyn Nets for his career of selfish acts. 

The New York Times reported that Tucker Carlson is the most racist prime time host in history and that he along with his producers at Fox News go out of their way to make his show appeal to the immoral white nationalists that should be rounded up and put in prison... or shipped off to Russia.  

The career of Trevor Bauer is basically over as he's been suspended for two years by Major League baseball as more of his past actions have come to light.

It's the start of a new week, so lets recap what we played last week: Overwatch, Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition, Fallout 76, Final Fantasy XIV, Persona 5 Royal, Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle, Overwatch 2 and Smite!

If you're looking for tools to help with streaming or communicating from home with work, check out what Xsplit offers over at Xsplit.com, use the promo code CASDEN to save 10% on your order! If you're looking for just general stuff, of course you can swing over to Amazon using my affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3L8N1Yj. 

So what is this week's line up looking like, with Overwatch being on tap for tonight's stream?  Well it's going to look like this.Which is basically the same line up as last week

• Sunday: Overwatch
• Monday: Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition
• Tuesday: Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition
• Wednesday: Fallout 76
• Thursday: Final Fantasy XIV
• Friday: Persona 5 Royal
• Saturday: Something Random
  

Now what will that something random be? Maybe something from the PlayStation 3 era of gaming, I got a few ideas, but nothing I want to say just yet.

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