Tonight's stream of Lego Batman 2 saw us knocking out three chapters, and I'm rather impressed with how puzzle heavy this game is in comparison to the original, as having to backtrack and switching suits to make forward progression is kind of important.
Of course one thing that is also standing out is that this game has no problem pointing out how much of a jerk Batman is.
Lego Batman 2 will return on Tuesday night's stream!
Friday's stream will feature Ghost of Tsushima as we will continue roaming the middle area of the game.
For the raid we dropped in on samaell_alwahm who was playing 7 Days to Day
Saw cut-scenes of The Joker for Suicide Squad Kill The Justice League, and I'm glad they are not bothering to try and copy Mark Hamill's Joker. We'll feature the new content on Saturday's stream
Work was really good as we closed out the assignment we had, now the question is... will we have work on Friday?
Finished the Power Rangers commission story, and next up is something inspired by the manga Kuroko's Basketball... which I have never read. I think I have something figured out with it
Tonight we wrapped up the Pirates of the Caribbean tales in Sea of Thieves, we came close to sinking but Iceman, Striker and I held the ship together and was able to outlast Davy Jones. The send off for the content was quite sweet.
Next week we more than likely will dive in the Monkey Island content of Sea of Thieves.
Tomorrow night we're playing Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes... and I did pick up an extra achievement in that game off-stream as I was trying to see how many codes we could find to get a leg up in the achievement hunting.
For the raid we dropped in on ZoneSama during the weekly Just Chatting stream
Work was really good, another productive night, even if there were a couple of slight issues
Started work on the Power Rangers story commission, repurposed an old outline to make it a quick and easy story to write.
Recorded episode 3 of The Daria Reactions for my YouTube channel, that will premier next Wednesday at 9 AM Eastern
Sea of Thieves Achievements
Lords of the Sea: You completed 'Lords of the Sea'.
We started Lego Batman 2 DC Super Heroes this evening, and outside of having to mute the music because of DMCA issues, we had a fun time, smashing blocks to get studs and beating up villains as Batman and Robin. This is perhaps the first Lego game I've played where things involving vehicles didn't feel clunky. We cover the first four chapters, and I figure it might take three or four more streams to complete its campaign.
Lego Batman 2 will return on Thursday's stream
Tomorrow night the plan is to play Sea of Thieves with Iceman and Striker
For the raid we dropped in on IntergalaticPants who was playing Horizon Zero Dawn
Work was super good this evening, very productive but now we're in danger of me having my schedule swapped around in again in order to keep working.
Messed around a little with WWE 2K16 as I am considering streaming that as a filler night to chase a few achievements and get some footage
Made sure to pick up South Park Snow Day
Finished the Spider-Man story commission and began work on the next one on my docket which is Power Rangers related, specifically focused on Light Speed Rescue
WWE 2K16 Achievements
Tap! Tap! Tap!: Make an opponent tap out with a submission that is not a Finisher or Signature move. (Single Play)
Work tonight started an hour later than expected, but was 'semi-productive', as my gripes about the assignment I was on Thursday and Friday rolled around. Did get to switch assignments that was of a much higher quality in terms of actually having a nice rhythm and flow to how things go.
Tonight's stream of Cyberpunk 2077 saw a big focus on side quests, as I was doing every NCPD related thing I could find in the Watson area. If I want to get an idea of what would completion be like for doing every side activity, and to level up as quickly as possible, then it's kind of neccessary, even if it slows down story progression to a crawl. We did advance one story line a bit as it relates to the Rogue / Doctor Hellman path at the very end, mostly because I though it required more credits than it did.
We of course will be continuing Cyberpunk 2077 on Tuesday night's stream at 9:30 PM over on twitch.tv/fredcasden (assuming there is work of course)
Cyberpunk 2077 Achievements
Full Body Conversion: Install at least one implant in each system and body part.
For the raid we went over to twitch.tv/lilmoolah_ where Cyberpunk 2077 was also being featured
Didn't really eat much today, had a box of Mac & Cheese that covered lunch and dinner... but that's about it. Also had a small orange.
Finished the short story commission request based on modern WWE, which I'm glad to be done with. At least the next commission request on the docket is to the continue the Resident Evil series of stories, which the next entry focusing on Rebecca Chambers and Chris Redfield. I think I'll focus on their first meeting for it.
Spent a good part of the afternoon talking to Kristi, as we kicked around some stuff Power Rangers related. It may not work as something to publish, but it's great doing something creative with her again after nearly 5 years.
That's kind of all that's on my mind, so with that, have a good night folks!
Well today started with my electric and water bills both being paid straight away, so that was a hell of way to get things going. But things improved with some stocking up of a few goodies for the kitchen, some easy to peel oranges and a few things to go with stuff I already had. And I order a BBQ rib platter from Blowin' Smoque which was fucking delicious!
Also picked up the 2023 Convention Exclusive Funko Pop of Rita Repulsa from Power Rangers.
On the down side, I am rather irritated with the idiots constantly littering on the sidewalk next to my house , found a near full set of Heineken bottles and the cardboard container just laying there, like fucking really?
Anyway, tonight's stream started at 5 PM Eastern as I'm experimenting with earlier weekend start times to off-set Monday to Thursday night streams being shorter in length. Tonight we featured The Texas Chain Saw Massacre which is available on Game Pass, and I can safely say I see the influence of Friday the 13th The Game (Since the same people are involved) along with Dead By Daylight, (Helps that Leatherface is in both games and basically handles the same way). The game is pretty much pick up and play, but the tutorial is a little lacking just giving broad over views in a video format.
I really don't have a favorite 'victim' yet, but as far as the Family members go, I really like Sissy because she can actually sustain a chase through most maps and follow through narrow passages. Leatherface and Johnny are pretty cool as well, but i really don't like The Hitchkiker or The Cook.
Will we feature this game again? Probably, we can play a little after doing some Resident Evil 6 some on Wednesdays.
On a side note, the stream did go down for about 10 minutes due to an outage from Xfinity, and they said there is scheduled maintenance this evening at 1 AM, so hopefully whatever was going on they fix.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Achievements
Behind the curtain: Get your first unlockable.
Welcome to the Family: Execute your first victim.
First Blood: Execute the first victim in a match.
Dog will hunt: As Leatherface destroy 10 objects with your chainsaw (barricade, crawl space, door).
So Close…: Kill a victim within close range of an exit in any level.
He was the greatest ever: Feed Grandpa 10 times in total
The Saw is Family: Reach family bond to maximum and keep it there for the whole match.
I'm comin' for ya: As Hitchhiker use one gap, crawl space and ladder in a single match.
For the raid we went over to twitch.tv/elegantlyslays which was also featuring The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
Did a fair bit of writing this afternoon as well, finishing of a WWE Short story commission while forgetting one of the details that was requested (which I felt bad about), and started on another Persona 5 related story. Did pick up another short story commission based on Resident Evil which I'll start tomorrow afternoon.
Of course on Monday I have an in-person interview at what was West Jersey Hospital. I'll take a Uber to get there and probably take buses back.
Our next stream is scheduled for 5 PM on Sunday evening over on twitch.tv/fredcasden, which will feature Overwatch!
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
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.
Today was fucking awful, I had a job interview in a town called Mount Laurel, and I already had great fears about being able to get there and back because of the limited bus schedules, in fact I took an Uber over to ensure I got there for my interview on time while taking a bus back. But tings went from bad to worse when I was asked two questions that caught me off guard my best friend would describe me and how the person closest to me would describe me... and both made me very uncomfortable, the first because I'm not sure who I would consider to be my best friend and I never considered how they would describe me, and with the second... well, it's obvious I was close to my mom and I couldn't control myself from tearing up trying to think how she would describe me. I feel so fucking embarrassed by that, b
Then work was cancelled in the evening for the sixth consecutive shift.... and I may have missed out an opportunity for another job interview because I couldn't plan short notice for tomorrow (Tuesday). So yeah, really shitty day
The stream started at 7 PM and we played a little game called Spirit of the North, which is a puzzle platform style game, where we guide afox through a journey involving spirits and... saving the land from pollution? Corruption? I'm not sure. It is a pretty game with a good sound track, but I may have glitched the game somewhere in the fifth chapter.
There only eight chapters (apparently) so we should be able to finish it on Tuesday night's stream
Spirit of the North: Enhanced Edition Achievements
A Guardian Forgotten: Awaken the Spirit of the North
Infused with Light: Become Infused with Pure Ancient Energy
Fetch: Carry a Shaman Staff for 3 minutes
Awaken: Awaken 5 Shaman Spirits
Spirit Bark: Unlock Spirit Bark Ability
Eradicate: Destroy 3 Plague Tethers
Blooms of Light: Collect 25 Spirit Bloom
Spirit Form: Unlock Spirit Form Ability
Uprooting Darkness: Destroy 8 Plague Tethers
Garden of Light: Collect 50 Spirit Bloom
Best Friends: Cause the Wisp chirp 100 times
Weightless: While in Spirit Form; step on a pressure plate, an unstable platform, and walk on water
Written In Stone: Infuse 30 Standing Stones
Spirit Dash: Unlock Spirit Dash Ability
Plague Doctor: Destroy 18 Plague Tethers
For the raid we went over to twitch.tv/princesspashley where Princesspashley was doing a Just Chatting stream.
Didn't do any writing on the Mass Effect short story commission, which is already at 2900 words, and I intend to work on it on Tuesday afternoon
Touched based with my former co-writer and long time friend Kristi, throwing around a few ideas for a few things Power Ranger related. It could be very Morphinomenal.
Our next stream is scheduled for 9:30 PM Eastern over on twitch.tv/fredcasden with more Spirit of the North as indicated earlier. If work is canceled, we'll start at 7 PM Eastern.
Work was cancelled today, but I was told we should have something on Monday which I really hope is the case. Didn't receive the paper work I was expecting for the job I applied for on Thursday, so I'll reach out to the recruiter who contacted me about the job I'm hoping I might get.
Tonight's stream of The Last of Us Part II saw me covering all of Seattle Day 2 on Ellie's side of the story, which is mostly Ellie by herself hoping to find Tommy instead finding Jesse, and then going off to the Hospital to find Nora and getting the information on Abby's whereabouts. Because of Ellie's apparent single minded focus on revenge, it has lead to her getting some great character growth, particularly when the flashback of Ellie learning about what Joel did coming after her encounter with Nora. Again, Ellie is certainly shining brightly as she deal with the guilt caused by Joel's decision and the guilt of pushing him away because of it, and his fate.
Don't get me wrong, Joel deserves what he got, and I have no sympathy for him as a character, because his decision basically put a target on his back and lead to greater tragedies that could have been avoided if he wasn't selfish.
That said, I'm looking forward to continuing this game on next Friday's stream
The Last of Us Part II Trophies
Specialist: Learn all player upgrades in one branch
For the raid we went over to twitch.tv/zonesama where Zonesama was hosting a Just Chatting stream.
Finished writing the 39th entry in a series of Mass Effect related short story commission requests, and it wasn't the strongest entry, considering it revolved around the character of Maya Brooks. At this moment there are no commission requests in the queue, which means I might focus on an original story
Really have to break out the sheers and go our and cut some branches and stuff, maybe will do that on Sunday afternoon if it doesn't rain that day.
Figured out what I want the Friday videos for my YouTube channel to be, and it's going to make use of my brain as a fan fic writer and using my own head canon for various franchises to make topical discussions. The first video will focus on Trini from the first season of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and will premier on August 25!
Our next stream on Saturday is scheduled for the usual 7 PM Eastern start over on twitch.tv/fredcasden and we're going to see if episode two of The Expanse is available to play, if not, then we may focus on something else, maybe continue the Claptrap DLC for Borderlands or actually start up a larger scale game. We'll see what I end up doing.
Yesterday.... because I didn't want to dirty any dishes after washing them, I ordered from Papa Johns for what was basically lunch and dinner... needless to say I felt very stuffed by the time the stream started. I've gotten so use to eating small meals that when I have something heavy it really wears me down.
Last night's stream of Elder Scrolls Online was a lot of fun as Striker joined in and we continued our focus on the main story of High Isle involving the conspiracy to disrupt a peace conference. We each picked up the same companion character which helps makes the combat a lot easier, since it's a mage... which means two of it are unleashing some major magic on enemies.
Now I do wish the wikis for ESO were a bit more coherent in terms of listing main story quests and side quests to give me a better idea of the story pacing to make things flow a lot better.
For the raid we dropped in on tokushoutsu during the marathon of GoGoFive which was adapted to Power Rangers: Light SPeed Rescue. You can check out their channel at twitch.tv/tokushoutsu
It's Sunday, which means Overwatch 2 is on the agenda for tonight! As always voice chat will be handled through discord!
Now in an attempt to blatantly extend my Xbox Achievement streak another day, I started messing around with the Breakers Collection, which contains two fighting games, Breakers (released in 1996) and Breakers Revenge (released in 1998), a pair of games released on Neo Geo hardware. Now Obviously I was expecting them to be difficult, so to get use to the in-game controls, I started on the easy setting just to see how responsive the controls are and to see if it's something I want to stream.
Needless to say my experience was fairly positive for the most part, and I was thinking I could end up knocking out a fair amount of arcade runs. Then I ran into the final boss Bai-Hu who I feel is personally one of the cheapest, input reading A.I. controlled opponents I have ever faced in any fighting game, and I'm saying this as someone who has been the arcade version Street Fighter Alpha 3 on the hardest difficulty as Sakura! It took me over two hours to beat Bai-Hu.
If I'm going to stream this game, it would certainly under some unique settings to try and go for multiple achievements at once.
Breakers Collection Achievements
Basic Moves: Won a Round without using a Super Special Move (Either Arcade or Versus) (Either Online or Offline)
The Pledge: Won a Round with a Special Move Finisher (Either Arcade or Versus) (Either Online or Offline)
I don't need it!: Won a Match without using a Super Special Move (Either Arcade or Versus) (Either Online or Offline)
The Turn: Won a Round with a Super Special Move Finisher (Either Arcade or Versus) (Either Online or Offline)
Take it easy: Finished Arcade Mode on EASY (Difficulty Level 1-3)
Path of Tia: Finished Arcade Mode with Tia (Any Difficulty Setting)
Can't Touch This!: Won a Round without taking any damage (Either Arcade or Versus) (Either Online or Offline)
Hammer Time!: Won a Match without taking any damage (Either Arcade or Versus) (Either Online or Offline)
Freshman: Used Training Mode for the First Time
Graduated: Used Training Mode with ALL CHARACTERS
Victory is Mine!: Won 10 Versus Matches (Either Online or Offline)
Don't Remember...: Won 10 consecutive Versus Matches (Either Online or Offline)
Not that Hard: Finished Arcade Mode on HARD (Difficulty Level 7-8)
Path of Bai-Hu: Finished Arcade Mode with Bai-Hu (Any Difficulty Setting)
Oh and my achievement streak is up to 21 days.
Finished the 26th entry in the series of Mass Effect commissioned stories yesterday, and got some work done on a Star Trek story I'm working on as an exclusive for my SubscribeStar followers.
I've had no issues with my main shower drain since I cleared out the clog earlier in the week, just thought I'd share an update on that!.
The City of Camden Water Bill has been paid, I don't have to worry about that again until July!
Recorded part 2 of my building a playlist based on vinyl records I own, and it features a lot of Commander Cody and Carpenters. That video will go live on my YouTube channel first on the first Monday in May.
My YouTube channel is gradually getting more attention ever since I started doing the shorts. Helps that I finally know how to make those in the right aspect ratio!
Song of the Day: Can I Change My Time by Tyrone Davis
Yesterday got off to a good start as a new boom arm / mic stand arrive which is a lot more managable than the one I got a few years ago. The key thing is now I can have the mic even further away from the speakers, but it does end up placing it closer to me.
Also had two comic books books, one being the RWBY / Justice League crossover, and the other being the Power Rangers / Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles crossover. Really looking forward to reading both.
Last night's stream of Agents of Mayhem saw a big focus on story related content and leveling up some characters. With the exception of Scheherazade, every other agents side stories are completed. We'll be getting to Scheherazade tonight as her unlock missions become available only after the Gaunt story is completed. At this point I can mostly focus on main story stuff, because I am debating putting in the grind to get every Agents up to level 20.
That said, I did notice that as far as the Xbox version of the game goes, not many people actually finished it. I think it was something like 7% of Xbox players finished the main campaign, which is kind of stunning to me. But I kind of figure if I stick with the main missions the rest of the way, I'll finish Agents of Mayhem within three streams.
So the goal on tonight's stream is obvious, unlocked Scheherazade, do her story missions and then tackle the big story arcs!
Agents of Mayhem Achievements
Super Agent: Reach level 40 on any agent.
Bombshells: Fully deck out the Bombshells in their signature outfit.
Three's Company: Fully deck out Carnage a Trois in their signature outfits.
You Got Gaunt!: Complete "Operation: Star Power".
All the Bells and Whistles: Fully upgrade all areas of the ARK
For the raid we dropped in on Kalenal while they were playing Pokemon Scarlet over at twitch.tv/kalenal
My brother hooked me up with some food from Checkers yesterday, it made for a nice change of pace of eating healthy.
You know, there are times I truly believe Naoki Yoshida aka Yoshi-P is a complete idiot... and it's mostly due to him trying to justify something stupid like only a PlayStation console can handle anything Final Fantasy related.
Got some writing done on the Dragon Ball short story commission, using flash backs have allowed for it to flow a lot better.
So yesterday afternoon the Xfinity tech came out and saw that everything was literally perfect with things at my house, but the real problem was with the infrastructure of their network beyond my house. He said it was with the 'Plant' which serves the area, and that yesterday things were really bad (as we experienced on last night's stream), things were better today with only two sudden stream resets.
So as for last night's stream it was a variety night starting with Fall Guys, and I actually won a show! I made damn sure to get the clip for that right away. Also played some MultiVersus and managed to get myself closer to earning the achievement for playing 100 matches in a 'party' Won one match with an epic double elimination that resulted in a come from behind victory. Next was Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed where I won my first match while being a ghost, and I managed to score some achievements in that while also getting my first win playing as a Ghost, before playing a few matches of Smite losing 2 and winning 1 to close out the night.
Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed Achievements
Animated: Haunt 50 Objects in a single match
Tobin's Prodigy: Fully Haunt 10 Locations as a Ghost
For the raid we dropped in on MissCammi316 as they were playing Dead By Daylight over on twitch.tv/misscammi316!
Finished the Commissioned Fan Fic request for a Halo story featuring Commander Palmer and Master Chief. I really should play the Halo games in order to actually understand these characters at some point.
Did some Vampire Survivors runs after the stream and picked up several more achievements. Would be fascinating if I actually 'complete' this game.
Vampire Survivors Achievements
Banish 2: Fill 70 entries in the Collection.
Coffin: Mad Forest: Find and open the coffin in the Mad Forest.
Coffin: Inlaid Library: Find and open the coffin in the Inlaid Library.
Reroll 4: Reach Level 100 with O'Sole Meeo.
Start of a new week means it's time to recap all the games we played last wee which were Overwatch 2, Star Trek Prodigy: Supernova, Dragon Ball FighterZ, Fallout 76, Final Fantasy XIV, Vampire Suvivors, Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight, Fall Guys, MultiVersus, Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed and Smite!
Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout featured Difficult Challenge Combo #3, Difficult Challenge Combo #1 and Biceps Shape Focus Combo for 34 minutes.
How does your feline shop? By reading a catalogue.
Song of the Day: Karma Police by Radiohead
For tonight's stream we're playing Overwatch 2 and we'll hope the stream goes rather smoothly with no issues. So on that note we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!
Here is another blog post where things totally were not saved in
their original format by Blogger for whatever reason, and thus I’m
having to recall everything that I wrote originally.
Last night's stream of Overwatch was a lot of fun as usual, we
were joined by PandaSweet for the entire stream, and we had a lot of
more wins than losses that’s for sure. We actually had a couple of
wins that took place on the Volskaya Industries map that lasted less
than three minutes and thirty seconds with us on attack. I had a
couple of Plays of the Game in Junkenstein’s Revenge as Cassidy and
Torbjourn, plus one in a Quick Play match as Moira. Other characters
used were D.va, Ashe, Soldiers 76, Mei and Junkrat.
OF course, there were some issues with my Internet Service Provider, Comcast/Xfinity, which resulted in the first 10 minutes of the stream being counted as lost footage. I've documented and I'll collect various notes so the next time I contact them I'll have a case to force a technician to come out and check everything.
We had two raids during the stream, first was from Pau6always who
was playing Rocket League over at twitch.tv/pau6always!
We also had a raid from CallMeMsGalaxy who was also playing Overwatch
over at twitch.tv/callmemsgalaxy!
For last night's raid we dropped in on Joliet4 who was doing a
short music stream over on twitch.tv/joliet4!
Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid appears to be in an unplayable
state, as I tried to do few matches to get back into the flow of
playing it... but the game itself kept crashing. I was playing it on
my Xbox One S , I tried uninstalling it, reinstalling it and power cycling my console. Now to see if it was a hardware issue, I did play
some Smite, and knocked out this week's challenges with three games
as a Mayan god and 2 as a Guardian by using Cabrakan. I had no issues
at all with that. I did see on a few forums that Power Rangers has
had an increasing series of crashes posted on various versions of the
game depending on various factors. The good news is that I did get both of Cabrakan's achievements in a single match so it was worth it.
SMITE Achievements
TREMORS!: "Unlock
the Smite Award "TREMORS!"
Shield Smash: "Unlock the Smite Award
"Shield Smash"!
So the question becomes, will I ever stream Power Rangers; Battle for the Grid again... we'll see, I'll try installing it on the Xbox Series S console and see if I have the same issues.
Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout featured Difficult Challenge Combo #2, Difficulty Challenge Combo #3 and Biceps Shape Focus Combo. This was also day number 700 in a row of working out,
If you're looking for tools to help with streaming or communicating from home with work, check out what Xsplit offers over at Xsplit.com,
use the promo code CASDEN to save 10% on your order! If you're looking
for just general stuff, of course you can swing over to Amazon using my
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For tonight's stream we will be featuring Tom Clancy's The
Division 2 with Iceman to finally check out the Keenly College
content.
Last night's stream had a wide amount of variety with games from the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 era. We lead off with Legends of Wrestling, which arrived in the mail mid-afternoon, and outside of the unlock all the wrestlers code not working, it was just as mediocre as I remember. Mainly I added it for the purpose of having the completely trilogy of the series. Something of note is that my stream had a few resets which I suspect was due to an issue with Comcast.
Second game was Rocky Legends, which in many ways is the older version of Big Rumble Boxing: Creed Champions which we played last year... just a little less arcade like. It does have a full story mode, with various unlockables that can be earned... but Rocky Legends is a lot more grind heavy. Also of note is that the music from the Rocky films is worked in quite nicely through the game with some musical cues kicking in depending on how a round is going.
We then switched to the PlayStation 3 and checked out Golden Axe: Beast Rider... and from what I experienced, it seemed like a good game The controls are a little over thought out, and the riding of the dragon seemed a little clunky, but beyond that the game looked, sounded and played pretty well in my opinion. Would I dedicate it to a full attempt to beat it... who knows.Still, I did find it to be better than something like Bloodborne.
Marvel vs Capcom: Origins was the next game, which has the full arcade port of Marvel vs Capcom... now i played the EX Edition recently, but going back into the 2v2 style certainly was screwy, as I felt a lot of my timing was way off in regard to what I was able to do. Not to mention the Arcade port A.I. is much more brutal than the PlayStation variant. We closed the night out with a quick look at Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, which was the version of SSF2T that had the more modern look that no one really liked. If I started earlier in the night I probably would have dedicate more time to actually brute force my way through it, but hey that's a challenge for another day!
For last night's raid we dropped in on CallMeMsGalaxy who was playing Overwatch over on twitch.tv/callmemsgalaxy!
Speaking of Overwatch, I did my 5 placement matches for Support... and went 2-3, getting placed at Silver 1724
I would be shocked by all the drama surrounding Star Wars, but lets be honest, at this point, most people are taking the roles in that franchise just to bait trolls.
Today's Fitness Boxing 2 workout featured Triple Combo #1, Double Combo #2, Left-Right Step Combo and Advanced Combo #2. Triple Combo #1 was set to No Mercy Difficulty, and managed to score a new personal best on it.
Started work on the commission request for a WWE story involving Finn Balor, AJ Styles and Liv Morgan, I got the general opening set, and I figure if I don't over complemented I can knock it out gradually over the next few days
Feeling old yet... rumors are starting to pop up regarding what may be happening for the Power Rangers 30th Anniversary. Although I believe Jason David Frank is done with the franchise because of how his tattoos need to be constantly covered, and of course there is issues with Austin St. John that could result in him spending 20 years in prison due to committing fraud with the PPP loans.
For tonight's stream, Iceman will be unable to join us, so we'll be taking a break from Fallout 76 and focus on something else for to the evening! Thus I think we'll place the Xbox 360 version of Ghostbusters on tonight's stream.
God damn did it get cold! Last night following the stream it was 15 degrees! And I didn't get up till like 3 PM Eastern today... so anyway, last night's stream featured four games, and since that was the case, I'm going to give my thoughts on them here right now.
First, there was Dead of Alive 2: Hardcore, and prior to last night, the only DOA games I played were Dead of Alive 5: Last Round (on Steam and XBox One) and the original Dead of Alive (PlayStation). DOA2:HC certainly holds up, it's character models all look great, the game play is still the same so it was very much a pick up and play for me without having to figure out too much, in fact I was surprised some stuff I would use in DOA5:LR worked in DOA2:HC (such as many of Tina's throws!). The story mode was interesting, in that it just give some extra moments of character interactions, but I'm not to sure how I feel of the Tengu as the 'last boss', with how it distorts the screen and having some really cheap tactics.
Second was Dino Stalker, a spin off of the Dino Crisis games, Dino Stalker sees the hero Mike Wired, getting transported to another dimension where he he ends up having to fight dinosaurs to stop something catastrophic from happening. This is a light gun game, but it can be played with a controller... and outside of instances where I feel I've having to fight the movement controls, it is fairly solid and certainly playable.I made it through the first three levels with only one death and that was due more to me not realizing I can destroy objects to reach new areas, and thus I ran out of time!
Third was Power Rangers; Super Legends... and it's certainly better than Power Rangers: Time Force. Released to celebrate the franchises 15th anniversary, Super Legends is a side-scrolling beat 'em up that does reward exploration to find hidden items and secrets, but it can be a straight forward experience if that is what one prefers. It is an oddly 'quite game' as even at max volume, it certainly didn't sound as loud as say most games from the PlayStation 2 error. We cleared the first couple of levels with a fair amount of difficulty, plus one Mega Zord battle, which was... interesting.
Lastly, the final game of the night was WWE SmackDown: Here Comes The Pain... and I have always thought this game was overrated. Some of the character models looked okay, but in comparison to Dead or Alive 2: Hardcore which we played earlier in the night, HCTP has not aged well. Here the face of Trish Stratus doesn't even look as if it belonged on her body from some angle. That said, the game play certainly took a lot of getting use to again... and the A.I., even on Normal, can be down right brutal (can't even think how I use to play this on its hardest difficulty setting). Since I still have my memory cards, I had a save file with every thing unlocked, so that was fun at least.
Of course a little detail about last night's stream is that I set up a new scean in OBS to use when playing older games whose aspects ratios were 4:3 (mostly for the original PlayStation and PS2 things in my library), and added a little feature that shows the game title on screen as well.
Following the stream, for the raid, we dropped in on Kalenal as they were playing Final Fantasy XIV! They stream three times a week over on twitch.tv/kalenal!
Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout featured Double Combo #2, Left-Right Step Combo and Advanced Combo #2 for a duration of 31 minutes and a calorie burn of 561 kcal. Normally I would do a little extra on top of the daily, but since my butt didn't get out of bed till the middle of the afternoon, I just stuck with the daily.
My off-stream Final Fantasy XIV adventures saw me start up the 5.5 content starting with Unto the Breach, and and I went roaming around unlocking a couple of more 'job' classes with in the game as well, because at some point I will be needing to expand what roles I utilize! Though I am content being the clueless Bard... I just do Damage, so no one expects me to be on point for heals or pulls as a tank! There was a particularly charming moment with Estinien confusing Alisaie for her brother Alphinaud. Sure they are twins, but how can anyone confuse Alisaie for her brother upon first meeting! Their hair parts on different sides and Alisaie carries a rapier! Rather surprised that Alisaie let the Azure Dragoon live after that to be honset.
It's Sunday, which means its Twitch Bits time to highlight all the games we played last week in a little video! This past week we played Overwatch, Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise, Forza Horizon 4, Gears 5, Final Fantasy XIV, Kingdom Hearts III, Dead or Alive 2: Hardcore, Dino Stalker, Power Rangers: Super Legends and WWE SmackDown: Here Comes The Pain!
For tonight's stream, we're playing Overwatch, as we do every Sunday!
You know that feeling when the end is in sight for a game, but then you realize exactly what you need to go through to finish it? That is exactly what happened to me with last night's stream.
As you know, Pokemon Shining Pearl was what we were featuring, with the first goal of getting through the eighth gym was interesting, and it probably should've been a warning as to how the Elite Four were going to be in terms of specialty, or rather going off-specialty.. The Victory Road journey was pure torture to get through, mostly because the Pokemon spawning in it were just pure mindless action. Granted the level boosting was nice but seeing Golbat after Golbat which basically negates the effectiveness of some members of my squad is just mind numbing.
Then there is the bull shit of having to win five fights in a row with no real chance to rest after beating the Elite Four, it's straight to the Champion Cynthia. Which means the next time I play Pokemon Shining Pearl next Saturday, that entire stream will be about grinding. I will probably do off-stream re-matches against the Elite Four without using Portions or Revives to get as much XP as possible since I know I can get through them with extreme difficulty at the moment. Plus I'm going to want to stock up on every healing item I can.
One last note, every member of the Elite Four having Earthquake as a move on multiple Pokemon is just cheesy, frustration. If there is a reason why we want to over-level just have the Hit Point pool large enough to tank those devastating hits. In fact that process began this morning as I set about looking for the Lucky Egg and finding a spot to start gaining levels on my team with Rapidash being the horse of the squad and beating up on Ice-Type Pokemon in the underground.
We had two raids during the stream, first was LumiLexy who was playing Little Miss Fortune over at twitch.tv/lumilexy! The second raid was from Lunar_Princess who was playing Pixel Ripped 1995 over at twitch.tv/lunar_princess!
Following the stream we sent the fun over to Kalenal who was playing Final Fantasy XIV! You can find Kalenal over at twitch.tv/Kalenal!
Played a little Final Fantasy XIV off-stream yesterday afternoon, knocking off a few main-story quests, but the length of the dialog to sit through does mean I've really slowed my pace down with the game as of late considering it's all setting up stuff for Endwalker. Plus the clear indication we're on a collision course with Elidibus is really obvious.
Today's Fitness Boxing 2 diamond workout featured Defensive Combo #1, Double Combo #1 and Defensive Combo #2 for a duration of 28 minutes and an estimated calorie burn of 438 kcal
Since for whatever reason Mortal Kombat IX is delisted digitally, I tracked down a copy of the phyiscal version for the X-Box 360. I believe backwards compatibility for it was recently added to use on the X-Box One / Series X consoles... but since only my X-Box One has a disc drive, that is how we will feature it. I also believe it's only functions for head to head play are also disabled as well, so no need to worry about online achievements/
Managed to get the final two achievements in Jump Force, one was needed to unlock the other, but the game is 100% completed. I became the 283rd person over on trueachievements.com to accomplish that particular feat. According to X-Box itself, of all people who have owned and played Jump Force, only 0.01% have actually done this.
Jump Force Achievements
Apex Fighter: Got S rank 10 or more times on Expert Free Missions.
Jump Force: Obtained all achievements
Also spent some time working on another set of achievements in Microsoft Solitaire Collection. If it weren't for the in-game ads, this would be a lot more pleasant.
Microsoft Solitaire Collection (UWP) Achievements
Playing the Odds: Completed all the odd-numbered challenges in an event before playing the even-numbered challenges
It's time for this week's Twitch Bits, highlights from last week from
all the games featured which were Overwatch, Fist of the North Star:
Lost Paradise, Forza Horizon 4, Gears 5, Final Fantasy XIV, Kirby's
Adventure, Power Rangers Time Force, Rushdown, Shock Wave Assault, Space
Jam, WWF War Zone, Yu-Gi-Oh Forbidden Memories and Pokemon Shining
Pearl!
For tonight's stream Overwatch is on tap with the goal of playing enough matches to unlock the Peppermint Bark skin for Brigitte!
You know when it came to last night's stream, I easily could've just picked one thing and spent the entire night featuring one game.. but no, I made it a variety night, trying out some stuff and bouncing from game to game. I am silly like that. All games but were were played on the PlayStation One
We kicked off the night with the PlayStation version of Shock Wave: Assault. Prior to yesterday, the last time I played it was probably in the year 2000, but that would've been the Windows 95 version. We managed to cover a few of the early missions, and I felt I got a good handle on the controls. Surprisingly, not every button on the PlayStation controller is used. Funny thing, I do remember the Windows 95 version being harder to control, but I don't remember if I was using a joystick, mouse and keyboard or a game pad at the time.
Next was Rushdown, a game my younger brother had, which I don't remember ever seeing him play. It's an extreme sports title, that features timed trials either on a snowboard, kayak or bicycle in 5 locations. It's a really limited game and really comes down to mastering each course with each way of getting down it to unlock other courses.
Broke WWF War Zone, and I can safely say last time I played this was way back in 1998. We did a few matches in the Championship Challenge mode to see if we could get one of the promos to pop (it did for Triple H, whose promo was clearly recorded during his blue blood gimmick). Funny thing I realized about War Zone's roster is that it clearly was set some time in early to mid 1997, and it was clear there was some last minute adjustments made to get things as up to date as possible with Bret Hart and The British Bulldog leaving in November that year, Faarooq's baby face turn in early 1998, and other little details. On a side note, I could not do any finishers.
Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden Memories was the next game featured, and boy did I remember why I regretted getting it when it came out in the early 2000s. While the story is well done with some nice visual novel presentation, the game play is the most brutal case of 'RNG' from that time period. You have to have knowledge of every card, know which ones can be combined to make more powerful monsters that can defend or attack. I do think I have a save on one of my memory cards, I would have to check.
Space Jam made its second appearance on the year, as we played two games, winning one of them... because I increased the difficulty in the second game. Still it was nice to get some of the various Loony Tune dunk animations to pop, such as Tweety lifting Sylvester, and Elmer Fudd's face planting against the from of the rim.
I finally tried out Power Rangers; Time Force... and boy oh boy, was I not expecting the wonky hit box detection. Clearly this game was rushed, as I feel like nothing I was doing was really connecting against the enemies, and navigating can be a pain, regardless if using the D-Pad or Analog stick. With the 'beat the level within the time limit gimmick', this is a game where mastering where everything is located is key to be able to get the rewards. That said, the use of Footage from the Super Sentai series Time Force was based on was pretty cool. Also this was the game I was playing to enter 2022.
To close out the stream, I loaded up the Nintendo Switch to play a little Kirby's Adventure, getting through the first two words (as in beating the bosses of both words following the standard stages). I really should sit down to see if I can fully beat this game on stream some day. I also forgot to get a screenshot of Kirby's Adventure... oops!
Following the stream we sent the fun over to FelKimChi who was playing Minecraft! You can find their channel over at twitch.tv/felkimchi!
Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Daily Workout featured Intermediate Combo #1, Triple Combo #2 and Biceps Shape Focus Combo for a duration of 31 minutes and an estimated calorie burn of 519 kcal. Here are the stats for the week
Punches Thrown: 10,272
Estimated Calorie Burn: 4083.30 Kcal
Someone needs to tell Kanye West that stalking Kim Kardashian is probably going to land him in prison... actually, don't tell him, the comedy of him being arrested and locked away would be awesome!.
Keeping my daily achievement streak going and to kick off 2022, I knocked off another Street Fighter II game from the 30th Anniversary Collection.
Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection Achievements
True Champion: Beat Street Fighter II': Champion Edition.
Because of the length of last night's stream I did not put in any time on Final Fantasy XIV, granted it would've mostly been cut scenes anyway near as a I can tell for the Main Story Quests!
For tonight's stream we shall be playing Pokemon Shining Pearl, as we'll be heading to the eighth gym and level grinding as much as possible along the way!
