Today's Notes 5/14/21

Good afternoon everyone,

Slept in today because there were no work assignments, I'm guessing it's because there is one assignment we had was just not being productive, no matter what was tried. Still I took advantage of this by shaving off my beard.

Anyway last night's stream started off with Star Trek Online, and boy was that plagued with bugs, such as getting when I queued up for a Task Force mission, only to be pulled into one that was already started and resulted in me being stuck in the beam in point... which meant I got hit with with an AFK Penalty that wasn't my fault!

Twitch Highlight: Pulled Into A Task Force Operation... And Got Locked In The Spawn Point!

Then add onto that when doing Azura Nebula, I got stuck inside an asteroid, but at least I could free the trapped ships and not be targeted by the Tholians. But yeah Star Trek Online had a lot of issues last night.

Following the STO portion of the week, we tried out Cobra Kai: The Karate Kid Saga Continues, which is a game based on the the show that is based on the films. It's your standard beat 'em up brawler, with a level up grind system, which meant replaying levels to earn the in-game currency needed to make the characters stronger. Probably the best part about this game is the fact the actors provide voices for the video game versions of their characters.

Twitch Clip: Cobra Kai Never Dies!

Off-stream last night, put in more achievement hunting on Mortal Kombat 11 chasing down ones associated with character fatalities and other random ones. Here's the list of what we managed to accomplish: 

1. Bonzer Bog: Perform 2 different FATALITIES with Kano
2. Cyber Initiative: Perform 2 different FATALITIES with Frost
3. Never Ends: Perform 2 different FATALITIES with Scorpion
4. Target Eliminated: Perform 2 different FATALITIES with Sonya
5. On Ice: Perform 2 different FATALITIES with Sub-Zero
6. Oh My Days: Duck 100 times during a match
7. Disco's Not Dead: Flip Stance 50 times during a match
8. Brutal End: Perform 25 BRUTALITIES
   

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was extended because I did not have work today, so made sense to do a longer workout. Certainly felt good at the end of it.  As an added result this ended up being my best week ever in terms of doing Fitness Boxing with a total estimated calorie burn of 5611! Never broke the 5500 barrier before even when doing the original Fitness Boxing with daily long sessions. We're up to 97 points of the 100 needed for Bernardo's Best Friend achievement so we'll get that done tomorrow.

For tonight's stream, we're finally going to play Mass Effect: Legendary Edition. The remastered version of all three games is about 90 GB, with Mass Effect 2 being the largest of the three games. We'll start early, not sure on an exact time, but it's gonna be a long stream that's for damn sure!

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

Today's Notes 5/13/21

Good morning everybody,

Well work for me was cut short yesterday afternoon because I have that sinking feeling they are looking to stretch out current day-time assignments, seeing as how there was no work for those working the evening this week. So basically my shift ended at 3:30 PM Eastern. Which meant I could've started last night's stream a lot earlier than 6:30 PM Eastern, but I took advantage of the extra time to go through some more CDs and boxes to get more of a handle on things heading out the door in the coming weeks.

Last night's stream of The Division was a lot of fun, big thanks to Iceman for joining in as two more areas of the map were cleared out. We did have a few hilarious moments, such as coming across an ECHO that showed a scene that felt very real with a bunch of idiots getting together for a party when they were told to stay home during a pandemic. Keep in mind The Division came out in March 2016. I picked up two achievements last night as well. 

1. Good With My Hands: Craft 10 items.
2. Lean On Me: Heal or Buff allies 100 times while in a group.

Also, near as I can tell, based on areas of the map left to explore and the indication of collectables found, I'm at about the half-way point of the game overall, so progress certainly being made!

Twitch Clips: This Feels Very Real... This is really topical these days in 2021

Twitch Clips: Where Is This Damn Dude? AY DIOS MIO!

Following last night's stream, I jumped into more Mortal Kombat 11 stuff, farming away at several achievements and even trying the online mode, as in basically me getting my ass kicked by other players from around the world. There is an achievement for playing 50 casual, non-ranked matches, so maybe we'll make that a stream next week. Anyway here's the list of things accomplished last night.

1. Caged: Perform 2 different FATALITIES with Johnny Cage
2. Balanced: Perform 2 different FATALITIES with Cetrion
3. Royal Guard: Perform 2 different FATALITIES with Jade
4. Turn Back Time: Perform 2 different FATALITIES with Geras
5. My AI Can Do It: Play 10 AI Battle Simulator sets
6. Gimme Dat Money: Spend 50,000 koins in the Naknadan shrine
7. Ka-Ballin: Perform 2 different FATALITIES with Kaba
8. Blood Bath: Perform 2 different FATALITIES with Skarlet
9. Double Dose Of Deadly: Perform 2 different FATALITIES with Noob
   

I have noticed that there are no achievements associated with the DLC characters, which is rather odd. Then again a lot of the choices made for MK11 seems odd to me.

We've officially added a physical copy of Hades for the Nintendo Switch to my collection yesterday. Yes we have it digitally, but there is something awesome about having a physical copy as well.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Session marked the 311th day since the start of the first Fitness Boxing in July, we're up to 94 points for Bernardo's Best Friend Achievement, so staying on pace to wrap that up on Saturday. We're up to 4891 estimated calorie's burned for the week, so we have a chance of surpassing last weeks total of 5121.

Since it's Thursday, you know my attention does turn to Star Trek Online, and hey the patch notes for this week indicate they actually fixed some things for a chance. Here's the list for that: 

General:  

•     Resolved an issue that was causing the Zipline during the “Dragon’s Deceit” mission to appear stuck on Captains characters.  
•     Skipping cutscenes now requires the player to hold down the escape key for a couple of seconds, in order to reduce accidental skipping, as well as problems caused by skipping a scene while assets are still loading in.
•     Updated Dominion Bridge Officer backgrounds in the Bridge Officer tray.  
•     Updated and added search filters to the Accolades list in the Journal.  
•     Updated filters in the Ship Vendor to include Purchase and Non-Purchase options.  

Systems:  

•     Resolved an issue where the Tholian Webspinner Array console was applying its bonus vs Held targets against non-held targets. Tholian Webspinner Array +20% Crit Chance vs Held foes redesigned to +50% Bonus Damage vs Held foes
•     Resolved an issue that was causing Ground Captain Abilities to not be capable of Exposing enemies.
•     The increased Expose Chance and Expose Duration applied by the Section 31 Phaser Pistol is now passive and affects all abilities as long as the weapon is equipped. This fixes the issue where it would not affect itself until after it had been fired at a target.
•     Resolved an issue that could cause the hazard visuals from Ionic Turbulence to not play if no enemies were being affected by it.
•     Resolved an issue that could cause Ionic Turbulence to not inherit certain ownership properties correctly. 

None of this will effect what we've been doing with Star Trek Online as of late, since it's time is being split with other games on Thrusdays. So tonight we'll do the endeavors stuff using Sorra, a few Task Force Ops using Zagreus and then once those are done we'll switch over to something else. I'm thinking maybe Cobra Kai, but not 100% sure as of yet.

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

 

Today's Notes 5/12/21

Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream featured the game Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, a indie game that came out a few years ago. As noted before, it was gifted to me by long time friend of the channel ShadowStrkr on Monday night, and since we had an open night because of the upcoming release of Mass Effect Legendary Edition, we went ahead and played Brothers last night. Now here's the funny thing, I installed the game on my Xbox One the previous night, and when I went to play it during the start of last night's stream, it crashed to the desktop several times. Ended up having to uninstall it and do a power cycle to clear the cache to get it work, which is just weird!

Anyway the game itself certainly has that big epic fantasy vibe, with beautiful landscapes, giant creatures and a musical score that carries the story along. The controls took a while to get use to with the left analog stick and left trigger buttons corresponding to the older brother and the right analog stick and right trigger for the younger brother. This game is built entirely around puzzles, most of which can be solved logically. The real difficulty comes when having to move both brothers at the same time, such as in chase sequence involving an invisible Goliath of some kind. Since we played it on the Xbox One, we did unlock several achievements along the way to finishing the game.

1. Wishing Well: You threw someone's ball down a well… Shame on you.
2. Bunny Buddies: You made the bunnies play nice.
3. Falling Star: Make a wish.
4. Call of the Giants: You sounded a giant horn.
5. Behind the Curtain: You found a secret.
6. Turtle Soup: You helped the turtles to the sea.
   

Most of these achievements involved going off the main path, so another play through will be required for the remaining six (Or just chapter jumping off stream to get them)

Twitch Clip: RunrunrunrunrunRUN

Twitch Clip: Yoink!

Speaking of Mass Effect, there was this neat little thing I found yesterday to make our own 'covers', so here's mine. Those who have seen my previous runs of the Mass Effect trilogy know that these are typically the squad mates I end up using the most over the course of the games... plus you have to have Mordin for obvious reasons.

After the stream, I messed around more with Mortal Kombat 11, which is on my Xbox Series console, and since discovering the game is built around letting it play itself for farming purposes, the grind was put in for several achievements.

1. Get Some: Perform 2 different FATALITIES with Jax
2. Deadly Encounter: Perform 15 different FATALITIES
3. Hat Trick: Perform 2 different FATALITIES with Kung Lao
4. Sacrifice: Perform 2 different FATALITIES with Kotal Kahn
5. I Want It All: Komplete the Novice, Warrior, or Champion Klassic Towers with 10 different kharacters
6. More Power: Use 50 Konsumables
7. No Bag Boy: Perform 2 different FATALITIES with Liu Kang
8. Family Values: Perform 2 different FATALITIES with Cassie Cage
9. Konsumed: Use 100 konsumables
10. Kollecting Bounties: Perform 2 different FATALITIES with Erron Black
11. Thrashed: Perform 2 different FATALITIES with Baraka
12. Pound Town: Perform 2 different FATALITIES with Jacqui Briggs
13. My Magic Shoes: Run 5 miles in the Krypt
14. MURDER!!!: Perform 30 different FATALITIES

I am curious as to why the developers made such an exploit, but hey, it's easy achievements for me to unlock, so who am I to argue! Besides when I stream Mortal Kombat 11 it'll mostly be for the story mode.

We added two more games to the collection yesterday as well, Cobra Kai: The Katate Kid Saga Continues and Xenoblade Chronicles : Definitive Edition, both for the Nintendo Switch. They were both on sale recently at 50% for the physical versions of the games, So they made for nice pick ups.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was about 31 minutes and we're up to 91 points out of 100 for Bernardo's Best Friend achievement. I did have a little trouble getting some left uppercuts to register, resulting in three missed combo sequences. Weight is still hovering around the 249-250 pounds mark.

For tonight's stream we'll be back to The Division, with the focus on clearing out stuff in the next area of the map, what ever that was from the end of last Wednesday's stream. We may be joined by Iceman at some point as well, which means things could get extra silly. 

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

Today's Notes 5/11/21

Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream was really good, particularly in regards to achievement hunting. The game for the night was Day of the Tentacle, and the remastered version that came out a few years ago has Steam achievements, and on the initial play-through in 2019, we came across 50% of them, so last night was about getting the majority of what was left, which involved learning that there were certain object combinations that could be use (such as combining a fork and cat while using Laverne).

Here's the full list of what we managed to get last night.

1. Music Appreciation Award: Reach yesterday without turning the stereo off
2. Rap Sheet: Forger: Try to sign the contract yourself with the quill pen
3. Alas, Our Lazy Speechwriters Didn't Cover This: Talk to Washington, Jefferson, or Hancock while they're outside
4. Master Plumber: Flush 50 objects through time
5. That Should Have Worked: Hoagie uses battery with Chron-o-John instead of plug
6. Now You're Pushing It: Try to microwave the hamster again after he's thawed out
7. Can't Win and Chew Gum at the Same Time: Laverne tries the chattering teeth on her human during the human show
8. ESRB Violation: Laverne thinks about eating the cat
9. Rap Sheet: Fraud: Try to alter the contract with Booboo-B-Gone
10. You Call That a Hint?: Try to wash the dirty car with the brush
11. Missing Pink: Try to mix the red paint and the Booboo-B-Gone
12. I'm Sure He'd Never Notice: Try to swap the textbook with the stamp album
13. That Joke Never Gets Old: Squirt five different people with disappearing ink
14. And Then the Universe Implodes: Try to mix the disappearing ink with Booboo-B-Gone
15. Voiding the Warranty: Try to put something metal in the microwave
16. And Then the Universe Explodes: Try to mix the decaf and caffeinated coffees
17. Most Annoying Guest Ever: Ring the front desk bell 100 times 

Now there are two achievements left but they are both tied to playing the Maniac Mansion game which I'm not to keen on, maybe that'll be an excuse to play Day of the Tentacle again next year.

Twitch Clip: Laugh Darn You!

Following DOTT, we had extra time so we loaded up Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on the Switch for a few races, and went up against other people from around the world... and promptly got my ass kicked. Still had fun, but yeah, Mario Kart 8 is not exactly a racing game I go out of my way to play because of the weirdness of the control layout.

Big thanks to long time friend of the channel ShadowStrkr for gifting me Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons!

After the stream I messed around with Mortal Kombat 11 and discovered a few things, one that the story mode is its own separate download for whatever reason... and two that this game has some the most exploitable ways of getting achievements ever, with the use of AI battles to run through the towers. Now I've played in Mortal Kombats 1, 2, 3 (Vanilla and Ultimate), Trilogy, 4, Deception, Vs DC Universe, 9 & 10.... so I wonder where along the line did Nether Realm Studios choose to eventually make a Mortal Kombat simulator. Anyway here are the achievements we unlocked last night

1. Blood In The Water: Spill 10,000 pints of blood
2. Kollected: Perform 2 different FATALITIES with Kollector
3. Bugging Out: Perform 2 different FATALITIES with D'Vorah
4. Princess Power: Perform 2 different FATALITIES with Kitana
5. Struck Down: Perform 2 different FATALITIES with Raiden

Twitch Clip: I'll take a 9th place finish

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session lasted about 1/2 an hour, solid work out of three ten minute exercises. We're up to 89 points on Bernardo's Best Friend Achievement, so things are on track to get it done by Saturday! Also forgot to get the proper screen shot for today's session, but hey the main screen one shows my streak of 309 days!

Not completely sure what we'll be doing for tonight's stream as of yet, we might dive into Brothers to see if I can get through that in a single night with a blind play through if I don't come up with anything.

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

Today's Notes 5/10/21

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night's stream of Overwatch was a lot of fun since this week Mayhem matches kicked into the Arcade mode at 8 PM Eastern Time. Certainly had a fair share of wins and losses. Big thanks to PandaSweet for joining in on the fun. Also picked up three plays of the game last night, two with Dva and one with Reinhardt. In addition to Mayhem, also messed around with a few other arcade modes included 3 vs 3 elimination and capture the flag... only because free loot boxes were attached to each one.

Twitch Clip: Boom-Shakalaka!

Twitch Clip: But I Have Pineapple!

After the stream I resisted the urge to do another late night going through stuff, but at this point I think all I got left are just boxes to break down. There might be another box or two filled with music CDs, but they are sorta buried where I cannot reach them at this exact moment.

Finally my copy of The Fifth Element for the PlayStation One arrived. And boy did the United States Postal Service send it through the ringer because this is the journey it went on. It went from the origin point of Drexel Hill, PA to Glenolden, PA to Cuncinnati, OH, to Warrendale, PA, to Philadelphia, PA, to Miami, FL to Opa Locka, FL to Bellmawr, NJ and finally right here to Camden, NJ. Make note of the origin point and final destination... and then ask yourself... if it Philadelphia was the 5th stop... how the fuck did it end up in Miami!

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was streamed as it is every Monday as of late and we set a new overall personal best for Estimated Calorie Burn with 1158.84. The daily session was about 43 minutes at a high pace and then I did addition 27 minutes on top of that. Needless to say I was completely cooked after that  because in the bonus stuff I put I was completely sluggish.

Twitch Clip: Don't Quit!

Twitch Clip: Put Power Into The Last Punch!

I was going through my game library to see what I could possibly finish in one night and noticed that we haven't played Day of the Tentacle since 2019, so we'll play that tonight. There are some Steam Achievements I could try and knock out during tonight's play through so that would be a bit productive in that regards!

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

 

Today's Notes 5/9/21

Good afternoon everybody and Happy Mother's Day!

Last night's stream of ESPN Major League Baseball wasn't without incident, as during game two of the World Series between my Phillies and the Red Sox, it was a slug fest when the game locked up, and I've noticed that only happens when so much happens in a game it just FUBARs everything. Still my Phillies are the 2004 World Champions. The real highlight was Game 5, which I'm calling the Boston Massacre, but my Phillies won 29-1, with Bobby Abreu hitting 3 grand slams. What makes it better is that the game glitched out and the in-game commentary of Rex Hulder and Jon Miller was absent, so I was providing half-assed commentary through-out. I segmented that out as a full on highlight because it was that silly.

Full Game: ESPN Major League Baseball: The Boston Massacre 

Since ESPN Major League Baseball is finished I'm not sure what's replacing it on the weekly line-up, I'm considering perhaps a football game, either NFL Game Day or a Madden game from the late 90s / early 2000s. Actually what I should do is play Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep to wrap up the 1.5 + 2.5 Collection. But we'll see how I figure that out come the end of the week.

Following the stream I went through organizing my CDs, and managed to reunited a bunch of music with their original jewel cases and liner notes the the exception of 2 where I'm missing the liner notes for. My CD binders are also neatly organized to where there are 4 CDs per page if liner notes are missing, and 2 CDs per page if I still have the liner notes but note the jewel cases. Also I put a bunch of burnt CDs from the early 2000 in their own little binder, and have another one set aside for various video games & video media which I didn't have cases for.

We're only a few days away from the release of Mass Effect Legendary Edition! I can't wait for Friday! My biggest concern is using the ME2/ME3 styled controls using a game pad since I only every played those games on PC. 

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was about 70 minutes total with 40 minutes counting for the daily exercise. We're up to 82 points out of 100 for Bernardo's Best Friend Achievement, so I should have that wrapped up by the end of the week, either Thursday or Friday. Saturday at the latest.

With it being Sunday, that means Overwatch is on deck to begin the new week! Will we have Mayhem matches for more than just an hour? Actually, what Blizzard should have done is implement weekly PVE stuff, there are plenty of maps where mission objectives can easily be a thing... but then again, Jeff Kaplan was in charge and if he couldn't understand that smurfing was cheating then it's no wonder many of us are eager for Overwatch 2 now that he's gone. 

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

Highlight for the Week of May 2, 2021

Here are highlights of all the games featured over on http://twitch.tv/fredcasden for the week of May 2, 2021. This week we featured Overwatch, Fitness Boxing 2: Rhythm & Exercise, Nancy Drew Dossier: Resorting to Danger, MLB The Show 21, Tom Clancy's The Division, Monster Hunter Rise, Star Trek Online, ECW Anarchy Rulz, Virginia and ESPN Major League Baseball!