Today's Notes 8/12/21: Slugs of Metal

Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream started off with my just chatting about stuff of interest from work, such as the stuff involving public charter schools, and the big reveal that I now have all three strategy guides for the Xenosaga trilogy, plus the Art of Xenosaga Episode 1. Flipping through them was a big reminder of just how hard the first game of the trilogy was based on what I remember. Still having the strategy guides will be a big help. 

Onto the games we played last night, first up with Metal Slug 3, a game I have played before, but this was the Xbox 360/Arcade version of it. We manage to knock out two achievements and finish the game in about an hour (give or take). It did take over 50 continues, so if this was being played in an actual arcade, at 25 cents per continued, it would have taken over $12.50 to finish the game. 

Metal Slug 3 Achievements

1. Save President: Save President in the mission.
2. Mission All Completed: Complete all the missions.

For the next part of the stream, we loaded up Smite, and did three arena matches, using Athena, and happened to get teamed with players who recognized that I was using her Confound ability to pull enemies towards me to be ganged up on. It was pretty cool, hell, I had a ton of assists which was something I pride myself on when using Athena. So that was really cool.

At the 9 PM hour we switched over to The Division where Iceman and I mostly focused on the Underground. Going through the missions that seem to be randomly generated. Since we're playing this casually and going through it to find items, it was a stress free run. And we both managed to get the same achievement too!

Tom Clancy's The Division Achievements

1. Objectively Experienced:  Complete each of the 6 different mission objectives in the underground.
   

So with all that said, you can bet we have a lot of clips from last night which I'll list next. 

• Metal Slug 3: We Saved The President
• Metal Slug 3: Damned If You Do... Damned If You Don't... 
• Metal Slug 3: We don't need any helicopter! 
• Metal Slug 3: What Hit Me?! 
• Metal Slug 3: We're running out of room!
• Metal Slug 3: Final Boss! 
• Smite: First Blood As Athena!
• Smite: Using Athena's Ultimate To Get Out Of Danger And To Make The Save! 
• Smite: Reinforcements Are On The Way! 
• Smite: Time to Run A... We Go Not Runaway 
• Smite: 2 Kills In Less Than 30 Seconds As Athena!
• The Division: Get To The Supplies! 
• The Division: Dude Pick A Nickname
• The Division: Objectively Experienced
  

Something that did come up was Gears of War 3, and when we will play that, because Iceman does have a rotating schedule, so we might try and sync that up with his days off so we could get in full sessions instead of partial ones. So we will get to Gears of War 3, it's just going to end up a floating game where it might bump other things around.

Also when we raided Kalenal's stream (twitch.tv/kalenal) the subject of Final Fantasy 14 being free to play up to level 60 came up, and know that they play it, Oldish plays it, PandaSweet plays it, it's certainly tempting to consider. My big concern would be where to fir it in, and I could easily just pair it with Star Trek Online to make an MMO night, start with STO then jump to FF14. It is something to consider. 

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout lasted 28 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 418 kcal. The exercises for today were Defensive Combo #1, Double Combo #1 and Defensive Combo #2. The progress towards the Karen's Best Friend achievement is now up to 81 out of 100.

Messed around with adding an 'on-screen' chat box where anything typed in the chat will appear on a designated area on the stream. This is will help with adding proof of trolling / spamming done by idiots. Also adjusted the end of stream screen to show credits of anyone who subbed, donated, followed or kicked in bits.

For tonight's stream, with it being Thursday, we'll be playing Star Trek Online to do the endeavor quests before checking out something else from my game library, maybe something from the PlayStation 2 era. We could try to continue Lupin the 3rd: Treasure of The Sorcerer King, or maybe something else completely! Who knows?!

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

 

Today's Notes 8/3/21: It's Been 20 Years

Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream did indeed end up seeing my start up Chrono Cross, but the question was... which version? See I have the original release with the SquareSoft logo, then there was the Greatest Hits version that has the SquareEnix logo.... but in the end I went with the PlayStation Network 'PSOne Classic' digital version. Why? Well mostly because I did not want to delete anything off of my PS1 memory cards, but also I wanted a fresh play-through, and if I used the save files on my memory cards, that would've been going with a New Game+... plus with the odds being I'm going to pair Lupin The 3rd: Treasure of the Sorcerer King with Star Trek Online again this week for Thursday, I figure making use of the different console would be better. Also the PS3's disc drives kind of 'sticks' a bit... 

Anyway playing Chrono Cross for the first time in a long time didn't mean I forgot how the melody for the a lot of the music went, hell I damn near was able to vocalize (poorly) the entire opening theme... and I will say the music for Chrono Cross still holds up... as does the writing as characters have different accents and ways of speaking, which is just a nightmare for me since I'll be reading the dialog out loud for the majority of stuff. The game play mechanics didn't take long for me to remember how to play, and I was able to mostly remember how to recruit some early party members and I wanted to make sure I had certain people in my party early, namely Leena... which meant we didn't add Kid to the team until a bit further into the stream, also of the trio of Guile, Nikki and Pierre... the one I went with was Nikki because I remember his team up with Mikki to be pretty cool.

As far as how far we got, it did take the entire stream but we did make it into Viper Manor and reach the save point in the barracks, so that means tonight's stream is going to see quite a few boss battles. Along the way we did start a few side quests, such as getting the Bellflower for Glenn and Riddle, finding the first two parts for Skelly, nabbing the Big Egg from the Dodo Nest.

Since this was a PS1 game, that meant there were no achievements, but we do have a list of clips for you to check out.

• Chrono Cross: I Think I Remember The Battle Mechanics
• Chrono Cross: Foreshadowing 
• Chrono Cross: We Get A Chest In Return... Eventually
• Chrono Cross: First Boss - Mama Komodo 
• Chrono Cross: Insert Dramatic Cut Scene Here
• Chrono Cross: Kid
• Chrono Cross: Boss Fight - Karsh Solt & Peppor 
• Chrono Cross: Get The Big Egg!
• Chrono Cross: Defeat The Dodo 
• Chrono Cross: Boss Fight - Solt & Peppor
• Just Chatting: Congrats To My Cousin 
• Chrono Cross: Boss Fight - Cassowaries 
• Chrono Cross: Defeat The Quaffid 
• Chrono Cross: Boss Battle - Zoah, Solt & Peppor

If you're wondering about the Just Chatting Clip, during the stream I got an email from my cousin Elissa who was announcing that she and her husband just had their first child! So big congrats to them!

On a side note, playing Chrono Cross means for the first time in a while I get to have an excuse to have an actual physical strategy guide on hand to help me remember how to recruit various characters. Some are locked into the story, while others involve actual decisions to be made and specific actions to be performed in terms of side quests. And considering the rarity of some of the games in my collection, find a few for some specific titles is not a bad idea...

Yesterday's mail arrived with another little item for the collection: Pitfall: The Lost Expedition for the PlayStation 2.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Daily Workout lasted 28 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 438 kcal.We did do an extra set, so the the complete session was 34 minutes with the estimated calorie burn being 526 kcal. We are now up to 58 out of 100 for the Karen's Best Friend achievement. Weight is still holding around 250 lbs.

Also started messing around with Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training... seems like a way to work my brain a bit either after a work out after dinner. And it's an excuse to use the Switch undocked. 

For tonight's stream, as mentioned earlier we'll be back to Chrono Cross, picking thing up at around 6:30 PM Eastern

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

Today's Notes 8/1/21: Ghosts, Gangsters and Pokemon

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night's stream saw us continue Pokemon: Let's Go Eevee, as we resumed the adventure in Lavender Town, entering the Pokemon Tower... and then being promptly booted from it because we needed a key item to continue that story. So it was off to Celadon City to deal directly with Team Rocket at their hidden base, which in it's own way is a bit of a gauntlet. Now there were a few things i liked about this, namely the fact Eevee gets their own little moment when they have to go through a vent to retrieve the lift key... not to mention they also get to scare off Jessie & James! The battle against Giovanni was a walk in the park for the most part.

Along the way we also tackled the Celadon City gym, which is a real maze to get through, and unlike the Pokemon Blue & Yellow form back in the 90s, navigating it was a lot easier because of the wide screen perspective. Erika was no real challenge, granted I have only one fire-type in my lineup, but still, my squad ranges in the low 40s down to the mid 30s.... with the exception of Raichu... now I had a level 36 Raichu but I traded it for its Aloha counterpart, so it's playing catch-up.  

Anyway, once things in Celadon City were done it was back to Lavender Town to tackle the Pokemon Tower, and the battles within it were pretty one sided. I did like the animation regarding the Cubone and it's mother, plus the battles against Jessie & James at re now pretty much straight forward.

We have several clips from last night's stream, which I'll now list

• Just Chatting: Eventually We'll Have To Find Out 
• Pokemon Let's Go Eevee: On The Road Again
• Pokemon Let's Go Eevee: I'll Show You My Pokemon... In Battle! 
• Pokemon Let's Go Eevee: We're All Within A Game Man! 
• Pokemon Let's Go Eevee: Earning That Rainbow Badge 
• Pokemon Let's Go Eevee: I Do Know You're Team Rocket 
• Pokemon Let's Go Eevee: Blastoise To Deal With Rhyhorn
• Pokemon Let's Go Eevee: Eevee Vs Poliwrath 
  
• Pokemon Let's Go Eevee: Playing With Eevee
• Pokemon Let's Go Eevee: The Haunter Is Gonna Regret That 
  

It's Sunday, which means a new recap video featuring everything we did last week on Twitch, which includes Overwatch, Fitness Boxing 2: Rhythm & Exercise, Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep, Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection, Tom Clancy's The Division, Lupin The 3rd: Treasure Of the Sorcerer King, Star Trek Online, Streets of Rage 4 & Pokemon Let's Go Eevee, plus there are couple of Just Chatting clips included as well!  

We added two games to the collection yesterday.. The first is Pitfall 3D: Beyond The Jungle for the PlayStation, and the second was Aeon Flux for the PlayStation 2. The Aeon Flux game is based more on the movie starring Charlize Theron... and the game's manual does indicate that she supplies voice acting for Aeon in the game... which makes me wonder just how bad is her voice acting, because their is a huge fucking difference between on-screen acting and voice acting, with voice acting you have to use your voice to actually convey everything the character is saying with actual emotion, it's not about doing a 'silly voice', it's about putting the mark on what's being said. I don't have that concern with Pitfall 3D... because Pitfall Harry is voiced by Bruce Campbell, someone who actually knows what the hell he's doing when he's doing voice work.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Daily Workout was streamed on Twitch with the session lasting 31 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 534 kcal. I didn't even look to see what the updated progress was on for the Karen's Best Friend achievement... because it was more of a spur of the moment decision to stream. Didn't really feel like doing extra as I wanted to tackle a few things right after lunch. But we do have clips for the session.

• Fitness Boxing 2 8/1/21: Clip 1
• Fitness Boxing 2 8/1/21: Clip 2 
• Fitness Boxing 2 8/1/21: Clip 3
  

For tonight's stream, we're of course going to be playing Overwatch and we'll get started around 7 PM Eastern...

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

Today's Note 7/30/21: Bad Camera Controls Are Bad

 Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream lead off with Star Trek Online, as we tackled the four endeavor quests, and we gained a little boost for ships turn rate, which is every useful considering I tend to equip my ships with consoles that boost the speed at which my ships turns... and let me tell you cruisers due need all the help needed to turn! It is rather annoying that Gravity Kills seems to be frequently featured on the endeavor quests. We'll probably be switching ships on both Zagreus and Sorra in a couple of weeks.

Anyway here are clips from the STO part of the stream

• A lot of Lupin The 3rd Games are listed on Twitch but not Street Fighter 30th Anniversary
• Star Trek Online: Every Thing (D)ucks 
• Star Trek Online: Did They Just Shift Positions!
• Star Trek Online: Realized A Giant Torpedo Was Behind Me 
• Star Trek Online: Just Stand Right There
  
• Star Trek Online: We Know They Are Attacking From The South!
  

In the second half of the stream, dedicated to checking out Lupin The 3rd: Treasure of the Sorcerer King. Released in 2004 when Lupin The 3rd was airing on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim, in theory it should be a very straight forward stealth adventure game with various styles of puzzles.... however, the camera controls are very picky, like you can move it but the camera is really confined to space of what room you're in and what objects are around you. It did take me an hour and 45 minutes to clear Chapter 1. Now the game's CGI cut scenes and voice acting are great, and the musical score which I believe pulls from the actual show is incredible. Not sure if we'll keep going back to it to gradually work through it one chapter at a time.

Here are clips from that part of the stream!

• Lupin The 3rd: It's Lupin! 
• Lupin The 3rd: Escape! 
• Lupin The 3rd: He Ain't That Bright 
• Lupin The 3rd: Globe Puzzle 
• Lupin The 3rd: Took Long Enough To Remove The Disguise 
• Lupin The 3rd: Puzzle Solving 

Work seems to be focused on trying to get people's thoughts on a particular school district, and it's amazing how few people are interested. But if only they give the study a chance they will see it's very informative! Ah well.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout lasted 31 minutes with the estimated calorie burn being 484 kcal, and we did do some extra so the complete session was 40 minutes with the estimated calorie burn total of 619 kcal. We did score a new achievement this morning

1. Karen's Buddy: Perform 10 free exercises with Karen

With that done, we've unlocked progress for the Karen's Best Friend achievement, we are up to 47 out of 100 for it already, and we're now at 99 out of 100 for the King Fit Fighter achievement. So when the first one is done, we complete the later. 

Did talk to my primary care physician yesterday to see if I was at risk of any side effects regarding the Covid vaccines, he guesses no based  on my medical history. Problem is the guy tried to book tests without my authorization. And people wonder why I hate dealing with doctors...

For tonight's stream I'm not completely sure what we'll be up to, I'm considering starting up a JRPG of some sort, but I could end up starting up another large adventure game. We'll see.

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