A Nearly Event Free Night

 Good afternoon everyone,

Last night's stream of Final Fantasy XIV was mostly issue free, with only two interruptions that happened at 8:48 PM Eastern and 8:58 PM Eastern. Unlike Wednesday night with Fallout 76, the disruptions were enough to kick me from Final Fantasy XIV both times... thankfully I was not doing anything in a group when that happened. From what I can tell, it looks like signal interference.

As for what we did on stream, we did the usual routine of an Alliance Raid and a Trial, that ended up being the final showdown with Elidibus at the end of Shadowbringers, which I haven't done since first playing it... so needless to say re-learning it was interesting. We hit level 90 with Fishing, so that's maxed, and we did some power leveling on Botany, we only have two story quests for Botany left to do, and with luck we'll be able to knock those out on next week's stream. I thought we could some power leveling with Dragoon, but no such luck, but that's like a long haul project anyway.

We also did some Just Chatting, and I saw that President Joe Biden is going to appease Mitch McConnell but appointing an anti-abortion lawyer for a spot as a Judge in Kentucky. Considering the path of destruction McConnell's stuffing of the Supreme Court has done over the past week, appeasing Mitch The Bitch should be the last thing anyone should do.

On a positive note, I got a $5 Dollar Gift Card from my Day Job... and we went on Amazon to see if there anything unique we could add to the collection. Turns out that My Little Pony has a full multi-console game released called My Little Pony: A Maretime Bay Adventure. It was about a year ago at this time we discovered DC Super Hero Girls Teen Power, and I have no problem going against stereotype. On a side note, isn't it odd that Generation 4 of My Little Pony (Friendship Is Magic), never got a full video game released, which is amazing considering the number of grand adventures and epic plots that series had. Actually what would have worked for a Gen 4 Video Game would have been something along the same lines of the Persona series with the Slice of Life mixed with the Adventure. 

Twitch Clips

• Hope For People To Wake Up
• No One Likes You! 
• I Got One... I Got Two... I Got Three!
• Run Back To Find More Sap 
• What's the Logic In THat
  

For the raid, we dropped everyone off with SweetLindir as they were playing Smite over on twitch.tv/sweetlindir!

We're coming up on two full years of daily workouts... and first Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout for the month of July featured Defensive Combo #2, Triple Combo #2 and Front-Back Step Combo for 28 minutes.

Played Some Fall Guys last night and unlocked the season pass... which actually lead to a couple of achievements. So yay! Also PandaSweet picked up Fall Guys so got in a lot of fun matches playing duos and good test of the cross play too. 

Fall Guys Achievements

• Household Name: Reach lvl 25 fame during a season
• Star of the Show: Reach lvl 40 fame during a season
• Fall Bae: Share a hug with a Fall Guy

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 Persona 5 Strikers. I might take a more grind approach this go-round as we're dealing with the Second Jail, but I saw there were achievements / trophies associated with unlocking skills by playing with each characters. So that should be fun.

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

Finished DC Super Hero Girls Teen Power

 Good afternoon everybody,

Last night we wrapped up DC Super Hero Girls: Teen Power, and I have to say, this was a damn good little game, and if you take out all the time I spent looking around for collectables and logos, the main story plus all character side quests takes maybe 22 hours, depending on how quickly you adapt to the characters. I rather enjoyed the big reveal of it not being Lex Luthor but his bratty little sister Lena Luthor being behind all the trouble... which I think is a first, since normally Lex is the trouble maker. The game does a real good job of justifying while all the villains and heroes are teaming up against the common enemy, which actually does not give any hope for DLC for the game coming any time soon. 

Now even thought we finished the game and saw the credits roll, there is quite a lot of post-game content to keep folks busy, such as finding all the hamsters in the open world, going back to every mission to find the golden hamster, maxing out every character's levels, getting perfect runs on every mission, completing the 'image training' side quests for each character, donating 25,000 gold to either Poison Ivy or Green Lantern to unlock every character's statue, and build things in every spot in Hobs Bay. If you are a completionist, this will take you a while to do. But I don't complete games, I finish them... and for me the main story of any video game is what I look to finish!.

That said, we do have clips from last night's stream, which I'll list next.

Twitch Clip: Harley Quinn Defeats Supergirl

Twitch Clip: Harley Smash!

Twitch Clip: Hold on to this for me!

Twitch Clip: The final hit on the final boss!

Twitch Clip: Nicely Done!

Also starting today, I'll be posting the weekly highlight reels with every Sunday post, instead of giving them their own posts, it just one less thing I have to do. Anyway this weeks highlight reel includes footage of Overwatch, Fitness Boxing 2: Rhythm & Exercise, Mass Effect Legendary Edition, Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid, Tom Clancy's The Division, Star Trek Online, New Pokemon Snap, God of War & of course DC Super Hero Girls: Teen Power! 

Of course now next week's highlight reel is going to chance since we finished DC Super Hero Girls Teen Power, more than likely we'll move New Pokemon Snap to Saturday, and having something else teamed up with Star Trek Online for Thursday. Hell we got a bunch of used games recently, that would be a good day to see if they work or not! 

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Daily Workout was streamed over on Twitch, and no the plan is not to do extra bonus streams this week, I just felt like streaming today's session (lol). Anyway the daily work out went 28 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 473 kcal, but I also did some extra, so the total duration for 40 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 673 kcal. We're now up to 3 out of 10 for the Van's Trainee achievement and 3 out of 10 for the Van's Buddy achievement.

Since this session was streamed, there are a couple of clips for it.

Twitch Clip: Eight more

Twitch Clip: Focus on the biceps

With it being Sunday that means Overwatch is on deck for tonight! The Deadlock Challenge event ends in a couple of days, so this will be your chance to earn spray drops by watching anyone playing Overwatch over on Twitch (like me for example starting at 7 PM Eastern haha)

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

 

Today's Notes 7/3/21: Kratos and The Boy Have To Climb Another Mountain

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night's stream saw the focus returned to God of War, as we covered a lot of ground, covering three major areas, The Light of Alfheim, Inside The Mountain and A New Destination. We learned the Witch of the Woods is Freya, the Stranger is Baulder... and got several upgrades and new abilities. We also covered two side quests as well to help boost things along.... all of this is why the stream went well over six hours! That said the 'boy' is certainly annoying, but there are a few positive to his annoyance, mainly the number of times we can assume Kratos wants to smack him! Now the big 'early story twitst' that there is a taller mountain for Kratos to climb certainly was cool... but the more I think about it... isn't it just a reuse of textures and areas from the prior areas of the game? I have noticed a heavy use of repeated graphical assets throughout God of War, and so I'm wondering with another tall as mountain to climb if it's interior is gonna be almost the same with how it looks.

Anyway with everything that was done last night we did get a couple of trophies based on story progression.

1. Feels Like Home: Allow the Light Elves to return home
2. Dragon Slayer: Defeat the Dragon of the Mountain

That Dragon Slayer one for defeating the dragon on the mountain certainly felt epic because of how that battle ended, made, which certainly made for a nice change of pace from facing enemies not that much bigger than Kratos.Of course we do have links to some of my favorite moments from last night, which I'll list next.

Twitch Clip: Insane in the membrane

Twitch Clip: Got you you little jerk!!

Twitch Clip: Kratos The Adventurer

Twitch Clip: Groovy...

Twitch Clip: I think it's dead!

Got in some Virtua Fighter 5: Ultimate Showdown off stream yesterday winning 8 out 9 ranked matches played. At the moment out of 46 ranked matches I have 35 wins, 11 losses. Not bad for a guy who only pops into it every so often. 

Of course now I do have a question... why is the PlayStation 4's Dual Shock controller has such a terrible ability to hold a charge? A fully charged Xbox One or Xbox Series controller can last 20 hours, but a PS4 controller can barely go past the six hour mark? Come on man! A PS3 Controller can handle that workload!

We added three games to the collection yesterday, Bio Freaks for the PlayStation 1, Tekken 5 & Dead or Alive 2: Hardcore for the PlayStation 2. Bio Freaks is probably best known these days for the Boss Rage done by Maxamillion Dood a few years ago, but I have to admit, the main reason it was on my list of games to get was to see if it's true that its worse than The Simpsons: Wrestling. So I'm thinking maybe doing a stream where I play both games to see which one is worse. With the addition of Tekken 5, I now have all 5 of the main games in the series and with DOA2: Hardcore, it's more along the lines of finding the Dead or Alive Games that I could possibly play, DOA3 may be a tough one to find because I believe that was a Xbox 360 only release.

Also picked up six books... Mass Effect: Revelation, Mass Effect: Ascension, Mass Effect: Deception, Mass Effect Andromeda: Annihilation, Mass Effect Andromeda: Nexus Uprising & Mass Effect Andromeda: Initiation. I am missing one book in the Mass Effect series but I'll probably add it tomorrow. looking forward to reading these.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout went 28 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 466 kcal, and with today's session we wrapped up the last achievement for Laura and started work on the achievements for the next trainer Evan. Here's what we did today.

1. Laura's Best Friend: Reach a trusting partnership with Luara
2. Evan's Stylist: Change Evan's Outfit
3. Evan's Fashion Designer: Put a matching outfit together for Evan
4. Evan's Fashion Saboteur: Mismatch an outfit for Evan
5. Evan's New Student: Exercise with Evan as your instructor
6. Evan's Best Student: Receive a three-star rating from Evan
   

Since we had the New Student and Best Student achievements, that means we did do a little extra, namely we started progress on Evan's Buddy, we're 1 out of 10 for performing 10 free exercises with Evan. With tomorrow's workout we'll start on the Evan's Trainee achievement. Over all at this point were at 94% completion for the King Fit Fighter achievement which is to earn all the in-game achievements.

For tonight's stream we will be continuing DC Super Hero Girls: Teen Power, picking up with the start of chapter seven, looking forward to see how the plot develops considering everything is pointing to a show down with Lex Luthor for the game's climax.

Space, Pokemon and Weird Decisions By Logitech!

Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream, we lead off with Star Trek Online and tackled the endeavor quests, which actually saw a big focus on the Lukari task force operations, having to complete three of them on Advance difficulty or higher... which meant we had to be stuck in a queue waiting (and hoping) others were doing them to. We had some luck, and got some good teams of wanting to get through them as quickly as possible. Now here are the links to some clips from STO portion of last night:

Twitch Clip: Up And Atom... Up And AT THEM!

Twitch Clip: Pull them off me!

Twitch Clip: We're gonna break out the Boom stick!

Twitch Clip: That was a mistake.... WHOOPS!

For the second half of the stream, our attention turned to New Pokemon Snap, continuing the journey of going around and snapping photos of Pokemon and hoping to get diamond stars on all of them. Near as I can tell, the story gradually moves forward with each level one gets on a particular 'course', and the higher the level you have on a course, the more variety of Pokemon you see and the more things they will possibly do! I've made up my mind that when we finished DC Super Hero Girls: Teen Power, New Pokemon Snap will move to Saturday nights, but we're probably a few weeks away from that. The best part about New Pokemon Snap is the dark humor I can have with it when I say 'time to shoot some Pokemon'....  And of course here are some clips from the Pokemon portion of the stream.

Twitch Clip: Holy Crapola!

Twitch Clip: We're Gonna Need A Bigger Boat

Twitch Clip: We Popped Him!

Twitch Clip: Getting a good shot of a Florges

Now as I've been busy upgrading things over the course of the past year, there is one things that I feel could use an improvement and that's the camera I use. I use both a Logitech C920 and a Nexigo 1080P game. The C920 is the secondary camera because I had issues with it where at times it would not capture video at all, so we added the Nexigo, because it was the closest thing on the market I could get last year because the Logitech Streamcam was sold out everywhere. So I finally got my hands on one, and boy did this fly under the radar... it uses a USB-C connection, which is the small port slot often seen on laptops and more micro-built PCs (like an off the shelf HP or Dell).... so it raises a question of, what was Logitech thinking? They put out the best webcam possibly just before the pandemic hit last year, and it uses a connection type that is not universal and needs a USB-C to USB-A 3.0 adapter to connect to MOST PCs. Anyway the big reason I want to replace the Nexigo game is that it has no zoom in or out function, which would be really helpful when setting scenes in OBS, instead I have to use a crop filter to get things to where I have them, but it ends up so zoomed in on my face it makes things a little awkward and less than ideal since I use a green screen. If the C920 didn't have issues I would just swap the two, but it is what it is. With luck we'll have the Streamcam up and running by Monday.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout went 31 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 557 kcal. We took out the stretching for today's session. Did have a handful of ugly misses mostly due to the left joy con having the de-sync issues. Probably will have to look up how to 'calibrate' the joy cons again. Anyway we're up to 98 out of 100 for the Laura's Best Friend achievement, which means we'll have it unlocked with tomorrow's session before we move on to the next trainer. On a side note, I'm glad to see that there is a DLC music pack for Fitness Boxing 2, granted it's original music and not licensed tracks, but adding more variety to what the came uses as background music for each exercise is a good thing.

We've added it four items to the gaming collection, first for the PlayStation we now have Star Wars: Master of Teras Kasi, Tekken and Tekken 2 . Of the three I have played Star Wars: MOTK before, because my younger brother had it. I'm surprised that wasn't among the PS1 games I knew were his that I found several months ago because I know he wasn't into trading in the games he had. I've never played the original Tekken or Tekken 2 before, so adding them made sense since thanks to Kazuya being added to Smash has made it easy to track the older games down. Lastly for the Nintendo Switch, we've added Arcade Spirits which is a visual novel game that according to reviews I've read, is a little more in-depth that it seems. On a side note: I need replacement cases for Tekken and Tekken 2 as they came without their jewel cases or manuals. Knowing the folks at https://customgamecase.com/  it'll probably be two weeks before they arrive.

Also picked up a couple of books: Overwatch Deadlock Rebels which is the tie-in novel focused on Ashe and Jesse's past. Should be a good read from what I've skimmed through so far. Also picked up RWBY The Official Manga Volume 3, and it's been a joy to see how the series has been adapted to a different medium... even if the art style at times leaves a little to be desired.

Tonight's stream will focus on God of War for the PlayStation 4, as we pick up the start of our quest to go for the The Light of Alfheim. Of course I'll be doing as much random exploring as possible to find collectables, loot and enemies to fight. We'll get the stream started in the early evening!

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

Today's Notes 6/28/27: 500 Wins As A Damage Role Player!

Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream of Overwatch was a lot of fun, as we got in a few Mayhem matches before the daily change over, then focused on standard quick play matches. Had plenty of wins and losses, ending on a 6-4 stretch... to bad the night ended with the 10th match in that run being a lost. Big thanks to PandaSweet for joining in on the fun, and hope some folks were able to get an Deadlock spray or two tonight, as we did extend the stream to 11:30 PM Eastern. We also picked up a few plays of the game as D.vs and Torbjorn as well!

Now I also hit a personal milestone, getting my 500th win as a Damage role player. Every since I started playing Overwatch, getting the opportunity to play as a character whose main focus is dealing out a lot of damage has been something I've been denied. This goes back to before the role queue, where the damage role often has the longest wait-times.... so more often than not I end up playing tank or support, getting pretty damn good with Dva, Reinhardt and Moira. So as of late, for the last hour of each Overwatch stream I've set that aside for me and whoever is with me to queue up only for damage roles.... because if I'm doing a 4 hour stream, and three hours are as a tank or support, I will want to play damage too! 

But to put in in perspective I have 311 hours as a tank with 1098 wins, 153 hours as damage with 500 wins and 328 hours as support with 1211 wins. My most used characters are

1. Moira - 209 Hours (Support)
2. D.va - 157 Hours (Tank)
   
3. Reinhardt - 91 Hours (Tank)
   
4. Mercy - 55 hours (Support)
   
5. Brigitte - 34 Hours (Support)
   
6. Ashe - 26 Hours (Damage)
   
7. Orisa - 25 Hours (Tank)
   
8. McCree - 24 Hours (Damage)
   
9. Torbjorn - 23 Hours (Damage)
   
10. Tracer - 17 Hours (Damage)
    

Of the 792 total hours I've spent playing Overwatch, 340 hours were in Quick Play, 250 hours are in Arcade Mode, 192 hours were in competitive, 7 hours in experimental and 2 hours 'Game Brwoser'. Keep in mind, I haven't played a competitive (ranked) match in quite a long time.

Anyway here are some clips from last night's stream!

Twitch Clip: Triple Kill... I'll Take It!

Twitch Clip: I Love Mayhem

Twitch Clip: That did not work out the way I hoped it would

Twitch Clip: Whew boy did that work!

Twitch Clip:  Oh boy!

We added three games to the collection yesterday: Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training, Bayonetta 2 (which a digital copy of Bayonetta 1) and Pokemon: Let's Go Eevee! What made me go after the Eevee version of the game is the fact it's a remake of Pokemon Yellow... but Eevee has a different skill set than Pikachu!  

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily work out was streamed this morning a little after 5 AM... because I couldn't get to sleep at all, so I figure why not just do it early to wear myself out! The exercise duration (minus stretching) was 31 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 512 kcal. Since I don't route the audio to head phones during these sessions, near as I can tell my mic is set up in such a way that it will barely pick up audio from my monitor's speakers. So that was a cool discover. We are up to 88 out of 100 for the Laura's Best Friend achievement, which I should accomplish by the end of the week! 

And since this was also streamed, here are some clips from the morning workout! 

Twitch Clip: You can do it!

Twitch Clip: Ready Stance

Twitch Clip: Put The Body Into It!

Considered I quipped the character of Livewire was probably on the DC Animated Universe version of OnlyFans, I started dabbling out a fic based on how I've see the version of the character seen in DCSHG:TP. Probably will be a short fic with an open end ofr a follow up.

It's Monday which means tonight we'll be back to Mass Effect 3: Legendary Edition, with the flow of content being main mission, side quests, main mission. As I said, this run of ME3 is going to take a long time because of how I like to roam around the Normandy and the Citadel!

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

Highlights for the week of June 20, 2021

 Here are highlights of all the games featured over on http://twitch.tv/fredcasden for the week of June 20, 2021! This week we played Overwatch, Fitness Boxing 2 Rhythm & Exercise, Mass Effect Legendary Edition, Tom Clancy's The Division, New Pokemon Snap, Star Trek Online, God of War & DC Super Hero Girls: Teen Power!

Today's Notes 6/27/21: Star Sapphire Is A Little Psychopath

Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream totally focused on DC Super Hero Girls Teen Power as I covered every side quest that I could do before having to progress the story, which involved getting a lot of dedicated time playing as Star Sapphire, the last of the playable characters. I can see why they left her for last, because at first impressions she seems rather lackluster. She has some great ranged attacks, but if you're stationary with her she is a very easy target. Also she has really bad foot speed in comparison to everyone else, but like Supergirl she can fly, so if you can get a handle on that you can have fun using her. That said, Star Sapphire's obsession with Hal Jordan is rather funny, if a little creepy. The entire character related quest where Star Sapphire goes to talk to a tree because Poison Ivy does it is just weird. 

Now there were two side quests that proved problematic, one involving Harley Quinn where we had to be stealthy and I did so bad I had to use the 'assist mode', and the other was timed encounter to find jewels as Catwoman, where the placements of crates i needed to search were highly questionable!

In terms of the story, it certainly seems like Lex Luthor is up to something with the Toyman being involved... and their scheme certainly united the villains and heroes of Metropolis high to the point they are totally united... with the exceptions of Livewire and Posion Ivy who have their own things to work on. Speaking of Livewire, her social media attention wanting is such great fodder for Fan Fiction, like she would do anything for it... and it pops up in a big way with Harley Quinn wanting to mess with her over it. If Drace Domino is unable to do anything with that, I certainly will have to put in some time to put something together!

Anyway here are some clips are from last night's stream!

Twitch Clip: This is surprisingly relaxing!

Twitch Clip: Livewire is on Only Fans...

Twitch Clip: Star Sapphire has a hell of an AOE attack!

Twitch Clip: Harley Quinn Saves The Day!

On a side note, the VOD for Friday's stream of God of War is still missing as Twitch is still indicating that stream is still going! We may not port over the VODs for our play-through of it to YouTube.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Daily Workout went 31 minutes with an estimated calorie burn 446 kcal thanks to 1155 actions performed. Only had once miss off of a straight from the south paw stance, but it was due to the left joy con de-snycing with the Switch. We are now up to 86 out of 100 for the Laura's Best Friend achievement. 

Did a little of stream Star Trek Online playing, and switched starships for Zagreus who is now in command of Kelvin Timeline Constitution class cruiser, ya'll will see that on Thursday night's stream! 

It's Sunday which means Overwatch is on the agenda for tonight, and since there is an event going on involving Ashe, you'll be able to earn some sprays by watching my stream tonight! 

Today's Notes 6/26/21: A God of War and His Boy

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night's stream we started up God of War for the PlayStation 4, now I have not played a game in the series before, but much like with the Xbox One from early last year, we break in the console with the 4th game in a series (Well technically 6th since I do have a collection for the PS3 that has all 5 of the earlier games!). Anyway, first impressions is that God of War is a real gorgeous game, everything looks incredible, so as much as I knock Sony for their decisions when it comes to gamers, they do provide the hardware for developers to make some gorgeous stuff (which is part of why so many games from the PS2 and PS3 era still hold up).

We spent the night mostly roaming the first major area of the game, seeing that there were a few things I couldn't reach at that point in time while getting an understanding of the story, where Kratos has a son, and his wife (the boy's mother) is dead, and they are going on a long journey to spread her ashes off a mountain. Of course Kratos is not where he belongs and the locals (namely the Norse gods) want to have a word with him,

Now of course I will admit I'm not playing this on its hardest difficulty, because lets face it, everyone has seen me get killed on the easiest difficulty of some games.. and even with that, the default controls for God of War cross me up. There's something weird where for a game like this, where the light and heavy attack buttons are on the bumper and trigger buttons, so I end up pressing the face buttons, which causes the boy to fire his arrows.

And yes I know the boy has a name... but considering how quickly he got on my nerves, he's just... BOY!

Anyway, we'll continue God of War on next Friday's stream... but of course we have clips from last night to mark some of things that happen!

Twitch Clip: Kratos Is Gonna Put A New Condo Right Over There!

Twitch Clip: I do have the body of a god...

Twitch Clip: Gruesome!

Twitch Clip: Major... Major Trouble!

Twitch Clip: Grab It's Head!

And since God of War is a PS4 game, there were trophies (achievements) unlocked!

1. The Journey Begins: Defend your home from The Stranger
2. Nice Moves: Obtain a Runic Attack Gem
3. Best Dressed: Craft an outfit for Atreus
4. A New Friend: Survive the Witch’s Woods
5. Dwarven Ingenuity: Upgrade a piece of armor
6. Enchanted: Slot an Enchantment into your armor

We added three games to the collection: Ghosts of Tsushima for the PlayStation 4 which was recommended heavily by Iceman, as well as Mario Tennis Aces and Mario Golf Super Rush! I think we'll have a night where we play both of those games to see if I can learn how to play them!

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Daily Workout went 31 minutes, with an estimated calorie burn of 572 kcal. It was a bit frustrating as the left joy con would have periods of 'resetting' in the middle of a combo, resulting in 5 missed punches that basically resulted in 4 great combos being prevented. With today's session we're now up to 83 out of 100 for the Laura's Best Friend achievement.

Tonight's stream will be night 4 of DC Super Hero Girls: Teen Power, last week we saw Harley Quinn and Catwoman become playable characters, which means Star Sapphire is left, and she's the typical spoiled bully whose mor concerned with their image and chasing the star Quarterback. I'm still not totally sure how many chapters are left in the game, but if it's tied to the buildings being built in Hobs Bay we may be 2/3s of the way through!

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

Highlights For The Week Of 6/13/21

 Here are highlights for the week of June 13, 2021 of all the games featured over on http://twitch.tv/fredcasden! This week we played Overwatch, Ftiness Boxing 2: Rhythm & Exercise, Mass Effect Legendary Edition, Tom Clancy's The Division, Star Trek Online, WCW Vs The World, WWE All-Stars, Xena: Warrior Princess, Bloodborne, Virtua Fighter 5: Ultimate Showdown & DC Super Hero Girls: Teen Power!

Today's Notes 6/20/21: We can now play as Harley Quinn!

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night's stream of DC Super Hero Girls; Teen Power saw a lot of plot advancement, as we defeated Toyman and saw that he was actually working with Lex Luthor! We also got to play as Harley Quinn and Catwoman, meaning only Star Sapphire is left to be 'unlocked'. I do have to admit, learning how to play as Harley and Catwoman was a bit difficult because I already put so much time into boosting up Supergirl, Batgirl and Wonder Woman. 

And if you're curious as to when you can start using the villains, Harley becomes available half-way way through chapter 4, since she has direct interaction with Batgirl, because (as near as I can tell) in the show, Harleen and Barbara are best friends who are unaware of each other's secret identity. Note: For each villain you unlock you will need to power them up in order to keep them evenly paced with the heroes since by the middle of chapter 4, Batgirl Supergirl & Wonder Woman should have 50% of their upgrades unlocked (If you're playing like I am and doing every side quest you come across).

That said, Harley's 'No Time Bomb' ultimate move is such a great screen clearer, and she has a great multi-hit jump attack that works great on larger enemies. I could have done without the race to defuse bombs while enemies are swarming in on me, because unless you notices where they are (or are lucky enough to see their locations on the mini-map) it can get really hectic.I do wonder how many chapters are left in the game because it seems like there are at least eight chapters.

Anyway, here are some clips from last night's stream

Twitch Clip: Nananana Cat-Dude!

Twitch Clip: No Respect At All

Twitch Clip: No Time Bomb... There It Goes!

Twitch Clip: Supergirl: It's Not My Fault He's Using Really Hard Words

Twitch Clip: Defeating Toyman!

I didn't do any off-stream gaming at all last night, because the length of the stream was about 5.5 hours, plus I had to put together the highlight reel for the Facebook page (that basically exists in case Twitch's TOS gets really screwy) and also the weekly highlight reel for my YouTube page (which exists as an archive for most streams as well as occasional video commentaries).

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session went 31 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 495 kcal. Blocking was a slight issues today, but I it's tough for me to stay in sync on blocking combos. We are now up to 58 out of 100 for the Laura's Best Friend achievement.

It's Sunday which mean's Overwatch is on deck for tonight, as we'll be having fun doing mostly Quick Play matches. Maybe we'll get lucky and we'll have Mayhem matches after the 8 PM Eastern Hour, but I doubt it.

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

Today's Notes 6/19/21: The Spilled Bloodborne Of A Virtua Fighter

Good morning everybody

Last night we finally broke in the PlayStation 4 on stream, with two games. Thankfully a delivery I wasting on arrived early... which also allowed me to discover an issue with the PS4. Since Sony designed the PS4 to be able to stream directly from it, it actually can block a signal to the a capture card... so I had to do some plugging and unplugging of HDMI cables and such just to get a signal to my main monitor so that I could access the PS4's settings to turn that blocker off.

So once the stream started, we lead off with Bloodborne. Prior to last night I have seen people play these styles of game where it's trial and error, and while I didn't really progress far... I did at least start to get a grasp of the mechanics of combat and figuring and how to do things. By the time I was really getting a grove in the same area I was basically running laps in, I was getting a little burned out on getting killed so often, so I think Bloodborne will be one of those games we go to in order to fill in gaps on a stream, like maybe pair it with Star Trek Online on Thursdays or something.We did get one trophy last night in Bloodborne which I'll list next...

1. Blood Gem Contact: Acquire a blood gem that imbues hunter weapons with special strength.
   

I also did a few hours of Virtua Fighter 5: Ultimate Showdown, jumping into ranked matches and actually had a good streak going. We were also joined by Reaper, another long time friend of the channel for some direct head to head game play, where it was pretty even granted all of my obvious mistakes started to get exploited and exposed, but we had a lot of close bouts! We unlocked no trophies in Virtua Fighter 5.

We have some clips from last night as well, which I posted the links for next:

Twitch Clip: Let Me Do The Smart Thing...

Twitch Clip: Wah! Son Of A Biscuit!

Twitch Clip: Let's Freaking Go!

Twitch Clip: Get Out Of My Ring!

Now Bloodborne wasn't the only game to arrive yesterday: Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise, Uncharted Collection, Uncharted 4: A Thief's End & Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness were all added to the collection..

Because of other circumstances, there were no Xbox achievements unlocked last night, granted I could jump on after posting this to tackle some, but other circumstances involving heavy objects will now allow for that. I had a pretty good streak of 39 days, with 200 achievements unlocked. My personal best was 87 days with 483 achievements acquired. 

However I did start work on a little Overwatch Fan Fic idea last night involving Moira and Tracer, based around a character interaction dialog they have when they are on the same team. I figure I could get something out of that would fit quite nicely over on HF.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Session went 31 minutes, with an estimated calorie burn of 501 kcal. We are now up to 66 out of 100 for the Laura's Best Friend achievement. As we can see the point addition is sometimes 2 and sometimes 3. There doesn't seem to be a set pattern but we'll get there eventually! 

Tonight's stream will be focused on DC Super Hero Girls Teen Power, picking up with the start of Chapter 4, which seems to be a Batgirl focused chapter, so it should see a lot of quirky stuff happening. 

We'll get that started about 7 PM EST over on twitch.tv/fredcasden! See ya then!

Today's Notes 6/13/21: More DC Super Hero Girls

Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream was totally focused on DC Super Hero Girls: Teen Power as we cleared everything up through the end of Chapter 3. The obvious parallels between this game and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic really is starting to show with some of the plot developments, with a build towards the heroes and villains looking like will be working towards a common goal, particularly since the ending of chapter 3 basically sees an obvious set up for Bumblebee becoming friends with Giganta, at least through their secret identities of Karen and Doris. 

There are obvious things that are pretty much ripe for fan fic exploitation to the point I'm hoping I can commission Drace Domino (the author of Rise of the Battlebitch) to write at least one. Now of course I could write my idea myself, but I hate writing dialog. Just to give an idea of how out of context some things can be in this game, there is an entire dialog sequence between Diana (Wonder Woman) and Jessica (Green Lantern) about how the former needs practice being with a man

That said, did realize that that with each new chapter, new hamsters and logos start appearing around the open areas as more places become reachable for exploration. The biggest pain in the ass for all these collectable will be the golden hamsters which can be only found in combat missions... which I think will be best to pick up when doing the replay since there are rewards for completing the combat missions as quickly as possible.

Anyway here are some clips from last night's stream:

Twitch Clip: Boot To Livewire's Head (also note how her attacks are telegraphed)

Twitch Clip: Got The Hamster!

Twitch Clip: Jessica is Oblivious To Pamela's Trauma

Twitch Clip: Supergirl Breaks Stuff

Twitch Clip: Defending a building

Following the stream I went on to finish my APBA Baseball 1993 Season, and of course you can find every box score here for the games I played. I didn't make any major roster switchers outside of bringing in three 'Farm System' catches (two from the White Sox one from the Padres) to the Phillies roster because of how Todd Pratt kept wearing down quick when used,  There was also some weirdness involving the Twins whose entire pitching staff (including Farm System) was injured so position players had to be used.

Also loaded up Trover Saves The Universe to start chasing down some stray achievements, the list of what I accomplished is the following.

1. BALL FUN TIME: Bounce a ball 25 times in the apartment, because apparently that's more fun than the actual game.
2. Final Upgrade!: You got the final upgrade! You're all sticky, like a popsicle stick!
3. Bet You Can't Make 100: You made 10 baskets, now make 100! Come on, what else do you gotta do today?
   

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was 37 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 574 kcal. We unlocked the  Laure's Buddy achievement today (Perform 10 free exercises with Laura) so now we turn our attention to the Laura's Best Friend achievement, which is to reach a trusting partnership with Laura, and we're already at 50 out of 100 for it. Steady progress is of course steady with Fitness Boxing 2.

We added several more PlayStation 4 games to the collection:, Final Fantasy VII Remake, The Last of Us Part II, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Street Fighter V: Champion Edition, Until Dawn, and the Quantic Dream Collection which included Heavy Rain and Beyond Two Souls (Both of which I have for the PS3), but the real bargain here was Detroit Become Human. Yes it was actually cheaper to get the collection than to get get Detroit Become Human by itself. Go figure. More than likely we'll do a PS4 stream on Friday of this week. 

Of course most people who know me know that I don't have a special attachment or nostalgia for the original version of Final Fantasy VII, so why would I play the remake? Well for one I did enjoy Final Fantasy XV, and if FFVII-R plays anything like that then I should be able to brute force my way through the game. Of course since we just got the PS4, that means unless I get a PS5 by the time I start playing FFVII-R, I won't be able to play the Intergrade content, but that's fine, it'll be awhile before I get to FFVII-R anyway.

For tonight's stream, it's Sunday which means Overwatch is on deck! There are no new challenges or things to accomplish, so we'll just be playing Quick Play matches.... unless we have Mayhem after the 8 PM hour... then we'll be playing nothing but Mayhem matches! 

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

Today's Notes 6/12/21: Trover Saves The Universe

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night we played and beat Trover Saves The Universe (Xbox version, non-VR) and it took me about 5 hours to get through the entire story. The basic plot is that the player plays as an unnamed 'chair bound' protagonists whose dogs are kidnapped by a being named Glorkon who has a goal to basically destroy the universe so that he can be with his 'true love'. So basically the plot is about as thin as an episode of Rick & Morty, which should be obvious because it was created by the same guy who co-created that show , Justin Rolland.

Now I played it with the game being uncensored, and let me tell ya, that is probably where Trover Saves The Universe's biggest strength lies, as the dialog is pretty much non-stop and worth listening to at least once, which probably will raise questions about replay-ability when chasing after achievement. Graphically it is solid, nothing stands out too much which doesn't make me want to play it with a VR headset.The controls are very responsive when moving Trover himself around for combat and basic platforming, but can be exposed when having to manipulate objects as the unnamed protagonist.

The big question is would I have eventually played this game if it wasn't gifted to me, and the answer to that is probably not. While not a difficult game by any means, there's not much there to want to deep-dive back into it for another complete play through, but the good news is there is a level selection screen that will make it easier to do things in 'smaller' bits, such as wanting to go to a particular stage and find all the power babies missed, or making some choices a little differently.

Would I recommend Trover Saves The Universe... kind of, it is a game with a limited shelf-life, but if it's on sale and if you're looking for something to knock out in a night, it's worth checking out.

Anyway here's the list of all the achievements we managed to get on a single play-through.

1. You Didn't Have To Do That: You killed a NPC. That’s gonna affect the whole game! Your actions have consequences in this game!
2. Pet Cemetery: Kill all of Tony's pets... I'm tired of them pooping on my lawn.
3. Instant Clone Soup: Collect the clone DNA in under 10 minutes. That's it? Man, we're just giving these things away.
4. We <3 MURDER: Kill every villager. That's right, we celebrate violence! What do you think about that, mom and dad?
5. Here's Donny!: Witness Donny's death, then write an essay about it for your college application.
   Really? This Game's Not That Good: Replay the game, instead of getting a real job.
6. BBALL IN THE BBALL HOLE: IT'S BBALL TIME! MAKE ONE BBALL BASKET IN THE TELEPOD LIKE A GOOD LITTLE BBALL BOY OR BBALL GIRL!
7. That went well...: Glorkon mixed the world! What they get an achievement for that? But it’s just a cut scene!
8. No Winners In This Game!: Beat Glorkon without getting killed by anyone... Including me. That’s right, I’ve been hunting you.
9. Trover ****s the Universe: You beat the game! You can die a happy now, you slimy, little popsicle stick.
   

And here are some clips from last night as well!

Twitch Clip: I won't use the right thumbstick on my controller

Twitch Clip: Oh This Is Michael?

Twitch Clip: Finding Power Babies

Twitch Clip: I Think He Blew Up

Twitch Clip: Achievement: No Winners In This Game!

Following last night's stream I hooked up the PlayStation 4 just to get it set up, and I did take a good look at what's listed in the PSN store... and good lord did Sony fuck up so badly by not having any type of emulation for PS3, PS2 and PS1 games that folks may have purchased digitally in the PS3 era. It's really a reminder of their small-minded approach to actually being consumer friendly that made them lose me when my original PS3 died. But at least they learned their lesson by making the PS5 similiar in its build to the PS4. That said, I'm not sure when we'll do out first PS4 stream.

Also I jumped back on to knock out some achievements for Toybox Turbos, and man does the cheapness of the game's A.I. start to reer its ugly head when it starts being more about luck than skill. Anyway here are the three achievements we picked up.

1. With Friends Like These...: Played a local match with more than 1 player
2. Totally Random: Played an online quick match against matchmade opponents
3. Paint Job: Repainted a vehicle with a custom colour
   

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 sessions went 40 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 660 kcal. We are now up to 8 out of 10 for the Laura's Buddy achievement which we should hit tomorrow then the focus will turn towards the Laura's Best Friend achievement.

Also nearly forgot to renew my Nintendo Switch Online membership, granted what I play via online multiplayer via the Switch is limited, but since most of the games I do have for it do have online multiplayer, it's good to have just in case 

For tonight's stream we'll be back to DC Super Hero Girls; Teen Power, which we started randomly last Saturday night. It will be interesting to see when the difficulty spike starts to kick in or if this game is as even as it seemed to be! 

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

A Review Of DC Super Hero Girls: Teen Power

Good afternoon everybody,

Needless to say, I did not get up till 3 PM Today... as I woke up real early yesterday and by the time I actually went to bed, yeah there was no way I was waking up at a reasonable hour today lol

Anyway yesterday we added four games to the collection, all of which were for the Nintendo Switch, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order, Kirby Star Allies, New Pokemon Snap and DC Super Hero Girls: Teen Power.... and if you can't tell by the title of today's entry, it's the last one that was the focus of last night's stream.

DC Super Hero Girls: Teen Power is a semi-open world adventure game based on the show of the same name. The artist style is very similar in style to that of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic & Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends... which makes sense since the developer of those shows is the same one over seeing DC Super Hero Girls, Lauren Faust. I mean look at the screen cap of Supergirl amd tell me you can't see the obvious parallels in body language to Rainbow Dash.Game play sees you taking control of Supergirl, Batgirl and Wonder Woman (and their alter egos of Kara, Barbara and Diana) in stardard action 'beat up' game play. It can be a little button mashy at first but as your progress and get familiar with the controls and the character you will develop your own way of dealing with various enemies.

Now I will not call this an easy game by any means, because timing when defending can be a little problematic for me, but that's where powering up the heroines comes into play, you get power crystals which you can use to unlock more health, powers and abilities for each character... but progression isn't shared equally, so you can't put all of the power crystals into one character, since some game play may require a specific hero to only be involved. That said, this leads to the games biggest strength in that it encourages players to explore to find activities which are split between Super Hero activities and normal every day activities... and there is a lot to do.

When suited up, you will be engaging in combat, racing against the clock to collect or destroy items (or enemies), performing rescues and so forth. These will allow you to use the heroes abilities for the task that needs to be done. When not doing Super Hero activities, you play as the alter egos, going around a few open areas, completing side quests such as collecting hamster mascots, taking photos of super hero and super villain logos (or just taking photos in general), and generally doing side quests that could involve everything from tracking down suspicious activity & helping old ladies across the street. Now apparently Harley Quinn, Star Sapphire and Catwoman are also playable, but I suspect that is either an alternate game mode or something that becomes unlocked with natural story progression similar to the order one gets to play Supergirl, Batgirl and Wonder Woman before being able to switch freely between the three) 

There is a 'star system' in game for how well you do every activity, but if you don't get a perfect star rating on your first attempt don't worry, you will unlock a mode that will allow you to replay missions to see if you can do better. (This was unlocked in Chapter 2 as part of story progression).

The plot of DC Super Hero Girls is that some of Lex Corps Demobots has gone on a rampage and in order to make good, Lex Luthor has started the 'Hob Bay' project, and the students of Metropolis High get to help design the new city area. As you progress through the chapters of the game you earn currency that can be used to purchase outfits for your trio of heroines, but also at certain points you will be asked to select a new building for the 'Hob Bay' project, which you are paying for out of the currency you earn (so don't go all in on getting the outfits if you want to get the really cool looking buildings early!).

Overall I enjoyed it and I think we'll keep DC Super Hero Girls Teen Power as part of the line up to see if I can beat it. And if you want to see some game play footage here are the links to some clips from last night's stream!

Twitch Clip: Strong My Little Pony Vibes

Twitch Clip: I Got Learn How To Dodge

Twitch Clip: Sweet Cranberry Justice

Twitch Clip: Brawl At School

Twitch Clip: Batgirl Glides To The Balloons

Following the stream last night I finally got the nWayPlay to work for Power Rangers Battle For The Grid to link my progression from when I was playing it on PC to what I accomplished on the Xbox One... and it reset all my stats. Thankfully before I did that I did earn an achievement.

1. Defenders Sworn to Fight: Fight in 200 Ranked matches with any character
   

I've gone all in in replaying the 1993 Season with APBA Baseball for Windwos, using the 1993 Phillies. Since I figured out how to turn on injuries and fatigue  I had to go ahead and and move every team's farm system to their main roster to compensate for that... so it makes rosters very unbalanced. I'll be posting all box scores here, so there will be days where there will be a lot of APBA Baseball blog entries.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session went 31 minutes, there were no missed actions, but out of 1492 total actions, only 1478 were perfectly in sync. Today's exercises were Double Combo #2, Left-Right Step Combo and Advance Combo #2. Estimated calorie burn was 576 kcal. We're up to 98 out of 100 for the Martina's Best Friend achievement, which we should knock out tomorrow, since the Monday sessions are normally streamed over on Twitch. Which means we'll break in a new trainer tomorrow as well. 

Since it's Sunday, that means tonight we're playing Overwatch, we'll get started at around 7 PM Eastern over on twitch.tv/fredcasden! 

Have a great rest of your day folks!

Highlights for the week of May 30, 2021

 Here are highlights for the week of May 30, 2021 featuring all the games played over on http://twitch.tv/fredcasden! This week we featured Overwatch, Fitness Boxing 2 Rhythm & Exercise, Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, Tom Clancy's The Division, APBA Baseball For Windows, Star Trek Online, NCIS & DC Super Hero Girls: Teen Power!