We Had Some Work Yesterday; PS2 Variety Night

Good morning everyone,

Yesterday we had some work, not as many hours as I would've liked, but it knocked some rust off... too bad some of the usual features used for work wasn't working as they should've been. I'd really hate to go back to using my phone instead of the web browser set up, because it makes harder for me to hear the people I'm interviewing.

Congratulations to my uncle Freddy who is going into the Pennsylvania Boxing Hall of Fame!

Last night's stream was truly a variety night of games from the PlayStation 2 era, starting off with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Battle Nexus... and I forgot how bad that game was in regard to hit detection, the wonky A.I. and the bad camera angles. For whatever reason Konami really struggles with making TMNT games that weren't 2D brawlers. Chances are quite a lot of the VOD is going to be muted or cut because of how much footage this game used from the 2003 TMNT series.

Next was X-Men: Next Dimension, a fighting game that clearly has some inspiration from Tekken and Virtua Fighter. We went through the arcade mode as Betsy (aka Psylocke), and outside of Magneto, we didn't have too much trouble. Rather surprised Patrick Stewart supplied some voice work for the game. This game does have a story mode, so it makes it worth revisiting to see what that is like.

Over The Hedge was the next game we played, based on the movie of the same name, and while clearly aimed at younger gamers, it has a nice charm to do for a budget cash grab game.Based on the first couple of levels, I feel this game will be a hoot to play in co-op if I can rope in either my cousin Frances of my brother Leo into spending an evening messing around with it on stream.

Finally checked out Champions of Norrath: Realms of EverQuest, and its not a bad RPG,but it's clear it was meant to take full advantage of the PS2's online multiplayer capabilities. It might have local co-op so that might be worth diving into as a novelty.

We took a look at Death by Degrees and I have to wonder what Bandai Namco was thinking, They already had the bases for a decent brawling game in the form of the Tekken Force mode that was introduced in Tekken 3, but Death by Degrees certainly was not as fun to pick up on, due to the weird controls. Does look and sound great though.

Lastly we played Star Trek Encounters, which is in an arcade shooter game that uses some of the same assets used for Star Trek Legacy which was released on the Xbox 360 and PC around the same time. Much like it's more advanced sister game, the 'campaign' is not really fun, but using cheats to unlock all the ships means there is chaos to be had in its various game modes.

On a side note, I have to do something about how OBS is broadcasting things much darker than they should be in terms of the output color pallet.

For the raid we dropped in on Kalenal who was playing Final Fantasy XIV over at twitch.tv/kalenal

Tonight is the Super Bowl... and I know my mom would have been rooting for the Eagles if she could watch it... and I finally saw her death certificate... and reading it really hit me hard.

Finished the Mass Effect short story commission and have another one to start working on as well, so this series will be up to 22 chapters.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout featured Advanced Combo #1, Sway Back COmbo and Difficulty Challenge Combo #3

"What do you call a poor Santa Claus?" "St. Nickel-less."

Song of the Day: Sunday Best by Surfaces.

For tonight's stream, it's Sunday and that means Overwatch 2... and yes I will be wearing Eagles green, in fact I'll be wearing my mom's Eagles jersey that was originally owned by my brother.

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!