Four Random Games On A Saturday

Good afternoon everyone,

God damn did it get cold! Last night following the stream it was 15 degrees! And I didn't get up till like 3 PM Eastern today... so anyway, last night's stream featured four games, and since that was the case, I'm going to give my thoughts on them here right now.

First, there was Dead of Alive 2: Hardcore, and prior to last night, the only DOA games I played were Dead of Alive 5: Last Round (on Steam and XBox One) and the original Dead of Alive (PlayStation). DOA2:HC certainly holds up, it's character models all look great, the game play is still the same so it was very much a pick up and play for me without having to figure out too much, in fact I was surprised some stuff I would use in DOA5:LR worked in DOA2:HC (such as many of Tina's throws!). The story mode was interesting, in that it just give some extra moments of character interactions, but I'm not to sure how I feel of the Tengu as the 'last boss', with how it distorts the screen and having some really cheap tactics.

Second was Dino Stalker, a spin off of the Dino Crisis games, Dino Stalker sees the hero Mike Wired, getting transported to another dimension where he he ends up having to fight dinosaurs to stop something catastrophic from happening. This is a light gun game, but it can be played with a controller... and outside of instances where I feel I've having to fight the movement controls, it is fairly solid and certainly playable.I made it through the first three levels with only one death and that was due more to me not realizing I can destroy objects to reach new areas, and thus I ran out of time!

Third was Power Rangers; Super Legends... and it's certainly better than Power Rangers: Time Force. Released to celebrate the franchises 15th anniversary, Super Legends is a side-scrolling beat 'em up that does reward exploration to find hidden items and secrets, but it can be a straight forward experience if that is what one prefers. It is an oddly 'quite game' as even at max volume, it certainly didn't sound as loud as say most games from the PlayStation 2 error. We cleared the first couple of levels with a fair amount of difficulty, plus one Mega Zord battle, which was... interesting. 

Lastly, the final game of the night was WWE SmackDown: Here Comes The Pain... and I have always thought this game was overrated. Some of the character models looked okay, but in comparison to Dead or Alive 2: Hardcore which we played earlier in the night, HCTP has not aged well. Here the face of Trish Stratus doesn't even look as if it belonged on her body from some angle. That said, the game play certainly took a lot of getting use to again... and the A.I., even on Normal, can be down right brutal (can't even think how I use to play this on its hardest difficulty setting). Since I still have my memory cards, I had a save file with every thing unlocked, so that was fun at least.

Of course a little detail about last night's stream is that I set up a new scean in OBS to use when playing older games whose aspects ratios were 4:3 (mostly for the original PlayStation and PS2 things in my library), and added a little feature that shows the game title on screen as well. 

Following the stream, for the raid, we dropped in on Kalenal as they were playing Final Fantasy XIV! They stream three times a week over on twitch.tv/kalenal!

Twitch Clip Links

1. Aren't You My Brother? I'm Gonna Kick Your...
2. Panic Shooting! 
3. We've defeated so many enemies!
4. Right in the Kisser! 
   

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout featured Double Combo #2, Left-Right Step Combo and Advanced Combo #2 for a duration of 31 minutes and a calorie burn of 561 kcal. Normally I would do a little extra on top of the daily, but since my butt didn't get out of bed till the middle of the afternoon, I just stuck with the daily.

My off-stream Final Fantasy XIV adventures saw me start up the 5.5 content starting with Unto the Breach, and and I went roaming around unlocking a couple of more 'job' classes with in the game as well, because at some point I will be needing to expand what roles I utilize! Though I am content being the clueless Bard... I just do Damage, so no one expects me to be on point for heals or pulls as a tank! There was a particularly charming moment with Estinien confusing Alisaie for her brother Alphinaud. Sure they are twins, but how can anyone confuse Alisaie for her brother upon first meeting! Their hair parts on different sides and Alisaie carries a rapier! Rather surprised that Alisaie let the Azure Dragoon live after that to be honset.

It's Sunday, which means its Twitch Bits time to highlight all the games we played last week in a little video! This past week we played Overwatch, Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise, Forza Horizon 4, Gears 5, Final Fantasy XIV, Kingdom Hearts III, Dead or Alive 2: Hardcore, Dino Stalker, Power Rangers: Super Legends and WWE SmackDown: Here Comes The Pain! 

For tonight's stream, we're playing Overwatch, as we do every Sunday!

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

A BattleGround Is Worth A RWBY

Good morning everybody, 

Last night's stream started around 8:30 PM Eastern due to work, so it was kind of a wild card night where I didn't totally make up my mind on what we we're going to do. But we ended up checking out WWE Battlegrounds and then doing a complete run of RWBY Grimm Eclipse (X-Box One version)

WWE Battlegrounds as I believe I said before is the bastard child of WWE All-Stars, over the top action with stylized graphics. We did check out a number of the game modes, with the cage match probably being the most fun, why the Royal Rumble seems like a frustrating mess. Did learn that the ring can be destroyed and there are various things that can be interacted with. One thing I can say for sure is that if WWE Battlegrounds had any type of 'online' community, that it's multiplayer would be a lot of fun... at least in theory.

Of course the rest of the stream was dedicated to RWBY: Grimm Eclipse, a game that I'm no stranger too. We played the X-Box One version as I indicated earlier, which meant that anyone who knew I played it and would use the Steam version was probably disappointed they couldn't join in. Still we got joined by a couple of randoms as we went through the game, start to finish with Blake Belladonna, as there are achievements associated with beating the game with every character at least once. But I am curious on if the Nintendo Switch version of RWBY Grimm Eclipse has a more active community since the game saw a fairly recent release earlier this year.  

But playing RWBY Grimm Eclipse does make me wish there was a new game, and I'd be more than happy with a game that had the same controls and character models. Enough time has passed and there are probably a lot of things that could be done based on all the stuff that has happened in the series. Hell if there is an official manga basically re-telling the entire story from the start, there should be a game that does the same thing! 

WWE Battlegrounds Achievements

1. Charismatic: Filled the crowd bar
   

RWBY Grimm Eclipse Achievements

1. A Little Respec: Refund all of your Ability Points
2. It Belongs in a Museum: Collect 10 artifacts during a single play session.
3. Cleverly Disguised Jumping Puzzle: Collect the artifact at the end of the jumping puzzle in Forever Fall.
4. Blake Belladonna: Complete the campaign using Blake
5. Butter and Butter: Do Blake's taunt right after killing the Mutant Deathstalker
   

Following the stream we sent everyone over to LifewithStand (twitch.tv/lifewithstan) who was playing Cyberpunk 2077. LifeWithStan typically starts his starts at 10:15 PM Eastern Mondays to Thursdays!  

Twitch Clip Links

• The Bexploder!
• Double Ax Handle!
• The Boogey-Slam?! 
• A Cleverly Disguised Jumping Puzzle
• Shadow Strike Mastery 
• Another Battle One... to the tune of Another One Bites The Dust
• That... was close
• Butter and Butter

A number of games was added to the collection yesterday, and the first three are for the PlayStation 3. First we have Zone of the Enders; HD Collection, brand new which includes a demon of Metal Gear Rising. We went after this mostly because we picked up Zone of the Enders 2nd Runner earlier in the year. It is a remaster of the original game released on the PS2, which was hard to find. Next, we added Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Saga, and I already add the the first two Lego Star Wars games released on the PS2 when they were released nearly 20 years ago, so adding  this made sense. Next we added the PlayStation 3 version of the Mass Effect Trilogy, which includes all three games. Since this was acquired used, I doubt any redemption codes included still work, but hey it's pretty much complete in box so that's cool. This is mostly for collectors purposes, although the idea of boosting my PlayStation trophy score is appealing. 

The remaining new additions are for the PlayStation 2, the first of which is Dino Stalker, which I believe was Capcom's last ditch attempt to get anything out of The Dino Crisis series by making it more action oriented. Not completely sure as I never played Dino Crisis 1 or 2, but after the release of Dino Stalker, Capcom pretty much gave up on that series of games. Next is Over the Hedge, published by Activision as a tie in to the movie of the same name.... added it because it was cheap. Lastly we added Tomb Raider: Legend... the game that pretty much was released as a make-good following the travesty that was Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness. TR:L was the start of the last trilogy of the original incarnation of the Tomb Raider series before it's 2013 reboot.

Yesterday was the 55th Anniversary of Star Trek, and while Star Trek Online celebrated by discounting a number of Original Series things, GOG actually was able to re-release a number of Star Trek games from the late 90s early 2000s... but with out Star Trek: The Next Generation A Final Unity getting a re-release, there isn't much to get excited about sadly.

Did even more organizing of my DVDs, and managed to locate a few that I thought were missing, but I got the nagging feeling I'm still missing a few anime DVDs... namely as it relates to La Blue Girl and  Peacemaker Kurogane. I could be remembering wrong, because I swore I had Die Hard 2 in my collection, as well as Lethal Weapon and Lethal Weapon 3... so unless when the last time I moved which was way back in 2006 things got left behind accidentally, or stuff got thrown out that wasn't suppose to over the years. Ah well, thank goodness for digital media right?

Overwatch Competitive Season 30 Results (Tank)

1. D.va - Havana - 8:59 - Win - 1-0
2. D.va - Oasis - 7:28 - Loss - 0-1
3. D.va - King's Row - 14/32 - Loss -0-3

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout lasted 31 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 454 kcal. The exercises for today were Beginner Combo #2, Weaving Combo #2 and Straight Combo #1. Timing felt a little off with how many motions registered as just being 'ok'. I will admit the one miss was because I need to use the rest room (LOL)

Last night's stream started late, but tonight's will not as I was told I'll have work during the day, so we'll start around the usual time! Not sure exactly what we're going to be doing, but we'll be up to something!

So on that note, see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!