We Had A Variety Night

Good morning everyone,

Yesterday I did plan to wake up early, but... ended up waking up a lot later than intended, but still got a few things done.

We had a fun stream, as it was a variety night, opening with Fall Guys and running into instances of dudes self sabotaging the team in so many ways, including diving off the platform in Block Party. No wins, but we did make it the final round once.

We switched of Ghostbusters Spirits Unleashed after I learned they added some cosmetics from Extreme Ghostbusters, so yeah that caught my attention. We had a couple of victories but mostly got chased out by the ghosts. Didn't really get a good look at the new map but it's nice to see there are stuff still being added.

We played some Smite for the first time in a long time, winning three out of the four matches played (2 in Arena, 1 in Assault), with those victories being as Athena, Terra and Nike respectively. I actually forgot how long Assault matches can feel because of the random nature of who everyone has to use, Still I'll take the wins.

Now all of those games were played on the Xbox Series and Xbox One consoles, because lastly we hooked up the PS3 in probably a year I think, and we played the X-Men arcade game, USA Rom version on Hard, using Dazzler. It was a solid run, and a good test of how it looks and plays on stream after all the hassle I went through to improve the picture quality.

Now I did consider doing an extra night of Persona 3 Portable or Mass Effect, but I figure bouncing from game to game and console to console made for a more unique experience.

For the raid we dropped in on Kalenal who was playing Final Fantasy XIV over at twitch.tv/kalenal!

Getting back to Mass Effect, did some writing on the short story commission yesterday afternoon, and I figure it's now about 40% done, just need to do the action sequence.

The plan for tonight's stream, well it's Overwatch, even though we are all disappointed in being lied too by the developers of it regarding the PVE content, since they already had a live game to service in place. I will not be surprised if someone files a class action lawsuit against Activision Blizzard over this  

Good thing I ended the stream when it did, because a few minutes afterward, my internet went down!

I continue to mess around more with the Xbox version of Star Trek Online and discovered there is a very noticeable lag when doing anything in the tailor, like tweaking uniforms and so forth. In fact in an upcoming video scheduled for July on my YouTube channel, it takes about 20 minutes just to switch the uniforms of my starting crew from the TOS era to the 2409 uniforms.

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

We Had Some Work Yesterday; PS2 Variety Night

Good morning everyone,

Yesterday we had some work, not as many hours as I would've liked, but it knocked some rust off... too bad some of the usual features used for work wasn't working as they should've been. I'd really hate to go back to using my phone instead of the web browser set up, because it makes harder for me to hear the people I'm interviewing.

Congratulations to my uncle Freddy who is going into the Pennsylvania Boxing Hall of Fame!

Last night's stream was truly a variety night of games from the PlayStation 2 era, starting off with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Battle Nexus... and I forgot how bad that game was in regard to hit detection, the wonky A.I. and the bad camera angles. For whatever reason Konami really struggles with making TMNT games that weren't 2D brawlers. Chances are quite a lot of the VOD is going to be muted or cut because of how much footage this game used from the 2003 TMNT series.

Next was X-Men: Next Dimension, a fighting game that clearly has some inspiration from Tekken and Virtua Fighter. We went through the arcade mode as Betsy (aka Psylocke), and outside of Magneto, we didn't have too much trouble. Rather surprised Patrick Stewart supplied some voice work for the game. This game does have a story mode, so it makes it worth revisiting to see what that is like.

Over The Hedge was the next game we played, based on the movie of the same name, and while clearly aimed at younger gamers, it has a nice charm to do for a budget cash grab game.Based on the first couple of levels, I feel this game will be a hoot to play in co-op if I can rope in either my cousin Frances of my brother Leo into spending an evening messing around with it on stream.

Finally checked out Champions of Norrath: Realms of EverQuest, and its not a bad RPG,but it's clear it was meant to take full advantage of the PS2's online multiplayer capabilities. It might have local co-op so that might be worth diving into as a novelty.

We took a look at Death by Degrees and I have to wonder what Bandai Namco was thinking, They already had the bases for a decent brawling game in the form of the Tekken Force mode that was introduced in Tekken 3, but Death by Degrees certainly was not as fun to pick up on, due to the weird controls. Does look and sound great though.

Lastly we played Star Trek Encounters, which is in an arcade shooter game that uses some of the same assets used for Star Trek Legacy which was released on the Xbox 360 and PC around the same time. Much like it's more advanced sister game, the 'campaign' is not really fun, but using cheats to unlock all the ships means there is chaos to be had in its various game modes.

On a side note, I have to do something about how OBS is broadcasting things much darker than they should be in terms of the output color pallet.

For the raid we dropped in on Kalenal who was playing Final Fantasy XIV over at twitch.tv/kalenal

Tonight is the Super Bowl... and I know my mom would have been rooting for the Eagles if she could watch it... and I finally saw her death certificate... and reading it really hit me hard.

Finished the Mass Effect short story commission and have another one to start working on as well, so this series will be up to 22 chapters.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout featured Advanced Combo #1, Sway Back COmbo and Difficulty Challenge Combo #3

"What do you call a poor Santa Claus?" "St. Nickel-less."

Song of the Day: Sunday Best by Surfaces.

For tonight's stream, it's Sunday and that means Overwatch 2... and yes I will be wearing Eagles green, in fact I'll be wearing my mom's Eagles jersey that was originally owned by my brother.

After 143 Hours... We Finished Persona 5 Royal

Good morning everyone,

Last night's stream of Persona 5 Royal certainly saw me doing what the game said to do and 'Take My Time' when it came to trying to anticipate how much content was actually left, as I certainly wasn't rushing to finish the game, because I wanted to streak to last at least four hours. Turns out there was six hours worth of content left based around how I was choosing to handle the last trip into Mementos and doing other things (messing around with the Batting cages, spending time with some of the Confidants and unlocking stuff in the Thieves Den 

Now... let's talk about that battle against Maruki which is probably the most drawn out pain in the ass boss fight in the entire game with how many phases it had. Sure we got a HP and SP reset with each phase, but it was a battle that boiled down to 'But wait there's more...' when it came to obviously points of where it should have ended. We defeated Maruki's Persona... no wait... he evolves his Persona... then he gets eaten by his Persona... then it boils down to a fist fight... like really? The Holy Grail to Yaldabaoth boss fight wasn't nearly as padded as Maruki's was.

Now of course by the time we finished that fight it was 10:12 PM... but we didn't finish the game until 12:19 AM... because of all the cut scenes and extended dialog sequences I've managed to find pepped into the last stretches of time. Sure There's the time skips, but there is a lot to see, and when you are given time to roam around there are little nuggets and references one can find that serve as nice callbacks.And since I've been playing Persona 4 Arena, and seeing the 'Men In Black' involvement with characters from Persona 3... I'm betting those were who was chasing the Phantom Thieves at the very end.

Overall, Persona 5 Royal was an awesome experience and I look forward to playing it again on the Xbox side of things in 2023. 

Persona 5 Royal (PS4) Trophies

• Take Back the Future: Completed every Palace.
• The Path Chosen: Watched the ending.
• The Phenomenal Phantom Thief: Obtained all trophies.

Twitch Clips

• It's Showtime! The Defeat Of Jose!
• Boom... Headshot 
• Roses For Makoto 
  

During the stream we got a raid from Redneck_23 who was playing American Truck Simulator 19 over at twitch.tv/redneck_23!

For last night's raid, we dropped in on YrGamerBunni who was playing Halo: Infinite and Fortnite over at twitch.tv/yrgamerbunni! 

On a side note, Persona 5 Royal is only the 5th PlayStation title that I've gotten the Platinum Trophy for... the others being NCIS, WWE: Legends of WrestleMania, X-Men The Arcade Game and Sonic The Fighters.

There is a question of what will be featured on Friday's now... and the top two contenders are Dragon's Dogma and Persona 5 Strikers. We'll see what I end up deciding 

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout featured a brisk workout because I woke up super late. Still kept the daily streak going which was good.

While my fantasy baseball team had a great week last week, this weeks looks like it'll be a problem with Bryce Harper having to deal with a blister issue.

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... well, it's back to Persona 4 Arena to continue going through the story mode of that game, which means sitting through the visual novel parts. Good news is I believe we can basically go through everyone's story straight through because we tackled Labrys's story last week. So we should be able to knock off at least three characters stories tonight.

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

Another massive night of Persona 5 Royal

Good afternoon everyone,

Well last night was another massive stream based around Persona 5 Royal, caused mostly because when I know I don't have to get up the next day and I get raided, I will extended the stream, thus the stream got extended multiple times. Now we did have to go through all the time to git towards the battle with Sae which was on November 18th, and we spent a lot of time pushing to build up numerous confidants to get them maxed out. At this moment the only two that need work are The Hanged Man and Tower. This also means, I spent a lot of time on looking up all the fusion combinations to build up the Strength confidant... and needless to say, a lot of sites some wrong combinations listed.

I do love the fact that following the battle with Shadow Sae, the game catches up to the initial prologue and we got to experience it all again this time with context, With that said...let's talk about that near two hours of plot development between Sae's interrogation of Ren is completed and the big bad dude of the base game is Shido. I mean a lot of ground is certainly covered to explain everything as how the Phantom Thieves thwarted the Akechi's assassination attempt on Ren. Now I'm fully able to suspend my disbelief, but a lot of things certainly had to go right for the plan to go off without a hitch. Clearly numerous things could have and should have gone wrong, but all is well that ends well.  

Next time we play Persona 5 Royal, which will be on Friday, we are picking up on November 24th, just after the initial visit to the Cruise Ship Palace. So we got that to look forward too. And in case anyone is wondering, we have put in 105 hours into Persona 5 Royal up to this point.

Twitch Clips

• That Broke Her Heart
• Too Late To Be Sorry 
• Off With Their Heads!
  

Persona 5 Royal Trophies

• A Night in Kichijoji: Attended the jazz club.
• Casino of Jealousy: Bankrupted: Completed the casino Palace.
  

As mentioned before we had a few raids last night, the first was from just_press_next who was playing Undertale over at twitch.tv/just_press_next.

The second raid was from Oldish22 who was playing Path of Exile over at twitch.tv/oldish22!

The third raid raid was from YrGamerBunni who was playing Crusader Kings III over at twitch.tv/YrGamerBunni! They also gifted a sub and dropped a few bits which is always appreciated!

For our raid at the end of my stream, we dropped in on DimakTV who was also playing Persona 5 Royal, they were also dealing with the Shadow Sae boss battle. They stream over at twitch.tv/dimakTV! 

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout featured Intermediate Combo #1, Triple Combo #2, Biceps Shape Focus Combo and Difficult Challenge Combo #1

Fitness Boxing 2: Rhythm & Exercise Stats For May 22 to 28, 2022

• Punches Thrown: 10,809
  
• Estimated Calories Burned: 4465.88 kcal
  
• Sophie's Contender Progress: 16/30 hours (53%)
  

Got a lead to track down two PlayStation 2 era games, the original Legends of Wrestling and X-Men: Next Dimension. The first game I had years ago, and at some point I must have traded it in back in the early 2000s, while the second game is one of the earliest console fighting games to have an allegedly solid story mode.

SoulCalibur II HD Online has been delisted on the Xbox side of things... which makes me glad I snapped up the game when I did and featured it fairly recently on one of my streams.

For tonight's stream I really have no clue what I shall be doing, but I'll be up to something random. So we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

Is Rose Going To Be The Most Important Character in Street Fighter VI?

Good morning everyone,

Last night's stream did start 'on time', only because an expected work assignment was cancelled, so it looks like tonight's stream may have that same uncertain 'start time', as I told my job I will be available fairly deep into the evening.

Anyway, what we did last night was go through every single character story in Street Fighter V, and while nearly all the initial characters from the game's release tie into one another to various degrees, but it's when I got into the 'DLC' characters where I started to ponder, particularly when it came to things involving G and Rose. Rose is drawn to face G after using Tarot Cards that labeled him 'The Fool', but the battle has her realize that the world is heading to its in, later when she is meeting with Oro, she wonders if things could be changed, if her younger-self could learn of what's to come it could lead to things being done different and that they had to get back to 'Zero'... hell her story is called 'Back to Alpha'. So this has me thinking the obvious.

Is Capcom Going To Use "Time Travel" In Street Fighter VI?

And I put 'Time Travel" in quotes, because actually going back in time isn't totally necessary given Rose's soul power and psychic abilities, all that would be required is her sending some sort of message to herself. It's a stretch, but it certainly an option considering all the seeds of an Armageddon plot being set considering that time line wise, Street Fighter VI is basically reaching the point of the events of Street Fighter III where Gill and the Secret Society was basically looking for 'subjects' to repopulate the world. So basically, Rose becomes Raiden from Mortal Kombat IX. And considering the questions I have about G and all the talk about Bison's Psycho power it just makes me think Rose is going to be the most important character in the next game.

Or course, there is the chestnut Oro says to Dhalsim about a pure warrior being the one to possibly be the one to save the world, and that basically is Ryu considering his character journey over the decades. So there's that clearly obvious path Capcom is going to go down.

Anyway, going through all the character stories you could tell who they had a lot of ideas for and who they didn't... as E.Honda's story was basically him 'beating the rules of the bathhouse into the skulls of Laura, Rashid and Ryu', and Abigail's was just him wondering where his car was. Then you have the grand interconnected stories that see all the Final Fight characters (Cody, Poison, Abigail, Lucia) crossing paths, along with things like the continued odd association of Sakura, Blanka and Dan which was humorous. 

Since we ere going through every characters' story, that meant we got to play as everyone, and I was pleased with how nearly every character felt 'pick up and play' in terms of being able to figure out some stuff fairly quick. Some character felt very awkward, in particular Necali, then you had the obvious filler of characters like 'Kage' whose only purpose seems to just further the fact Ryu is going to obviously save the world in Street Fighter VI.

Also... Birdie seemed to be universal punching bag, I mean seriously, I know he's a comic relief character in the general story of SFV, but I believe he gets beaten up by the majority of the default 16 characters.

Something that I did observe when it comes to a log of the dialog in the characters stories, you could replace the word 'fight' with the word 'fuck' and everything would still make sense.

One last observation, something that did surprise me about the character stories is how uneven it was, it took 6 hours to finish, with characters having anywhere from 1 to 5 fights to complete depending on their story. The average I believe was 2 to 3, but it certainly meant getting into a groove of going from story to story a bit uneven.

There is a question of when will I do another Street Fighter V stream and for sure after Luke debuts to see his story, but there are the various arcade endings to get for the characters considering how the arcade mode is set up.. So we'll see what ends up happening. Maybe some nights of doing ranked matches too.

Anyway we didn't do a raid last night, instead we hosted Maximilian_DOOD  (twitch.tv/Maximilian_DOOD) who is f the largest streamers I follow, he was featuring X-Men: Children of the Atom and Marvel Super Heroes.

Street Fighter V Achievements

1. Quantity Over Quality: Level up 5 characters! Up to level 5 should do the trick. When it comes to food and fightin', it's quantity over quality, mate.
2. Lucky We Met!: Whoa, I'm really mixing it with the celebrities here! C'mon, Rashid, you're the Raging Storm! Get out there and finish 5 Character Stories!
3. Vindicated Honor: Raise your player level to 50. Level up that much and you'll be about ready to exact you revenge.
4. Burning Spirit: Your player level is a reflection of your passion! Aim for the stars, and reach level 100!
5. No Rest For The Wicked: Your stats are as pitiful as your strength, maggot! Come back when you've raised all characters to level 5.
6. The 16 Trials: So you wish to learn Yoga? If that is truly the case, then first you must complete the Character Story with all characters. There is great merit in walking each of their individual paths.
7. Number 2 Is The New Number 1: Niiihehe! 2, 20, 200! Such a glorious sound, I could say it twice more! 200! Raise you player level to 200! I already have, niiihehe!
   

Twitch Clip Links

• Ken Introduces Ryu To The Wall
• Chun Li Destorys Charlie 
• Birdie Wants To Eat Something... Chun Li Appears
• R. Mika's Super Move... It's Bootiful
• Ibuki Makes Birdie 'Canon' 
• Ed's Super Nice Super
• Figuring Out Abigail's Super
• Figuring Out Cody's Super 

We managed to track down a copy of Fear Effect 2: Retro Helix for the PlayStation, which is a tough game to find in the United States (but it's fairly common in Europe). It does need a custom case made for it, so I'll check and see what customgamecase.com has listed, because I need a case for the PS3 versions of Assassin's Creed: Black Flag and BioShock Infinite as well. 

Did some more organizing of DVDs and such... got basically all my anime DVDs put together, but going through my collection I feel as though I'm missing quite a few. It's probably just me over thinking considering I'm looking to have every DVD I have available to do watch-parties in my Discord. Anyway, I might put puts on one bookshelf (shocker) to free up shelf space on the one most people have seen on camera.

Overwatch has re-released the prior years All-Star skins, which meant I was able to grab the 2018 Pacific All-Stars Skin for Genji and the 2019 Pacific All-Stars skin for Lucio. Also made sure to grab every remaining Overwatch League team skin for D.va to complete that set... guess the next ones to gradually work on would Ana I guess.  

Overwatch Season 30 Competitive Results (Tank)

1. D.va - Route 66 - 13:01 - Win - 3-0
2. D.va - Nepal 00:25 - Tie - 0-0 - (Match thrown out)
   
3. D.va - King's Row - 14:32 - Win 3-2
   

So far this Season I have played 14 matches, winning 11 and losing 3, averaging 28.29 Elimination per 10 minutes with an average of 4.29 deaths per 10 minutes. 

We added Teen Titans for the PlayStation 2 to the collection today, and I was very much unaware that the animated series that made the ships of Robin/Starfire, Beast Boy/Raven, Cyborg/Jynx and so many more main stream in the 2000s had a game based on it. I should not be surprised but I am.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout lasted 31 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 472 kcal. The exercises for today were Weaving Combo #1, Intermediate Combo #2 and Advanced Combo #1. As you can tell by the screen shot, today was a flawless session, every thing registered as perfect. Very rare when that happens.

For tonight's stream, I'm not sure what we'll be doing, let alone a start time, but I'll keep folks posted in the Discord and on Twitter (twitter.com/fredcasden).

Regardless, we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

Bae Before Bay

 Good afternoon everybody,

Last night we wrapped up Life is Strange and went for 100% completion with Episode 5, and needless to say there were two things about that I didn't care for which was the two achievements tied to the stealth game play aspect in the Nightmare section. I'm sorry, but if there is one reason why I never could give Life is Strange a perfect 5-star rating it's because of that... and the fact that in episode 5 there are moments where Max is talking and her lips aren't moving

That said, episode 5 has always severed as a satisfying conclusion to the story of Max Caufiled, in that she either chooses to save Chloe Price or save Arcadia Bay, and while 52% choose to save Arcadia Bay, the ending to save Chloe is considered to be the true ending because a) Max and Chloe are such a ship-able couple and b) the comic book series follows the save Chloe ending. 

But because Life is Strange has a collectable mode with the option to jump to the final decision without it over writing the choice, we were able to look at the ending of sacrificing Chloe to save Arcadia Bay,, which does see the fall of Nathan Prescott, the arrest of Mr. Jefferson and Chloe's funeral... but the more up beat tempo of the song used for it always bothered me.

Perhaps the thing about saving Arcadia Bay that makes it most realistic choice for most people is that prior to when Max has a conversation with herself at the Two Whales Diner during the Nightmare sequence, you have a bunch of people begging for Max not to kill them as a prelude to the final choice... but at the same time you have others thanking her for saving them during the events of when she is heading to the Two Whales Diner (such as Truck Driver and Fisherman)... and a lot of folks go for the 'needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few). Trust me on a first time play through it can be gut wrenching, but this was my third play through (the first two were using the Steam version).

I do understand that the remastered collection has been delayed till early next year, and there is one thing I hope it fixes and that is how plastic the hair looks, particularly for those with more elaborate hair styles (Chloe, Max, Alyssa all immediate come to mind.) 

Life Is Strange Achievements

1. Incandescent: Take optional photo #1 in Episode 5: Polarized
2. Night Vision: Take optional photo #2 in Episode 5: Polarized
3. Framed: Take optional photo #3 in Episode 5: Polarized
4. Camera Obscura: Take optional photo #4 in Episode 5: Polarized
5. Blowup: Take optional photo #5 in Episode 5: Polarized
6. Iris: Take optional photo #6 in Episode 5: Polarized
7. Sensor: Take optional photo #7 in Episode 5: Polarized
8. On Display: Take optional photo #8 in Episode 5: Polarized
9. Light Meter: Take optional photo #9 in Episode 5: Polarized
10. Selfie Awareness: Take all optional photos in Episode 5: Polarized
11. Silhouettes: Take optional photo #10 in Episode 5: Polarized
12. Polarized: Finish Episode 5: Polarized
    

Now something funny, Episode 4 took me 4 hours to tackle on Friday night, and Episode 5 took me a bit over 3 hours... so to extend the stream out, we played some Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, playing in the world wide open races... and at best I finished 6th a couple of times, and for a brief moment in one race I was as high as 2nd... but things went horribly wrong, because I cannot for whatever reason figure out how to drift consistently, which makes cornering a real problem.

Following the stream we sent the fun over to DaWorstGamerEver25 (twitch.tv/DaWorstGamerEver25) who was celebrating their birthday and playing Police Simulator: Patrol Officers! 

Twitch Clip Links

• Funny but you sound like a 30 year old Actress!
• RUDE! 
• That is not the weather in San Francisco!
• Knocked his (BLEEP) Out
• And if you believe that I got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you
• Max you're talking without moving your lips!
• Perfect Moment For a Dab 
• I love you but I Killed you!
• We like big squirrels and I cannot lie
• Warren has issues 
• The Bottles Were Out To Get Her
• Finding the code... boo-yah!
• That's kind of the whole point 
• It is the canon choice! 
• Bae...
• It would have helped if I didn't run into the building
• Well we finished in 7th 
• Aw come on really come on Dudes!

Something weird, yesterday I received a delivery from BioWare of three Mass Effect t-shirts... which I already received. Back at the end of August... in fact the tracking number and everything is exactly the same. Someone must have screwed up somewhere and it certainly wasn't me.

People are getting on their high horse regarding the 'sexualization' of fictional characters, to which which I say 'Welcome to Earth, you must be new here. It's not really worth crying about because sex appeal sells, it always had, and it always will. Hell 99% of casting for television shows and movies is based around how someone looks, the actual acting is clearly a 'bonus', how else does one explain the careers of Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart

In terms of how I'm feeling following the 2nd Covid shot on Friday, just some stiffness here and there nothing major.

Since it's Sunday, that means a new highlight reel, and this week we actually stayed focus on things, so this week's highlights include clips from Overwatch, Chrono Cross, Life is Strange, X-Men vs Street Fighter EX Edition and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe!  

Overwatch Competitive Season 30 Match Results 

1. D.va - Eichenwalde - 14:02 - Win - 3-0
2. D.va - Lijiang Tower - 8:59 - Win - 2-0
3. D.va - Temple of Anubis - 8:59 - Win - 2-0

 

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout lasted 28 minutes with an estimate calorie burn of 413 kcal. Today's exercises involved Body Hook Combo, Body Uppercut Combo and Uppercut Combo #2. In terms of chasing the EX Achievements, if I stick with Hiro for the next 32 days I should knock out his challenger combo as well as the next achievements for 300 consecutive days and 300 stamps.

For tonight's stream, we'll be playing Overwatch, mostly standard Quick Play matches, as I'm focusing on Ranked Matches off stream.

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

 

The Theory Of Chaos Could Be The Apocalypse

Good morning everyone,

Last night we were back in Twitch playing Life is Strange, with episode 3: Chaos Theory. This episode further expands on Max's powers with its big climax of her being able to go back to a moment in time via a photograph to change history, which leads to a lot of things changing... namely Chloe being paralyzed. It's certainly a reminder as to why one does not change history in time travel stories because just because one thing could be avoid, the changes could have far greater consequences that cannot be predicted.

That said, episode 3 does give many reasons to not like Chloe, particularly in regards to how bitchy she can be on a number of subjects, such as the situation regarding Rachel and Frank, plus her own hang ups over how her father died, not to mention complaining about Max letter her down. Believe me as much as the game gives options for reasons to chose Chloe over Arcadia Bay, it certainly gives a lot of reasons to choose the town over her.

In terms of optional photos, we managed to find several of them,

 Life Is Strange Achievements (earned on stream)

1. The Reflex: Take optional photo #3 in Episode 3: Chaos Theory
2. Histogrammar: Take optional photo #4 in Episode 3: Chaos Theory
3. Pinholed: Take optional photo #6 in Episode 3: Chaos Theory
4. RAW Strength: Take optional photo #7 in Episode 3: Chaos Theory
5. Optican: Take optional photo #9 in Episode 3: Chaos Theory
6. Flash!: Take optional photo #10 in Episode 3: Chaos Theory
7. Chaos Theory: Finish Episode 3: Chaos Theory

Now when we finished episode three, I hooked up the PSOne so that we coul d play X-Men vs Street Fighter: EX Edition for the first time on stream. We went through the standard arcade mode twice, once as Ryu (with Cyclops as the back up), and the other mostly as Wolverine (with Ken as the back up) before realizing I did not know how to do any of Wolverine's supers in the air, so switched it to Cyclops (with Ryu) to finish the second run. Did get some great clips of some match endings involving Supers, including a couple of Ultra Super Finishes! 

I do think like a lot of fighting games, the novelty of X-Men vs Street Fighter: EX Edition is to pair it with stuff that ends early, since it serves as a great way to make sure a stream fills out to my preferred time length.

Following the stream we raided SmoresDaFloof who was playing a unique RPG / Platformer called Blue Fire, which seems to have a lot of Legend of Zelda vibes to it! Smores is awesome and I hope you check them out at twitch.tv/SmoresDaFloof

Twitch Clips Links

• Max The Ninja Strikes Again
• God Damn It Chloe! 
• Time Travel: Never Leave Home Without It
• Hey there's Fan Fiction About That
• Give me the Eggs and Bacon NOW!!!! 
  
• Max Earns A Truck Ride
  
• Warning The Homeless
  
• Saving Alyssa... Yet Again
• X-Men Vs Street Fighter EX Edition Intro!
• Catching Rouge with both Ryu & Cyclops' Super!
• The Chip Damage! 
• Might as well hit it again in mid-air!
• Caught Cyclops In Mid-air! 
• Would I Make Something Up Because I don't Read Japanese? 
• Wolverine and Ken: Ultra Combo Finish! 
• Cyclops Finishis Apocalypse
• Defeating Ryu as a we get a new follower! 

Sad to hear that Daffney Unger (real name: Shannon Spruill) who I first saw on WCW Programming in late 1999, passed away. She made headlines on Wednesday night regarding a live video she was doing on Instagram which made people extremely concerned. It's always upsetting when you hear about someone going that far because of the circumstances they are in... so I encourage folks to seek help if you ever need it. 1-800-273-8255 is the number for the Suicide Prevention Hotline

That said, what I remember of Daffney was she made her debut during a skit for a 'WCW Nitro Party' where she was basically worshiping David Flair, and then showed up like a week or two later. I thought the pairing of her Flair, was great and then when Crowbar was added to the mix, it made them real entertaining. Daffney was so over the top with her screams and antics around ring side, it made her stand out in a big way. 

Let's circle back to Life is Strange and the fact features a collectable mode which I totally forgot about, which means going back to get the optional photos missed in episodes already played is fairly easy, depending on the circumstances needed to get to the photo opportunities. So a few hours after the stream, I went back to episodes 1, 2 & 3 to go collectable hunting to 100% complete each episode without effecting the story we already have in progress. 

Life is Strange Achievements (Earned off-stream)

1. Visionary: Take all optional photos in Episode 1: Chrysalis
2. Focused: Take optional photo #6 in Episode 1: Chrysalis
3. Processor: Take optional photo #3 in Episode 2: Out of Time
4. Lab Master: Take all optional photos in Episode 2: Out of Time
5. Pixelated: Take optional photo #6 in Episode 2: Out of Time
6. Parallax View: Take optional photo #1 in Episode 3: Chaos Theory
7. Lenscrafted: Take optional photo #2 in Episode 3: Chaos Theory
8. Bokeh: Take optional photo #5 in Episode 3: Chaos Theory
9. Viewfinder: Take optional photo #8 in Episode 3: Chaos Theory
10. Camera Eye: Take all optional photos in Episode 3: Chaos Theory 

Overwatch's 29 Competitive Season ended yesterday with my final SR as a Tank being 1641, with my season high being 1681. 22 matches were played, and 11 matches were one, so I easily batted .500. So with the season ended I went a head and did the qualifiers for season 30, off to a good start of 3 wins and 2 losses

Overwatch Season 30 Competitive Matches

1. D.va - Kings Rows - 11:31 - Win - 3-0
2. D.va - Hollywood - 11:00 - Loss - 0-3
3. D.va - Oasis - - 15:32 - Loss - 2-1
4. D.va - Junkertown - 11-:00 - Win 2-1 - Play of the Game
5. D.va - Ilios - 8:59 - Win - 2-0 - Play of the Game

Yesterday I went to CVS to get the second Covid-19 vaccine shot... and they didn't have any available, so I have to step out again today, this time I going to call before hand. I was told they were expecting a fresh batch in the early evening yesterday, so hopefully that is true.

I know right now Tuesday night's stream will have a late start of 7:30 PM / 8 PM Eastern because of work. Got to take what I can get these days.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Daily Workout lasted 28 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 431 kcal. The exercises for today were Double Combo #1, Defensive Combo #1 and Defensive Combo #2. Since turning off the vibration function on the joy cons, there has not been the random de-syncing of the left joy con. Still a couple of odd misses, but that might be on my own timing (or lack there of).

For tonight's stream we will play Life Is Strange Episode 4: Dark Room, and we'll pair it with something else once we finish the episode

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

 

We Are The Kanto Champion

 

Good afternoon everybody,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Twitch Clip Links

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Today's Notes 7/26/21: Dare to Lindholm

Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream of Overwatch was a lot of fun, we got in a few normal Quick Play matches early, then switched over to Arcade mode once Mayhem became available. Big thanks to PandaSweet and TazerFace for joining in on a lot of the matches.

I did happen to have my best match ever stat wise with Brigitte, and it's why the screen shot is that of the results screen. The funny thing about that match is that I basically got fed up with the two damage dealers spamming 'Need healing' and I actually backed off providing heals in general and just focused on the payload. Thankfully the two tanks, one of which I believe was Panda and the other support also focused on the objective.... and somehow that match was one in what was basically a 4 vs 6 scenario.

Here are the match results in general from last night.

1. Quick Play: Moira- Win
2. Quick Play: Brigitte-  Win
3. Quick Play: D.va - Win
4. Quick Play: Moira - Win
5. Quick Play: Brigitte - Loss
6. Quick Play: D.va: Loss
7. Mayhem: Widowmaker -  Win
8. Mayhem: McCree - Loss
9. Mayhem: McCree / Winston : Loss
10. Mayhem: Windowaker -  Loss
11. Mayhem: Reinhardt - Win
12. Mayhem: Zarya - Win
13. Mayhem: Echo  / Winston - Loss
14. Mayhem: Reinhardt - Loss
15. Mayhem: Reinhardt - Loss
16. Mayhem: D.va - Loss
17. Mayhem: D.va - Loss
18. Mayhem: Tracer - Loss
19. Mayhem: Zarya: - Win
20. Mayhem: Brigitte- Win
21. Mayhem: Brigitte- Loss
22. Mayhem: Genji / Moria -Win

I will admit in that last match I basically phoned it in as Genji before switching to Moira at the very end to basically provide all the support needed to pull out that win.

Anyway, here are some clips from last night

• Overwatch 7/25/21 Clip 1
  
• Overwatch 7/25/21 Clip 2
  
• Overwatch 7/25/21 Clip 3
  
• Overwatch 7/25/21 Clip 4
  
• Overwatch 7/25/21 Clip 5
  

I put a poll on twitter to see what 'forgotten' RPGs people might be interested in seeing at some point. The list included Chrono Cross, Thousand Arms, Xenosaga Episode 1 and X-Men Legends. To vote visit: https://twitter.com/FredCasden/status/1419519455630139395

 Woke up at 4:30 AM, mostly due to the heat, trust me there is a reason why I hate it when weather gets about 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Anyway, I messed around a little with Pokemon: Let's Go Eevee to try capturing Pokemon with it undocked, and yes while it's easier to aim and toss the Pokeballs , it did show some of the more.... problematic aspects of the game with the ratio of how often the Pokemon will break out of the pokeballs. That said, I did boost the levels of my squad, so we should be on pace or just ahead of the pace for everything in Lavender town.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Daily Workout saw us using Karen for the first time as the trainer and it was broadcasted on Twitch. The daily workout itself lasted 31 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 589 kcal, and we did extra, so the complete session went 43 minutes with an estimate calorie burn of 786 kcal. We knocked out two a achievements with this session

1. Karen's New Student: Exercise with Karen as your instructor
2. Karen's Best Student: Receive a 3-star rating from Karen

We also made progress on other achievements, we're up to 3 out of 10 for the Karen's Trainee, 2 out of 10 for Karen's Buddy and 98 out of 100 for King FIt Fighter. The Karen's Best achievement's progress is currently hidden, but we need all four of these achievements to unlock the last four outfits in the game

Of course since this session was streamed there are a few clips.

• Fitness Boxing 2 7/26/21 Clip 1
• Fitness Boxing 2 7/26/21 Clip 2 
• Fitness Boxing 2 7/26/21 Clip 3
• Fitness Boxing 2 7/26/21 Clip 4 
• Fitness Boxing 2 7/26/21 Clip 5
  

For tonight's stream we are starting up Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep, and we'll going in order to the character campaigns from top to bottom... mostly because I know Aqua's is supposed to be done last. My goal is to just get through the story on all campaigns as quickly as possible.

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

Highlights from the week of 3/14/21

 Here are highlights from my Twitch channel (http://twitch.tv/fredcasden) for the week of March 14, 2021, where we featured Overwatch, Dragon Age Inquisition, Fitness Boxing 2 Rhythm & Music, ESPN Major League Baseball, Star Trek Online, Gran Turismo 5, X-Men The Arcade Game, TNA Impact, Sonic The Hedgehog (2006), Marvel vs Capcom Clash of the Superheroes, Lego Indiana Jones 2 The Adventure Continues and Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma! 

Today's Notes 3/20/21

Good evening everybody,

Yup I overslept today... but hey, it's not like I had any serious plans for the afternoon anyway. Last night's stream saw no frame drops, so Comcast is staying on the ball, but getting in touch with Jerry from their Corporate Customer Service division is proven to be a damn trial in and of itself, because if they say to the FCC they spoke with me directly,, that will be a damn lie. Yes everything has been going great, but I want to make damn sure they know why I took the steps I did.

Anyway, we kicked off last night's stream with Gran Turismo 5, a racing game that featured all sorts of awesome vehicles, and I was surprised at how gorgeous that game still looks. Last time I played it was back in 2013, and it was a real joy. Now remembering how to corner and the fact that acceleration and break are not the triggers on the controller meant there was some interesting moments of me going off track.

We then jumped to X-Men the Arcade Game, doing a complete run using Dazzler, and I did start an online lobby, and near as I can tell it all still works. Granted no one stumbled into my game, so we couldn't see if that worked and what the latency would be like, but hey we had fun going through it.

Now I did say we were going to try Sonic The Hedgehog 2006... and while I remember beating this game way back in the day, I clearly don't have the patience to deal with the horrible camera angle and very loose controls. The fact that Sega rushed Sonic 06 into the development and basically merged it with another game they were working on in a desperate attempt to celebrate the Blue Blur's 15th anniversary was very much exposed by the fact that the games in the franchise that came out after it like Sonic Generation and Sonic Forces are far superior by not trying to do as much. Of course we did have a bit comedy with the fact that Sonic 06 is not listed on Twitch, which goes to show how Sega feels about it.

TNA Impact, the game that could be blame for driving Midway out of business was also featured last night, and for a game that was hyped to be like WWF No Mercy, I can safely say TNA Impact after all these years is nothing more than an arcade style wrestling game like the WWE SmackDown games. With a clunky control scheme and perhaps the stupidest gimmick match in wrestling history (Ultiamte X), it's a good game for a laugh and that's about it. That said, it does have a story mode... and maybe we'll suffer through that... who knows.

Marvel Vs Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes was also on the lineup, as part oft he Marvel vs Capcom Origins collection, and it was certainly a struggle to get through the arcade mode, thanks to the input reading the game does at various points. Still we got through it, with Ryu and Chun Li after trying various combinations, and there is something excited about getting through games like that. Maybe cause it was an arcade game first and thus every time you loss you had to put a quarter in to continue, so when you finally beat you are super pumped!

Lastly, we closed out with a little Lego Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues, which was released about the time of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I remember not liking this one as much as the first Lego Indiana Jones game and never finished it, so maybe we'll do that in full at some point, question is do I lay the PS3 version or the Steam one.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Session started late because I did over slept, bit we did do a 45 minute workout, which meant seeing and hearing how Hiro acts during the No Mercy mode. and his voice actor really didn't get into delivering his lines. Still we burned a lot of calories... and now it's time to gain those calories back with dinner!

Tonight we'll be starting up Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma, the final game (as of this writing) in the series, so looking forward to seeing how the plot and details of what's going on is revealed!

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