We Experience A Month In A Day

Good afternoon everyone,

Well last night's stream of Persona 5 Royal was another epic, long stream as we covered the entire month of October, which means we saw the Destiny-Land party and the  twist of what happens to Haru's father... and we took everything up to October 30, so the next time we play Persona 5 Royal on Friday, we'll be dealing with the Casino Palace straight away. I am not at all thrilled about having Akechi on the team, and his gaudy Metaverse attire just looks awful.

That said, I was able to knock out various Confidant story arcs like Tae and Yusuke's, while also catching up on Iwai, Sojirio & Futaba's. I know another big trip into Mmentos is going to be needed to knock out a lot of the not Phantom Thieve ones, but that is what it is. I have to also say, I'm not all that impressed with Sae's Shadow-self, maybe it's me but the eyeliner just ruins the entire look. I also have a concern regarding having to get Kasumi up to Rank 5, and the fact that Haru has not been an option to spend time with to build up her Ranks. Oh and speaking of Kasumi... her transformation was so totally based on Sailor Moon it's painfully obvious.

Persona 5 Royal Trophies

• Pure Perfection: Maxed out all social stats.
• Spaceport of Greed: Obliterated: Completed the spaceport Palace.
• A Most Studious Disguise: Scored the highest on your exams.

Twitch Clips

• GEZHUS!!
• For Real Man 
• Futaba can look up more you know
  

For the raid, we dropped in on LifewithStan who was playing Elden Ring over at twitch.tv/lifewithstan! 

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout involved Advanced Combo #2, Weaving Combo #1, Weaving Combo #2 & Body Straight Combo. This session was also streamed over on my Twitch channel since I woke up super early. Also set a new personal best for Advanced Combo #2 on No Mercy despite a clear screw up of throwing the wrong punches early into it.

Fitness Boxing 2 Rhythm & Exercise Stats For 5/8 to 5/14/2022

• Punches Thrown:11, 731
  
• Estimated Calories Burned: 4835.14
• 22 out of  30 hours trained for Laura's Contender (73%)
  

Bonus Twitch Clips

• Advanced Combo #2 on No Mercy
• Weaving Combo #1 
• Weaving Combo #2 
• Body Straight Combo
  

Let it be known that I've never had respect for Jim Ryan, the CEO for PlayStation, based on his attitude towards people wanting to have access to older games. But his complete disregard for Women's Rights as it relates to the bull shit that is the Supreme Court of the United States wanting to over turn Roe v Wade is completely asinine. Okay sure, he doesn't take a stance, but it's quite clear he thinks Women's Rights are a trivial issue, which they are not. 

In regards to the 'Diversity Space Method' Blizzard published when it came to creating characters from different backgrounds and origins for Overwatch... and I'm not mad at it. The blatant use of race, age and other factors when it comes to creating characters has been seen in the TV, Film and Comic Book industries for decades. Hell, Marvel Comics basically went out of their way to create a second in-print just to make the main continuity more diverse before merging it in.

My fantasy baseball team is doing well this week batting .280 (53/189) with 37 run scored, 9 home runs, 26 RBI, and 4 stolen bases. Pitching has been good enough with 33 innings pitch, one win, 3 saves, 35 strike outs with an ERA of 4.36 and a WHIP of 1.09. Overall we're ahead of 7 out of nine catagories. Hopefully this trends holds through the rest of the weekend. 

For tonight's stream we're going to do another night of random stuff on a Saturday! So we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

The Loyalty Of The Thief And The Mercenary

Good morning everyone,

Last night's stream of Mass Effect 2 was focused on every not associated with the main story of the game, as we went to nearly every system we could and put in a good deal of time on things associated with the game's DLC. I'll get the Firewalker content out of the way first, I'm not a fan of the Hammerhead vehicle, but having played Mass Effect 2 enough times I can basically tear though its missions rather quickly to get it out of the way.

Zaaed's mission of revenge is probably the one where I can easily flip flop on saving the refinery workers or just getting Zaaed to Santiago so that he can have some closure. Granted the later has the awesome sight of Zaaed walking away from an explosion like a total bad ass.Which was the choice we made.

Kasumi's mission is probably a lot more convoluted than it needed to be, it certain has a lot more combat than Zaaed's by a large margin, and is more difficult because instead of having a squad of three, it's you as Shepard and Kasumi. The issue of the Gray Box is certainly debatable when it comes to choosing to destroy it or let Kasumi keep it. We went with letting her keep it.

Beyond that, we found a couple of side missions. located the Normandy crash site and just held off on picking up Jack, Grunt and Morden. Way I figure by picking up Jack and Grunt first, then Morden, that should allow me to deal with Project: Overlord before Horizon colony. At least that's the theory I have based on how I am looking to pace things out.

Mass Effect 2 Achievements

• Merciless: Make 20 enemies scream as they fall or are set on fire
• Head Hunter: Perform 30 headshot kills with any weapon on humanoid targets
• Agent: Complete 5 missions discovered by scanning unexplored worlds
• Broke, Blind and Bedlam: Gain the loyalty of the thief
• Revenge!: Gain the loyalty of the mercenary

Twitch Clip Links

1. This Is Mandatory
2. Shepard Meets The Press 
3. Head Hunter
   

For the raid, we dropped in on Redneck_23 who was doing things with Farming Simulator 22 over at twitch.tv/redneck_23!   

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout featured Biceps Shape Focus Combo, Triple Combo #2 and Intermediate Combo #1. Also set a new personal best by scoring a perfect on Advanced Combo #2 set on Low.

I'm not surprised at all with how lackluster Sony's updated PlayStation Plus service is going to be in comparison to what folks get with Xbox's GamePass... this is because of Sony's attitude towards older content. Just remember, Sony is the company who had a CEO who insulted those who like to go back and play older games.

So when checking out games, I  checked Enter Digiton: Heart of Corruption, which is one of the many Indy-developed platformer that has a bit of Metroid approach to it. While it only took 30 minutes to get all the achievements, I can safely say it is very buggy, as any time I paused or pressed the central button on the controller to check my progress. I can safely say this is a game that is not worth featuring on stream with the issues I had with it.

Enter Digiton: Heart of Corruption Achievements

• Opener I: Open 1 door with a key
• Cleaner I: Destroy 25 obstacles
• Hunter I: Kill 6 enemies
• Cleaner II: Destroy 75 obstacles
• Opener II: Open 2 doors with a key
• Clearer I: Die 6 times
• Clearer II: Die 12 times
• Hunter II: Kill 24 enemies
• Cleaner III: Destroy 200 obstacles
• Clearer III: Die 24 times
• Hunter III: Kill 48 enemies
• Opener III: Open 5 doors with a key

For tonight's stream we're going to do something different, we're going to check out Fallout 76.. ad game's whose initial launch was... troubled. But it's been around for a while, which means there was plenty of time for patches and fixes to be applied to it by its developers.

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

Time-Lapsed And Vaccinated

Good afternoon everybody 

Last night's stream featured Life is Strange Episode 4, and we 100% completed it, finding all the optional photos along the way with the help of the list of achievements. Considering how many were diamond achievements, I doubt I would have come across them... but then again I have played Life is Strange before, and maybe I should have checked my Steam achievements list before writing this. Ah well.

Anyway, Episode 4 certainly goes out of it's way to label Nathan Prescott as the big bad of the game, with how everything revolves around him, from the conversation with Frank Bowers, to how the Prescott family e just something everyone wants to go away going back 100 years, to the 'dark room' pretty much being in a barn in the middle of nowhere. But the twist of Mr. Jefferson being the true villain both works and at the same time doesn't work.

And here's why it never worked for me: it's because Jefferson as a character always comes across as a creep, and this goes back to episode 1 when he is always pestering Max about submitting a photo for the everyday heroes contest to just happening to be talking to Kate before she attempts to jump off the dorm building in episode 2 to being all to chilled with what was happening at the Vortex Party at the end of episode 4. It just comes across as being way out of place to me.

I will admit I do like the fact that if you save Kate in episode 2 you get to visit her in the hospital in episode 4, which also having the benefit of her helping out when Max and Chloe sneak into the boys dorm. Actually if you play things 'right', you can end up giving Max one hell of a large social circle. 

After the stream we sent everyone over to Kalenal (twitch.tv/kalenal) who was doing a bonus stream this week featuring Final Fantasy XIV! Kal also announced that she won't be streaming tonight or this upcoming Monday, but will be back on Wendesday (September 8th)

Twitch Clip Links

• I believe It Max....
• Bacon Pancakes
• It's What You Get At Starbucks... 
• Bird Don't Make Me Flip You
• Nathan Is The Devil... CONFIRMED! 
• Totally Trespassing 
• Good Evening Doctor Hoo
• We found Rachel Amber
• Save Alyssa... Again!
• Double Achievement In Episode 4!
• Max's Name Is On The List!
• Warning Victoria About The Dark Room
  

 Life is Strange Achievements

1. Ambient: Take optional photo #1 in Episode 4: Dark Room
2. Time-Lapsed: Take optional photo #2 in Episode 4: Dark Room
3. Balance: Take optional photo #3 in Episode 4: Dark Room
4. Rangefinder: Take optional photo #4 in Episode 4: Dark Room
5. Gamma Value: Take optional photo #5 in Episode 4: Dark Room
6. Dioptric Power: Take optional photo #6 in Episode 4: Dark Room
7. Fisheye: Take optional photo #7 in Episode 4: Dark Room
8. Manually Exposed: Take optional photo #8 in Episode 4: Dark Room
9. Tripod: Take optional photo #10 in Episode 4: Dark Room
10. Shutterbug: Take all optional photos in Episode 4: Dark Room
11. Slideshow: Take optional photo #9 in Episode 4: Dark Room
12. Dark Room: Finish Episode 4: Dark Room
    

Went and got COVID-19 vaccination shot number two at the closest CVS Pharmacy yesterday, granted, making sure they had vaccination shots on hand was frustrating, considering on Thursday I walked over there and they said they had none. Once I had confirmation they had shots, I rushed over to get mine done. Now opposed to the first shot, they gave me a little 'stop watch' like item to track the 15 minutes they wanted folks to wait for observation after getting the shot... but if they were observing those they have vaccinated, shouldn't a member of the staff actually been... observing? Because they weren't.

Was able to add ,hack//Outbreak to the collection yesterday, which means the quest to find and add .hack//Quarantine begins. That is easily one of the rarest games to find for the PlayStation 2 because the the original .hack series of games didn't really do to well because of the episodic nature of them. In short they were ahead of their time in a big way.

Also added an alternate PlayStation 2 (Slim version) that has a MODBO Chip within it to make it region free. While obviously most of my PS2 library consists of North American released games, there are still some things that were exclusive to Japan and Europe that I would like to track down, and having the hardware on hand to play them is a step in the right direction. However a test run of this PS2 didn't exactly present promising results as I think the laser to read the discs may have gotten misaligned by how the United States Postal Service treated the package. So that would be possibly 2 PS2s broken in transit by the USPS...

Overwatch Competitive Season 30 (Tank)

1. D.va - Busan - Downtown - 14:02 - Loss - 2-1
2. D.va - Oasis - 18:04 - Win - 2-1
3. D.va - Blizzard World - 19:03 - Win - 3-2

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout lasted 28 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 423 kcal. The exercises for this sessions was Hook Combo #2, Front Back Step Combo and Beginner Combo #1. Progress for Hiro's Contender is that we're at 15 hours out of 30. Weighted in yesterday at about 248 lb from what I could tell, it was clearly below the 250 lb mark

We've added Extreme Ghostbustes: The Ultimate Invasion to the collection, this was released on the original PlayStation but it was a PAL/Europe Exlcusive, and is a game that can make use of the PSOne's light-gun... which is something I don't have.

For tonight's stream we'll be will wrap up Life is Strange, with Episode 5: Polarized, and I'm really debating wanting to go for all the photo opportunities on stream or note because of how episode 5 relies a lot on a half-ass stealth game play. Since I know I can just go after the collectables after the fact, it's no pressure to 100% complete it.

Anyway, that's what we're doing and if it doesn't take me 4 hours to get through the final episode, we may do something else!

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

We Took Our Lumps But Had Fun

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night's Overwatch stream was a lot of fun, and big thanks to PandaSweet for joining on on the madness. We certainly took more losses than usual, but I did end up having 6 plays of the game, 1 as Tracer, 2 as Dva and 3 as Moira. All of this week's matches were Quick Play matches, so it was nice to deliver on big plays

Overwatch Quick Play Results

1. Moira - Loss
2. D.va - Loss
3. D.va - Loss
4. D.va - Win
5. D.va - Loss
6. D.va - Loss
7. D.va - Win
8. Moira - Loss
9. Moira - Loss
10. D.va - Loss
11. Moira - Win
12. Moira - Win
13. Moira & Mercy - Loss
14. Moira - Loss (Back Fill) 
15. D.va - Win
16. Tracer - Loss
17. Torbjorn & Mei - Loss
18. Tracer - Loss
19. Tracer - Loss
20. D.va - Win
21. Moira - Win
22. Moira - Loss
    

Off-stream, with 3 days left in the current competitive season (#30) for Overwatch, I did the five qualifying matches for a tank on the role queue category. I did have 1 Play of the Game. After the 5 matches where done I placed at Silver 1617. The last time I played ranked matches was Season 26 which was back at the start of the year, and I only did a handful of matches thin, where I placed at Silver 1567, so I had better luck this go round.Maybe I'll start doing more ranked stuff and document them in my daily blog. Anyway  Here are the results

Overwatch Ranked Matches (Role: Tank)

1. Havana: D.va - Loss - 0-1 13:31
   
2. Hollywood: D.va - Win - 2-1  - 14:02
3. Dorado: D.va - Loss - 1-2 - 10:30
4. Hollywood: D.va / Orissa / Reinhardt - 5-4 24:39
5. Blizzard Word: D.va - Win 1-0 7:28
   

Now who did we raid following the stream? Well we sent the fun over to SmoresDaFloof who was playing Final Fantasy VII (the classic version), you can check them out at twitch.tv/SmoresDaFloof!

Twitch Clip Links

• Shut Down!
• Just another Triple Kill with Dva's Ultimate
• Panda's Ultimate Set That All Up! 
• That's what I get for encouraging such madness! 
• HOW DID THAT HAPPEN!? 
• This time stay down!
• Blinking Over The Edge 
• Who else is on fire!

So Paige of the WWE said she is going to try and make a comeback... well considering how long it took the likes of Edge to make a comeback, it's possible, so maybe she'll be able to do it. But the road to getting cleared by WWE doctors is going to be a long one, and I wonder if that process will frustrate Paige to the point she'd leave the company and go somewhere with less incentive to do the right things medically for their talent (AEW). 

If there ever was a network that should be exposed for being a collective bunch of idiots, it's ESPN who deserve every bit of bad press they are getting for the debacle they allowed to be on their networks this weekend. Bishop Sycamore, which is an online charter school that just happens to have a barely year old football program, somehow worked their way into being the ass kicked victims of IMG Academy, which has a football program that has produced well over two dozen NFL players in its history. Apparently, EPSN couldn't be bothered to do a back ground check on Bishop Sycamore in their quest of chasing the all mighty attention of the NFL.

Considering the issue of running Road Rash 3D on Friday via the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3, I might go look into a back up for one of those systems, probably the PS2 since I could grab for a modified one to justify adding games that are region locked from that era to the collection.

Some may wonder why don't I just play these games via an emulator, it's because I'm not a fan of emulating games, things don't quite feel right, either with how a game looks and saving games can be problematic. If there was a PS1 or PS2 emulator that out there that didn't have those issues I certainly never found it. 

Dr Kawashima's Brain Training World Championship Competition #81 Results

• Dual Task: 41.73sec
  
  • Global Rank: 1427 out of 2695 (B-)
  • Age Rank: 167 out of 297
• Finger Calculation: 31.33sec
  
  • Global Rank: 1190 out of 1640 (C)
  • Age Rank: 140 out of 179
• Calculations X25: 31.68sec
  
  • Global Rank: 1986 out of 2736 (C)
  • Age Rank: 214 out of 292
• Photographic Memory: 69.79sec
  
  • Global Rank: 1931 out of 2486 (C-)
  • Age Rank: 216 out of 276 

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout lasted 31 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 470 kcal. The exercises for today were Hook Combo #1, Waist Shape Focus Combo and Block Combo. For whatever reason the left joy con kept having to re-sync, resulting in 8 misses, 7 of which were during the Block Combo resulting in a Fitness Age score of 25... and I can't remember the last time I had that many misses during a session! So I took out my frustration and did a little extra, so the complete session was 37 minutes with an estimate calorie burn of 540 kcal.

For tonight's stream we will be resuming Chrono Cross and I believe we will try and get the Level 7 Tech Skills for several characters to start with, just to make sure we're not missing big moves or combinations. Once that's done we're off to the Sea of Eden to continue the story!

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

 

We Are The Kanto Champion

 

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night's stream saw us wrapping up Pokemon Let's Go Eevee,,, and the night began as it ended, with a battle against our rival named Rival. Yes that was his name because I'm super creative. 

First let's talk about Victory Road, all the check points you have to go through to make sure you have all the badges is a bit silly but it does build the anticipation of reaching the Indigo Plateau. The cave it self is a bit of a pain, but we didn't really explore it, as i elected to forgo catching Moltres in favor of focusing on the task at hand of getting through the cave as quickly as possible. I just didn't want to deal with the frustration of trying to catch it and it taking up a long amount of time.

So one we reached our true destination, it was time to face the Elite Four. With a team consisting of Eevee, Aloah Raichu, Charizard, Blastoise, Victreebel & Pidgeot, on paper I should have struggled against all four members of the Elite Four... but I made sure to give each one moves of mixed types, case in point Eevee has a psyche, normal, electric and water attacks, Raichu had electric, ground and fighting, and so fourth, Blastoise had water, ice and dark... and straight on down the line. Basically the plan was to use these six as basically rough match ups that could take a few hits 

For each of the Elite Four I went into each battle with the following plans

1. Loreli: Use Eevee and Raichu's electric attacks to devasate most of her lineup, leaving Charizard to counter Jynx
2. Bruno: Use Eevee's Psychic attacks to wipe out the three fighting Pokemon, leaving the Onyx and Poliwrath to be taken out by Victreebel and Raichu.
3. Agatha: No real plan other than to one versus each other team and use the most devastating attacks possible. Her team is extremely weak to Psychic attacks, but no way Eevee can be out their the entire fight.
4. Lance: Raichu on Seadra, Aerodactyl and Gyarados to start to them it out with an electric attacks, using Blastoise to shut down the Charizard & Dragonite with water and ice attacks.

While no member of my squad got knocked out there was some close calls, but everyone hung tough. Once we stomped through the Elite Four it was time to face Rival one last time. This was the only battle in the entire game where my opponent actually switched Pokemon in and out based on match ups, so it was a little more interesting than the standard battles against Pokemon gym leaders. But my plan was this.

1. Use Raichu on Rival's Mega-Evolved Pidgeot, since flying types are weak against electric types.
2. Use Charizard to roast Vileplume
3. Use Blastoise to wash out Marowak since it was weak against Water
4. Use Victreebel to crush the Rival's Raichu
5. Use Eevee's water and electric abilities  to take out Rapidash and Slowbrow 

There was no real need to use Pidgeot in the championship battle other than in case of an emergency situation, and it was an obvious conclusion that we were winning.... because even if we had bad match ups, we had the higher experience.... still we played the match ups and became champion! Woo-Hoo! 

So with Pokemon Let's Go Eevee done that opens up Saturday for another side quest game, and I have a lot of strong contenders to consider what will take its spot. Now once the credits rolled, we loaded up Pokemon Unite, playing a few matches winning a couple and was named MVP twice. Pretty good in that regard I think.

Twitch Clip Links

• You think you're big and bad?
• Ice Beam Is Super Effective And It's A Critical Hit 
• Charizard roasts the Rival's Vileplume
• Victreebel crushes The Rival's Raichu 
• Eevee finishes off the Rival's Rapidash! 
• Eevee with the winning blow on Rival's Slowbro! 
• We just drive it home! 
• Scoring And Knocked Enemies Out 
• We slam it in! 
• Oh we won! 

Following the steam we sent the viewers over to Kalenal (twitch.tv/kalenal) who was playing Final Fantasy XIV Online. If you're interested in FF14 and want to learn how to get an idea of what happens during raids, she's one of the best to watch!. 

Since it's Sunday we have a highlight reel featuring everything done over the past week. This week's games were Overwatch, Chrono Cross, Smite, Tom Clancy's The Division, Star Trek Online, Life is Strange, Road Rash, Road Rash: Jailbreak, Pokemon Let's Go Eevee & Pokemon Unite!

Yesterday we added X-Men vs Street FIghter EX Edition for the PlaySation to my collection... and that title should be an indication this is the version of the game that was released in Japan. It is a conversion of the arcade game X-Men vs Street Fighter, but due to the limitation of the Playstion, it was turned from a two on two tag game, to a standard one on one best two out of three rounds fighter that sees your partner being used as an 'assist' and to help boost up Super Combo finishes. Because this was the Japan version, it served as the perfect test for the modified PlaySation to see if it could play a game not meant for North America.... and the test was successful. Interesting enough, despite being a Japan-only release, X-Men vs Street Fighter EX Edition has a lot of things in English at least in terms of the basic menus. The only things in Japanese was dialog on the victory screens and during a characters 'victory' ending.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Daily Workout lasted 31 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 445 kcal.  The exercises for today were Weaving Combo #2, Beginner Combo #2 and Straight Combo #1, these are always selected by the game, but since I started keep track of them, there does seem to be some sort of pattern.

For tonight's stream we'll be playing Overwatch as we do every Sunday! We'll try to stay positive when dealing the randoms we got stuck wit.

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

A Chang'e Of Scenery

Good morning everybody,

From this point forward, I'm dropping the Today's Notes & Date from the posts, just a minor change because In part some of these entries are written the previous day.

Last night's stream lead off with Smite, playing only Arena matches because they eat up a fair amount of time and were going to switch over to play The Division in the second half of the stream. We played six matches total, winning three of the, so a nice 50/50 split much like with Overwatch. Big thanks to LvStrkR for joining in on a few matches as well! Here are the specific match results and which god I used. Stats are Kills / Deaths / Assists with the KDA being how many Kills & Assists I had per each of my deaths in that match

Smite Arena Match Results

1. Chang'e - Win - 9 / 6 / 13 / 2.58 KDA
   
2. Chang'e - Win - 6 / 2 / 12 / 6 KDA
   
3. Chang'e - Loss - 1 / 6 / 7 / 0.75 KDA
   
4. Chang'e - Loss - 3 / 9 / 13 / 1.06 KDA
   
5. Chang'e - Win - 4 / 6 / 13 / 1.75 KDA
   
6. Athena - Loss - 4 / 11 / 18 / 1.18 KDA
   

Now you made notices the obvious that I was using Chang'e. and that's because Smite has long term achievements, and one is to use each character enough times to having reach Rank 10, and with Chang'e I'm at rank 7 following last night's matches. With over a 100 characters based on deities in the game, it's something that will take awhile to do, and often I run hot and cold with my willingness to play Smite. Also playing as Chang'e allowed me to use their name as a pun for this entry's title.

With the Division this week, Iceman and I focused on the Underground, going into each to random generated mission with the goal of finding collectables as well as leveling up. There are specific achievements tied to the Underground DLC for The Division, and it's a good way to keep going back to that game. As always big thanks to Iceman for being apart of the fun! Did earn one achievement last night

Tom Clancy's The Division Achievements

1. Those Signature Moves: Activate any of the Signature Skills 100 times.
   

Twitch Clips From Last Night

• New Funkos In The Collection
• How I Deal With A Scam Call 
• We Opened The Gate! 
• Very Much So! 
• Tinder is completely Useless 
• Striker Picks Up The Spare! 
• Jamming Device Disabled 
• Confirmed: Guile's Theme Goes With The Division 
• The moment I realized I should have said "Holy S... It's Viper" while playing Chrono Cross 
• Shocking... 
• Dude I'm standing in front of this dude! 

Following the stream we raided LifeWithStan (twitch.tv/LifeWithStan) who was playing Subnautica, they are very upbeat and engaging, be sure to check them out! 

Off stream, played some Street Fighter V and I realized I can easily do another Street Fighter V stream focused on chasing one achievement based around doing the story mode with the original characters the game launched with. Also picked up an achievement as well!

Street Fighter V Trophies

1. Win Or Die Tryin': It's about time you cleared Survival Mode on normal difficulty. You know what happens if you refuse, don't you? Let's just say the only way you live is if you keep on winning!

We added four Funko Pops to the collection yesterday. Moira (Overwatch / Pop! Games #490), Killer Frost (The Flash / Pop! Television #1098), Alfred E. Newman (Mad Magazine / Pop! #29) and Ripley Holding Jonesy (Alien / Pop! Movies # 733). The Ripley is marked as being a limite Edition  to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Alien movie franchise which is pretty cool. Currently looking for two more Funko's to complete a display that is on my desk's shelving. Once it's complete I'll share a picture.

Found my PlayOverwatch page featuring all of my PC stats: https://playoverwatch.com/en-us/career/pc/FredCasden-1202/. Real nice to have all my stats out there for the world to see... unlike most players who hide their stats.

Added a modified PlayStation Slim to the collection as well, as a way to both preserve the PlayStation 2 and 3, as well as possibly being able to play games that were exclusives to the PAL or NTSC-J regions. I have one in particular in mind that folks may be interested in seeing if I can track it down reasonably enough. Though the more I think about it, searching for a modified PS2 would have been more logical.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Daily Workout lasted 31 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 544 kcal. The exercises for today were Left Right Step Combo, Advanced Combo #2 and Double Combo #2. For the Lin's Champion achievement were are up to 47 out of 50. 

I see that Spider-Man: No Way Home is basically taking elements from the god-awful One More Day story-arc... which just serves as a reminder to me that Joe Quesada can go fuck himself.

For tonight's stream we will lead off with Star Trek Online, and once we've completed the Endeavor Quests and do some quick Task Force stuff, we'll be playing episode 2 of Life Is Strange. 

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

Today's Notes 7/8/21: We Found Things On The Piers!

Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream started with Power Rangers: Battle for the grid, as I took my (at the moment) preferred trio of Ryu, Chun-Li and Lauren into battle, for a solid hour, where we had wins and losses. What surprised me the most is that two of my wins came from people choosing to leave the match, and yeah, you don't quit against me, I'm not all that good, I just 'master' what I can do, which isn't all that much. Still we did push past Gold Tier I up into Platinum Tier V, where my overall rank was 1041 in the world (which says a lot about how small the player base is if i'm only 41 places out of being in the top 1000 that is displayed on the in-game leader boards). Also managed to put together a 40 hit combo, which is a personal best for me.

We did get any achievements during the Power Rangers portion of the stream, but we do have a handful of clips of some cool moments which I'll list next!

Twitch Clip: I thought I was dead to rights!

Twitch Clip: 40 Hit Combo! HADOKEN!

Twitch Clip: Come on... LET'S GO!

Now the majority of the stream was spent with Tom Clancy's The Division ans Iceman and I went into the West Piers took look for phone recordings, finding every single one (three required the use of a map). The Piers is a great place to roam around, but the enemy spawn-back rate is pretty damn high. Thankfully I had it turned down to World Tier I. Also I earned one achievement that was not related to the collectables.

1. Master Craftsman: Craft a High-end item.
2. Skillz: Equip 10 different Skill Mods.
   

Now there were a few instances of frame drops last night, which I believe is due to Comcast / Xfinity, which I'll have to look into and keep an eye one, but we also have a few clips from this portion of the stream!

Twitch Clip: Just stand there and fire!

Twitch Clip: Getting things done!

Twitch Clip: Great minds

Also off stream, went back to find two phone recordings I missed during the main game, so now every possible collectable has been found!

Had a set of high quality Phillips ear-buds and a wired PlayStation 4 controller arrive late last night (just before 10 PM). The reason for the ear buds is because as summer heats up, having the phones on becomes problematic with how hot it gets. Granted earbuds are not a great alternative because of the cord being short, but it's best I solution I could come across until the fall. 

Let me talk about the day gig for a moment, so let me express that I have long since come to loath, hate, despise and flat out dislike particular parts of this country based on the attitude the local residents when I'm trying to do my job .... there is a special place in hell for the state of Massachusetts folks 

You could tell I put in a lot of time with APBA Baseball for Windows yesterday as well, it's amazing at how random the results for every play is, and no lead every feels safe. I did make the 1909 season I'm playing harder than it needs to be by having 'maximum batters faced' limits for pitchers turned on, so it's gonna be interesting for me when my pitching staff starts wearing down.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout went 31 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 487 kcal. Struggled with doing left uppercuts from the orthodox stance today, as all 4 misses involved that particular punch. We did do a little extra so the total session was 43 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 655 kcal. We also reached 95% total game completion with the achievement we unlocked today.

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

Which means out attention now turns to the Evan's Buddy Achievement, and at the moment we're at 48 out of 100 for it. And if I'm right there are 10 more achievements in the game as well

For tonight's stream we'll lead off with Star Trek Online to get some endeavor quests done, then we'll switch over to test out some PlayStation 1 games. Not sure which ones exactly, but it'll be a variety night.

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

New Pokemon Snap Is A... Snap.

Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream lead off  with Star Trek Online, where we tackled the endeavor quests, which oddly enough mostly focused on ground combat (deal a certain amount of damage with distruptor weapons, heal one self a certain amount and eliminate anthropod enemies on either New Romulus or Nimbus III), which was all fine and good. The fourth quest which involved healing 'teammates' ships... which mean being lucky enough to get into a space task force operation where I knew it was going to be possibles to get opportunities to heal anyone I got teamed with.was pretty surprised I was able to get that in one mission because at this point in STO's life-span, most people are really quick about healing themselves.

Here are some clips from the Star Trek Online portion of the stream:

Twitch Clip: Getting The Repair Teammates Ship's Endeavor Done

Twitch Clip: Clearing a Borg Red Alert

Anyway, the big focus of the stream was on New Pokemon Snap for the Nintendo Switch... which isn't a complete remake of the original one for the Nintendo 64, which becomes pretty obvious when the protagonist of the original game pops up in the new game. Graphic wise it's pretty neat, the music is okay, and the voice acting (what little there is) is passable. It is a pretty straight forward pick up and play game once you go through the tutorials. 

Something that became real obvious to me in the early going is that this was a game where you have to level up but getting pictures of every Pokemon, in the perfect situation, at the perfect distance.... and well yeah, being perfect is real key... and would be fine.... if we weren't confined to the NEO-ONE, a little automated vehicle that moves along a programmed path (with some variants if you're lucky to find them) and thus you are taking pictures on the fly as you are moved from the beginning of the path to the end.

There is a basic story involving legendary illuminated Pokemon which from what I can tell will take about 8 to 10 hours if you're trying to just tear through the game, but it seems to me the big focus is on filling in the PhotoDex with 4 diamond level pictures of each Pokemon, which could take a real... real long time. So the value of the game in terms of longevity is certainly there.

So would I recommend New Pokemon Snap.... for the most part yes. It's a game for casual say if you have a free half hour, you can load it up on your Switch do a few trips to snap some photos and then move on with your day. I would say wait to catch it on sale, unless you're a big Pokemon fan.

Here are some clips from of the New Pokemon Snap portion of the stream.

Twitch Clip: It's HUGE!!!!

Twitch Clip: Trying to get those good photos!

Twitch Clip: So much stuff happening!

As most people saw last night we got a Blue Compass Boom Arm which we unboxed and set up during the stream. Where I had it originally was okay  but I positioned it so it's more in front of me and above me just out of camera rang. It did force a reposition of the camera used for Fitness Boxing 2 streams. But hey, at leastthe mic isn't taking up space on the desk any more (it was blocking my second monitor so I needed something to move it out of the way). The Blue Compass Boom Arm is pretty damn firmly made, but getting the arm into the clamp slot is a pain in the neck considering my desk layout is way different than most and I had to pretty much set the lock-in plants in advance, which was really tough.

Also big thanks to those who choose to sub to my channel last night and to drop bits! It isn't often both things happen in a stream, so it certainly was pretty cool to see happen!.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Daily Workout went 28 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 434 kcal, which is funny considering today's workout has me sweating a lot more than yesterdays. But today's session was totally focused on the mid-section, which is my biggest area that needs the most work. We're now up to 81 out of 100 for the Laura's Best Friend achievement. On a side note, this was day 354 of Fitness Boxing 1 & 2 (day 196 of just FB2)

Tonight's stream we'll be starting up a large campaign game using the PlayStation 4, I'm not sure exactly what will be the foucs, but I will have my mind made up by the time we start the stream this evening.

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

 

Today's Notes 6/12/21: Trover Saves The Universe

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night we played and beat Trover Saves The Universe (Xbox version, non-VR) and it took me about 5 hours to get through the entire story. The basic plot is that the player plays as an unnamed 'chair bound' protagonists whose dogs are kidnapped by a being named Glorkon who has a goal to basically destroy the universe so that he can be with his 'true love'. So basically the plot is about as thin as an episode of Rick & Morty, which should be obvious because it was created by the same guy who co-created that show , Justin Rolland.

Now I played it with the game being uncensored, and let me tell ya, that is probably where Trover Saves The Universe's biggest strength lies, as the dialog is pretty much non-stop and worth listening to at least once, which probably will raise questions about replay-ability when chasing after achievement. Graphically it is solid, nothing stands out too much which doesn't make me want to play it with a VR headset.The controls are very responsive when moving Trover himself around for combat and basic platforming, but can be exposed when having to manipulate objects as the unnamed protagonist.

The big question is would I have eventually played this game if it wasn't gifted to me, and the answer to that is probably not. While not a difficult game by any means, there's not much there to want to deep-dive back into it for another complete play through, but the good news is there is a level selection screen that will make it easier to do things in 'smaller' bits, such as wanting to go to a particular stage and find all the power babies missed, or making some choices a little differently.

Would I recommend Trover Saves The Universe... kind of, it is a game with a limited shelf-life, but if it's on sale and if you're looking for something to knock out in a night, it's worth checking out.

Anyway here's the list of all the achievements we managed to get on a single play-through.

1. You Didn't Have To Do That: You killed a NPC. That’s gonna affect the whole game! Your actions have consequences in this game!
2. Pet Cemetery: Kill all of Tony's pets... I'm tired of them pooping on my lawn.
3. Instant Clone Soup: Collect the clone DNA in under 10 minutes. That's it? Man, we're just giving these things away.
4. We <3 MURDER: Kill every villager. That's right, we celebrate violence! What do you think about that, mom and dad?
5. Here's Donny!: Witness Donny's death, then write an essay about it for your college application.
   Really? This Game's Not That Good: Replay the game, instead of getting a real job.
6. BBALL IN THE BBALL HOLE: IT'S BBALL TIME! MAKE ONE BBALL BASKET IN THE TELEPOD LIKE A GOOD LITTLE BBALL BOY OR BBALL GIRL!
7. That went well...: Glorkon mixed the world! What they get an achievement for that? But it’s just a cut scene!
8. No Winners In This Game!: Beat Glorkon without getting killed by anyone... Including me. That’s right, I’ve been hunting you.
9. Trover ****s the Universe: You beat the game! You can die a happy now, you slimy, little popsicle stick.
   

And here are some clips from last night as well!

Twitch Clip: I won't use the right thumbstick on my controller

Twitch Clip: Oh This Is Michael?

Twitch Clip: Finding Power Babies

Twitch Clip: I Think He Blew Up

Twitch Clip: Achievement: No Winners In This Game!

Following last night's stream I hooked up the PlayStation 4 just to get it set up, and I did take a good look at what's listed in the PSN store... and good lord did Sony fuck up so badly by not having any type of emulation for PS3, PS2 and PS1 games that folks may have purchased digitally in the PS3 era. It's really a reminder of their small-minded approach to actually being consumer friendly that made them lose me when my original PS3 died. But at least they learned their lesson by making the PS5 similiar in its build to the PS4. That said, I'm not sure when we'll do out first PS4 stream.

Also I jumped back on to knock out some achievements for Toybox Turbos, and man does the cheapness of the game's A.I. start to reer its ugly head when it starts being more about luck than skill. Anyway here are the three achievements we picked up.

1. With Friends Like These...: Played a local match with more than 1 player
2. Totally Random: Played an online quick match against matchmade opponents
3. Paint Job: Repainted a vehicle with a custom colour
   

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 sessions went 40 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 660 kcal. We are now up to 8 out of 10 for the Laura's Buddy achievement which we should hit tomorrow then the focus will turn towards the Laura's Best Friend achievement.

Also nearly forgot to renew my Nintendo Switch Online membership, granted what I play via online multiplayer via the Switch is limited, but since most of the games I do have for it do have online multiplayer, it's good to have just in case 

For tonight's stream we'll be back to DC Super Hero Girls; Teen Power, which we started randomly last Saturday night. It will be interesting to see when the difficulty spike starts to kick in or if this game is as even as it seemed to be! 

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

Today's Notes 6/11/21:Variety Is The Theme

Good afternoon everybody,

Well if its a work day where I'm scheduled to work but there isn't enough work to cover everyone and if I'm posting in the afternoon, it means no work today... damn it all. I may complain about some of the assignments we get (who doesn't) but I do enjoy my day job.  

Last night's stream started with Star Trek Online, where we returned to just doing the endeavor quests, which surprisingly completely involved just being on the ground. Did learn that that Elder Worms count as 'Captain' level enemies on Nimbus III so that was something. 

Following the STO segment our attention turned to playing some old PlayStation 2 games. First was The Bouncer, which despite some issues (probably with the disc), we were able to check some stuff out with it, and I was amazed with how well it still looked for a game that is 20 years old. Say what you want about SquareEnix these days, but back when the company was still SquareSoft and new hardware became available, they took full advantage of it. And I may have directed a tweet at SquareEnix last night busting their chops about The Bouncer deserving a remaster.

Next our attention turned to Ready 2 Rumble Boxing Round 2, and good lord, playing it on it's default difficult was impossible. Made by Midway Games (the people behind Mortal Kombat0, R2RBR2 certainly plays like an arcade game. Even knocking the difficulty down to easy still resulted in times where I got my ass kicked. I was surprised there was a limit on continues when doing the arcade mode, like why was that a thing? Anyway, I'm surprised the Ready 2 Rumble Boxing is a dead franchise these days, as it seems to me it would do real well on the Switch as an over the top game similar to ARMS

Finally, we closed out with Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution, and since I still had my save file from 15+ years ago, and one thing that was made obvious was that Pai was my main. Trying to remember how to playh VF4: EVO was a lot harder than I thought, but we made some progress with it. Now with all the talk as of late regarding Virtua Fighter 5 getting a PlayStation 4/5 exclusive remaster, I do want to point out that VF4: EVO still is a gorgeous looking game for being as old as it is. Would be nice if Sega did a re-release of VF4: EVO on modern hardware.

Anyway here are some clips from last night's stream

Twitch Clip: We're A Queen Slayer!

Twitch Clip: We're figuring stuff out here!

Twitch Clip: Damn... Damn... Damn!

Twitch Clip: What The Hell Just Happened?

Twitch Clip: It Broke Something!

Now we did add something huge to the collection last night, a PlayStation 4, along with The Last of Us Remastered, Horizon Zero Dawn: Complete Edition, God Of War, Spider-Man: Game of the Year Edition & Titanfall 2. The PS4 will mostly be used for the exclusive games which will start seeing their prices come down to where grabbing them in bulk will be real easy. Not sure when we'll hook it up as I 'll need to move a few things around to find a good spot for it.

I continued to put in a lot of grinding for my APBA Baseball 1993 Season, as you could tell with all the Box Scores posted yesterday. Last night was pretty rought as my Phillies went on a major losing streak, but we still have a sizeable lead

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session went 40 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 606 kcal. Also unlocked a couple of in-game achievements , the first being Laura's Trainee which was to perform 10 daily workouts with Laura, and the second was Grand Fit Fighter, which is to earn 90% of all achievements. We're also up to 6 out of 10 for the Laura's Buddy achievement 

For tonight's stream, we'll be playing Trover Saves The Universe, which was gifted to me last week by long time friend of the channel LVstrikR. We'll use the Xbox Series console for it (Since at the moment I'm currently charging that controller). 

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

Today's Notes 4/6/21

Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream of Dragon Age Inquisition didn't see any of the blips of frame rate drops that popped up during yesterday morning's Fitness Boxing 2 stream, so it was smooth sailing.

That said, we got a lot, and I mean a lot of story stuff doing last night as we tacked several story missions that involved Varric and Bianca (the dwarf not the crossbow), Iron Bull, Blackwell, Leliana and Vivienne plus the entire Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts quest which sees the Inquisitor having to play the political game at a grand ball. It certainly was a change of pace, but sadly we did not get all the goodies or find all the secrets during that, but on the flip side I did get one of the apparently toughest achievements to get called 'Belle of the Ball', which is to to gain full approval of the Orleasian court. 

Speaking of 'tough to get achievement', how come fewer people have the 'Botanist' achievement, which is just farming plants you grow at Skyhold? I don't get it.

Anyway we'll be back to exploring more of the open areas of Dragon Age Inquisition, as we still have two major ones to go through, plus work on some of the loosen side quests, so basically, last night was story heavy, tonight's it's all about wandering around. Which is fine because it means we'll be able to put more into leveling up to be able to over power nearly everything we come across. Also this means we'll have a lot of opportunity to clear out the War Table things as well

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was the first daily using Sophie, and man, her voice's lack of intensity makes me think whoever her actress was must of been thinking they were doing voice work for like Wii Fit or something, where a softer tone of voice would've worked better. That said, the session was solid and I did a little extra on top of the daily because we had the extra time this morning.

I've been taking a look at a few things on Amazon and if I time things right I could easily go about finding a lot of brand new mint condition stuff for the PS2, PS3... not so much the PS1 however.

I do have a slight case of writer's block when it comes to laying out a fan fic someone wants me to put together, actually I started it but I didn't like how it was going... and I hate restarting fics.

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

 

Today's Notes 3/30/21

Good morning everyone,

Last night's stream of Dragon Age Inquisition saw the wrap up of things in the Westward Approach and then out attention was turned towards the Exalted Plains where we covered everything we could until we had to head back to Skyhold to open up two expanded areas for that zone. We did tackled the dragon in the Emerald Graves, so we now have defeated four dragons, and there are six more needed to get the related achievement. We also unlocked the Stargazer, People Person and Invincible achievements.

We'll be continuing Dragon Age Inquisition tonight at about 6 PM EST, with a focus on some things related to what we were covering last night first before jumping back into the Exalted Plains. 

Now Sony's trend of being any consumer popped up in a big way this week with the announcement they are closing the digital store fronts for the PS3, PSP and PS-Vita with no backwards comparability options for those systems for the PS5. Now to my knowledge new games were still being made for the Vita, so it's very weird as to why Sony would close it's store-front. The PS3 and PSP I can understand because those are older systems... but this this just reeks of Sony wanting to force people into buying a PS4 or PS5. And people wonder why I went with the Xbox One and Series for my more modern main-stream console releases.

And before you point it out, yes I do Consider the Nintendo Switch to be more of a niche system in comparison.

Speaking of which, Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Session was pretty solid, very few misses and lasted about a half hour. If I'm planning things out correctly, I'll need to do 19 more exercise sets to finish up using Hiro as the trainer.

My back up Uninterrupted Power Supply should arrive later today, because fuck knows last Friday having three brief power flickers had me worried to my wits end. I went with the CyberPower CP1500PFCLCD PFC Sinewave UPS System because of it's reviews and was listed as the best one on the market on every list I could find. 

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