Highlights for the Week of February 7, 2021

Here are the best moments of the games featured on my Twitch channel (http://twitch.tv/fredcasden) for the week of February 7, 2021. The games featured were Overwatch, Fitness Boxing 2: Rhythm & Music, Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix, Paladins, Tom Clancy's The Division 2, ESPN Major League Baseball, Star Trek Online & Zero Escape Virtue's Last Reward! 

Today's Notes 2/13/21

Good afternoon everybody,

Yup I slept in, didn't get up till about 1:30 PM.... had a nice tuna sandwich and salad for 'breakfast', because why not.

Anyway last night's stream of Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix saw a lot getting done in terms of advancement of the story, as we made our second visits to everything from Twilight Town up to Port Royal, which means achievements for finishing the worlds related to Mulan, Beauty &The Beast, and Pirates of the Caribbean were unlocked. Obviously the biggest and best moment of the night was the aftermath of Goofy's apparent death and playing as Sora running along a canyon fighting along side Squall, Cloud, Tifa and Yuffie before slaughtering 1000 enemies still holds up as one the most bad-ass moments in any video game I've played. Now while I like a lot of the added cut-scenes that add extra context to the story, the placement of them leave a bit to be desired, because I have no memory of such a large break in the action in some sections. Also the realization that I have to use the Drive forms to get various abilities that should be from just leveling up or reaching story points is complete bull shit lol.

So let me tough on the impeachment trial which as of this moment exposed two real big obvious truths, one the Republicans have no balls and won't stick their principals when it comes to defending the constitution are are willing to risk even more violence and Trump running for office again because they were complicit in enabling him to organize an assault on the Capital back on January 6th, and the Democrats dropped the fucking ball by not calling for witness testimony from those willing to speak about what they know and saw regarding Trump's actions, showing their inability to follow-thru.In fact as I'm writing this, the Senate did acquitted Trump 57-43.... and the 43 Senators all of whom are Republicans should be ashamed of themselves and for the fact they have just put this nation in peril. May all 43 of them burn in hell for all of eternity. If you are a Trump Support, fuck you and I hope you burn in hell too.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was about 38 minutes (closer to 46 minutes if one includes 8 minutes of stretching), and was a real leg burner as it did include a Hell Mode set. Unlocked a new achievement "Middleweight Puncher Lv. 3" which was to reach a total punch count of 84,000 HITs aka punches thrown that are not consider misses.  This does not include things like weaves, ducks, steps and blocks. My current exact total is 84,510 punches thrown. On a side note, it seems the game itself does not like to use 'So What' by Pink, as it has only been used in a session 5 times, while "Alone" by Marshmello and"Can't Hold Us" by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis have been used 21 times.

Late tonight, we'll be getting back to Zero Escape Virtue's Last Reward, as I think we've done all we could with the Magenta door path last week, so we'll need to jump to the first door choice to pick on of the other two to see if that gets us anywhere. So we'll be seeing a lot of dialog, new puzzles and such for tonight's stream! 

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

Today's Notes 2/12/21

Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream was indeed a double header, leading off first with Star Trek Online, which saw probably the most variety of ships seen ever for one of my streams, as we bounced from character to character, doing either full episodes or short quick patrols / task force operations. Hell some characters haven't been seen on stream in nearly two years near as I could tell. So it's safe to say, that will be the pattern with STO going forward unless there are nights when there is new content to work with.

The second half of the stream saw me teaming up with Iceman7667, FnDanteSavage and PowerThumbz in the Division 2, as we completed the manhunt, and it was the usual silliness that takes place when the four of us team up in that game... for example, me parodying a Neil Diamond's Sweet Caroline for friend of the channel KarolinaWatts, or me and Dante going back and forth on lyrics from Whitesnake's Here I Go Again. It was a super fun and successful night.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 stream was surprisingly brief, as the total workout time minus stretching wasn't even a half hour, but the pace of everything was pretty quick. Still it was a good way to get moving to start my day, even though I had one moment that if I was streaming it, I would've just been totally embarrassed with how badly I screwed up a combo. It does happen, mostly when for some reason I think the punch sequence is totally different than what is right in front of me!

Got in a little Animal Crossing New Horizons this morning, and it is recognizing today as Lunar New Year, rather surprised that the Festival Day that's on the 15th wasn't paired up with today. 

Tonight's stream will be focused on Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix, as we begin the second half of the game by returning to Twilight Town. Chances are it's gonna be over run with Heartless and Nobodies, the later of which we haven't seen much of so far in the game, despite being a huge part of the intro with Roxas and mentioned heavily during Yen Sid's briefing to Sora, Donald and Goofy about the different types of enemies they'll be seeing.

And since I'm about to start work as soon as I post this, we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

Today's Notes 2/11/21

Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream of ESPN Major League Baseball was a lot of fun, as my 2004 Philadelphia Phillies went 5-1 on a six-game home-stand against the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Diego Padres, which saw two walk-off wins, one of which was a home run in the bottom of the ninth. Unfortunately,  we lost Kevin Millwood for three-months, meaning my rotation has Eric Milton, Randy Wolf, Vincente Padilla, Brett Myers and Pat Hentgen. On a side note, I did notice Dan Plesac was in the game as a free-agent, so I added him to my bullpen, giving me another left-hander... and I had to chuckle when his fast ball clocked in at 97 MPH, because by the end of the 2003, Plesac was topping out at 87 MPH which lead to this decision to retire at the end of that season.

Yesterday, the official Ghostbusters YouTube channel added Darkness at Noon part 1, which was the first episode of Extreme Ghostbusters. I remember watching it on the very first day of my freshman year of High School on WGTW Channel 48 here in the Philadelphia area. Watching it yesterday, it was clear the strength of the show was going to be on its tone being pretty dark, and that Kylie Griffin was going to be the break out character. The show does suffer a little from the 'is that all they wear' vibe, as the in-episode timeline indicates two-days past... and that all the main characters were wearing the same clothes as they did before with the exception of when Egon suits up in a jumpsuit and when Kylie is seen in her apartment.

I did casually follow what was going with the impeachment via Twitter while working yesterday, and then once I was able to check some stuff out with audio it became very clear to the me that if any Republican Senator acquits Donald Trump of his crimes then they are basically admitting they condone what happened on January 6, 2021. You cannot say that Trump misspoke and that he 'didn't mean for it to happen', when he was basically telling people to come to DC, to march on Capital Hill and to attempt a coup all in his name.

Today's Fitness Boxing stream was s solid 30 minute workout, nothing to major or stressful, even though I happened to miss performing two right blocks (one from orthodox stance and one from the southpaw stance) at same exact point in two different combo sequences. Still, when looking at the end results when compared to the last few days, it certainly felt like a very light day. 

Tonight's stream will be a double header, because I work from 12 PM to 5 PM EST again today, so as soon as I finish dinner we'll get started. The first half of the stream will focus on Star Trek Online, as we'll probably do a couple of episodes for one of various characters, then about 8:30 / 9 PM EST we'll be switching over to the Division 2 to continue this weeks manhunt with Iceman, PowerThumbz and FNDanteSavage. So Trek and shenanigans will be on the menu for sure. 

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

Today's Notes 2/10/21

Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream ended up being a double header, because of the time zone difference between myself and a few others combined with when I finished working. So we lead off with Paladins, getting in matches as Ash, Ying, Tyra and Skye... and I certainly had some great moments during that, the one thing that stands out about that game is the how garbage a lot of the PC players can be. Yes I used to play Paladins a lot on PC, but much like with Overwatch, if you play a character that is a healer, like Jenos, your priority should be on helping support the front line, not flanking and being no where near to help on the objective!

The main event of the night was doing manhunt things with PowerThumbz, FnDanteSavage and Iceman in the Division 2, and we got 3/5ths of it done, with having to reach a boss floor in the summit taking the most amount of time. If it wasn't for that we probably could've gotten everything else for the manhunt down. That said, instead of being in DC, the main focus was in New York, so there was a lot more enemies in close proximity for us to deal with! More than likely when we team up again on Thursday, that is going to be another double-header night for me,.

The developers of Star Trek Online continue to make incredibly stupid decisions, as they are working on limiting player choice. For the sake of the Role Play aspect of the game, a lot of players would create characters that either stayed in the past (if they were Agents of Yesterday or Discovery era Starfleet Officers), or stay unaligned (if they were Romulan Republic or Dominion), because cause what the RP of MMORPG stands for... Role Play! But someone on the dev team didn't like that people were doing that, and so they are stripping things that made that possible away, namely access to the DOFF system, which in itself is an exploit the developers put in place at the expense of actual game play content! As I said, it's an incredibly stupid decision.

Had a solid Fitness Boxing 2 session this morning, even though hip shape focus combos are just torture on calves, since it's jab-duck-jab-duck-jab-body jab.... so think up down up down-up-down. Did pass two achievement milestones, one being middleweight puncher lv. 2 which was to reach a total punch count of 80,500, (my current total of punches thrown is 81,293) and the other being Supersonic Hitter which was to perform 90,000 perfect motions. 

Tonight stream will see the continuation of ESPN Major League Baseball on the Playstation 2, as my Philadelphia Phillies will be at home taking on the Los Angeles Dodgers, and maybe even the San Diego Padres. For those wondering where in the calendar we are, about May 18, 2004. Since we'll most likely start at 6 PM EST (give or take) we should be able to knock out both series, or at least the entire Dodgers  series and maybe start up the series against the Padres.

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

Today's Notes 2/9/21

Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream of Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix certainly covered a lot of ground, as we went through the first visits to Port Royal, Agrabah, Halloween Town and the Pride Lands while also touching on the first couple of side-quests for Atlantica and 100 Acre Wood. I said it before, but KH2 has such a superior game play experience to the original game it's not even funny, when one considers that the core mechanics of combat are the same. That said I am wishing I had the availability to dodge roll instead of hoping to parry attacks to turn some situations around, because part of how I got through the first game and even Re:Chain of Memories was rolling out of the way. On a side note: the placement of some of the puzzle pieces leaves a lot to be desired as there doesn't seem to be multiple ways to reach certain locations.

Tonight we'll be returning to The Division 2 and 9 PM EST for the next manhunt adventure with Iceman, PowerThumbz and I think also FnDanteSavage, but since I work in the afternoon from 12 PM to 5 PM EST, more than likely I'm going to lead off with something else before hand. Not sure exactly what yet, but we'll have a lot of fun that's for sure..

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was a little rough, although shorter than yesterday, I had some issues getting loose from the orthodox stance and missed quite a few things I was perfect with yesterday, namely with forward-backward steps. Still it's always a good way to start the day, and today was the 60th day of Fitness Boxing 2, so we got that going for us.

Turns out this years Super Bowl lost a lot of viewers in comparison to previous years, but lets face it, people have found other things to do, and the appeal of football was more than overdue to start seeing a decline in viewership... and some one is going to be of the theory that it's because of what the coaches look like, as if that really matters. The reason why sports lose viewers is because the quality of what is being presented is steadily declining. Gone are the days of big hits, big plays, grind it out grit that made football exciting... now it's so water down that it actually looks like a war re-enactment ceremony, where guys get mad for not following the script.

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

Today's Notes 2/8/21

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night's stream of Overwatch was quite productive in terms of getting the nine wins needed to unlock the Terracotta Medic skin for Baptiste. While it is clearly based on the Terracotta Army, it's not exactly something I'd throw on Baptiste, not that I use him much to begin with. Also had two plays of the game, one as Reinhardt and the other as D.va, and since both were in Total Mayhem matches, safe to say they hard to achieve. Big thanks to PandaSweet for joining in on the fun last night, as we made sure she got the Terracotta Medic unlocked as well. 

So the big take away from last night's Super Bowl is probably the streaker... and the usual 'woe is us' style of broadcasting that takes place in response to it. They ask 'why is something like this happening during a Super Bowl', well let's look at the facts, it's the Super Bowl, stupid people are going to do stupid things... the NFL has catered heavily to stupid people by going out of their way to have as many people in attendance as possible under current COVID guidelines, the NFL was basically asking for something to happen... and considering how the Chiefs of Kansas City got their asses kicked by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, leading to Tom Brady getting his 7th Super Bowl Ring... the NFL got what they deserved when it comes to the streaker.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was solid, as I moved a couple of things around to give me some extra room behind myself, so front back steams are easier to do. Surprisingly it also helped a bit with lateral movements when I move from side to side. Now of course we were streaming it, as we normally do once a week on Mondays, and that leads me to what the next topic.

I was going to play Animal Crossing New Horizons as well, as the normal thing we do on the extra streams, but the Nintendo Switch froze and locked up. So of course that ended the stream because I had to fix that, and to do that you press and hold the power on button from 15 seconds, you should hear an audible sound from the Switch, almost like a pop, and then it should reset itself. At least that's what I did after looking up how to fix it! 

Tonight we'll be back to Kingdom hearts II Final Mix, we'll be picking up right after the Disney Castle / Timeless River segment, which means we're either heading to the world of Pirates of the Caribbean or the Little Mermaid next, I'm not sure which is the right order to do things in. But if I remember right, The Little Mermaid bit is basically a rhythm game... so you know that's gonna be a pain in the ass

Anyway we'll see you later today over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

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