We Were Batman... In Lego Form

Good morning everyone,

Last night's stream featured Lego Batman, and since we're playing the Xbox 360 version, that means we're getting achievements which is rather nice. Now because of how much music is taken from Batman '89 and Batman Returns, I'm playing the game with the music turned off to avoid any DMCA claims... granted, the music does not get muted for cut scenes, which means all of Danny Elfman's score has to be muted via YouTube's tools. This does have an extra benefit in that I can hear when collectable items are near, which isn't too possible with the in-game music on.

Of course, all the charm of the Lego video games are in full effect with the cute comedy that one can't help but smile at. Since I've played the Steam version before and only did the Batman portion before, remember what to do was an experience. I don't believe I even touched the villain side on the Steam play through. Looking forward to more Batman shenanigans tonight. Now this being a Lego video game, that means going after collectables for completion would be and is a pain in the ass of epic proportions. Thankfully, many of this game's unlockable codes were discovered years ago, so simply imputing them meant I was able to jump to 40% completion right off the bat. Also I did jump into Free Play mode off-stream to unlock a few achievements.

LEGO Batman Achievements

• Super Builder.: Build 50 LEGO build-its.
• Hero.: Complete the first episode - Hero.
• Justice League.: Unlock all the Hero characters.
• Unbreakable.: Finish a level without dying (Character) with no extras.
• 0000001 00000011.: Build the giant LEGO Robot.
• Villain.: Complete the first episode - Villain.
• Is it a bird? Is it a plane?: Glide for 9 seconds.
• Eat floor... High fiber.: Slam 20 goons into the floor with Batman.
• There and back.: Destroy 10 objects in one Batarang throw. 
• Boy Wonder.: Perform 20 backflips in a row with Robin.
  

Twitch Clips

• Nooooo!
• We're going out of our way to improve the park! 
• What the hell are we making now?
  

For the raid we dropped in on Kalenal who was playing Tunic over at twitch.tv/kalenal!  Tunic looks like a very cute version of a Souls-Born game with an isometric view. Also, I rarely do clips of other people's streams, but this was a great moment for Kalenal.

Kalenal Twitch Clip

• Hello Freeze On Demand!
  

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout featured Waist Shape Focus Combo, Uppercut Combo #1, Advanced Combo #1 and Straight Combo #1

Was told today I would have an assignment from my Day Job, so I got that to look forward to this afternoon. Wonder exactly what is being researched this time. If its interesting I'll try to remember some details for tomorrow's blog.

Here's what Republicans seem to fail to understand, social media sights are not 'the media', sites like Twitter, Facebook and so forth have terms and conditions that must be followed, and if you violate there TOS, then those sites have the right to throw you off them.

Apparently there's a 20+ year debate over a line said by Ralph Wiggum on an episode of The Simpsons, ("Oh Boy sleep! There's where I'm a Viking"). Some people take it literally, some take if figuratively, I take it as... it's Ralph, if he says he's a Viking where he sleeps, then he's a Viking.

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 affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3L8N1Yj.    

For tonight's stream we're continuing Lego Batman: The Video Game, seeing if we can through episode 2 for both Hero and Villain. So on that note we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

Smite, The Division and a long Weekend

Good afternoon and Happy Thanksgiving,

Well I now have a long weekend because of the Thanksgiving holiday... so this means we'll have early streams today and tomorrow!

Last night's lead off with Smite, nothing major, as we stuck to the arena modes and got in several matches as a few different characters. I kind of figured out a little something with using Nox and Medusa that I feel could be effective with if I ever put in a lot of practice. Didn't get many wins last night, and we ran into quite a lot of people leaving matches.

Also, we did play The Division 2, with Iceman and PowerThumbz, to tackle stuff associated with the Reanimated Event. Which was I think fourth time that event was done this year, I know it was done in February and May, and I want to say sometime in the summer but I'm not to sure on the last one. Still it was fun and hilarious.

Still not sure how much more I personally can get out of The Division 2, its next expansion would need to have some sort of story content to really justify me keeping it on my X-Box One at this point. 

Following the stream we sent the fun over to Kalenal over at twitch.tv/kalenal who was playing Final Fantasy XIV! 

SMITE Achievements

1. Where Did I Go?: Unlock the Smite Award "Where Did I Go?"

Twitch Clip Links

• Where Did I Go?
• STRIKE! 
• Everyone is on fire...
  

Today's daily Fitness Boxing 2 workout featured Beginner Combo #1, Straight Combo #1 and Weaving Combo #2 for a duration of 31 minutes and a estimate calorie burn of 445 kcal. For sure we'll knock out one more of the EX Achievements with tomorrow's session

If you got a dark and twisted sense of humor, then look up Dark Simpsons on YouTube, you will never look at the characters on that show again the same way.

How do I know it's going to be a very cold winter... simple, it's the end of November and I have to put sweat pants on! Normally I'm in shorts in my office space.

My off-stream Final Fantasy XIV adventures was very straight forward, as I did the Battle of the Bridge trail that is apart of the hilarious Manderville series of quests, as well as knocked out the First, Third and Fourth Binding Coils of Bahamut via the un-synced method, which meant for me to do them solo. The third is a very weird jumping puzzle in figuring out which triggers leading to getting down further... and the fourth was a bit tough solo, but I succeed and now I never want to see those trials again!

For tonight's stream, I believe we are going to start up Pokemon Shining Pearl, which recently came out. I am not at all familiar with the Generation five era of Pokemon, so this will be a new experience... I don't even know which start I'm going to go with! 

So we'll find out later today over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

Michonne: The Side Story That Means Nothing

Good Morning everyone,

Couldn't fully get to sleep so I was up early, this is the result of me sleeping in yesterday till 2:30 PM in the afternoon... anyway last night's stream we did a one night play through of all three episodes of The Walking Dead: Michonne, which was released after The Walking Dead Season 2.

Now in case you can't tell by the title, The Walking Dead: Michonne is basically a side-story that has not connection to the adventures of Clementine that we see in seasons 1 & 2 and what we'll see in New Frontier & The Final Season. The reason is because this takes place within the context of The Walking Dead comics between issues #126 & #139, when the character of Michonne left her group, so it picks up with her on her own and willing to end it all because she has nothing left to live or fight for. She suffers from a form of PTSD because she doesn't know the fate of her kids from a failed marriage and that at times interferes with how she sees the world around her. It certainly makes for a unique experience, but at the same time, it does give off an impossible way to justify how one should have Michonne act.

Unlike with Lee, Clementine (and with Gabe in New Frontier), Michonne is a character that has a back story, so you don't want to have her be too much of an uncaring monster, but your don't want her to be open and jokey either, it's more about making her fit the role she had in the comics. Even if one has not read the comics, one can't shake the feeling that Michonne needs to be portrayed a certain way... and it's down to how the game is written.

And on top of that, the events of Michonne's adventures don't matter because we don't see Paige, Sam, Alex or James in New Frontier or the Final Season. Hell just about everyone is pretty expendable because even if you choose for Michonne to stay with her hallucination of her kids at the end, she'll end up living, so it's pretty meaningless in the long run.

Still with this done, we'll move on to The Walking Dead: New Frontier, with the plan doing episodes 1-3 on Monday and episode 4 & 5 on Tuesday.

Big thanks to Fn_dante_savage for resubscribing to my channel to earn the 12-month sub-badge! Also thank you to redneckerthanyou for kicking in 25 bits during the stream! The support means a lot!

Following the stream we sent the fun over to Kalenal who was playing Final Fantasy XIV over at twitch.tv/kalenal! 

The Walking Dead: The Telltale Definitive Series Achievements

1. Landfall: Completed Michonne Episode 1
2. Quiet Time: Completed Michonne Episode 2
3. Farewell: Completed Michonne Episode 3

Twitch Clip Links

• It advertises peaches... where the hell are the beans?!
• We're not sorry! BASH! BASH! SMASH... his face in
• Somethings Are Not Rendering 
• We have to disarm her!
  

It's Sunday which means we have this week's collection of my favorite moments of the week for you to check out over on YouTube. This week we featured Overwatch, Fitness Boxing 2: Rhythm & Exercise, The Walking Dead Season Two, Final Fantasy XIV, Gears of War 3, Star Trek Online, Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, The Simpsons Game and The Walking Dead Michonne!

Did some Final Fantasy XIV stuff off stream last night as well, and not so much on the main story quest, as we cleared out the Level 31 to 40 stuff, and then found the Enterprise in the Mission In Pursuit of the Past, when someone asked where my Soul Crystral was. So I had no clue, and thus I asked Kalenal who told me about the job quests, and thus I knocked those out in fairly short order for the Archer and the Bard ones that are available, then learned I could not proceed any further until I complete the Main Story Quest Before The Dawn which is a long ways away. Still progress was made!

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily work out lasted 28 minutes with the following exercises: Double Combo #1, Defensive Combo #1 and Defensive Combo #2 for an estimated calorie burn of 448 kcal. We kept it light today, also this was a perfect work out, no misses or OKs.

For tonight's stream we'll be playing Overwatch and we'll do a mix of Quick Play matches and doing the Halloween Terror event stuff. So it'll be pretty chilled!

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

We Rocked Springfield Like A Hurricane

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night we had the goal of finishing The Simpsons Game which we started last Saturday night, and safe to say we managed to do that, even if it took me a while to finish the various stages and the fact I had to look up the solution to beat up Ben Franklin.

Anyway, we picked up at the half way point with the Alien Invasion of Springfield and having to save Cletus from being anal probed which probably took longer than it should, but we did get a great cameo of Kelsey Grammer's Sideshow Bob. From the there the second half of the game began as The Simpsons end up in the Game Engine and need to make their way through four 'games' that are parodies of EverQuest (Marge calling herself a MILF Queen repeatedly was just awesome), Medal of Honor, Grand Theft Auto,... and whatever stereotype of Japanese games EA was trying to pull off, before going after Matt Gorening who brings in Bender and Dr Zoidberg from Futurama for help.... and then finally going to Heaven to get some answers from God.

Now it took me five and half hours to get through all that, a few deaths along the way, but it was a lot of fun. I did have a real mixed feeling about going after the collectables, and if if just ignored them I probably would have finished the entire game in one night, but it was what it was.I do admit I love the Dance Dance Revolution style battle against God with the 'wrath of God' mix of Rock You Like A Hurricane playing, it's such a silly way to take down the almighty. And of course Ralph at the end breaking the fourth wall was just classic.

Big thanks to LumiLexy for the huge raid during the stream! They were playing Luigi's Mansion over at twitch.tv/lumilexy!

Also thanks you to Largepen420 for the follow during the stream as well!

Following the stream, we sent the fun over to SheepFuzz who was playing Jackbox Party Pack 8 over at twitch.tv/sheepfuzz! 

Twitch Clip Links

• First Person Maggie View
• Lies! 
• They are Both Right... Marge is an Elf and A M...
• Burns Down On One Hit 
• Damn it! DamnitDamnitDamnit DAMN!
• Wonderful Magical Animal!
• Say What Marge?!
• Walk Away Now
• Sending Shakespeare to Gat Out Of Hell
• Ralph Knocks On The Monitor

Already earned the Week One rewards for this years Overwatch's Halloween Terror Event, and picked up a couple of Plays of the Game, one as McCree and one as Tracer. We'll feature Junkenstein's Revenge alternating with Quick Play matches on Sunday night!

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Daily Workout Session lasted 31 minutes with the following exercises: Triple Combo #2, Intemediate Combo #1 and Biceps Shape Focus Combo for an estimated calorie burn of 521 kcal. Since I work up very late today, I did not do any extra exercises.

For tonight's stream we are doing a one night play though of all three episodes of The Walking Dead: Michonne, which should easily cover the entire evening. Originally released between Season 2 and New Frontier, Michonne has no noticeable connection to the adventures of Clementine, which is probably why most people ignore it!

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

A Night Of Final Fantasy XIV

Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream fully featured Final Fantasy XIV, making it the first time we dedicated an entire stream to it.

We started with the 'Wreath of the Titan' story arc, which saw a lot of going back and forth from place to place, doing literal fetch quests... all in the name of 'proving ourselves' worthy of fighting the second of the games Primal gods, Titan, which is often the Earth based summon in most Final Fantasy games. Now things were going pretty well, outside of one bad encounter in a FATE where I got overwhelmed, but things were going smoothly. Then when I finally reached Titan (and after waiting in a queue for 10 minutes), I get squashed, revived and the knocked off the ledge! The other three people in the party had no issues with Titan... and I got credit for the quest being finished, but I did nothing during that fight! I'm quite mad about that while laughing at the same time at the shock. 

That kicked off the next major part of the story where the Scions are attacked, Minifilia is kidnapped and we find Cid as a monk with amnesia in a church which kicked off the search for his airship, the Enterprise. You know it's not a Final Fantasy game until Cid shows up, with the next goal finding his airship, The Enterprise. I remember back when I played Final Fantasy IV, that the name of the airship in that was also the Enterprise.... it's a good name for a shit, can't dispute that. 

So doing a full stream based around Final Fantasy XIV certainly proved to be more robust than a Star Trek Online stream because of the amount of content, keeping in mind I'm not doing the side quests at the moment, instead focusing on the main story quest line. The biggest draw backs are waiting in queues for dungeons, which can be anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes based on what I've experienced.

Following the stream we sent the fun over to Oldish22 who also was playing Final Fantasy XIV over at twitch.tv/oldish22! 

Twitch Clip Links

• Well he fell down 
• God god what is that?!
• And it's a dead turtle 
• We got him!
• Finishing The FATE in Time
• It's Huge! 
• First Time Facing Titan...
• I'm sorry but that was funny as hell! 
• Taking Out The Watcher

Now I did continue my trend of doing more Final Fantasy XIV off-stream, knocking out several quests leading up The Best Inventions is one of the final quests in the level 31-40 range of the story.I have noticed that some enemies are starting to be a little tougher out in the field despite the level advantage I have... then again, gear seems to be my biggest handicap.

Is there a more delusional D-list celebrity than George Takei? I mean the guy loves to blame William Shatner for the short gains in his career, but when you actually research Takei's history, you realize he basically justified the hiring of Walter Koenig for Star Trek's second season because Takei signed on to be in 'The Green Berets' starring John Wayne, which cut down on his own screen time, not to mention the fact that Takei only became an 'icon' as a result of becoming a self-parody with a starving need for attention which lead to him being a regular fixture on Howard Stern's program in the 1990s and 2000s.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Daily Workout lasted 34 minutes and featured Difficult Challenge Combo #1, Difficult Challenge Combo #3 and Difficult Challenge #2 (in that order) for an estimated calorie burn of 645 kcal. For the Free Training we did Defensive Combo #1 and Defensive Combo #2 for an additional 11 minutes with the estimate calorie burn being 172 kcal. So the totals for today were 45 minutes workout time with an total estimated calorie burn of 807 kcal.

For tonight's stream we are continuing The Simpsons Game, we played about 50% of it this past Saturday, so with a bit of luck we'll finish it tonight!

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

 

Black Cats in Star Trek And Hordes In Gears Of War

Good morning everybody,

Yesterday certainly was weird, as someone hacked my PlayStation account, thankfully since I work from home I was able to act quickly when I saw the email saying something changed! Took an hour to resolved, but hey nothing was charged to my account.

Anyway last night's stream lead off with Star Trek Online as we played the new 'Fall of the Old Ones' task force operation which is apart of STO's first Halloween Event. Based on the Original Series episode 'Catspaw' the Old Ones returne to study humanity, but their plans are disrupted by the Devidians. A Group of five players team up to run through a castle, fighting skeletons and hags while finding black cats and lighting candles to save the day. 

For a special mission based around Halloween, it certainly is really cool, the castle is fairly dark, you can't defeat the skeletons unless they are standing in candlelight, there are 13 black cats that are optional to find, and it's a great excuse to break out the Synchronic Proton Distortion Prototype Assault Rifle if you have it, since it's basically Star Trek Online's version of a proton pack complete with the special effect of how the beam looks.

We then played some Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, doing a successful run on Normal as Sakura before trying it on Hard as Ken... and I think I was actually getting better in keeping up with the A.I. on the harder difficulty even if it takes multiple tries to figure things out on how to approach each opponent. 

Finally Iceman and I returned to Gears of War 3 to mess around with the Horde mode. We tried it with just us at first, before grouping up with randoms, as we experienced some weird lags jumps, but got to the 20th wave before things went totally wrong. This was a lot of fun, it would be awesome if we could mess around with it in a group of 5.

Following the stream we sent the fun over to Kalenal who was playing Final Fantasy XIV over at twitch.tv/kalenal!  

Twitch Clip Links

• Welcome to Halloween... Star Trek Style!
• I'm a CAT!
• I'm a cat! I'm a cat!
• A Three Chain Combo! 
• This was incredibly lucky
• Big Hit!
• Iceman admits he was having a Thumbz moment 
• When Gears of War 3 Has Lag!
• I'm burning up!

Off-Stream Final Fantasy XIV stuff for me saw more Main Story Quest stuff done as we get through a bunch of missions, with everything leading to the Skeletons in Her Closet Mission which allowed us to access the Haukke Manor dungeon, which was a little confusing to get around and to keep up with the one person who clearly did it before. We progressed further to to the Wrath of the Titan quest which I believe sets up the final six quests for levels 21-30. With lucky maybe I can knock in short order.

Overwatch's Halloween Terror doesn't seem to be tracking each instances of Junkenstein's revenge, so have to do more random matches in other game modes to get the play time to unlock the first weekly skin for the event.... damn! Still I already have the first two rewards for the week done so at the very least I need to play 9 more matches to get the skin.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily work out lasted about 31 minutes with the following exercises Straight Combo #2, Hip Shape Focus Combo and Sway Back Combo for an estimated calorie burn of 459 kcal. We did an extra eleven minutes with Beginner Combo #1 and Beginner Combo #2 for added estimated calorie burn of 174 kcal. Full total for today was a 43 minute work out with a calorie burn estimate of 634 kcal.  

Some asked why don't I just do a longer daily work out, it's because with how I have Fitness Boxing 2 set up, it's because I like to control anything beyond the 30 minute mark.

For tonight's stream I'm not 100% sure what we'll do, we could do a full stream of Final Fantasy XIV or we do something completely random for the evening, as I want to save the Simpsons Video Game for Friday and The Walking Dead for Saturday. I'll make up my mind by this evening, you can count on that!

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

Just Another Fun Night of Overwatch And A Bonus Stream Of Fitness Boxing 2

Good morning everyone,

A new week starts as we have all sorts of things to consider over the coming days of what to feature and when!

Last night we of course played Overwatch, and big thanks as always to PandaSweet for joining in on several matches. We got into a hot stretch where we went 8 and 2 in our final 10 matches of the night. The night did include a couple of Mayhem matches as well, and I picked up 5 Plays of the Game, 4 as D.va and 1 as Junkrat. So a real successful night on Overwatch! Woo-Hoo!

Of course the big Overwatch news is that the Halloween Terror event starts on Tuesday October 12 and will run until November 2, and so far we know that Reinhardt and Roadhog will have new skins. The question now becomes, who else will have new attire? And what new 'achievements' will be tied to Junkenstein's Revenge this year.

Following the stream we sent the fun over to glorifiedthief who was playing Zero Escape: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors over at twitch.tv/glorifiedthief!  

Twitch Clip Links

• Bullseye!
• Caught 'em!
• Scoreboard!
• I got Bob'ed and D.va'ed at the same time
• When I can't get behind Panda's Shield
• Waiting for the right moment for a Quadruple Kill!
• Wild Finish
• That was me falling off a ledge 
• We win 
• Get Ready For A Shock!

Off-stream Final Fantasy XIV stuff is that I'm gradually making progress through the main story, but the placement of NPCs can be really odd. I get and appreciate Square Enix wanting to make it feel like a living world so that you don't find certain characters in the same spot when on a quest... but a way point finder would be useful when NPCs are in a building that is underneath where the map is indicating where they should be standing! That said the off-stream adventures  saw a familiar sight, at least when compared to Final Fantasy XV: Fighting Ifrit and getting a Chocobo, also joined the Twin Adder because well... I started in Gridania.

The guy who commissioned the two fics I've done last week basked around RWBY and Harry Potter is wanting more, hell he sent a list of stuff for me to consider taking on, but if there is one thing people know about me when it comes to fan fic writing its that I'm not really keen on repeated use of the same themes and characters unless it's something I'm really invested in.

There's been a lot pointed out at how the WWE's Women Division has seen a down turn as of late, and it all goes back to the a lot of the decisions of who was let go back in the spring of this year. The WWE would rather turn the Women's Division back into the bathroom break filler matches it was of the LayCool/Divas Title era than for the women to get equal time for their stories and characters to developer. 

Star Trek Online is kicking off it's Halloween event on Wednesday so for sure we're going to feature that to start of that night's stream, and The Simpsons game will resume on Friday night to finish it's second half.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Daily Workout lasted 31 minutes with the following exercise Intermediate Combo #2, Advanced Combo #1 and Weaving Combo #1 with the estimated calorie burn of 503.kcal. We also did an extra set featuring Difficult Challenge Combo #1 which added 103 kcal. Total session was 37 minutes with the estimated calorie burn being 606 kcal. This session was also streamed as a surprise as I tried use the Xsplit Cam set up.

Since this session was streamed the fun was set over to Sw33ts_gaming who was playing Smite this morning over at twitch.tv/sw33ts_gaming!

Bonus Twitch Clip Links

• Intermediate Combo #2
  
• Advanced Combo #1
• Weaving Combo #1
• Difficult Challenge Combo #1
  

Tonight's stream will see focus return to The Walking Dead with Season Two, which takes place a couple of years after the events of Season One, so Clementine is a bit older and is the star of the show. This will be a lot of fun!

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

The Simpsons Game Still Holds Up; Kotaku and PC Gamer Are CONDONING PIRACY?!

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night we started up The Simpsons Game on the PlayStation 3, and it's game I certainly have not played in well over a decade.

Originally released in 2007, The Simpsons Game allows the players to play as Homer, Bart, Lisa or Marge in a semi-open world environment, with specific pairs of characters of the games levels. It is a bit of a mix of button mash brawling, puzzle solving, item collecting and platformer all rolled into one very nice and extremely well produced package. As a licensed game, The Simpsons Game certainly goes above and beyond with the voice acting and look to give a proper representation of the show in a video game world.

The controls are still pretty responsive, and most of the time any missed jumps are normally the players fault. There are at times a lack of clear indication of what to do which does slow the game down a bit as a number of puzzles and solutions aren't obvious, and some things you have to basically wait for. The game does allow for two players which probably would make some areas easier than others, but it's not a difficult game by any means. Case in point, I finished 8 of the 16 levels during tonight's stream.

The collecting of items both in each level and in the open world is probably the most tedious thing, since in the levels you are limited to the 2 characters assigned to it (Bart & Homer during the food eating contest, Lisa and Marge during the mob rules section, etc) and a lot of times the camera does a too good a job of keeping things from view, as it's very easy to miss them. Granted in my case, I'm not totally going for the collectables, I'm more interested in finishing the game.

At some point this week we will continue the Simpsons game, probably on Friday since there is a good chance we're going to go hard and heavy on the Walking Dead with Season Two and Michonne

 Big thanks to LNG_3 for the raid during the stream! They were playing Golf With Your Friends over at twitch.tv/lng_3!   

Following the stream we sent the fun over to Kalenal who was playing Final Fantasy XIV over at twitch.tv/kalenal! 

Twitch Clip Links

• Hope nobody needs to go to the bathroom after this!
• Oh great we're playing Frogger now... DAMN IT ALL!
• Maggie Go Do The Thing! 
• Give Me Your Ride Jerk!
• Our Boy Ralph! 
• Behold the power of Jazz!
• Go Lisa! Donkey Just Got Konged!
• Lisa Wrecks Dolphins!
  

Went and played some Final Fantasy XIV after last night's stream to advance the story along, nothing major just running from point A to point B and getting loss every 5 minutes! Did get into a few dungeons as part of the Main Story Quest path which was cool.

It's Sunday which means it's time for the weekly Twitch Bits, and this week we played Overwatch, The Walking Dead Season One, Gears Of War 3, Final Fantasy XIV, Metroid, Super Mario Bros, Donkey Kong, Punch-Out and The Simpsons Game! 

Speaking of Metroid, would you believe two website are encouraging piracy of the new Metroid Dread game that is exclusive to the Switch? It's True Kotaku (https://kotaku.com/metroid-dread-is-already-running-great-on-switch-emulat-1847833403) and PC Gamer (https://www.pcgamer.com/watch-metroid-dread-running-on-pc-thanks-to-emulators)  both have columns written by Zack Zwiezen and Jody Macgregor on this subject. Why the fuck would you want to encourage piracy of a game for a franchise that has been neglected by Nintendo for so long? Hell the Kotaku column actually has the line: "There are so many good reasons to be grateful for pirates, emulators, modders, and hackers for doing what so many big publishers won’t" in it, with the justification that large publishers aren't preserving their legacy and that the Nintendo Switch is not a powerful console in comparison to a Xbox Series X, PlayStation 5 or B-Tier Gaming PC.

Look I'm all for preserving older titles, it's why I've done my best to track down games from the PS1 to PS3 era and take full advantage of the fact that the Xbox One and Series consoles have backwards comparability to try out older games, but I'm 100% against piracy when it comes to gaming and both Kotaku and PC Gamer should be fucking ashamed of themselves for encouraging it.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout lasted 30 minuets with the following exercises: Uppercut Combo #1, Triple Combo #1 and Body Straight Combo resulting in an estimated calorie burn of 445 kcal

It's Sunday night which means it's Overwatch time! Rather surprised that the Halloween event hasn't started yet, but here's hoping it's announced this week!

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

New Pokemon Snapped Has Been... Snapped

 Hey Everybody,

Last night's stream was completely focused on New Pokemon Snap as we put in the time to finish the game. This would be the first game we started paired with Star Trek Online on Thursdays to be spun-off and finished... which meant we put in 5+ hours in. Now I'm assuming most people who have played this were going through it super quick, while I happily re-ran courses to get photos of different Pokemon and struggled slightly with realizing there were obvious puzzles in place. Still it was a lot of fun.

Now in terms of replay value, New Pokemon Snap certainly has one hell of a long post-game, where you have to get 4 different kind of diamond ranked level photos of every Pokemon... and who knows how many levels per course there is in it. Either way, it's a game that would keep most people busy for a long time because it's certainly not meant to be binged-played.

Anyway we have clips from last night of moments that stood out to me!

Twitch Clip: Wake The Bear

Twitch Clip: Photograph IT!

Twitch Clip: The Houndoom Jump Scare

Twitch Clip: Random Button Pressing

Twitch Clip: Xerneas

Next is the Highlight Reel For This Past week where we played: Fitness Boxing 2: Rhythm & Exercise, Overwatch, Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid, Tom Clancy's The Division, Dead or Alive, Star Trek Online, Tekken, The Simpsons: Wrestling, God of War & New Pokemon Snap!  

 

Finished up the 1909 APBA Baseball Season I've been playing, and amazingly I was able to have the Detroit Tigers finish in first play, 1.5 games ahead of the Philadelphia Athletics. What made it possible was the fact that the scheduled for the 1909 season is what it ended up being at the end of 1909 when the season finished 112 years ago, which meant that the Athletics had a lot of double headers which burned out their pitching staff. The Tigers staff in game was not exactly in great shape, as I had to let everyone complete the games they started, which meant I had guys pitching into extra innings! It's amazing how much having pitchers have a maximum batters face limit can make things gut wretching. Also some in-game teams' pitching staffs were totally wasted that they had to use position players to start! I'll post stats and stuff later today.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout lasted 31 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 498 kcal, but we did a little extra so the total session lasted 43 minutes with an estimated calorie burn 685 kcal. We're now up to 57 out of 100 for the Evan's Best Friend Achievement. Today's session was also stream on Twitch, at 5:30 AM... because I woke up and couldn't fall back asleep. Anyway, that also means we have some clips.

Twitch Clip: A Sunday Morning Sandstorm

Twitch Clip: Got My Motor Running

Twitch Clip: Like Frankie Said I Did It My Way

Twitch Clip: He asked what I was thinking!

It's Sunday, which means we're kicking off a new week with Overwatch! We're gonna have fun, or at least try to, who knows how much the random people I'll play with will let me down!

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

Today's Notes 7/8/21: Well I've Never Played That Before

Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream lead off with Star Trek Online, and involved having to set up a new ship for Sorra (my Cardassian in the Klingon Empire), since one of the 'fun' things to do with STO is to master the Tier 6 vessels to unlock perks and traits that could augment a number of different factors. This also involved having to find Tetryon weapons for the endeavor quest which meant having to go to the exchange to find some decent gear, needless to say having to use way to many Energy Credits to outfit the ship with the necessary gear. Still the endeavor quests weren't too bad, destroy Voth vessels within the Dyston Sphere, do an Academy Lore quest, do a certain amount of Tetryon damage in space and defeating Tholians on the ground, We do have a few clips from that portion of the stream.

Twitch Clip: We're just tearing it apart

Twitch Clip: Come here you!

Twitch Clip: Can You Dig It!

Once the Star Trek Online portion was done, our attention turned to some of the older PlayStation games we've recently added, and for the first time I've played Tekken. I've never played the original game in that franchise, not even when it was in the arcades back in the 90s, so this was a first for me. Couple of things stand out to me, the first being how slow it is when compared to Tekken 3. The original Tekken comes across as wanting to be like Virtua Fighter, but without any of the charm. It's surprisingly difficult as well and the COM opponents can be real cheap with readying inputs, even when reducing the difficulty from Normal to Easy. On the plus side the ending cut scene for Nina was oddly hilarious. Here are some clips.

Twitch Clip: Defeating Law!

Twitch Clip: I'm not sure how I did that!

Twitch Clip: Nina Williams: Badly Dubbed Ending

A game that great surprised me with how it played was Dead or Alive. Prior to last night I've only played DOA-5 on Steam a couple of years ago, so to play the PlayStaiton version of the first game of the series shocked me with how quickly it loaded, how good it looked, how fast the action was and how it was just an overall great game. Sure you can tell it's a game that is well over 20 years old, but the game play mechanics hold up and the difficulty curve for the 'Tournament' mode isn't unfair. Yes Bayman can be real cheap as I learned, but it wasn't frustrating as I could understand how I lost and learned to overcome my mistakes to progress! Cleared the 'Tournament' mode with TIna, and while I'm glad we unlocked an alternate costume, I'm surprised there was no character ending. Anyway, here are some the links to clips from that part of the stream

Twitch Clip: An Explosive End

Twitch Clip: Getting wrecked by Bayman!

Twitch Clip: Defeating Raidou!

We closed out the stream with The Simpsons Wrestling... this is a game I played back when it came out, and I will admit I did traded it in... so finding a copy in 2021 amused me. It took me a while to remember how to play, and once I did, I feel into a good groove of getting racking up a series of wins... all the way up to getting my butt handed to me by Smithers and Mr. Burns. This game has a unique tournament mode as you get to save after every match and you gradually unlock the hidden characters (we managed to unlock Bumblebee Man last night). Now this is still a terrible game, but once I remembered the ins and out of the power ups, the taunts and so forth it wasn't that bad a time.

Twitch Clip: We'll just smother him!

Twitch Clip: Pinning Barney!

Twitch Clip: Losing To Smithers

Last night's was so much fun with the se different old games, we'll probably do a similar night next week to try out older stuff!

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session lasted 31 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 483 kcal. Didn't do anything extra today as I felt a little sluggish getting the day started (mostly due to tossing and turning last night). We're up to 50 out of 100 for the Evan's Best Friend achievement.

For tonight's stream we're back to playing God of War on the PlayStation 4, and we'll probably spend a lot of time roaming around to do side quests since we got a good portion of the Lake of Nine to open up last week.

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

Today's Notes 7/3/21: Kratos and The Boy Have To Climb Another Mountain

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night's stream saw the focus returned to God of War, as we covered a lot of ground, covering three major areas, The Light of Alfheim, Inside The Mountain and A New Destination. We learned the Witch of the Woods is Freya, the Stranger is Baulder... and got several upgrades and new abilities. We also covered two side quests as well to help boost things along.... all of this is why the stream went well over six hours! That said the 'boy' is certainly annoying, but there are a few positive to his annoyance, mainly the number of times we can assume Kratos wants to smack him! Now the big 'early story twitst' that there is a taller mountain for Kratos to climb certainly was cool... but the more I think about it... isn't it just a reuse of textures and areas from the prior areas of the game? I have noticed a heavy use of repeated graphical assets throughout God of War, and so I'm wondering with another tall as mountain to climb if it's interior is gonna be almost the same with how it looks.

Anyway with everything that was done last night we did get a couple of trophies based on story progression.

1. Feels Like Home: Allow the Light Elves to return home
2. Dragon Slayer: Defeat the Dragon of the Mountain

That Dragon Slayer one for defeating the dragon on the mountain certainly felt epic because of how that battle ended, made, which certainly made for a nice change of pace from facing enemies not that much bigger than Kratos.Of course we do have links to some of my favorite moments from last night, which I'll list next.

Twitch Clip: Insane in the membrane

Twitch Clip: Got you you little jerk!!

Twitch Clip: Kratos The Adventurer

Twitch Clip: Groovy...

Twitch Clip: I think it's dead!

Got in some Virtua Fighter 5: Ultimate Showdown off stream yesterday winning 8 out 9 ranked matches played. At the moment out of 46 ranked matches I have 35 wins, 11 losses. Not bad for a guy who only pops into it every so often. 

Of course now I do have a question... why is the PlayStation 4's Dual Shock controller has such a terrible ability to hold a charge? A fully charged Xbox One or Xbox Series controller can last 20 hours, but a PS4 controller can barely go past the six hour mark? Come on man! A PS3 Controller can handle that workload!

We added three games to the collection yesterday, Bio Freaks for the PlayStation 1, Tekken 5 & Dead or Alive 2: Hardcore for the PlayStation 2. Bio Freaks is probably best known these days for the Boss Rage done by Maxamillion Dood a few years ago, but I have to admit, the main reason it was on my list of games to get was to see if it's true that its worse than The Simpsons: Wrestling. So I'm thinking maybe doing a stream where I play both games to see which one is worse. With the addition of Tekken 5, I now have all 5 of the main games in the series and with DOA2: Hardcore, it's more along the lines of finding the Dead or Alive Games that I could possibly play, DOA3 may be a tough one to find because I believe that was a Xbox 360 only release.

Also picked up six books... Mass Effect: Revelation, Mass Effect: Ascension, Mass Effect: Deception, Mass Effect Andromeda: Annihilation, Mass Effect Andromeda: Nexus Uprising & Mass Effect Andromeda: Initiation. I am missing one book in the Mass Effect series but I'll probably add it tomorrow. looking forward to reading these.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout went 28 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 466 kcal, and with today's session we wrapped up the last achievement for Laura and started work on the achievements for the next trainer Evan. Here's what we did today.

1. Laura's Best Friend: Reach a trusting partnership with Luara
2. Evan's Stylist: Change Evan's Outfit
3. Evan's Fashion Designer: Put a matching outfit together for Evan
4. Evan's Fashion Saboteur: Mismatch an outfit for Evan
5. Evan's New Student: Exercise with Evan as your instructor
6. Evan's Best Student: Receive a three-star rating from Evan
   

Since we had the New Student and Best Student achievements, that means we did do a little extra, namely we started progress on Evan's Buddy, we're 1 out of 10 for performing 10 free exercises with Evan. With tomorrow's workout we'll start on the Evan's Trainee achievement. Over all at this point were at 94% completion for the King Fit Fighter achievement which is to earn all the in-game achievements.

For tonight's stream we will be continuing DC Super Hero Girls: Teen Power, picking up with the start of chapter seven, looking forward to see how the plot develops considering everything is pointing to a show down with Lex Luthor for the game's climax.

Today's Notes 7/1/21: It Was Morphin Time

Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream started with Power Rangers: Battle For The Grid, mostly playing ranked matches and using the team of Ryu, Chun-Li and Lauren (Red Samurai Ranger) and had a mixed bag of wins and losses. It was a lot of fun, and most of the fighters were close calls... however my frustration with players who build teams around just not engaging the enemy certainly showed. Jason (Red Mighty Morphin Ranger) Eric (Quantum Ranger) and Mastodon Sentry are so cheaply used it's not even funny. That said I also went to see Ryu's story mode and that was a shock that with the implementation of difficulty settings, I found myself struggling against the game's A.I. IT does appear they gave him a full grand story, which means it's not just win 7 fights, it's all a slow build up to Ryu facing the end boss.

Anyway here are some highlights from the Power Rangers portion of the stream:

Twitch Clip: There who go! Strong finish!

Twitch Clip: Jumped right into their super... DAMN!

Twitch Clip: That was close!

Twitch Clip: Another win!

Twitch Clip: We won that!

Also last night ,we returned to The Division with Iceman having our back! We went through Mid-Town east clearing out the last area of side missions and fidning collectables, but then discovered, I was missing two Survival notes from somewhere early in the game, as well as 1 Echo! It's gonna be a pain in the ass to try and figure out where they are I use know it! Now I did feel I was kind of cheated on a couple of achievements because once you clear every mission in and area and have certain Base of Operation upgrades done you'd be given the location of every collectable in that area... but 3 were obscured by other nearby loot points and one locked door that I had to use a guide to go find them off stream!

So basically I was able to knock out several achievements which I'll list next:

1. Agent Diaries: Extract 130 phone recordings from phones found in Manhattan.
2. Incident Reports: Extract 40 audio incident reports from JTF laptops.
3. Droning on…: Extract 16 aerial photos from crashed drones.
4. The Finder: Retrieve 20 missing first wave Division agent profiles.
5. Shadows of the past: Activate 63 ECHO scenes.
6. Survivalist: Recover 24 Survival Guide pages.
   

And of course here are clips from The Division portion of the stream!

Twitch Clip: Got Punched In The Face For His Trouble

Twitch Clip: Are you holding? Yes he is!

Twitch Clip: Finding the last drone!

Twitch Clip: How are they getting up the stairs?!

I'm one month in to my 1909 APBA Baseball Season with the Tigers and trying to score runs is a real pain, as I'm not familiar with players from that era, so figuring out who I can hit and run with is tough. On the other side of the coin, just about every starting pitcher can go deep into the games, so I don't have to go to the bullpen as much (unless things get really ugly!) 

We added five games to the collection yesterday. First was The Simpsons: Wrestling for the original PlayStation, I had this game 20 years ago but traded it in. Finding a copy in 2021 was a bit difficulty, but worth it for the potential of having an entire stream based around this really crappy game! Next was SoulCalibur III, SoulCalibur II, Tekken 4 and Tekken TAG Tournament all for the PlayStation 2. The last three games were all part of the somewhat tough to the find Namco Classic Fighter Collection, so coming across the complete set is pretty cool! 

Also arriving yesterday was the Mass Effect Legendary Cache which includes the following: 1 Mass Effect Legendary Edition Metal Game Case (Game not included), 1 Morality Spinner Pin,  1 N7 Acceptance Letter, 2 Canvas Art Prints and one wearable N7 Helmet! I don't go after big collector items like this often, but I made a strong exception here, because I am a huge Mass Effect fan. Now the helmet did prove one thing... I do indeed have a big fucking head! And I did wear it on stream for a bit last night to try it out!

Twitch Clip: Wearing The N7 Helmet! How Does Shepard Breath In This Thing!

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily work out went 31 minutes (minus about 8 minutes for stretching) with an estimated calorie burn of 489 kcal. We're up to 96 out of 100 for the Laura's Best Friend achievement. Looks like we can locked that in by Saturday! This was also day 360 since we started with the original Fitness Boxing and day 202 since the switch to Fitness Boxing 2! Nearly at one year!

Tonight's stream will lead off with Star Trek Online, a focus on doing the endeavor quests and then we'll continue the story of New Pokemon snap! The later one will probably involve a lot a back tracking to get all the photos we need to level up and get further into the story, but it should be pretty chill.

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

Highlights For The Week Of 4/4/21

 

Here are highlights from my Twitch channel (http://twitch.tv/fredcasden) for the week of April 4, 2021, which featured Overwatch, Fitness Boxing 2: Rhythm & Exercise, Dragon Age Inquisition, ESPN Major League Baseball, Star Trek Online, The Simpsons Arcade Game, WWE SmackDown Vs Raw 2009, Soulcalibur IV, Star Trek D.A.C. & Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma!