The Return of Life is Strange 2

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night's stream saw the start up of Life is Strange 2... and yes it's not the first time I've played it, as I played the Steam version back when the game's 5 episodes were originally released a couple of years ago and unlike the first Life is Strange game and Before The Storm, I wasn't too keen on play LIS2 again..

The first thing I wanted to touch on is the fact that the developers of Life is Strange 2, DONTNOD, didn't even want to make a sequel to Life is Strange... and boy does it show from the very start, with how they went out above and beyond in shoehorning in every possible political reference they could think of into it. Some of it can be avoided, but a lot of it thrown right into the face of the player.... and needless to say, it's one of the biggest reasons why have such mixed opinions on it. You see what made the original game, the prequel (Before the Storm) and the latest entry (True Colors) great and memorable is the fact the story and characters came first and any other references and commentary on society was no where near a priority to shove down players throats. Folks can find something to love about the other three games to great animations, artwork, fan fiction and more.... while Life is Strange 2 is basically the bastard child of the franchise.

Then there comes the problem of the main characters, Sean and Daniel... neither are particularly likeable, in fact Daniel can be down right insufferable at time.... while Sean is just a wet blanket. The choices you make as him to try and make the best out of a crazy situation never truly seem to matter because unlike the other three games where the it feels like every plot points you reach seems natural because of the choices you make, in Life is Strange 2 the story feels like its happening despite anything you do or don't do.

That said, for this play through we are trying to go for a fully 'moral' story to get Daniel to be a 'good kid' and less of a brat, and the ending with Cassidy, because I already screwed up going for the Lyla variant of the Redemption ending. We knocked out episodes 1 and 2, getting all the achievements for each one, and so the goal for tonight's stream is to get episodes 3 and 4 done. There is no chance we'll be able to tackle episode 5 until Monday's stream.

After the stream ended we sent the fun over to ErikaMonky (twitch.tv/erikamonky) who was playing Sid Meier's Civilization VI. That is a game I seriously need to dedicate a couple of nights too because I've been meaning to play it but I keep putting it off. Anyway, we met ErikaMonky during the Twitch Sings era, and she super cool. She doesn't stream often, but you are guaranteed to enjoy her broadcasts!

Life is Strange 2 Achievements

1. Sketchy: Start any drawing in Episode 1
2. Sidetracked: Find optional collectible #1 in Episode 1
3. Bear Aware: Find optional collectible #2 in Episode 1
4. Bonus Miles: Find optional collectible #3 in Episode 1
5. Ranger: Find optional collectible #4 in Episode 1
6. Room Service: Find optional collectible #6 in Episode 1
7. A Long Road Ahead: Finish Episode 1
8. Trail Angel: Find optional collectible #5 in Episode 1
9. Dillydallying: Find all optional collectibles in Episode 1
10. Back in Time: Find optional collectible #1 in Episode 2
11. Draw the line: Start any drawing in Episode 2
12. Family Business: Find optional collectible #2 in Episode 2
13. Bad Santa: Find optional collectible #3 in Episode 2
14. Heirloom: Find optional collectible #4 in Episode 2
15. Teenage Angst: Find optional collectible #5 in Episode 2
16. A Private Journey: Find all optional collectibles in Episode 2
17. Small Town Blues: Find optional collectible #6 in Episode 2
18. Free Spirits: Finish Episode 2
    

You might notice on the achievement list that the order for the ones for episode 1 seem weird, that's because we got the last two achievements after finishing the episode, using the collectors mode.

Also, I completely forgot "The Adventures of Captain Spirit' mini-sode, which was the 'demo' / teaser for Life is Strange 2 was a thing, which gives the backstory of Chris and this father to put their entire situation in episode 2 into its proper context... but it wasn't completely worth diving into on stream since all it really does is determine if Chris is wearing eye-paint in the main game.

Twitch Clip Links

• Quick Lock Him In! 
• No We Cannot Do A Bend And Snap
• Did He Just Slide Across?! Where Did He Come From?!
• It's a Bird! 
• And he dropped it on the ground
• We Found A Thing... A Diamond Achievement!
• There should be Snowmen In The Back
• Another Diamond Achievement!

Work itself was kind of odd yesterday afternoon, mostly because of how my assignment changed just minutes before I was about to start... don't get me wrong, having to do a straight up normal raw research study is much more preferable than trying to get through gate keepers to reach extremely busy professionals... but that meant the sample size was going to be a lot smaller. 

Did pick up The Artful Escape, so we'll do a stream featuring that in the near future, probably next Saturday night

Messed around a bit with Smule, and boy do I wish it had a PC version because i wouldn't mind subscribing to it to be able to do open seeds on so many songs!

Overwatch Season 30 Competitive Match Results 

1. D.va - Watchpoint: Gibraltar - 9:30 - Loss - 0-3
2. D.va - Numbani - 16:03 - Win - 3-2
3. D.va - Hanamura - 10:00 - Loss - 1-2
   

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Daily Workout featured Body Straight Combo, Triple Combo #1 and Uppercut Combo #1 with total time length of 31 minutes and a estimated calorie burn of 429 kcal

For tonight's stream, as indicated earlier we'll be continuing Life is Strange 2 with episode 3 and 4, with the intention of locking in Cassidy as Sean's love interest. Hopefully we can get all the right choices done to make sure we get the desired ending of the entire game.

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

A Night of Road Rash & A Morning Of Smule

 Good afternoon everybody,

Last night the plan was to feature the Road Rash Trilogy of Games on the original PlayStation, which includes Road Rash, Road Rash 3D and Road Rash Jailbreak... things didn't totally go as planned. 

Anyway, we lead of with Road Rash, a game I have played before on an IBM PC back in the 90s that used Windows 95. Needless to say I have fond memories of that version of the game, in fact I still have the CD-Rom for that version! Anyway, playing it's PlayStation cousin was really cool, in fact it felt natural to play in terms of what buttons did what, and nothing felt over thought out. The biggest gripe I have with it is how loud the engine sound effects are, and the general lack of audio settings in the game's option menu. It was great seeing the different FMVs for when you win, lose or wreck your bike, as they really strike a great done. 

This game certainly holds up very well for being over 25 years old, but it did take some adjustment getting use to seeing when objects would appear ahead of you so that they could be avoided. It's not much of a problem on the Thrash Level 1 or Level 2, but one Level 5 when using the fastest bikes in the game it's real noticeable at how little time you have to recognize realize and react. I wouldn't mind seeing a remaster or remake of it, hell all Electronic Arts would have to do is look at what they did with it and duplicate it with some nice 3D models

Then we went to play Road Rash 3D... and it didn't work. It would load up, show the PlayStation Logo and get to the menus to navigate. But when going to do an actual race, it would not work, it got stuck on an infinite loading screen with no clear indication it was going to actually load the race I intended to play! I tired it on both my PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3, and no dice. I would have tried in a PlayStation One, but I need to find the correct power cable for it, So disappointed that we couldn't check Road Rash 3D out, but that's  the risk of old games, sometimes they work, sometimes they don;t... but from what I saw from the controls, it looks like EA was over thinking how to use every button.

However, I couldn't leave this alone, and since I needed an excuse to test a PSOne Slim I recently acquired to possibly handle games that are region locked to outside North America, I hooked it up and guess what... it was able to fully play Road Rash 3D. So at some point we'll do a PSOne night and will featured this particular game.

Anyway, we were able to play Road Rash: Jail Break, and boy is this an ugly game to look at with muddied visuals that really makes it hard to see what's coming. The controls are very similar to Road Rash, and the game-play handles pretty well. But there is no stand alone Race Mode, it's all tied to the game's campaigns. There are time trials which are kind of fun, but wanting to just play a racing game without having to worry about story progression or stat keeping is annoying. Still I probably had more fun seeing all the different ways I could crash as some of the rag doll physics were incredible to look at

Twitch Clip Links

• Groovy... A Winner Is You
• We should be closing in on the end 
  
• He clearly did not want to live!
• We gotta.... DUUUUUUUUUUUUDE!!!!!!
• Hell of a crash... 
• Who is leaving this stuff in the middle of the road?!
• We finished The Race
• WHYYYYY!!!
• The Hype Is Real! 
• The Return Of The Bunny
• Can we make it to first.... NO NO NO NO!!!! 
• Can we get there?! 
• Cut across shorty cut across
• DudedudedudedudeDOOTDOOTDOOT!

 Following the Stream we sent everyone over to DaWorstGamerEver 25 (twitch.tv/DaWorstGamerEver25) who was playing American Truck Simulator. I've known him since High School, he's a real good guy and I hope you'll check his streams out when he's live! 

We have a new art piece from DaemonsW0lf (www.darkwolfcreative.com / twitch.tv/daemonsw0lf), and all the instruction I gave was for them to have fun and surprise me. What they came up with was an incredible portrait of The Bunny looking bad ass and geared up to be in Tom Clancy's The Division.

We added another Funko figure to the collection, from the My Little Pony Vinyl Collectable Series, Dr. Whooves, who was basically an in-joke of working in the 10th Doctor into My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic without having to go through the BBC. It's a nice little figure that goes with with the similar Rainbow Dash figure I have in terms of book-ending Funko Row on my desk shelving. 

Picked up two Custom Game Cases for South Park: Chef's Luv Shack and WCW Vs The World from www.customegamecases.com because I really really hate having loose games. If I can get a proper case for them I shall pursue that. 

We have six new additions to the collection. Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne and Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga II, which complete the collection of games from that series for the PlayStation 2. For the PlaySation 4 we've added ZOne of The Enders: The Second Runner - Mars, Tales of Berseria, Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition,and Tales of Zestiria. Am somewhat kicking myself, because we added Tales of Berseria a few months ago... oh well, guess the 2nd one will remained sealed! We also have Tales of Vesperia for the Switch, so that will remained sealed as well. `

Finally caved in and messed around with Smule this morning because breaking out The Bunny last night for a few minutes was a reminder of how much I enjoy Twitch Sings. Now Smule may have a huge song library, but there appears a lot of alternate arrangements for everything. The biggest gripe I have is that since Smule is only for mobile devices, it makes it really awkward to hold my phone to balance the camera and sing at the same time. Anyway here are the links to some stuff I did this morning.

Smule Recordings

• As Tears Go By (Solo) 
• As Tears Go By (Duet)
• The Longest Time (Duet) 
  
• Sweet Home Chicago (Duet)  
• Fly Me To The Moon (Duet)  
• Can't Help Falling In Love (Duet)
  

Now this does raise some questions... how come the RIAA has no issues with Smule but had major issues with Twitch Sings?! Is it because some of the leadership at the RIAA have ties to Donald Trump who was trying to use the office of the President of the United States to target Jeff Bezos? All signs point to yes that was indeed the case. 

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Daily workout lasted 31 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 491 kcal. The exercise sets for today were Weaving Combo #1, Intermediate Combo #2 and Advance Combo #1.

For tonight's stream we are continuing Pokemon: Let's Go Eevee.. we have eight gym badges and our next destination is Victory Road. Could we possibly finish this game tonight? We shall see!

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