Spirit of the North, PowerWash Simulator and Other Notes

 Hi everyone,

Work was cancelled tonight as the assignment that was supposed to start got pushed back to tomorrow, so that helps in a big way as we haven't had work since the Friday before last! I also have a job interview tomorrow at 12:30 PM Eastern, which could possibly lead to a new career path. Then again I also applied for a position as for a major company that has a major presence in my home town too. Either job would be a good get because I wouldn't mind commuting via Uber or Taxi since they would be very local destinations with in the city!

We finished Spirit of The North on tonight's stream, and needless to say the final three plus chapters of the game may in total took two hours and changes to do, (since we were in the middle of chapter five last night), but man did the game develop a case of a 'where the fuck do we go', namely in the Chapter 7 where everything was mostly blue and rather hard to see. Almost at random I seem to find where I needed to go and things progressed to a rather satisfying ending.

Overall I like Spirit of the North, much like Abzu and Omno, there is a fairly logical approach to all the puzzles... and it's more about the journey and experiencing the creative direction the developers put in place. Would I personally play it again, probably not, but I do recommend folks play it.

Spirit of the North: Enhanced Edition Achievements

• Match Maker: Match 12 sets of Revolving Matching Glyphs
• Old Companion: Awaken 12 Shaman Spirits
• Spirited Away: Make it out of the Spirit World
• Northern Lights: Fill the night sky with Aurora Borealis
• Foxin' Around: Stand still for 3 minutes

Since we finished Spirit of the North two hours into the stream, after a break we switched over to PowerWash Simulator, starting on the Firehouse job, and clearing out well over 60% of it, leaving the side structure to deal with. There is an achievment for not using the scaffold, which is going to be an interesting challenge next time we use PowerWash Simulator as a filler game

For the raid we went over to twitch.tv/misscammi316 where Cammi was playing Smite

Kristi and I did a lot of free style writing on our little Power Rangers project, not sure if we'll publish it, but we certainly put in a lot of lore and detail into it.

Xfinity spent the morning installing fiber optic cable in my neighborhood so we're all on that 10G network... let's home that fixes the issues of intermittent Upstream power levels dropping.

I want to say I'm 70% finished the Mass Effect short story commission, and it's already the length of two and half stories at 5300 words. That's the problem with stories that involve 10 characters that need to be spotlighted equally.

Our next stream over on twitch.tv/fredcasden will start after 9:30 PM Eastern on Wednesday, as Iceman and I will begin the Ada Wong campaign of Resident Evil 6! I'm real curious to see where her story fits in with the other three campaigns.

And on that note, have a good night everyone!

Today's Notes 8/8/21: A Night In Saffron City

Good afternoon everybody, 

Last night's stream saw us focusing back on Pokemon Let's Go Eevee, not so much in terms of capturing Pokemon but a long series of battles, as we spent mostly the entire stream in Saffron City, dealing with the Team Rocket as Sliph Co, which was a real chore to get through. Thankfully I did not deal with the teleport pads first, instead worked my way up through each floor one by one until I reached floor 11, which made trying to find my way to the board room a lot easier to deal with once all of Team Rocket's grunts were defeated. Also made sure to collect all the items once I found the key card, which really helped as things progressed.

After Giovanni was defeated, my attention turned to the Saffron City Gym, which meant taking on Sabrina and her cronies who all use psychic Pokemon. The only advantage I had is that Eevee was in the upper 40s and everyone else was mid 40s so they could take a few hits and deal some big blows if things rolled my way. The real big concern was how psychic Pokemon can put my team to sleep, but we were able to brute force our way through to grab our 5th badge.

We closed out the stream by going through Routes 12 and 13 to begin making our way to Fuchsia City, saving when we reached Route 14. We did wake the sleeping Snorlax, and it surprised me we had a classic 'Wild Pokemon Appears' battle to deal with which was really nice to see! Anyway we got quite a few battles heading into the next gym, and then probably next's Saturday's stream will see us go back up to Celadon City, since there is an entire route to explore west from Fuchsia City. 

Here are a list of clips from last night for you to check out!

• Pokemon Let's Go Eevee: Blue Stood No Chance
• Pokemon Let's Go Eevee: Play TIme With Eevee 
• Pokemon Let's Go Eevee: Eevee Wakes Up!
• Pokemon Let's Go Eevee: Eevee's Paw Game 
• Pokemon Let's Go Eevee: Who Wants Barbecued Bat?
• Pokemon Let's Go Eevee: Victory Is Ours Against Giovanni! 
• Pokemon Let's Go Eevee: Eevee With A Boot To The Head!
• Pokemon Let's Go Eevee: Going For The Big Bite!
• Pokemon Let's Go Eevee: Eevee Versus A Wild Snorlax
• Pokemon Let's Go Eevee: We Caught The Snorlax! 

It's Sunday which means we have a highlight reel of everything from this past week, which includes  Fitness Boxing 2: Rhythm & Exercise, Overwatch, Chrono Cross, Smite, Tom Clancy's The Division, Marvel vs Capcom 2: New Age Of Heroes, Star Trek Online, Omno, Forza Horizon 4 and Pokemon Let's Go Eevee, plus a couple of Just Chatting Segments!.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout was streamed on Twitch, and the actual exercise time was 31 minutes, as we did Weaving Combo #2, Straight Combo #1 and Beginner Combo #2. Estimated calories burned was 499. We are now up to 71 out of 100 for the Karen's Best Friend achievement. Since this was a streamed session we do have clips.

• Fitness Boxing 2: Weaving Combo #2
• Fitness Boxing 2: Beginner Combo #2 
• Fitness Boxing 2: Straight Combo #1
  

For tonight's stream, of course we're playing Overwatch to kick off the week. I don't think we'll have Mayhem as an option this week because of the Summer Event it meant that order of daily options in Arcade Mode got swapped around 

Today's Notes 8/7/21: Omno Is a great little game!

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night I wasn't completely sure what I was going to do with last night's stream until about 5:30 PM, an hour before start time, and since Iceman (who you often hear as part of the The Division streams), recommended Omno earlier in the week I gave it a shot.

The story is that you are on a pilgrimage on the path of Light, following the footsteps of those who went before you. Along the way you'll pick up skills like surfing, floating and teleportation that are all key to getting through the various puzzles and finding items. Each area is pretty open for exploration, and you will want to explore as there are normally three journals to be found that give some lore to journey you're on. 

Now I made the mistake of not checking out the achievement list before hand, because it turns out Omno is a game one can 100% complete in a single play-through (I will have to do a second play-through at some point so we will revisit Omno in the future). It looks gorgeous, has a great sound musical score, controls handle very well, and the puzzles, with the exception of one, are not designed to screw with the player. 

Extra note: Omno also has a really subtle story involving your companion, a little green floating squirrel type creature that actually plays into the ending of the game, which I'll admit made me tear up a little. 

Anyway, all in all, I highly recommend Omno to anyone looking for a quality game.!

Now I did happen to get raided once we finished Omno, and I extended the stream a bit with some Forza Horizon 4, did a few races and messed around for a bit, nothing major. 

Both games were playing using an X-Box console (my Series S), and so we got a lot of achievements last night.

OMNO Achievements

1. The Initiate: Rode the First Legendary Animal
2. Pit Master: Auqui Pit completed
3. The Apprentice: Rode the Second Legendary Animal
4. Plains Master: Malaha Plain completed
5. Valley Master: Sag'Ya Valley completed
6. The Disciple: Rode the Third Legendary Animal
7. Likeminded: Surfed with Scipuins for 30 seconds
8. Aggression management: Stomped a Lapicrab 5 times
9. Canyon Master: Cavulta Canyon completed
10. The Adept: Rode the Fourth Legendary Animal
11. Desert Master: Unkh-Tuur Desert completed
12. Ground is lava: Kept an Astendeon airborne for 10 seconds
13. Mesa Master: Yeccaph Mesa completed
14. Heights Master: Pulyang Heights completed
15. The Exalted: Rode the Fifth Legendary Animal
16. Cliff Master: Fluamao Cliffs completed

Forza Horizon 4 Achievements

1. Colossus of Roads: Reach Round 10 in the Horizon Road Racing Series.

We do have a list of clips from last night's stream as well, which we'll now list for you to check out!

• Omno: That surprise sub jump scare
• Omno: No nope nope nope!
• Omno: Ah-ha... Ah-hahaha!
• Just Chatting: Found the strategy guide for Grandia III
• Omno: DUUUUUDE!!!!!
• Omno: A graceful dismount
• Omno: We're surfing with them! 
• Omno: I Can Walk On It! 
• Omno: Teleportation Things 
• Omno: The Ground Is Lava! 
• Omno: Did that say 6.66%?
• Omno: Whoa!!
• Omno: Cliff Master
• Forza Horizon 4: Coming in 2nd 
• Forza Horizon 4: Okay so we did get there... barely! 

Manage to track down a copy of the Grandia III strategy guide published by BrandyGames, it was used and was missing a huge chunk of it's back cover, but hey, when I get around to give that game a shot I have a better hope of figuing out where to go, because I remember Grandia III' being a lot tougher to navigate in an open desert area that the first two games in the series.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout lasted 31 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 488 kcal! Keeping things consistent is key don't you think?  

I did try my hand at the 'weekly championships' for Dr Kawashima's Brain Training... wonder how I'll bad I rank, maybe I'll post the results on Monday or Tuesday?

For tonight's stream we're back to Pokemon: Let's Go Eevee, as we'll try to figure out what out next objected should be and go through the hassle of catching many creatures to level up my main six.  

And on that note we'll see you later tonight around 7 PM Eastern over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!