A Solid Night Of Overwatch

Good afternoon everyone,

Last night's stream of Overwatch saw the usual break down as mostly matches in the flex role (which meant Tank and Support) before dedicating the final hour to playing Damage role characters. Big thanks to PandaSweet for being apart of the fun. Picked up three plays of the game last night as D.va, Reinhardt and Torbjourn. Other characters used were Junkrat, Mei. Wrecking Ball, Ashe & Moira. Think in our last 10 matches we went like 5-5... not 100% sure but I'm not about to go check. 

On a side note we did have a brief issues with Xfinity, my internet service provided during the stream... where it didn't go down fully, but it certainly interfered with the strength of signal to Twitch.

Twitch Clips

• The Focus Is Real
• Where Did She Go... COME HERE!!! 
• There goes my 12 kill streak...
  

During the stream we had a raid from YrGamerBunni who was playing Halo: Infinite over at twitch.tv/yrgamerbunni!

For the raid we dropped in on Flint_Locke who was playing Higurashi no Naku Koro ni: Chapter 8 - Matsuribayashi over at twitch.tv/flint_locke! 

I mentioned it last night during the stream, but one has to admire the balls of Capcom to be putting out two compilations of arcade games that have some of the same games in both collections within a month of each other and charging the same amount for both. Of course I would go for the Capcom Fighting Colleciton first because that can and will be a streak of featuring the games in that collection... and then grab Capcom Arcade 2nd Stadium down the road.

Disney is doing another live-action remake with Hercules... and unlike with most of their live action efforts, this one makes sense because there is little chance they will screw up the casting... oh wait... this is Disney... and they picked Will Smith to step into the role of the Genie for Aladdin...

Played a couple of matches of Assault in Smite last night, winning one of the two. Always nice to be able to split the difference.

Today's FItness Boxing 2 daily workout featured Defensive COmbo #1, Double Combo #1 and Uppercut Combo #2 for 28 minutes.

Shaved off my beard... I'm now a lot less fuzzy on the face.

Watched the first episode of Stargate SG-1 for the first time in a long time, it's amazing how much Richard Dean Anderson brings to the role of Jack O'Neil right off the bat.

Finished the WWE commissioned fan fic featuring Cody Rhodes & Brandi yesterday afternoon... and thank goodness I used the post-match promo he did at WrestleMania because it served as a great framing device. Ended up getting another commission request, again WWE related, this time to do something involving Brock Lesnar.

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, well we're going to wrap up Persona 5 Royal... we started it as a Friday Night Exclusive back in mid-February, and outside of one week where we also did a Saturday night stream, we kept to that. But with not much left to the game we'll take out time in finishing the remaining days with one final trip to Mementos, then give the Calling Card to Maruki, kick his sorry butt then it's just the time skip that occurs to Valentine's Day and then White Day to close it out.

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

Persona 5 Royal Does Take Your Time

Good morning everyone,

Persona 5 Royal has this little loading icon thing that says 'take your time'... and boy does that perfectly describe how I just sink so much time into it on Friday nights. Last night stream went 10 hours, and had one hiccup when the stream went a little wonky at the 9 hour mark. This was not planned, but the stuff with Futaba was just so good and I wanted to see how the story arc wrapped up, everything leading into the Beach day and end of the Summer vacation was just great.

That said, I did as much as I could to make up for the fact that I screwed some things up at different points, so we took a trip into Mementos (and nearly ran into the Reaper), did a lot of time spending with different confidants and managed to max out four of them, and I no longer have to have a Lovers or Chariot persona on hand as a result. 

One would think I would have a lot more to say about last night's stream, but it was after 4 AM when we rapped up and I was warped out of my mind. In the YouTube archives, the stream will be divided into three parts, two 4.5 hour long VODs, and one 1 hour long VOD.

Persona 5 Royal Trophies

• True Confidence: Maxed out one of your Confidants.
• Trash Into Treasure: Sold old clothing at Furugi no Neuchi.
• Pyramid of Wrath: Plundered: Completed the pyramid Palace.

Twitch Clip Links

• There we go 
• Are they siblings?
• He knew?! 
• Wow... she's... here.... WOW! She walked! 
• How did she figure that out?!
  

During the stream we had two raids, the first by x9abenonymous9x who was playing State of Decay 2 over at twitch.tv/x9abenonymous9x and the other by Redneck_23 who was playing American Truck Simulator over at twitch.tv/redneck_23! 

For the raid, we dropped in on Felkimchi as they were playing Mafia III over at twitch.tv/felkimchi! 

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout featured Front Back Step Combo, Hook Combo #2 and Beginner Combo #1. We did this workout at 6 AM before I went to sleep.

Fitness Boxing 2 Stats For April 17 to 23, 2022

• Punches Thrown: 8, 785
  
• Estimated Calorie Burn: 3488.15 kcal.
  
• 24 of 30 hours trained for Bernardo's Contender EX Achievement
  

I will not be surprised if Disney shuts down Disney World or goes about relocating it to another location in the United States due to the stupidity that is going on in the state of Florida because of Trump like stupidity from Ron DeSantis and the rest of his ilk. 

The first full week of Fantasy Baseball has two days left in it, today and tomorrow, and I'm only leading in two out of nine categories against my opponent. My squad has knocked in 17 RBI and has batted .273. The struggles of Anthony Rendon, Chris Taylor and Corey Seager has been bothersome, not to mention the roster moves I've had to make.

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 just going to take it easy and mess around with something random, total chill stream. 

So on that note I'm going to bed we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

Hunting For Blue Mage Spells Is Not Easy

 Good morning everyone,

Last night's stream of Final Fantasy XIV was interesting as we did the Pandemonium and got steps closer to getting the best gear I can get on the standard difficulty (Just need the upper body and weapon based on the post raid rewards), did some Fishing (got the Level 45 job quests done) and then there was the Blue Mage stuff. Now I did some basic finding of some spell out in the field, and even did a solo dungeon non-synced , bit then just when I was going to end I had the dumb idea to start trying to do the trial ones... and boy did I miss being able to attack on the run as a bard! But on the plus side I did try the party finder for the first time ever, and that helped things along.

It does amaze me how many spells are locked behind gimmicks like trying to get an enemy to spawn or hoping to do a dungeon to get the spell that is needed. Hopefully I'll be able to find more spells associated with Fates that will be real useful but I doubt it. Also finally tried to do some stuff as a Dancer, I think it's going to take me a while to figure that out in comparison to being a Bard.

Twitch Clip Links

1. First Spell From A Dungeon :) 
2. A Song About Minnie
3. Trying Out Dancer 
   

For the raid we dropped in on x9abenonymous9x who was playing We Were Here Together over at twitch.tv/x9abenonymous9x! I'm starting to wonder how many games are in that series. 

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout featured Uppercut Combo #2, Body Hook Combo and Body Uppercut Combo

Found out the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Cowabunga Collection will be available on the Xbox side of things. Sweet!

Added WWE 2K16 and The Walking Dead Complete Telltale Series to the Xbox One collection. Why the Walking Dead? Because it has a different set of achievements when compared to the Definitive Collection.

Did some off-stream achievement grinding in both SNK 40th Anniversary Collection (using the Watch exploit) and Ugly Americans, which was mostly to level up Callie to max out her stats. Had a weird issue where the Xbox 360 sign in wasn't working correctly, which seems to happen every couple of weeks for whatever reason.

SNK 40th Anniversary Collection Achievements

• God Slayer: Beat Crystalis.
• Rebels with a Cause: Beat the Arcade version of Guerrilla War.

Ugly Americans: Apocalypsegeddon Achievements

• Repeat, Repeat, Repeat: Use any special attack 100 times.

I am not one to defend Disney, but the Parents Television Council really stuck their foot in their mouths by saying that Disney has always been family friendly... and that's not true. This come about because Disney is adding the Netflix series Daredevil, Iron Fist, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones and the Defenders to Disney Plus... all shows that have an TV-MA rating. Thing is, Disney owns a lot of things that can't be described as family friendly. Who Framed Roger Rabbit doesn't fall into that category, neither does Sister Act or Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit, or the Alien franchise, or the Die Hard franchise.

For tonight's stream we'll be resuming Persona 5 Royal, and I think it maybe more of the story and lore as we work our way towards doing the next Palace. Should have a lot of stuff for us to react to!

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

Thoughts on AT&T Shutting Down WB Interactive

It shouldn't come as a shock to anyone who has seen the complete mess that always comes as the result of corporate mergers and buyouts, that sometimes certain divisions that were once pillars of one company are basically kicked out the fucking door by the new corporate power structure to make sure the 'bottom line' is as pretty as possible for stockholders. Perhaps the biggest once most people my age can recall would be the AOL-Time Warner merger which basically saw World Championship Wrestling get sold off to the then World Wrestling Federation for a couple of million dollars, because a.) the accounting practices of Turner Broadcasting and then Time Warner were fucking abysmal and b.) people really hated that the only reason anyone watched TNT was for the wrestling on Monday Nights.

Still, in the realm of video games, it's probably not as noticeable as often video game publishers like Blizzard or Electronic Arts stay within their lane... but when outside companies come in, say for example Disney, things gets a little strange. Everyone knows Disney as a media empire, the House of Mouse has had its fingers in so many pies from amusement parts, movies, television shows, comic books and of course video games, and for the most part Disney handles things in-house as it relates to its various divisions, often striving for the peak of quality of whatever it is they are doing... right up until affects their bottom line. You see Disney had an in-house video game Division, obvious called Disney Interactive Studios that was around from 1988 to 2016, to make their own games and distribute them to the various consoles out on the market. But Disney being Disney, overtime they found it cheaper to just licensee things out to other publishers to do the developing, marketing and distribution in order to maximize their own profits. It's why Disney basically shutdown Lucas Games who was working on the Star Wars 1313 game (that most people were looking forward too) and awarded the license rights to Star Wars games to Electronic Arts.

So what we're seeing with AT&T and their move to shut down and sell off the studios associated with WB Interactive which includes NetherRealm Studios and Rocksteady is that they are looking to just licenses out their intellectual properties. They make a profit off of it it because a video game publisher is paying for the right to make a game based on something they own and also get a good size of the profits of anything sold, the risk entirely falls on that of the publisher. They not only must develop and sell a quality product they have to do under the pressure of having to make the another company 'happy'. It's why when EA screwed up royally with Stars Wars Battlefront II it was such a big deal and a blow to the Star Wars brand that Disney basically had to step in and tell them to get their act together , threatening to pull the license and award it to another publisher. It's why EA basically got rid of micro-transitions as it related to SWB2 for quite some time before slowly rolling them back in. In the case of AT&T, which will still own the rights to Mortal Kombat and obviously the DC Comics franchises, they are going to be in seat Disney has been in.

Now, What does this mean for things like Mortal Kombat... well once would assume that whoever buys NetherRealm Studios would get the Mortal Kombat license to go along with it and probably will still have the permission to develop the Injustice series for further installment, but now the risk ends up being there could be a chance that if NRS gets shutdown by whoever buys them, another studio would work on the MK games. So one would worry if say Electronic Arts bought NRS, and known their habit of shutting down studios and basically restructuring them to the point they can't be effective... but considering that the Mortal Kombat franchise is so huge, I wouldn't worry too much, but I'd have that in the back of my mind the entire time.

The real question is who do we want getting their hands on these different studios and getting access to the various licenses to the AT&T catalog? From my point of view, the big ones are Microsoft, Sony, EA and Blizzard. Microsoft and Sony would make whatever they get their hands on console exclusives, so of the two, I'd want Microsoft to have the rights to things since you not only have the Xbox release but also PC versions, and they have proven to be willing to work with Nintendo to expand things to the Switch. Sony on the other hand would want to keep everything to their systems only, so this would probably reignite the console wars based on what games are exclusive to what system. With EA and Blizzard, they'll want to release whatever is developed on as many systems as possible, but both have made decisions that were not in the best interest of their customers for the sake of profits.

Anyway.... that's just my opinion

Trailer Reaction: Mulan

Disney revealed the trailer to Mulan (2020) this week, and here are my thoughts and ramblings on it.