Video Commentary: Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories

Earlier this week we wrapped up Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories and yeah, I have some thoughts on the game that fits for this weeks commentary. 

Today's Notes 12/18/20

Good afternoon everyone,

Last night's Star Trek Online stream was full of Q's Winter Wonderland, as we battled snowmen, snow-borg, went ice fishing, ice skating and all sorts of other shenanigans. Now we actually did the entire night as our Cardassian in the Klingon Empire, keeping that particular series of streams going, meaning it will count towards the Glory for the Empire series I've been doing this year. Because I haven't done the Winter event out right to get items in a few years for Star Trek Online, I forgot how hard it was to get the ornaments needed to exchange for outfits and such. Thank goodness I still had some left on my main character to get Sorra (my Cardassian) off on a good foot. Did notice the long winter coats have clipping issues around the neck of my Cardassian, which was a little frustrating to see.

My physical copy of Drace Domino's Rise of the Battlebitch arrived today. Again I've been a big fan of their fan fiction work and with what I read so far in Rise of the Battlebitch, one can tell Drace put a lot of effort into it.

Updated to include Photo of Rise of the Battlebitch on my desk tray

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session ran over an hour when on counts the stretching at the beginning and the end and I do. I certainly felt a little draggy towards the end, as I've noticed that its a lot easier to get to 2000 punches per day in FB2 than it is in the original with the settings I've put in the place. The side-quad stretches can fuck right off though, there is no way I reach back and hold either ankle to stretch my thighs without falling over!

Twitch Sings still has 3146 songs on it, and I'm still keeping track because we got less than two weeks left until it shuts down. Some have pointed out on Twitter than when Twitch announced Twitch Sings was shutting down, they would replace it with something better but since that announcement nearly three months ago, there hasn't been a peep out of Twitch in regards to Twitch Sings. of course they did recently made some odd decision about what cannot be said on Twitch while not giving a particular group their own tag as a way to identify themselves. So who know what the fuck is going on in the head of Twitch's higher ups.

I'm not completely sure what I'll be streaming tonight on Twitch, we might just go ahead and make it a quasi-watch along of Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days just to get that out of the way, which would wrap up the 1.5 side of the Kingdom Hearts 1.5 + 2.5 Collection. Which would actually leave the 2.5 side of the collection for 2021... keeping in mind I still have Kingdom Hearts 2.8 and Kingdom Hearts III to follow that. Talk about a huge fucking franchise to work my way through!

And on that bombshell, we'll see ya later tonight over on twitch.tv/fredcasden

Today's Notes 12/17/20

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night's stream of ESPN Baseball 2k4 was a lot of fun, as we did a lot of chatting of old-schoolish baseball.... because at this point anything prior to 2010 is old school for a lot of folks right? Anyway, we continued the 2004 season of the Philadelphia Phillies, taking 2 of 3 at home against the Cincinnati Reds... and the only reason we won two games was because I switched the difficulty from Pro to Rookie. I got the timing down fairly well for 'real time' pitching, but for whatever reason the game really likes to put the screws to the player on things that are ending up hits for it with runners in scoring position. On a side-note, I did find it odd that Ken Griffey Jr was injured early in the season, yes I remember he was often injured during his times with the Reds, but to see that he was already on the 60-Day DL was really surreal. On a side note, I accidentally signed Ricky Henderson, but that did lead to me making some adjustments to my roster to give me a little flexibility, where I can use Pat Burrell at First Base to give Jim Thome a day off instead of Shawn Wooten. Also called up Chase Utley to platoon him at second with Placido Polanco, while sending Jason Michaels to the minors. You know I probably should've listed who was on the roster for this game.... but oh well. 

Today Fitness Boxing session took a solid hour, and discovered something new about it, in that if the game is having the player do a lot of lower body exercises, such as with the Defensive Combo with involves ducking, then the stretching routine at the start and end is going to add in stretches to make sure the player is properly warmed up. That said.... the hold you left/right leg behind your back with your left/right hand in order to stretch  the thighs was something I could not do when I was 17 years old and weighed 150 pounds.... so trying to do that at 37 years old at 260 pounds lead to me nearly falling over. Still the workout was good an intense, and I'm loving hell mode, particularly when it's the last exercise because it really gives the whole 'push it to the max at full power'. Plus one wouldn't want to piss off Lin.

With it being Thursday that mean Star Trek Online is on the agenda, as Cryptic Studios, the developers continue to fix the bug of forcing players to respec every time there is an update. According to patch notes, which I'm including below, it should be a rare instance, but it's still happening. At the very least they said they are giving players a little gift to compensate for the all the grief.

Star Trek Online Patch Notes (12/16/20) 

• Updated Memorial plaque to include Thomas Lister, Jr.    
• Resolved an issue that was causing characters to not load in properly. 
• Resolved an issue that would sometimes cause the client to crash when patching.  
• Added unlocks for Winter ornament 2020 to Fleet Starbases (Fed & Kdf).  
• Updated holiday selection console to recognize new ornament project and allow hide/unhide. 
• The Phase Shift universal console has been updated to be equippable on any Fek'Ihri Starship 
• Captains will no longer see fleet recruitment messages written by an account on their ignore list.
• Having to re-buy skills due to an invalid power tree should now be very rare for all characters.
  • This includes characters that were invalid before the fix.

And on that bombshell, we'll see you later night at about 9:30 PM over on twitch.tv/fredcasden

Today's Notes 12/16/20

Good afternoon everyone,

Yeah this is being posted very late, because I got up very late because well... I got up very late lol.

Anyway, last night we finished Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories, making it the 45th game we've finished on Twitch this year. Game play wise, I sure as hell can leave it because the card mechanic certainly would make more sense in a 2D standard RPG style setting. But in an action-adventure type setting, it's a real hindrance and breaks the natural flow, which became really noticeable on the 13th floor where you're often fighting three waves of enemies. 

That said, I did develop a plan on getting through the final bosses Axel (once) and Marluxia (3 times, but 2 were back to back), based on the fact so many enemies on the 13th floor can be healed if I dish out magic of any type... go all out on normal key blade attacks. Story wise, everything that takes place in Chain of Memories basically can come across as pointless because Sora, Donald and Goofy will forget everything that happens in Castle Oblivion, and thus setting things up for Kingdom Hearts II, but it doesn't become pointless because of the pinkie promise made between Sora and Namine.

And as proven in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, if a pinkie promise is broken.... watch your ass

Did do a Fitness Boxing 2 session today, going about 50 minutes (counting stretching), and I can safely say I do like some minor details in it, such as the game telling you to get some water between some exercises, and I really like the break down of seeing how well I throw specific punches from either the orthodox or south paw stances. That said, it seems the unlocking of specific routines is a lot slower than the original Fitness Boxing. On a side note, the in-game version of Hot N Cold and Girl's Just Wanna Have Fun are not as good as Bad Romance and Born This Way in the first game.

Tonight we're going to hook up the Playstation 2 and do some ESPN Baseball 2K4, continuing the 2004 season featuring the Philadelphia Phillies! Will we be able to win more than we lose? We'll see later tonight over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

Today's Notes 12/15/20

Good afternoon everyone,

Last night's stream of Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories certainly ended with a tough decision on my part. You see we cleared floors 11 and 12, dealing with two battles against Riku which were both cakewalks, the battle against Darkside which I probably made harder on myself by not recongizing its attack pattern sooner because of my set up being more 'spammy' than anything else, and two slightly tougher battles in rematches against Vexen, who is immune to ice, and Larxene, who is immune to lightning.Both of those battles required multiple attempts to figure out what would work based on what I had available . 

Now here's where the tough decision comes in, you see, if I elected to continue the stream to try and tackle the 18th floor, which I probably could've cheesed my way through based on what map cards I had available, we probably could've finished the game, because I know if I went through the 13th floor I would be dealing with the final boss battles along with about a dozen rooms of enemies to get through. Plus I still have my streak going in the original Fitness Boxing, so we called the stream as soon as Nami explains her story to Sora cut scene ended and will see about finishing Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories tonight.

Speaking of Fitness Boxing, in the original last night we broke past the 200,000 punch marker, which was a nice personal achievement to surpass at like 2:30 in the morning. And of course when I woke up today, we hit Fitness Boxing 2, and passed the 5,000 punch marker. Considering we started included that in my daily routine on Saturday, so it's awesome progress is already being made to catch up to the original.

The Overwatch Winter Event begins today, and I can safely say I want the new Moira skin, her as an Ice Queen is just totally appropriate!  Torb as a lumberjack is kind of cool, as is Roadhog as a 'Frosty Snowman', but the rest of the new skins I can take 'em or leave him, no real impact on me at all. I might give the the 4v4 elimination a try since it seems to be based around freezing opponents and thawing allies in a weird game of tag, but it looks like for the weekly events skins I'll be focusing on standard matches. As Kalenal (twitch.tv/kalenal) pointed out to me, since she is traveling for the holidays it's frustrating to see how many timed events Blizzard chooses to put out for its games around this time, knowing full well people may not be able to complete them all. 

Anyway that will do it for today's notes, we'll see ya later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden at about 9:30 PM EST! 

PornHub's Justified Nuclear Option Really Put The Hurting On Animation Creators

Good evening everyone,

Let me begin this by saying, I fully understand why PornHub did what it did by deleting about 60% of videos on its site, as certain content has been linked to shall we say, less than desirable people in terms of their intent (as indicated here: https://www.pornhub.com/blog/11422) . Yes, what PornHub did was an extreme measure, but at the same time, one has to realize they are a business first and foremost, so they are going to cover their own asses first. Again I'm not faulting Porn Hub for doing what they did because it was necessary.

But what they did was basically hit the panic button to do things quickly and sloppily (pun not intended) and a whole lot of creative people who have contributed to that site have been stepped on as a result.Those who I am referring to are animation creators. You may laugh but when I think of Porn Hub, I think of folks like 26RegionSFM, Pixel-Perry, RealVinyl and BigJohnson first before say the likes of Cassie Kisses and Asa Akira, because one can easily see the amount time that goes into creatied an animated video. 

Hell when I had an simple animated intro  made for my Twitch channel, it took the person I commissioned the work to six weeks to make it, and it was just in 2D, these folks are creating full 3D work, some of which with better quality than Pixar and Dreamworks. So one has to respect the time and effort these folks put into their work, particularly if its not just a short 10-15 second loop. The fact that they create videos that have a story to them, with a three act structure in most cases and are mostly working solo its amazing.

Hopefully PornHub will come up with some way of restoring their work or an easy way for these types of creators to contribute to the site... but knowing being familiar with the work of these content creators, I know they'll find a more animator friendly platform... hell most already had long time ago. 

That said I do find it funny that re-posters who did not create any animated content have not been hit by PornHub's purge... which is really really odd, when they actual creators get nuked, but the people who snatch the content with out the creator's consent. Believe me I've battled that as a fan fiction writer for years, and still have to battle it when I get word that stuff I worked on gets re-posted without my permission. 

Anyway, that's my thoughts on this, now to go and update my bookmarks.

Today's Notes 12/14/20

Good afternoon everyone,

We woke up early enough to get in a bonus stream, this time officially breaking in Fitness Boxing 2 as the new morning standard. Setting things up for a heavy workout, I can safely say that Fitness Boxing 2 does a better job of keeping me on pace than the first one did, but then again, we basically have to start over for the beginning, which means we're unlocking all the exercises again. That said, this did show off how glaring Lin's dialog and instructions being a mix of old and new is, as it can be a bit jarring. Also because of the length of the workout session, I did get to experience the No Mercy mode, in which in the instructor basically goes all drill sergeant, which is quite the change up in personality. As you see the results screen is quite different, but all the important stats are there. Really surprised my Fitness Age was at 23, when I'm really use to seeing it around 18-20, guess having too many 'okay' punches and misses really count against me. Oh almost forgot, yesterday did a weigh in and I was at 260 pounds!

We followed that up with a little Animal Crossing New Horizons, and we picked up our new resident in Hopper yesterday. He's clearly more of an elderly dude near as I can tell, wonder how well his personality will gel with everyone elses. Also for some reason Sherb said he was hacking things, which was totally weird. I wonder if his line of dialog was mentioned because I don't really spend the Nook Miles I've accumulated. I probably should though. 

We closed out the morning stream with Super Mario Bros 35, a single run through because things got off to a good start, and we battled our way to a 2nd place finish. Probably could've came in first if I didn't have to use my coins to try and get myself the power-ups needed to survive the amount of enemies that appeared on screen. Still finished in the top 5 is nothing to sneeze at!

Of course, we have to talk about last night's stream of Overwatch, which saw just about every match be a Quick Play match, which meant I was mostly playing Tank and Support, as was the case with PandaSweet when she joined in the fun! Of course we learned from last week and in the last hour we queued up as damage heroes only, which meant we got in some matches with other characters. I continue to work on using McCree when ever I can, having gotten better at moving around the payload to try and stall as much as possible, but he doesn't really have the kit to survive for long if my team's tanks aren't attacking on the payload.

Tonight we'll be back to Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories picking up on the 11th Floor of Castle Oblivion. With luck we'll get through the 11th and 12th floors along with the related bosses with as little trouble as possible, but if the battle against Vexen was any indication last Monday, this could be a complete slog of a night.  

On a side note note, an author I've been following for a quite some time on the fan fiction front that uses the handle Drace Domino recently had a book published called Rise of the Battlebitch, consideri I'm a big fan of their work, I figured I'll give it a read when I get the opportunity.

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