Even more hockey!

Good morning everybody,

Work for me yesterday was really boring, to the point it reminded me of when I was in the office and things were slow with a super low possibility of speaking to folks to get their views on things. Rather disappointing.

Last night's stream saw the return of ESPN NHL 2K5, and much like on Saturday night when we played it, two games with full 20 minute long periods can, will and does fill up an entire stream, since it's being played in real time. First game was the Flyers vs the Rangers, which we won 6-5, and then it was Flyers vs Penguins in a blow out, 13-3.

Really unsure if I want to do a full season of ESPN NHL 2K5, granted if I did, it would take 41 weeks to play an entire season since there are 82 games in a NHL season... and that's not counting the playoffs. Maybe if I did it as I did with ESPN Baseball towards the end and just did games on a specific night that would be more feasible. It is something to consider of course.

Big thanks to Iceman for renewing his subscription to my Twitch channel for the 44th month!

Following the stream we sent the fun over to Salty_Swede who was playing NHL 22 over at twitch.tv/salty_swede! He seems like a real good dude.

Twitch Clip Links

• The First Goal!
• A Fight Breaks Out 
• Flyers Go Up 6-5!
  

My off-stream Final Fantasy XIV adventures continued as I knocked the last of the level 60-61 Main Story Quests in Stormblood, which saw us arrive in Kugane in search of Goestsu and Yugiri. Clearly Kugane is based around feudal Japan in terms of its design style and there is an obvious map that basically says Kugane is Japan while Doma is China in terms of how it's all laid out. I'll say this, Square Enix has never been subtle about things like that... just look at how often they have folks take on major Religions on the Final Fantasy games in general. There was some great comedic moments, such as Yda punting a catfish like creature several feet up into the air, which made me chuckle and wished I was streaming that part of the story. For sure we'll be featuring Final Fantasy XIV on Saturday night!

Oh speaking of Final Fantasy XIV, Kalenal will be doing bonus stream tonight around 11 PM Eastern over at twitch.tv/kalenal!

We are going to be starting up a number of things this week, all on the Xbox side of gaming. Jump Force will be started tonight, to try and take advantage of the sudden renewed interest in it since it was announced the servers are going to be shut down in August of 2022. 

On Monday we'll begin Rise of the Tomb Raider, which is the direct sequel to Tomb Raider 2013 which we finished earlier this week. On Wednesday Iceman and I will be starting up Gears of War 4... now it is the only Gears game I have played before, so this time it's to get achievements and things that I missed the first time.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout had Body Straight Combo, Triple Combo #1 and Uppercut Combo #1 as the exercises for a duration of 31 minutes and a estimated calorie burn of  429 kcal.

For tonight's stream as I indicated earlier, we will be playing Jump Force... the game came out in 2019 and was something I was intrigued about playing since I use to read Shonen Jump back in 2002.

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

Today's Notes 5/9/21

Good afternoon everybody and Happy Mother's Day!

Last night's stream of ESPN Major League Baseball wasn't without incident, as during game two of the World Series between my Phillies and the Red Sox, it was a slug fest when the game locked up, and I've noticed that only happens when so much happens in a game it just FUBARs everything. Still my Phillies are the 2004 World Champions. The real highlight was Game 5, which I'm calling the Boston Massacre, but my Phillies won 29-1, with Bobby Abreu hitting 3 grand slams. What makes it better is that the game glitched out and the in-game commentary of Rex Hulder and Jon Miller was absent, so I was providing half-assed commentary through-out. I segmented that out as a full on highlight because it was that silly.

Full Game: ESPN Major League Baseball: The Boston Massacre 

Since ESPN Major League Baseball is finished I'm not sure what's replacing it on the weekly line-up, I'm considering perhaps a football game, either NFL Game Day or a Madden game from the late 90s / early 2000s. Actually what I should do is play Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep to wrap up the 1.5 + 2.5 Collection. But we'll see how I figure that out come the end of the week.

Following the stream I went through organizing my CDs, and managed to reunited a bunch of music with their original jewel cases and liner notes the the exception of 2 where I'm missing the liner notes for. My CD binders are also neatly organized to where there are 4 CDs per page if liner notes are missing, and 2 CDs per page if I still have the liner notes but note the jewel cases. Also I put a bunch of burnt CDs from the early 2000 in their own little binder, and have another one set aside for various video games & video media which I didn't have cases for.

We're only a few days away from the release of Mass Effect Legendary Edition! I can't wait for Friday! My biggest concern is using the ME2/ME3 styled controls using a game pad since I only every played those games on PC. 

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was about 70 minutes total with 40 minutes counting for the daily exercise. We're up to 82 points out of 100 for Bernardo's Best Friend Achievement, so I should have that wrapped up by the end of the week, either Thursday or Friday. Saturday at the latest.

With it being Sunday, that means Overwatch is on deck to begin the new week! Will we have Mayhem matches for more than just an hour? Actually, what Blizzard should have done is implement weekly PVE stuff, there are plenty of maps where mission objectives can easily be a thing... but then again, Jeff Kaplan was in charge and if he couldn't understand that smurfing was cheating then it's no wonder many of us are eager for Overwatch 2 now that he's gone. 

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

Highlight for the Week of May 2, 2021

Here are highlights of all the games featured over on http://twitch.tv/fredcasden for the week of May 2, 2021. This week we featured Overwatch, Fitness Boxing 2: Rhythm & Exercise, Nancy Drew Dossier: Resorting to Danger, MLB The Show 21, Tom Clancy's The Division, Monster Hunter Rise, Star Trek Online, ECW Anarchy Rulz, Virginia and ESPN Major League Baseball!

Today's Notes 5/8/21

Good evening everybody,

I did not get up till about 3 PM Today, but I have a good excuse this time, I was up till 5 AM this morning, because after last night's stream I got into another round of going through stuff to see what I could find, what I would keep and what's getting tossed.

So first, last night's stream, we played a little indie game called Virginia. The reason was that earlier in the week long time friend of the channel, ShadowStrkr24 was going to gift me the game, but turns out I already had it. So while I was trying to figure out what to do last night I remembered I said we would play Virginia because he said it was short game beginning to end, and he was right, it took about 2 hours. Virginia is purely a cinematic game, with very limited game play involvement, to the point where all the achievements seem purely accidental to come across. It does has an awesome musical score and is a gorgeous game, though what the hell a lot of the symbolism meant in the game was lost on me. 

Twitch Clip: Can We Get Some Service?

Twitch Clip: What The Hell Is A Buffalo Doing Here?!

Twitch Clip: How The Hell DId You Get In Here?

Twitch Clip: Of Course It's Aliens

Following that, we jumped back to the PlayStation One era with ECW Anarchy Rulz, and boy does this game reflect the turmoil ECW was under in mid-2000, with the massive roster turnover, in fact one of the biggest rivalries in ECW in 2000 was Masato Tanaka versus Mike Awesome, but only Tanaka was in Anarchy Rulz and and Awesome was in Hardcore Revolutin while both men had highlights in each games video intro. Game play wise it is more streamlined than ECW Hardcore Revolution and probably is the most 'realistic' North America made wrestling game in terms of how you can only perform more impactful moves based on the 'health' of your opponent but that results in the matches going on forever. Case in point, as a joke I set a Tornando Death Match for a time limit of 40 minutes, where I was using Tommy Dreamer, my CPU partner was the Sandman and the opponents were CW Anderson and Billy Wiles.... the match ended up going the full 40 minutes. 

Twitch Clip: Dreamer WIns With A Diamond Cutter? 

Twitch Clip: The Only Way A Rhodes Is Gonna Get Over Is If They Wear Polka Dots! 

Twitch Clip: Who Booked This Crap? I Did!

Now as I said at the start last night I went through some more stuff, finding things to throw out, but things that I found were pretty cool, including my near complete set of the Star Trek The Next Generation novels, more computer game manuals, several games from the Windows 95/98 era including Tomb Raider, Tomb Raider II, Triple Play 97 and NBA Live 98. While the Tomb Raider games have seen re-release in modern times, if I could get the later two games to work it would be pretty awesome in regards to featuring classic sports games.

For Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session, the daily was 40 minutes plus we did an addition 30 with Free Exercises. This resulted in a new personal best with punches thrown of 2922 and a new exercise duration time of 1 hour 10 minute 49 sections. Best Friend Achievement for Bernardo saw a big jump to 78 points... so if I'm getting 3 points for the daily workout, I wonder what are the qualifications for each point in Free Exercise mode. 

For tonight's stream we'll be wrapping up ESPN Major League Baseball on the PlaySation 2 with the World Series between my Philadelphia Phillies facing the Boston Red Sox. We'll be playing each game, so there is a good chance we're going to sweep the Red Sox in four games!

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

Today's Notes 5/2/21

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night's stream of ESPN Major League Baseball saw my 2004 Phillies sweep the Cubs in the National League Division Series and the Diamondbacks (who beat the Astros in the first round) in the National League Championship series. Now I went into last night thinking I'd alternate between playing and simulating the games (i.e. play games 1, 3, 5 in the Division Series and games 1, 3, 5, & 7 in the LCS), however, because game two in both series were actually won, my plan went right out the window when it game to LCS because why not go for the sweep right? Anyway, over the American League side of things, The Red Sox got through the Twins and Mariners (who beat in the Yankees in the first round), and near as I can tell, they won game six on the ALCS by hitting 2 grand slams in the bottom of the ninth. So Saturday's stream will be a showdown between my Phillies and the Red Sox in the 2004 World Series... and I'll play each game as we'll be looking to sweep the Sox. 

Twitch Clip: This Ball's Outta Here!

Twitch Clip: Hell of a way to end the inning

Big thanks to long time friend of the channel ShadowStrkr who gifted me Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen for Xbox One / Series, looking into it I see it's a 100+ hour game to finish but I do at the least want to take a look at it, so we'll do a demo-night featuring it sometime in the near future!

Another friend of the channel Kalenal, asked if I ever played The Curse of Monkey Island, and I have, granted I haven't played it since 2018. But considering my fondness for Lucas Arts games, I think we're probably do for another run of the Monkey Island games... and hey maybe I can track down the PS2 version of Escape From Monkey Island, since that is the one game in the saga I've never played.

With Mass Effect Legendary Edition coming out on the 14th, finding short games to add to the 2021 tour becomes a little bit of challenge. But since I haven't played many PC games this year, I think a return to the Nancy Drew series is needed, with Nancy Drew Dossier: Resort To Danger/ It shouldn't take me more than a night to get through, and we'll probably start early to give myself extra time to get through it!

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session saw me getting the achievement for using Bernando 10 times with Free Exercise sets, and at this point we're up to 58 points as it relates to his Best Friend achievement. The daily set today lasted 47 minutes and I did another 18 to make sure we burned 1000 calories. I'm hoping to do the weekly stream session in the morning because we'll be having someone come in the afternoon to check the washer & dryer which were acting up last Monday.

It's Sunday night which means Overwatch is on the agenda, and we'll be messing with Quick Play matches and whatever arcade modes spark interest this week (Mayhem, maybe Mystery Heroes).

And on that note well see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

Highlights for The Week 4/25/21

  Here are highlights of all the games featured this week over on my twitch channel (http://twitch.tv/fredcasden). This week we featured Overwatch, Fitness Boxing 2: Rhythm & Exercise, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, 3 on 3 NHL Arcade, Sonic CD, Tom Clancy's The Division, Star Trek Online, ARMS, ECW Hardcore Revolution, Tekken 3, Dragon Ball GT: Final Bout, Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors & ESPN Major League Baseball!

Today's Notes 5/1/21

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night turned into a night of variety with four different games being featured.All four games were for the original PlayStation

First up was ECW Hardcore Revolution, which is where we spent the first half of the stream, messing around with 1 on 1 matches, death matches, tag team matches and the barbed wired match. It was amazing how much about the roster of characters I remember, from Mike Awesome being ECW Champion at the time of the game being released to Dawn Marie's last name being Bytch... and yes it was spelled B-Y-T-C-H, as a play on Tammy Lynn Sytch. Remembering game had the nuclear styled input for doing basic moves meant a lot of button mashing to figure out what did what, but thankfully, a lot of combinations were universal, only with different results. I was surprised at how smooth the game felt after not playing it in nearly 20 years,

Twitch Clip: The Taz-Mission Is Locked In

Next, probably the big highlight of the night was Tekken 3, and this is the only Tekken game in the series I have ever played not counting Street Fighter X Tekken. Remembering how to play this was certainly difficult, since I just jumped right into Arcade mode using Xiaoyu on the games default difficulty.... and it took me nearly 20 minutes to get through it... which was a bit embarrassing considering there are 10 fights with 40 second time limit rounds where one has to win 2 out 3 rounds to advance to the next fight. Meaning a superior player could probably get through Tekken 3's arcade mode in about 5 minutes, maybe even less. Also messed around with the Survival, Tekken Ball and Tekken Force modes, the stand out of that being Tekken Ball because once I remembered how to play that it meant getting wins were pretty easy.

Twitch Clip: Wrecking True Orge!

Now for the low-light of the night, Dragon Ball GT: Final Bout... now last week we played Dragon Ball Z Ultimate Battle 22 which is considered by many to be the worse fighting game of all time, but Final Bout was worse as it feels completely sluggish with some of the largest input delays I've ever seen for any game. Trying to get a feel for the controls to figure out things was frustrating. Now from what I understand, to consider 'finishing' the game is to go through every single fighter in the 1P vs COM mode, which means figuring out how move more than just a couple of steps when pressing forward is going to be important if I want to attempt that.

Twitch Clip: We did.... something

We closed out last night with Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors and after messing with Final Bout, Darkstalkers was a breath of fresh air, a classic 2D fighter with awesome characters and animations, with button inputs not being delayed by a day and half. Since all it has is an arcade mode, went through it as Morrigian, and despite several losses along the way, we conquered it. Too bad there was no way to save anything to a memory card for this game, would like to keep track of my high scores. Ah well.

Twitch Clip: A Round Ending 9 hit combo!

Today we've officially added Apocalypse to my collection, published by Activision in the late 90s for the PlayStation, this is game is known best for featuring a very disinterested Bruce Willis who was originally supposed to be voicing a side-character. This game will be good for a laugh to see if we can do anything with it in terms of game play. And hey, you can use the analog sticks with it! Neat!

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was solid, as we have officially thrown 200,000 punches since switching over from the original game in December! Between the 2 games I've thrown 400,000 punches since July of 2020. As for the daily session, it was about 38 minutes, so we needed to do some more in the Free Exercise portion to get me over 1000 estimated calories burned for a Saturday!

Tonight we'll be starting the playoffs within ESPB Major League Baseball for the PlayStation 2, as my version of the 2004 Phillies begin to quest for the World Series. I think we'll do the format of playing every other game, this would give me the best shot of getting through hopefully the Division Series and League Championship series tonight.

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

Today's Notes 4/25/21

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night's stream of ESPN Major League Baseball saw the wrap up of the 2004 season, as my Philadelphia Phillies finished with a record of 111 wins and 51 losses and that was with me simulating most of the second half of the season. A big goal was to make sure Jim Thome won the triple crown, and he did with a batting average over .400, 48 home runs and over 180 RBI. Now I thought about just simulating the playoffs, but Iceman was shocked I would do that, so on Saturday of this upcoming week, we'll continue with the first half of the post season.

Continuing to look for stuff of interest when it comes to older games and things of a collective note, and I think I have a bead on things like Die Hard Trilogy, WWF WarZone and Tomorrow Never Dies for the PSOne. Obviously the first of those three will go into my idea of having a 'Bruce Willis' night when it comes to games associated with him. The other two are more for completing collections, as I have WWF WarZone is the one game I'm missing related to WWE wrestling games from the PS1-PS3 era, and it's the last one I'm missing from the Acclaim published wrestling games from that same era. Tomorrow Never Dies falls into completing the James Bond collection of games, but I know I'm still missing a few. 

Finished a Rule34 fan fiction commission last night, and got $50 for it, granted my interest in the pairing of Kelly Kelly and Randy Orton was not exactly all that high, since Kristi and I did everything logically possibly with those characters during our long writing collaborations.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout was about 43 minutes, but since it's a Sunday we did about 20 minutes extra. In comparison to yesteday, this workout was a few minuets shorter but we still burned an estimated 1083 calories. We finised up Sophie's Best Friend Achievement today during the daily workout, so for the extra portion I did, we switched to Bernardo, and quickly unlokced his related achievements of New Student, Best Student, Stylist, Fashion Designer and Fashion Saboteur. At this point 80% of the in-game achievements are now unlocked. Also stepped on the scale today and I'm down to 249 pounds! 

Tonight we'll be playing Overwatch, as we do every Sunday, and we'll be taking full advantage of the Archives event which ends this week, so we'll be going after the Mercy skin right off the bat. We'll get this stream started at around 7 PM EST tonight.

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

Highlights for the week of April 18, 2021

 

 Here are highlights for the week of April 18, 2021 of things that went down over on http://twitch.tv/fredcasden! This week we played Overwatch, Fitness Boxing 2 Rhythm & Exercise, NHL Face Off, Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Tom Clancy's The Division, Hades, Star Trek Online, Dragon Ball Z: Ultimate Battle 22, Knockout Kings, Rival Schools: United By Fate and ESPN Major League Baseball! 

Today's Notes 4/24/21

Good evening everybody,

Yup I totally slept in today, granted I didn't hit the sack till about 4:30 AM, and didn't get up till 3 PM, but hey I'm here aren't I? 

Anyway last night's stream was focused on games from the PlayStation One era and obviously these were games I have not played in probably 15-17 years.

First up was Rival Schools: United By Fate, as we went through the arcade mode on Disc 1 with Sakura and Hinata, and we did not get the good ending because I didn't realize you need to get through Raizo and his partner by using a team up super. We then messed around with the stuff on Disc 2 (or the Evolution Disc) which included a variety of different game modes and I still had my original save file so trying to to beat my old high scores was an interesting challenge.

Next up with Knockout Kings, EA Sports first venture into boxing video games, and we messed around with fights in all three weight classes (Heavyweight, Middleweight and Lightweight) as well as the slugfest mode. I ended up winning the first two fights using Muhammad Ali and Oscar De La Hoya in their respective weight classes, but lost as Floyd Mayweather and Butterbean (in the slugfest mode). I did find myself trying to use the combos I often see as apart of Fitness Boxing 2 with all the button presses, but I can safely say Knockout Kings was very unresponsive at times.

Lastly, and the real highlight from last night, we messed around with Dragon Ball Z Ultimate Battle 22, a game which I have never beaten, even on its easiest setting. But the stars were aligned, as I made up my mind I was going to 'get good', picked Android 18 and we went through the 1P vs COM mode, beating every other character in the game. It may have taken me an hour to do so, because I took my share of loses, but we got through it and best part is I got footage to prove it. Since there are no unlockable victory endings, I'm counting Dragon Ball Z Ultimate Battle 22 as a finished game for this years tour.

Following the stream I messed around with MLB The Show 21 and got the call up from Triple H to join the Phillies main roster, earning the Welcome To The Show Achievement. Since I was playing nightly after the streams, and playing every game I was starting, it took me about a week from the when the game went live last Friday for pre-order purchasers. A lot of folks have done it faster by simulating seasons, which is a cop out I think.

Todays Fitness Boxing 2 Daily workout was only 38 minutes.... so I did an extra 30 minutes in Free Training and boy do my legs feel it! It paid off as we're up to 99 points for the Sophie's Best Friend achievement, which we'll get tomorrow, so we'll have a new trainer starting with Monday's session. I also set new personal bests today with punches thrown (2802), estimated calorie burn (1147.05) and exercise duration (1 hour 9 minutes 14 seconds)

Added Legends of Wrestling II for the PlayStation 2 to my collection today, I did have this game years ago, but traded it in and tracking down a copy at a fair price took awhile. Also found a copy of the manual for ECW Anarchy Rulz, too bad I couldn't find the original jewel case with the back cover. Ah well.

For tonight's stream we'll be wrapping up the 2004 season in ESPN Major League Baseball, playing the Saturday Night games of each week. We'll get started with this at about 7 PM EST because I want to get a shower and have dinner first!

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

Today's Notes 4/23/21

Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream did indeed turn into a double header, with both Star Trek Online and Hades being featured.

What we did with Star Trek Online was get rid of the two 'recruit event' characters, and so I'm keeping Zagreus, my 10+ year veteran character, and Sorra, the Klingon Defense Force aligned character we rolled out last year. The way I figure is we'll gradually max out everything with Sorra (DOFF assignments, R&D, Reputation) and when that eventually happens I'll consider rolling out a new character. In terms of game play, we primarily did things related to the endeavors, and exposed once again how just queuing up for something for that (in this case Binary Circuit) takes way to long to do.

Following STO, we loaded up the Nintendo Switch to play Hades, and it took three attempts but we finally got through the game a second time. Granted it's been like two months since we first made it through. Like my first successful attempt we used the the Adamant Rail and was lucking to get the triple shot with no reload power, which made everything else easier. to slog through, Also Demeter's boon for casting, which tunes the runes into temporary beam turrets was a big help when I nearly failed on the third attempt.

New to my collection is Monster Hunter Rise, also for the Nintendo Switch, granted I've yet to play Monster Hunter World, but with both of these in my library, it gives extra options for syncing up with other streamers I know who play both games on a regular basis.

There's an official video of Bill Murrary and Ivan Reitman reacting to the Mini-Pufts that will be in Ghostbusters Afterlife, and you can certainly tell the difference between Murrary's joy for this and his disdain for the Paul Feig Train Wreck that was the 2016 reboot.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was about 30 minutes, and involved probably the hardest exercise for me... block combos, just never feel comfortable doing them. Anyway we're up to 94 points needed for Sophie's Best Friend Achievement, so two more extended daily workouts will finished that off, and that's not factoring in the extra I put in on the weekends. 

Not completely sure what will be on tap for tonight's stream, as we can go several different ways. Obviously I do not want to start up a large game, which does negate a lot in my collection since at the moment we have Uncharted: Drake's Gold, The Division and ESPN Major League Baseball as the campaign games. Maybe we'll bounce around with some old school PS1 / PS2 fighting games.

Anyway we'll figure something out and we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

Today's Notes 4/18/21

Good afternoon everyone,

Last night's stream of ESPN Major League Baseball saw the switch to simulating 6 out of every 7 games, and even with this my lead in the NL East stayed at over 20 games. More than likely we'll finish the 2004 season next Saturday. That said, after discovering the 'power swing' button last week, we certainly made good use of it, because in the games I did play last night we were mashing homers left and right, boosting Jim Thome's total to 37 and not to far off of the league leader Sammy Sosa's 41 with about 5 weeks left in the season.

Randomly, because there was a player named Bubba Trammel, and when I saw him, I instantly started thinking of the old Bell Atlantic commercials featuring James Earl Jones, namely the 'This is the book that got Bubba cooked' and ended with the line of 'And this is Bubba', and showing a big ass fish. Goes to show I'm old.

After last night's stream, I ended up going through some of the lower shelves and discovering even more stuff my pops left behind, including a bunch of old Sporting News Baseball books from the mid and late 80s, because he used to play the APBA Baseball games.This also lead to me discovering that one of the shelves on the bookcase you can when I do Fitness Boxing streams not actually being part of it, and that it was added with some half-ass tabs. Thankfully I had two old heavy duty plastic crates that I fit perfectly in the lower gap, and so I laid the board-shelf on top of it. The result ended up being the shelf is lower than before and now I can stand up some of the taller books I have in my collection.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was solid, 47 minutes with the daily workout plus an additional 15 minutes just to maintain my heavy weekend workouts. Tomorrow's session will of course be streamed over on Twitch as soon as I wake up and have breakfast.

With it being Sunday that means tonight we'll be playing Overwatch, and we'll be taking it easy as we'll be playing more archive arcade modes, rotating through Uprising, Retribution and Storm Warning. Maybe we'll take crack at the variations of those modes, and if there is Mayhem active this week, we'll toss in those to.

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

Highlights for the Week of 4/11/21

 Here are highlights from my twitch channel (http://twitch.tv/fredcasden) for the week of April 11, 2021 which featured  Overwatch, Dragon Age Inquisition, Fitness Boxing 2: Rhythm & Exercise, Tom Clancy's The Division, Star Trek Voyager Elite Force, MLB The Show 21 and ESPN Major League Baseball.

 

Today's Notes 4/17/21

 Good morning everybody, 

Well we were up early once again, as PSE&G came out to remove the old gas pipe, having to leave the elbow that connected it to the outside because the only way that can be removed is if they basically dig up the street and part of my yard. But they sealed it so no water leakage should occur.

Last night's stream featured MLB The Show 21, where we played a few games, did a couple of Home Run derbies, unlocked several achievements, started Road to the Show where I made the shortest, fattest dude possible... looks like a mini Bartolo Colon. The two-way player nonsense is something I'm not keen on, even if I have a better understand of the hitting mechanics in the game. Still we had fun with it.

We added three things to my collections, Dead of Alive 5: Ultimate and Vanquish for the PlayStation 3, and Chrono Cross for the PlayStation One. Those who have seen my collection know I had Chrono Cross already, but the version I picked up is the Greatest Hits version that had the Square Enix logo print on it, instead of the SquareSoft logo which was on the original release. As I mention, if you know where to look on Amazon you can find some cheap older games that will eventually become harder to find. 

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was 1 hour 5 minutes, but only 41 minutes were for the daily work out, the reason for the extra time is of course on Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays I try to do longer sessions, and today ended up being my longest duration for exercising to date. Granted these extra sessions often are around the 1 hour 5 minute mark, so it comes down to just a matter of seconds. In regards to the Sophie's Best Friend achievement, we're up to 74 points, needing 26 more to complete it. Also stepped on the scale and I gained a little to be up around 251-252.

(Note: Twitter was down, so I could not retrieve the screen shot of today's results at the time  this was posted)

Tonight's stream will be focused on ESPN Major League Baseball for the PlayStation 2, as I'll probably simulate several games, and if our lead in the NL East begins to shrink we'll then take it more seriously, this way we can get to the end of the season quicker.

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

Today's Notes 4/16/21

 Good morning everybody,

Well last night I certainly did not play Star Trek Online, and the reason was, I didn't feel like just doing another stream of just doing Task Force Operations and doing needless grinding.

So instead, we went back... way back.... to 2001 with another Star Trek game, Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force for the PlayStation 2. The last time I played it, prior to last night, was September 10, 2008, and keeping in mind I did have a PlayStation 3 at that point, it certainly wasn't capable of playing PS2 games. Now this game is one where you can choose your character to be male or female, and there are subtle differences depending on gender, such as you come across O'Dell in different locations, and some dialog is phrased differently from other NPCs. Now Voyager: Elite Force was originally a PC game ported to the PS2, and thus some (well a lot) of tweaking with the controls is needed as turning and looking up and down can be either too slow or too loose.... which makesGod Mode (when paused hold L1+L2+R1+R2+R3 then press select, you will hear the game say Impressive, when paused, you will see text indicating if its on or off) and almost necessity due to how enemies can and will rush you even on normal difficulty... keeping in mind I have 12+years of rust when t comes to Elite Force.

That all said, because there are a number of puzzles and trying to remember where to go and how to get from point A to point B involved, so we only made it past The Borg cube stage, which leaves 3 stages left. Which would be a good time to mention the following, the load times are frequent, as nearly every section of the game has to be loaded, granted the game runs smoothly, but you will become familiar with the loading screen. Even with god mod on, you can still die from fall damage and stepping into an environmental hazard, and there are several mission critical failures that can happen if you are not careful.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was solid, as I felt pretty god throughout it, missing only one block, and you know how my frustrations when it comes to doing block combos. We're still a long ways away from moving on from Sophie, as we get 3 points per day, and at the moment we're at 69, and so we need 31 more points to wrap up her last related achievement before moving on to the next trainer. Also of note: not as many calories burned this week as compared to last week, but the difference was only like a couple hundred, give or take.

Moving on, after last night's stream I loaded up MLB The Show 21 to give it a test run, and I can safely say the music got real old real fucking quick, so I turned that off within 5 minutes. Control wise, pitching isn't that much different from ESPN Baseball for the PS2 (which we'll be playing tomorrow night), but hitting it a pain in the ass, as it's that zone style / aim type hitting which kind of makes the game not fun to deal with because it forces you to use the strike zone camera (from behind home plate) which is something I hate! Still, I did get a bunch of achievements last night. And we'll be playing this for tonight's stream!

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

Today's Notes 4/15/21

Good morning everybody,

It's Tax Day, well it is under normal circumstances, but because of how FUBAR things with the IRS has been with last minute changes to the tax code and them now having to go back and adjust the returns for everyone who filed before the latest stimulus package bill, Tax season got extended.

Anyway last night we started off The Division, and because of how schedules and stuff work out, the first chunk of the stream I was on my own, struggling but doing alright... but then my buddies PowerThumbz and Iceman joined... and we discovered a rather unique bug, in that while I as a lower level player will scale up to match them in terms of dealing damage, my armor and health does not properly scale. This was a bug discovered within The Division back in 2018, and Ubisoft never fixed it, so I spent the second chunk of the stream getting downed in like 1 or 2 hits, which made for great comedy. Now on the other hand, for Thumbz and Iceman, they were practically immortal... except when it came to one wall on the mission to same Benitez, they were too close to it when it exploded... again great comedy. 

MLB The Show 21 for the Xbox One / Series consoles is available for early download and installation, which I took care of last night, so Friday night's stream will be dedicated to it. And with ESPN Baseball moving to Saturday's that means we'll be doing back to back with baseball this week!

Played a little Forza Horizon 4 off stream, and I noticed that I'm progressing pretty nicely towards some achievements in that, I figure if I focus on races for certain paths I can unlock them pretty quickly.

In my search for older games to add to my collection, the following were added to my collection, all of which are PlayStation (PSOne) era games, NHL Face Off, PGA Tour '96 and WWF WrestleMania The Arcade Game... all of which in their classic long box style cases. With them came WCW/NWO Thunder a game I already had, however this is a much cleaner copy with the jewel case being intact.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was solid, if a little awkward, as I  couldn't quite get the rotation I wanted when doing South Paw right hand upper cuts. I was able to stay in sequence to get ducking and weaving motions down, and the results indicate I did very well, I just don't feel like I was at my best. Ah well, tomorrow's another day.

It's Thursday which means we'll be playing Star Trek Online tonight, and probably means this will the shortest stream of the week.

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