Today's Notes 8/21/21: Went down to South Park to have myself a time

Good afternoon everybody,

Well last night's stream was certainly interesting as it relates to the South Park Trilogy on the original PlayStation.. and we used the PS3 for these shenanigans... and this will consist of a few mini-reviews.F

So first up was South Park, the first person shooter that was originally on the Nintendo 64 and then ported to the PlayStation. It's controls are pretty strange, with no use of the analog sticks on the PS3, so we're using the bumper buttons to aim up and down. It looks pretty good, but the draw distance is so short it's makes you wonder if the town of South Park is constantly surrounded by fog. We played through the first five stages, coming and so we got to see a lot of things, such as how the town is laid out and how far we're roaming from the start point, and since we were using Cartman, I assume the start point was his house. Enemies seem to pick up in variation as you progress, but I got really tired of shooting the turkeys, and the enemy A.I. tendency to charge and swarm the player makes me grateful that this game does indeed have a god-mod and provides infinite ammo. This game's biggest strength is the fully voiced cut-scenes, which serves as a nice way to progress the story along.

Next up with South Park: Chef's Luve Shack, which is your standard Puzzle / Party game, similar to the Jackbox Party collections you can find on Steam. This supports up to four players, but can be played solo, but it's a real drab experience. The trivia portion has also sorts of topics such as pop culture of things prior to 1999, science and historical trivia, plus South Park trivia (Guess DJ Slope of Slope's Game Room was wrong about that one). Chef's Luv Shack really shines with it's mini-games, several of which are based around actual things from the show such as Cartman riding a mechanic bull, the Chicken Lover and the kitty wanting Cartman's Pot Pie. Really would bet these would be a ton of fun with two or more people, but with Covid, I'm not bringing anyone here any time soon/

Lastly, South Park Rally... which has to be one of the worse games I've ever player, and probably the worst game of the year for me. First the one positive is that you can fully customize the controls, reassign the buttons to what feels natural to you... now beyond there, there is nothing positive about South Park Rally. It's standard 'race' mode, is a hit check 4 check points over the course of 3 laps, which is fine, Forza Horizon 4 has a lot of races like that... but with South Park Rally, you can take any route you want,  making it very easy to get turned around and loss. But get this you have to unlock any of the other game modes as you play the Championship mode. I've played my fair share of racing games, never have I seen it where they basically prevent you from trying to see what you might like playing. I was very disappointed in it to the point I just said the hell with it and threw in something else.

That something else was Vs, which came out in 1997. Published by THQ, this game looks good,, controls well and has a killer sound track. Now most people will remember Vs. based on the ads that featured Mia in most gaming magazines back in the mid-late 90s. Oddly enough it doesn't have a standard arcade mode, but it does have a Survivor and Challenge modes which kind of play like an arcade mode, with continues and such. The controls can be customized, to where you can bind combination inputs like Punch+Evade to one of the bumper buttons. I wouldn't mind dedicating more of a night to it to see how deep the Challenge or Survivor Mode actually is.

Anyway, here's the list of clips from last night!

• Virtua Fighter 2 was on PC... I own a copy! 
• DJ Pon 3 aka Vinyl Scratch Joins The Collection! 
• A Garrus T-Shirt: Raise Your Hand If You Haven't Been Killed Before 
• 
  It's something special.... 
• I've got snowballs of steel 
• I was expecting an explosion... 
• That was an actual question 
  
• Cartman Rides The Mechanical Bull 
• Beefcake! BEEFCAKE!!!!!. 
• Revenge is the proper answer... 
• They are coming right for us! 
• The butchering of a Mitch Hedberg joke...
• It appears we are in the lead... 
• He we actually did it... and crashed!
• Go Cartman Go! . 
• First Time Playing This
• The Disney Plus Joke From The Chat 
• That did not take long
• Get them in the corner!
• He's a business man and he's dressed like that?

 Following the stream we raided Oldish22 over at twitch.tv/oldish22 who was playing Final Fantasy XIV! He's a good due, and you should check him out when he's on!

We added a new Funko to the collection, from My Little Pony DJ Pon 3, aka Vinyl Scratch, which is #05 in the Funko My Little Pnny set. I am currently on the trail of a Doctor Whooves Vinyl Figure.

While organizing my book shelves yesterday morning, I found some odd games from the Windows 95/98 era... Triple Play 98, Jazz Jackrabbit 2, Pitfall the Mayan Adventure & Virtua Fighter 2. VF2 was a great find because it does prove what I said that it was a a game I played on PC, and is why I play Pai. The version of Pitfall the Mayan Adventure is the one that came exclusive with IBM PC's back in the day. I am surprised at the retro buyers market for Jazz Jackrabbitt 2, but even more surprised that Epic you know the studio behind Fortnite, hasn't done anything with the franchise in over 20 years. Triple Play 98I remember playing better on a Windows 98 machine as opposed to a Windows 95 one, .

 

Today Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout lasted 34 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 647 kcal, but we did an extra 17 minutes with an additional calorie burn of 315 kcal, so the total session was 51 minutes with a total estimated calorie burn of 963 kcal. The exercises for today with the high setting for Difficult Combos #1 #2 and #3 for the daily workout, and for the extra, we focused on the low setting for those same exercises, because there were achievements listed for performing those. Now these Difficult Combos certainly are harder than the standard variants, and its very easy to get crossed up based on what you has gotten use to seeing in terms of a pattern.

Fitness Boxing 2: Rhythm & Exercise Achievements

1. Triple Shooting Star: Acquire a 3-star rating in every workout (low)
2. Triple Supernova: Acquire a 3-star rating in every workout (high) 
3. Extreme Trainer Lv. 1: Acquire 28,000 point or more in Difficult Challenge Combo #1 (Low) 
4. Extreme Trainer Lv. 2: Acquire 28,000 point or more in Difficult Challenge Combo #2 (Low) 
5. Extreme Trainer Lv. 3: Acquire 28,000 point or more in Difficult Challenge Combo #3 (Low)  
6. Extreme Trainer Lv. 4: Acquire 56,000 point or more in Difficult Challenge Combo #1 (High)
7. Extreme Trainer Lv. 5: Acquire 56,000 point or more in Difficult Challenge Combo #2 (High) 
8. Extreme Trainer Lv. 6: Acquire 56,000 point or more in Difficult Challenge Combo #3 (High)  
9. Monster Weight Puncher Lv. 2: Reach a total punch count of 360,000 HITS
   

We're going to go back to using Lin every day at the trainer since the next closest achievement to get is Lin's Champion which is to train with Lin for over 50 hours, and we already put in 44 hours. Each of the other trainers I used for 17 hours or less, so they were each take a while to get to their respective champion achievements.  Regardless we're at 72% completion of the EX achievements thus far. 

For tonight's stream, we're back to Pokemon Let's Go Eevee as we head off to the Seafoam Islands, we got a battles in between plus there will be attempts to catch whatever Pokemon we can find! The higher we can push out levels the hopefully easier time we'll have with the elite four!

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

Today's Notes 8/13/21: WWE Crash Hour Is Proof Of Vince McMahon's Insanity

Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream was a triple feature of video games, Star Trek Online, WWE Crash Hour and Tripe Play 98. 

Star Trek Online was its usual fair of grinding out the endeavor quests that happened to be active on the day of streaming, but I did have to 're-roll', one because of a particular issue. You see there is a  endeavor quests that calls for facing the Tzenkethi on the ground, and there is only two ways to do that. One is to replay a story mission, and the other is to play Dranuur Beach Assault which require 10 players, making it one of the toughest endeavor quests to complete because no one plays it willingly. Which is a shame because it really is a stand out Task Force Operation that I actually won't just be going through the motions playing (i.e. Bug Hunt)

Once STO was done, we loaded up WWE Crash Hour for the PlayStation 2 and boy do I have opinions about the concept of this game. First off, it plays fine, the controls are easy to learn and of the characters / vehicles I used (Trish Stratus, William Regal and Steve Austin) everything seemed very responsive to my mad cap way of getting around the arenas. But the actual idea of WWE Crash Hour was actual foreshadowing into what Vince McMahon has done in the 19 years since it's release.

You see McMahon's desire of making the WWE about everything other than wrestling has certainly become more prominent over the past 19 years, with the WWE Studios Divisions, the WWE Network, Camp WWE the XFL revival, the Tough Enough revivals and so forth. He wants to have great influence over entertainment in general. Hell the WWE has become more of a badly over produced day-time soap opera at the expense of actual good decision making that it basically drove me away from being a fan. (Note: AEW is even worse)

But as the title of this blog indicates, WWE Crash Hour of Vince's insanity, because guess what someone had to pitch this idea to him at some point, and much like the WWE City in Scooby-Doo WrestleMania Mystery, you could tell that McMahon love the idea of controlling all of television and having his hand picked Superstars featured on everything because that has been his objective since the true peak of the WWE in the 1980s, because hey, he drove every other wrestling promotion out of business in the United States, certainly he (in his mind) could do the same to every other form of entertainment right? Thankfully the answer to that was no but as I indicate it came at the cost of driving long term fans like me away.

Don't get me wrong I still enjoy the WWE video games, but the actual product on TV... that can fuck right off.

Anyway, after WWE Crash Hour, we switched over to Triple Play 98, and after figuring out how to navigate the menus because it seems better formatted for Windows 98 (and I do have the disc for that version of TP98), we got into a game between the New York Mets and the Philadelphia Phillies. It took me a a few innings to figure out pitching, as I gave up 3 runs to the Mets in the first, and then figured out the timing for hitting to rally back to a 4-3 lead, then gave up a game tying home run in the top of the 8th before going a head 5-4 in the bottom of the 8th... and then somehow worked my way out of a 2-out bases loaded game. Needless to say it was an intense game. 

In comparison to Triple Play 97, Triple Play 98 is a lot better in how it feels to play in terms of executing hitting and pitching... base running is still FUBAR, but hey, it's a near 25 year old baseball game.

 Anyway here's the list of clips from last night.

• Just Chatting: My Memories Of Rampage World Tour
• Star Trek Online: A Fury of Strikes 
• Star Trek Online: Random Quoting Of Robin Hood Men In Tights is Random 
• Star Trek Online: The timing to catch her 
• Star Trek Online: Take Down The Flagship
• Star Trek Online: I am here everybody can relax!
• WWE Crush Hour: Trish is all about Talent & Ability 
• WWE Crush Hour: The Trash Talk Is Real 
• WWE Crush Hour: DUUUDE!!!! 
• WWE Crush Hour: Regal Has Control! 
• WWE Crush Hour: We Smacked Their Stupid Little Face! 
• WWE Crush Hour: A Win For Austin! 
• Triple Play 98: Olerud Makes Me Go Uh-Oh... 
• Triple Play 98: Iceman Would Be Pleased 
• Triple Play 98: A 2-Run Hit For Mickey Morandini! 
• Triple Play 98: It's way back! 
• Triple Play 98: Will It Drop In?! 

Yesterday we added Rampage World Tour for the PlayStation to the collection. Now this is a game I've only ever played in an arcade... sorta. You see there was a convenience story a few blocks from where I live now that often had two arcade machines, one was Mortal Kombat 3 (and later Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3), and the other would rotate in and out but at one point it was Rampage World Tour. I figure this will be a fine game to feature on a random Thursday.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout lasted 28 minutes with an estimate calorie burn of 428 kcal. The exercises for today were Hook Combo #2, Beginner Combo #1 and the Front Back Step Combo. We are now up to 83 out of 100 for the Karen's Best Friend achievement. 

Over on Twitter there was something about posting your four 'mains' from fighting games, and it actually took me a bit of time to come up with four. Obviously Sakura is my main in any Capcom fighting game she's in, going all the way back to Street Fighter Alpha 2... Cassie Cage was my main in Mortal Kombat 11 from earlier this year, Pai pretty much is my main in the Virtua Fighter series... but to come up with a fourth was a bit tough... so I went with Ragna The Bloodedge from the BlazBlue franchise because we used him a lot in the story modes.

For tonight's stream we'll be playing Street Fighter V, in particular, it's story mode, and I did forget we did play Mortal Kombat 11's story mode this year. Still, it'll be interesting to see if the story of SFV is better done than Marvel vs Capcom Infinite's. 

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

Hanging in Iðunn’s Orchard

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night's stream of God of War saw a couple of things, one I was using a wired controller for the session, I'm using a NACON Wired Compact Control (found here: https://amzn.to/3hOcN6E) and the reason for it is because I don't trust the battery life of the PS4 controllers. If a fully charged PS3 controller can handle 4+ hours of gaming, shouldn't its successor be able to top that? Apparently not. The advantage of having a wired controller now means no need to worry about making sure the PS4 controller is fully charged or worrying about how long the charge will last.

Anyway, what we focused on in God of War was mostly side quests, tracking down stuff for the dwarfs, finding spirits and helping them rest in piece, Nordic rune chests and so forth. We really didn't progress much on the story until the very end when we reached a new area and saw a giant of a giant laying dead in the snow and ice. Did managed to fully upgrade Kratos' health so I can be a little more reckless with going into fights against tougher opponents, but thankfully I understand the controls enough to hold my own against enemies ranked three level higher that I am.

We did get one trophy last night as well.

1. Iðunn’s Orchard: Fully upgrade your Health
   

And of course we do have some clips from last night's stream for you to check out as well

Twitch Clip: I Told You So

Twitch Clip: Here we go again on our own!

Twitch Clip: Had to be dealt with!

Twitch Clip: Rip and Tear! Groovy!

Twitch Clip: He just took a swim

Yesterday I did play a lot of APBA Baseball, basically knocking the entire month of August 1909, and as the season comes to a close, I don't think The Detroit Tigers of this game will be able to surpass the Philadelphia Athletics who have a stronger pitching staff and better offense. Granted my Tigers are like a 1.5 games behind, but alot would have to go right to see if I can duplicate history with a very weakened pitching staff.

Also did a little Virtua Fighter 5: Ultimate Showdown, playing three matches and winning two of them. Always amazes me when I see nearly 25+ year old tactics with Pai work.

We picked up Rumble Roses for the PS2 yesterday, it is a wrestling game by Konami that is a bit of a cult classic that had a semi-squeal for the Xbox 360. Also for the PS2 managed to track down Capcom Fighting Evolution, released by Capcom to celebrate its arcade fighter history but got absolutely ripped critically. A bit more topical though is that we added Mega Man Legends which oddly enough was discussed this week over on The Completionist YouTube Channel and Space Jam (since the sequel is coming out this upcoming Friday). I never played Mega Man Legends before, but Space Jam is another game that I know was in my younger brother's collection that has apparently gone missing

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout lasted 31 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 500 kcal. Had a few misses mostly due to blocks which is always a pain in the butt to register correctly. We did some extra so the full duration of today's session was 43 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 688 kcal. Today marked day 369 since the start of the original Fitness Boxing in 2020 and day 211 since the switch to Fitness Boxing 2. We're up to 54 out of 100 for the Evan's Best Friend achievement.

For tonight's stream, we're gonna keep it chill as we'll be playing New Pokemon Snap, we'll be taking pictures of Pokemon as we look to level up and advance the story forward!

And on that note we'll see you later today 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.

Highlights For The Week Of 6/13/21

 Here are highlights for the week of June 13, 2021 of all the games featured over on http://twitch.tv/fredcasden! This week we played Overwatch, Ftiness Boxing 2: Rhythm & Exercise, Mass Effect Legendary Edition, Tom Clancy's The Division, Star Trek Online, WCW Vs The World, WWE All-Stars, Xena: Warrior Princess, Bloodborne, Virtua Fighter 5: Ultimate Showdown & DC Super Hero Girls: Teen Power!

Today's Notes 6/19/21: The Spilled Bloodborne Of A Virtua Fighter

Good morning everybody

Last night we finally broke in the PlayStation 4 on stream, with two games. Thankfully a delivery I wasting on arrived early... which also allowed me to discover an issue with the PS4. Since Sony designed the PS4 to be able to stream directly from it, it actually can block a signal to the a capture card... so I had to do some plugging and unplugging of HDMI cables and such just to get a signal to my main monitor so that I could access the PS4's settings to turn that blocker off.

So once the stream started, we lead off with Bloodborne. Prior to last night I have seen people play these styles of game where it's trial and error, and while I didn't really progress far... I did at least start to get a grasp of the mechanics of combat and figuring and how to do things. By the time I was really getting a grove in the same area I was basically running laps in, I was getting a little burned out on getting killed so often, so I think Bloodborne will be one of those games we go to in order to fill in gaps on a stream, like maybe pair it with Star Trek Online on Thursdays or something.We did get one trophy last night in Bloodborne which I'll list next...

1. Blood Gem Contact: Acquire a blood gem that imbues hunter weapons with special strength.
   

I also did a few hours of Virtua Fighter 5: Ultimate Showdown, jumping into ranked matches and actually had a good streak going. We were also joined by Reaper, another long time friend of the channel for some direct head to head game play, where it was pretty even granted all of my obvious mistakes started to get exploited and exposed, but we had a lot of close bouts! We unlocked no trophies in Virtua Fighter 5.

We have some clips from last night as well, which I posted the links for next:

Twitch Clip: Let Me Do The Smart Thing...

Twitch Clip: Wah! Son Of A Biscuit!

Twitch Clip: Let's Freaking Go!

Twitch Clip: Get Out Of My Ring!

Now Bloodborne wasn't the only game to arrive yesterday: Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise, Uncharted Collection, Uncharted 4: A Thief's End & Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness were all added to the collection..

Because of other circumstances, there were no Xbox achievements unlocked last night, granted I could jump on after posting this to tackle some, but other circumstances involving heavy objects will now allow for that. I had a pretty good streak of 39 days, with 200 achievements unlocked. My personal best was 87 days with 483 achievements acquired. 

However I did start work on a little Overwatch Fan Fic idea last night involving Moira and Tracer, based around a character interaction dialog they have when they are on the same team. I figure I could get something out of that would fit quite nicely over on HF.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Session went 31 minutes, with an estimated calorie burn of 501 kcal. We are now up to 66 out of 100 for the Laura's Best Friend achievement. As we can see the point addition is sometimes 2 and sometimes 3. There doesn't seem to be a set pattern but we'll get there eventually! 

Tonight's stream will be focused on DC Super Hero Girls Teen Power, picking up with the start of Chapter 4, which seems to be a Batgirl focused chapter, so it should see a lot of quirky stuff happening. 

We'll get that started about 7 PM EST over on twitch.tv/fredcasden! See ya then!

Today's Notes 6/18/21: From The Final Frontier to the Squared Circle to a Warrior Princess

Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream was a variety stream as we featured four games over on twitch.tv/fredcasden.

The night began with Star Trek Online, the Thursday night tradition, and of course the big deal was just doing the endeavors, which offered some variety this week, using polaron weapons in space, defeating terran enemies on the ground, restoring sheilds in space and completing any Task Force Operation on a intermediate difficulty. Now can some one tell me exactly when was it that people stopped realizing what the fuck to do when facing Leeta during Assault on Terrok Nor? When she is chasing you, run to the three pads so the other people can activate the one you lead her to! It's not that difficult! But on two different versions of that same TFO (one using Sorra, the other using Zagreus), I got stuck with dudes who clearly were leading Leeta away from where the rest of us needed them to be. It got rather annoying, particularly since I was the one that did the console puzzle both times. to get a force field to drop.

Anyway, following Star Trek Online, we loaded up WWE All-Stars. Released in March of 2011, WWE All-Stars is an over the top styled arcade brawler that went wither real cartoonish versions of various WWE Legends and Superstars of the time. I had this game in collection since 2011, I have played and in fact I had DLC for it, so were able to use extra characters, since half of the default roster was locked. We could get a special stream out of it, going through Fantasy Warfare to unlock the other characters, and if we do that we can add the game to the Tour List for 2021. 

Next we turned out attention to WCW vs The World, now we tried to play this a few weeks ago and the copy I had did not work... so I tracked down another copy, and this one worked, and boy did I not have a clue out to play... actually had to look at the manual to see a few details. I pretty much had my ass handed to me, and had to lower the difficulty to easy to win a match and to get an idea of how to play. This is one of those games we can throw into the PS3 or PS2 for just shits and giggles of just how bad I am at it and how old the game looks (it did come out in 1996 after all) 

The final game of the night was Xena Warrior Princess, based on the legendary show starring Lucy Lawless, this is one of those 3D action games from the PlayStation 1 era where it tried to be ambitious and simple, but it just ends up handcuffing the player. This game came out in 1999... with no analog options. Keep in mind the original dual-shock controller came out in 1997... so what the fuck? Anyway we stumbled and bumbled our way through the first three stages. Now there are 21 stages within the game, so I kind of figure we can divide this game up, going back to it every now and again to see if we can get further. We can pair it up with Star Trek Online on Thursdays, and have it be the first game we play after doing the endeavors. Or I could just start the game over from scratch and do a proper play through from start to finish over several streams. 

Any way, here's the list of clips from last night featuring all four games!

Twitch Clip: Rose's Theme From Alpha 2 Works Nicely

Twitch Clip: The King Tea Bag's CM Punk

Twitch Clip: Hey! We did a Russian Leg Sweep!

Twitch Clip: Did we get him? We got him!

Now following the stream my attention again turned to Trover Saves The Universe in knocking out achievements for it, and we got a few done, to give us 20 out 27. Here's what I did last night.

1. You Actually Did It?!: What the hell is the matter with you?! You actually made 100 baskets?! What are you a sociopath?!
2. It's A Video Game, Kill Something!: Don't kill any villagers, because God forbid you do something out of the ordinary!
3. Here's a dang achievement, stop killing me!: Jump Trover into the Acid Lake 5 times. How is this even an achievement?
4. Daddy Gotta Eat!: Instead of feeding the poor, feed Gail's roommate in under 5 minutes!

Note: I am copy and pasting the achievement descriptions as they, the developers of some games put way to much effort into trying to be clever.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was 31 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 506 kcal. There was a big focus on ducking and weaving today, so my core got a real work out. We're now up to 63 out of 100 for the Laura's Best Friend achievement.

For tonight's stream we are going to do some gaming on the PlayStation 4, so what I have ready to go are Street Fighter V: Championship Edition and Virtua Fighter 5: Ultimate Showdown, I am waiting for a delivery to arrive at the time this is posted, so if it arrives in time we'll go with my main choice, if not, then it's either one of those two games, the edge probably going to Street Fighter V to do it's story mode.

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

The Collectors Have Been Stopped

Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream put the period of the end of Mass Effect 2: Legendary Edition, as we stopped the Collectors in dubious fashion (where Shepard didn't get the last shot on the Human-Reaper, leaving me to wonder who did get it.... Miranda or Thane). We got in some last minute chuckles of course, with EDI's "I enjoy the sight of seeing humans on their knees" lines, as well as making damn sure peace can be made between the Quarians and the Geth, and basically tackled all the important stuff such as Thane and Shepard's night together, making sure everyone's head was on straight and so forth. Now this wasn't a flawless night as I got wrecked on the mission to get the IFF, as well as during Legion's Loyalty mission and I miss timed Joker's run through the Normandy, resulting in 2 critical mission failures. Also I did the assault on the Collector's base a little differently, sending Tali through the Vent and using Jack for the Biotic field, because I heard they had had unique dialog in Mass Effect 3 because of this.

So of course finishing the game meant we got achievements which I'll list next

1. Friend or Foe: ME2: Obtain geth technology
2. A House Divided: ME2: Hack a geth collective
3. Paramour II: Establish or rekindle a romantic relationship in two games in Mass Effect Legendary Edition
4. Suicide Mission: ME2: Use the Omega 4 Relay
5. Against All Odds: ME2: Survive suicide mission
6. Mission Accomplished: ME2: Save humanity throughout the galaxy from certain annihilation
7. No One Left Behind: ME2: Keep your team alive through the suicide mission

Here's the best part, because I was so thorough with doing everything, we've unlocked every possible achievement for the Legendary Edition of Mass Effect 2 with the exception of beating the game start to finish on Insanity Difficulty. Not bad if I do say so myself.

Anyway, here are some clips from last night.

Twitch Clip: Critical Mission Failure: Whoops!

Twitch Clip: Shepard Tells Tali and Legion The Choices They Have

Twitch Clip: EDI Like The Sight Of Humans On Their Knees

Twitch Clip: Shepard and Thane

Twitch Clip: Make Him A Big Glowing Target!

We've officially added Spider-Man 2 Enter Electro for the PlayStation 1 and Sakura Wars for the PlayStation 4 to my collection yesterday. And big shoutout to DaemonsW0lf for hooking me up with a Yeti X microphone, which is a major upgrade of the Blue Snowball I've been using.

Following last night's stream I jumped into some online matches with Virtua Fighter 5 Ultimate Showdown and Street Fighter V... and I can safely say, that I believe the match making system for Virtua Fighter 5 is better than Street Fighter V, on the simple ground it is matching me against people of my apparent skill level. Since there are no trophies tied to wins, just ones for matches played, it makes the grind of playing online matches a lot more bearable. I can safely say that every match in Virtua Fighter 5 was pretty close, while with Street FIghter V it was often very one sided. That said, we did get some trophies out of Virtua Fighter 5. 

1. Do you hear me!? I'm the best that's ever been!: Send a stamp. The heart of Pro-Wrestling is to entertain others, so you're now a pro wrestler too!
2. Here I come!: Play 1 Room Match. A ninja conceals oneself... A ninja does not prefer... crowds.

No trophies were earned for Street Fighter V last night since that's even more a grind to get victories.

I did watch the Nintendo Direct for E3, and yeah it goes without saving, Nintendo stole the show. Between Metroid Dread, Breath of the Wild 2 the ultimate compilation of previous Mario Party games in a big release, plus remakes / remasters of classic games that I have zero in certainly showed that Nintendo was focused on giving players what they want. 

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 sessions went 31 minutes and had an estimated calorie burn of 577 kcal. We're up to 58 out of 100 for the Laura's Best Friend achievement. As always we keep it steady and consistent.

Tonight's stream will of be the continuation of Tom Clancy's The Division, and we'll do a lot more roaming around looking for gear before Iceman joins us to chase down the collectables and do the two main missions we have left in the area were were covering last week.

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

Today's Notes 6/15/21: The Lair Of The Broken Shadowbroker

Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream of Mass Effect 2: Legendary Edition was very straight forward, for I had the goal of clearing out the last remaining loyalty missions (for Mordin & Grunt) that I needed to do as well as covering the story that was Lair of the Shadowbroker (which originally was DLC). I can safely say that the fight against Tela Vasir was for me a lot harder using a game-pad than it was using a mouse in keyboard on the original PC version. Still the job was done, and everything is set up perfectly for Tonight's stream which is to finish Mass Effect 2 with the mission to recruit Legion, do his loyalty mission, trigger the invasion of the Normandy and get the Collectors into the next galaxy.

Here are some links to my favorite moments from last night!

Twitch Clip: Punch The Pyjack

Twitch Clip: Prompt For Headbutt

Twitch Clip: The Very Model of a Scientist Salarian

Twitch Clip: Achievement: Warp Specialist

Twitch Clip: What is Shepard Fighting For...

Since we got so much done, that of course means we earned several achievements, which I'll list next 

1. The Cure: ME2: Gain the loyalty of the Professor
2. Big Game Hunter: ME2: Thresher Maw defeated
3. Battlemaster: ME2: Gain the loyalty of the krogan
4. Warp Specialist: ME2: Warp the barriers of 25 enemies
5. Heart of Darkness: ME2: Confront the Shadow Broker

Now Mass Effect: Legendary Edition has 127 achievement, and so far I have 64 just based on how I prefer to play the trilogy, so 50% accomplished with still a whole game to go. Pretty solid if I do say so myself and I do say so myself!

After the stream my attention turned to the PlayStation 4 and Street Fighter V, and I went back and forth regarding getting PS Plus to play online matches, but since Virtua Fighter 5: Ultimate Showdown is free and both games have achievements tied to playing matches online, I figure that would be worth the overall price for the year. Which means, for the first time since 2015, my PSN account of dice_casden was seeing some action. (Yeah I didn't start using FredCasden as my gaming handle until I launched my Twitch channel).

Anyway, I have dabbled a little with Street Fighter V on Steam in 2019, and I found the quality of the online matches in terms of connection to be horrendous. And part of what made me get SFV on the PS4 was the fact I heard the netcode improved since then, and I'm glad to see it has, I only had one match drop completely out of 23 matches (for the record I won 6 of those matches) SFV plays pretty well online and I figure I can stumble my way into earning the wins needed for some trophies. We did get several trophies with me just having some fun.

1. Make A Name For Yourself: Why don't you see if you can collect 10 titles? There's nothin' like a good title! Even Mel said they make me look cool!
2. Sultan Of Titles: I am Rashid of the Turbulent Wind! You can change how you feel, just with a title! If you had 30 of them, you'd be set for the rest of your life!
3. I Know Kung Fu!: Congratulations on your first win! Keep practicing your Kung Fu in those Ranked Matches and I know you'll only get better and better!
4. Not-So-Secret Admirer: When someone sets their sights on you, don't you just wanna try even harder? Add someone to your Favorites and see what happens!
5. Fighting On The Internet: Alright, time you fought 10 network battles! The Internet is like my backyard - not a place I tend to lose! (Excludes Battle Lounge)
6. Bodybuilding Is Life: Go try out Training Mode for 30 minutes! "Bodybuilding never let man down." I borrowed that one from Master Zangief!

Now onto Virtua Fighter 5: Ultimate Showdown, I have played Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown via my Xbox One last year, getting all of it's related achievements, and so I was expecting that the PlayStation's new Ultimate Showdown version would have a similar set of trophies. And boy was I wrong, Virtua Fighter 5: Ultimate Showdown is clearly being pushed as a game to be used at whatever fighting tournaments are going to replace EVO following all the shit that happened to that knob-fest, since nearly every trophy is tied to playing against other players from around the world. That said the game plays pretty much like it's Final Showdown version. Messing around with it meant I did unlock some trophies.

1. Back to the Lab: Practice in TRAINING. What's important for a sumo is daily training... Head-to-head training that is!
2. I won!: Defeat Dural and clear Arcade Mode. To buy a boat or a fish detector. Decisions, decisions...
3. I'll show you… the results of my training!:  Play 1 Ranked Match. Is your Kung-Fu enough? I've only just begun!

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session went 28 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 449.25, didn't do anything extra as today is a work day, and as far as I know I am supposed to work but there is no assignment next to my name yet. We're not up to 56 out 100 for the Laura's Best Friend achievement.

Also figured out how to combine the two clip buttons I've been using into one on my Elgato Stream Deck, so when I want to clip something for Twitch and get a minute for my highlight reels, it's just a one button press. Also added a Venkman button which will have a few random one-liners said by Peter Venkman in the 1984 Ghostbusters film.

Of course as a I mentioned earlier tonight's stream will be dedicated to finishing up Mass Effect 2: Legendary Edition, we'll get started at 6:30 PM Eastern, and we'll be jumping right into the mission that will see us recruiting Legion.

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

Good afternoon everybody,

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway here are some clips from last night's stream

Twitch Clip: We're A Queen Slayer!

Twitch Clip: We're figuring stuff out here!

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

Twitch Clip: What The Hell Just Happened?

Twitch Clip: It Broke Something!

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

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

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

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

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

Today's Note 11/22/20

Good afternoon everybody...

Woke up super late today, but this is more understandable as I ended up trying to figure out what would it take to get my old Playstation 3, and what it does is when it powers up, the green light turns yellow then red. With what I read there might be a hardware failure within the consoles motherboard. ... The most common reason for Montherboard errors in Consoles is caused by overheating. And if I remember right, I ran the PS3 real damn hard back in 2012-2014. So probably I will end up either looking to get it fixed or finding one on the secondary market at some point. 

Did do a Fitness Boxing session, solid workout, nothing too out of the ordinary. but we're getting closer to fully unlocking all the customization options for the trainers while also being physically active!

Last night's stream started with Twitch Sings, and we did a nice mix of solos and duets, actually finished doing all my favorite songs on expert, and I started to try and do songs I've never heard of... and yeah that didn't go well. particularly when I was reminded at how much 90s R&B sucks!  

On the plus side, we test out, live on stream hooking up my old Playstation 2 Slim, and my biggest concern with it is how warm it gets considering there is next to no ventilation on the PS2-S. The positive side it works, looks and sounded decent, not sure how to switch it from being 16:9 visual output to 4:3 but hell, it was cool. All my memory cards still had saves and amazingly enough I still have nearly every game I have a save file for, with the exception of Street Fighter Anniversary Collection and Virtua Fighter 4 Evolution. That said, we were successful in running a PS1 game on the PS2 through my Elgato Capture Card, and so that means we'll be able expand things out a bit more than I thought.

So the PS1 game we ran last night for bit was Darkstalkers: The Knight Warriors, and fuck me, I can't remember the last time I played a fighting game that didn't allow for use of the analog sticks, but trying to remember how to play it was an experience. I'm also reminded  of how small and uncomfortable the PS2 controllers feel for a fighting game when you're limited to trying with doing down-forwards, down-backs with a D-Pad.

On the other hand, the PS2 game we tested out was Marvel Vs Capcom 2... and good lord how many hours did I sink into that game back in the day, just the scores on the leaderboard are silly as hell. But since the memory card still had my save, it means I have all the characters unlocked. And since I could use the analog stick with it, that means remembering how to play and do supers and stuff cam pretty natually. As usual Sakura ends up being my main because Sakura is BAE (she is my main in Street Fighter Alpha 2 and 3 as well). 

Tonight of course we'll be playing Overwatch, I already have the new Symmetra Skin so hopefully if anyone needs wins we'll be able to get them the victories needed to get the new skin. Tomorrow we'll be returning to Kingdom Hearts with Chains of Memories, to continue that saga