Best of the Week December 13, 2020

Here are the best moments from my twitch channel (twitch.tv/fredcasden) for the week of December 13, 2020, which included Overwatch, Fitness Boxing 2, Animal Crossing New Horizons, Super Mario 35, Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories, ESPN Baseball 2K4, Star Trek Online, Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days and Twitch Sings!

 

 

Today's Notes 12/19/20

Good afternoon everybody,

I can safely say if the snow stays on the ground it will indeed be a White Christmas in South Jersey, and hopefully we won't be seeing any more snow for the rest of the winter. I don't mind the cold as much, but snow is fucking annoying and I can't understand why anyone would encourage anyone to interact with it... and I'm saying when you have some school districts who have administrators who are Trump supporters assigning students to do just that (I'm looking at you Mount Vernon School District).

Anyway, last night's stream saw the return to the Kingdom Hearts franchise with the watch-along of Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days (which is read as Kingdom Hearts 358 Days Over 2... don't ask). As a set up for Kingdom Hearts II it certainly works, as we get a lot of Roxas's backstory... or lack there of as the real star being Xion, who just happens to be Sora idealized version of Kairi. Roxas comes across as having rocks for brains and just really annoying. Axel gets some character development from what we just recently saw in Re:Chain of Memories since a good chunk of 358/2 Days overlaps with Re:CoM. Graphically, it does make a lot of use of Kingdom Hearts II assets, in particular for nearly every thing involving Organization XIII's Castle and Twilight Town. At the very least we do get the explanation of why Rikku looks like Ansem in Kingdom Hearts II.

By the way, in case you're wondering why last night's stream was a watch along, is because orignally Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days was originally released for the Nintendo DS, and it's split screen set up couldn't really be converted to consoles, even though it was an action RPG. So what the developers did was just took all the cut scenes and made a movie while using occasional test pieces to explain details that took place in other places.... which is probably the biggest gripe I have regarding it, since they have all the other cut scenes, why not included the ones that took place in the Disney areas too? I get wanting to keep it under three hours, but as a viewing experience it does break the immersion.... not to mention the chance of locations would've been nice.

On a side note: Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days was last Disney project to feature Wayne Allwine, who was the voice of Mickey Mouse for 32 years.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was a little short as I wanted to see to see what different settings were like, such as increasing the intensity from Get Moving to Stamina while lowering the duration from Heavy to Regular. The result ended up being few punches thrown because of the shorter duration but more constant movement and things being done with a more rapid pace. Kind of perfect for days when I wake up late as hell (lol). Plus since I'm doing Fitness Boxing 1 before before 10-15 minuets it events out a little (plus that helps counter some of my snacking lol).

Tonight being Saturday, means we'll be doing one of our final Twitch Sings streams, with the game shutting down on January 1st. Se we got tonight and next Saturday the 26th, and maybe December 31st if we want to close the year out with Twitch Sings. Actually no that wouldn't quite work as the 29th starts up the next Division 2 manhunt and the question of if PowerThumbz is going to start that then and finishing up the 31st. Ack! I'll figure it out... who would've though that the Division 2 would've became such a major part of my streaming line up? I sure as hell didn't.

And on that bombshell, we'll wrap things up here, catch ya later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden

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!