The Division's End Game Was Reached!

 Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream of the Division saw us finally reaching the end game, taking down Colonel Bliss and see exactly how Keener sets up all the havoc for The Division 2 (which we played last year). Big thanks to Iceman and Striker for all their help in getting to the end! The funny thing about getting to the end game was that I ended up getting downed when facing Bliss' helicopter and if Iceman didn't come to revive me I would've been KO'ed for the completion of the final mission!

But that does not mean we're done with The Division, nope there are still more collectables to find and there is quite a bit of post-game content to check into, so we'll be keeping it around for a little while to explore and just goof around. So last night was like the last 'Division' focused stream, so it'll be paired up with other things, maybe I'll pair it up with Power Rangers Battle For The Grid as I grind towards various match totals.

Of course reaching the end of the game meant there were achievements unlocked and I will now list them.

1. Medic!: Revive a team mate 20 times in co-op.
2. Last Man Standing: Eliminate the leader of the Last Man Battalion and his men in the U.N. Building.
3. The Final Curtain: Uncover the fates of Gordon Amherst and Aaron Keener.
4. Marathon: Discover ALL of the Safe Houses in Manhattan.

The rest are mostly related to collectables and messing with post-game stuff, maybe running a few missions over again but we'll see how that plays out.

And we do have some clips from last night too! Here are the direct links to a few of my favorite moments!

Twitch Clip: The brave JTF officers

Twitch Clip: Achievement: Medic!!!!

Twitch Clip: Is he losing any health from this?

Twitch Clip: Revived In Time For The Mission To Be Completed!

Of course last night's stream saw a lot of baseball talk at the end as Iceman and I got into talking about old players, what-ifs and so forth. If he didn't point out I should end the stream I would've kept it going, because we ended up diving into Mass Effect and probables for the 4th game and what would've made Mass Effect 3 better. That was a lot of fun! 

We added three games to the collection yesterday, all for the Nintendo Switch: Luigi's Mansion 3, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening and Ring Fit Adventure. Of the three, the one I probably won't stream is Ring Fit Adventure because I may not have enough room to do some exercises it may require and see the monitor clearly. 

I do not understand why people are justifying the use of Spider-Tack and other substances in Major League Baseball, when that is blatent cheating. There is an idiot named Nick Messner who is trying to justify pitchers cheating because of 'big money contracts' for those not good enough to have the talent or the skill to earn those deals out  right. Fans like that are why baseball is dying out.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout went 28 minutes, and my timing was way off to the point my Fitness Age spiked to 22... ending a pretty damn long stretch where I kept at 21. Basically it was the number of punches that came up as 'okay' which was quite a few.  The estimated calorie burn was 458 kcal. We are now up to 78 points out of 100 for the Laura's Best Friend achievement. 

Tonight's stream will star with Star Trek Online as we'll knock out the endeavor quests, then we'll switch over to New Pokemon Snap on the Switch. It should be a pretty chill stream.

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

We Rescued Jack, Javik and A Krogan

Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream of Mass Effect 3: Legendary Edition probably saw how slow paced it's gonna be when it comes to me finishing it, because of how I love to roam the Normandy and the Citadel between missions, not to mention having to go after all the things in space. There's a lot of ground to cover in that regard.

Still it wasn't totally pointless, as we knocked out three major missions, one was Grissom Academy, which is a 'timed event' mission, meaning the longer you put it off the more you risk losing a chance to play it, which means you lose Jack to Cerberus. So that was the major priority right off the bat. From there we went after Javik next which mean Shepard returned to Eden Prime for the first time since Mass Effect 1. Yes I know Javik and his mission was basically day one DLC when ME3 was originally released, and  yes he does add a lot to the game in terms of lore in some places... but I never really use Javik so he wasn't a priority. Then we closed out by finally going to get the Krogan Shaman and Mordin to get the ball rolling on curing the genophage. My Shepard may be a renegade, but my Shepard always does the right thing for their buddies.

Of course with the progress we made last night, that meant we got a few achievements to mark our success, I'll list them next:

1. Pyromaniac: ME3: Set 100 enemies on fire with powers
2. Liberator: ME3: Stop a Cerberus kidnapping
3. Hijacker: ME3: Hijack an Atlas mech
4. World Shaker: ME3: Destroy an Atlas dropped from orbit
   

The hijacker one was a main in the ass, actually lead to critical mission failure as I couldn't remember how to hijack the damn mech. Still we got it done and at the time, it was still a diamond achievement. So yay me!

And we got some clips from last night to share, and here's the list of some of my favorite moments

Twitch Clip: Jack Isn't Wrong

Twitch Clip: Was Thane Saying Something?

Twitch Clip: If they were human they would both be called mother

Twitch Clip: We caught him in mid-air... nice!

Twitch Clip: Critical Mission Failure: Oops!

Following the stream my internet service went down but this is why I have some console that aren't depending on access to the internet, so I loaded up Super Smash Bros Ultimate and actually did a little work in the adventure mode. At some point I'm going to finish that. Also ran through classic mode as Mr. Game & Watch... and yeah didn't do well on that as I couldn't really get a handle on how he moves... so my final 'difficulty level' was like a 3.4. Bleh.

Overwatch has a new event focused on Ashe, where if you play at least 27 matches you will unlock a new skin, spray and icon associated for that character. The designs are based around her early years as part of the Deadlock gang, so it's a bit of lore. As is the case with recent Overwatch events, wins count as 2 points, so if you happen to win 14 matches in a row you get all three rewards rather quickly. I knocked them all out yesterday afternoon, mostly playing as tank and support.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout session went 28 minutes with an estimated calorie burn for 448 kcal, it is amazing how most days it's 31 minutes but then there are the days it drops to 28 minutes. It really depends on what exercises end up being selected by the game. This was day 194 of Fitness Boxing 2, and day 352 since the start of the original Fitness Boxing. We're now up to 76 out of 100 for the Laura's Best Friend achievement. Again their is no rhyme or reason as to what qualifies a day awarding 2 points or 3 points for the daily workouts. But with 24 points left to go, that means if every day awards 3 points we'll have it knocked out in 8 days.

It's Wednesday which means we're back to The Division as we work our way closer to the end. Chances are well be joined by Iceman at some point, so we'll start with me roaming around New York, doing stuff before our focus turns to the missions we have to take care of.

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

 

Today's Notes 6/22/21: The Reapers Have Arrived

Good morning everybody,

Yesterday things got interesting with a circuit breaker being tripped, certainly lead to me figuring out how to make things cool without stressing the wiring of the house! It lead to a slight delayed to the start of the stream, but not much of one.

Anyway, last night's stream saw the start up of Mass Effect 3: Legendary Edition, and I'm probably going to be taking my time with this one more sore than the first two games because of finding every damn item in space with the notes I used from the prior runs on PC. There are way too many awesome visuals in ME3 so I find myself stopping to see if something is screenshot worthy, and I posted a bunch over on Twitter.

In terms of the game itself, we basically did the intro, roamed the Citadel and Normandy and managed to pick up Garrus on the Turian moon. We also knocked out a bunch of achievements because I want to try and be as efficient as possible with everything being done on stream, so that meant one side quest plus going around the galaxy to find stuff and talking to everyone while exhausting conversation options!. Here's the list of what we accomplished:

1. Driven: ME3: Return to active duty
2. Focused: ME3: Evolve any of your powers to rank 6
3. Bringer of War: ME3: Chase down an assassin
4. Shopaholic: ME3: Visit a store on the Citadel
5. A Personal Touch: ME3: Modify a weapon
6. Untouchable: ME3: Escape a Reaper in the galaxy map
7. Lost and Found: ME3: Dispatch 10 probes to retrieve people or resources in Reaper territory
8. Eye of the Hurricane: ME3: Kill a brute while it's charging you
9. Mobilizer: ME3: Bring a veteran officer aboard

And of course we have a several clips from last night as well which I'll listed next:

Twitch Clip: Hello Legs

Twitch Clip: Shepard Meets The Press 3

Twitch Clip: Achievement: Untouchable

Twitch Clip: Battle on the Turrian Moon!

Twitch Clip: EDI Tells A Joke

In terms of where we'll be picking up, for Tuesday's night stream we're heading to Grissom Academy first to rescue Jack and then we'll do the mission to pick up Javik and see what various things we can knock out as well. 

Also I need to mess around with the Noise Gate in OBS to try and cut down on the noise caused by my fans.

Anyway we added four games to the collection yesterday: Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex for the PS2, Ghostbusters (2016) for the PS4, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity for the Nintendo Switch and Final Fantasy Anthology for the PS1

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session lasted 31 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 539 kcal. The exercises were Intermediate Combo #1, Triple Combo #2 and Biceps Shape Focus Combo. Mistimed a few jabs and a couple of uppercuts but otherwise a solid workout effort I think. We are now up to 73 out of 100 for the Laura's Best Friend achievement. 

And on that note we'll see you later tonight for more Mass Effect fun over on twitch.tv/fredcasden! 

Today's Notes: 6/21/21: Up Way Too Damn Early

Good morning everybody,

I woke up super early, at like 5:30 AM for no real reason so we got the day started.

Last night's stream of Overwatch was really heavy on the Mayhem matches, since that particular arcade mode kicked in at 8 PM Eastern for the first time in a while, and we managed to get 9 wins in it, which meant 3 loot boxes... which would be cool if I didn't already have everything possible one could get out of the generic loot boxes. Still, I had 5 plays of the game last night, 1 as Moira, 1 as Reinhardt and 3 as Dva! Big thanks to Panda Sweet for being apart of all the fun!

And of course, we do have links to some of my favorite moments of last night's stream which I'll list next

Twitch Clip: Total Gibberish

Twitch Clip: Some how I was still alive!

Twitch Clip: Took Them All The Way Down!

Twitch Clip: Nerf This! That's How You End A Match!

I did finish the mini-Overwatch fan fic I started on Friday after basically re-writing what I had down already to give myself an option for a follow up. I feel I had the dialog down the way I wanted, but the action and climax of the story (pun intended) were a little meh... but I haven't really sat down to write any serious fan fiction in quite a while. The basic premise is based around the one character interaction Tracer and Moira has that sometimes trigger when they are on the same team when waiting for a match to start. Anyway it's up over on HF under the title of Scientific Curiosity. 

Since on Friday we broke in the PlayStation 4, I figure we'll officially start up a large game using the system for Friday of this week. The most obvious choice is Final Fantasy VII: Remake, but I am leaning also towards Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness. We'll see what ends up being the big PS4 game later in the week.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session was streamed, and we kept it basic, going just 31 minutes with the workout, so the estimated calorie burn was 492, but I did put max effort into everything. We're up to 71 points out of 100 for Laurea's Best Friend achievement, so if things hold steady we'll knock that out by maybe in nine days, 10 days at the most. And since this session was stream we have some clips.

Twitch Clip: Adding Sway Backs

Twitch Clip: Ready?

Twitch Clip: Time to pick it up!

Tonight we are continuing the Mass Effect Legendary Edition saga with the start of Mass Effect 3, which we'll be playing for the first time on console... which means I'll have to track down my notes for where every little item is that has to be scanned for, which means we'll be chased by the Reapers a lot and fuel re-fill points and credits will be very scarce. Still it should be fun as we've tackled every side quest over the first two games, so we should be in good shape for Galactic Readiness (in theory). We'll get this started in the early evening.

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

Highlights For The Week Of 6/13/21

 Here are highlights for the week of June 13, 2021 of all the games featured over on http://twitch.tv/fredcasden! This week we played Overwatch, Ftiness Boxing 2: Rhythm & Exercise, Mass Effect Legendary Edition, Tom Clancy's The Division, Star Trek Online, WCW Vs The World, WWE All-Stars, Xena: Warrior Princess, Bloodborne, Virtua Fighter 5: Ultimate Showdown & DC Super Hero Girls: Teen Power!

Today's Notes 6/20/21: We can now play as Harley Quinn!

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night's stream of DC Super Hero Girls; Teen Power saw a lot of plot advancement, as we defeated Toyman and saw that he was actually working with Lex Luthor! We also got to play as Harley Quinn and Catwoman, meaning only Star Sapphire is left to be 'unlocked'. I do have to admit, learning how to play as Harley and Catwoman was a bit difficult because I already put so much time into boosting up Supergirl, Batgirl and Wonder Woman. 

And if you're curious as to when you can start using the villains, Harley becomes available half-way way through chapter 4, since she has direct interaction with Batgirl, because (as near as I can tell) in the show, Harleen and Barbara are best friends who are unaware of each other's secret identity. Note: For each villain you unlock you will need to power them up in order to keep them evenly paced with the heroes since by the middle of chapter 4, Batgirl Supergirl & Wonder Woman should have 50% of their upgrades unlocked (If you're playing like I am and doing every side quest you come across).

That said, Harley's 'No Time Bomb' ultimate move is such a great screen clearer, and she has a great multi-hit jump attack that works great on larger enemies. I could have done without the race to defuse bombs while enemies are swarming in on me, because unless you notices where they are (or are lucky enough to see their locations on the mini-map) it can get really hectic.I do wonder how many chapters are left in the game because it seems like there are at least eight chapters.

Anyway, here are some clips from last night's stream

Twitch Clip: Nananana Cat-Dude!

Twitch Clip: No Respect At All

Twitch Clip: No Time Bomb... There It Goes!

Twitch Clip: Supergirl: It's Not My Fault He's Using Really Hard Words

Twitch Clip: Defeating Toyman!

I didn't do any off-stream gaming at all last night, because the length of the stream was about 5.5 hours, plus I had to put together the highlight reel for the Facebook page (that basically exists in case Twitch's TOS gets really screwy) and also the weekly highlight reel for my YouTube page (which exists as an archive for most streams as well as occasional video commentaries).

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session went 31 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 495 kcal. Blocking was a slight issues today, but I it's tough for me to stay in sync on blocking combos. We are now up to 58 out of 100 for the Laura's Best Friend achievement.

It's Sunday which mean's Overwatch is on deck for tonight, as we'll be having fun doing mostly Quick Play matches. Maybe we'll get lucky and we'll have Mayhem matches after the 8 PM Eastern Hour, but I doubt it.

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

Today's Notes 6/19/21: The Spilled Bloodborne Of A Virtua Fighter

Good morning everybody

Last night we finally broke in the PlayStation 4 on stream, with two games. Thankfully a delivery I wasting on arrived early... which also allowed me to discover an issue with the PS4. Since Sony designed the PS4 to be able to stream directly from it, it actually can block a signal to the a capture card... so I had to do some plugging and unplugging of HDMI cables and such just to get a signal to my main monitor so that I could access the PS4's settings to turn that blocker off.

So once the stream started, we lead off with Bloodborne. Prior to last night I have seen people play these styles of game where it's trial and error, and while I didn't really progress far... I did at least start to get a grasp of the mechanics of combat and figuring and how to do things. By the time I was really getting a grove in the same area I was basically running laps in, I was getting a little burned out on getting killed so often, so I think Bloodborne will be one of those games we go to in order to fill in gaps on a stream, like maybe pair it with Star Trek Online on Thursdays or something.We did get one trophy last night in Bloodborne which I'll list next...

1. Blood Gem Contact: Acquire a blood gem that imbues hunter weapons with special strength.
   

I also did a few hours of Virtua Fighter 5: Ultimate Showdown, jumping into ranked matches and actually had a good streak going. We were also joined by Reaper, another long time friend of the channel for some direct head to head game play, where it was pretty even granted all of my obvious mistakes started to get exploited and exposed, but we had a lot of close bouts! We unlocked no trophies in Virtua Fighter 5.

We have some clips from last night as well, which I posted the links for next:

Twitch Clip: Let Me Do The Smart Thing...

Twitch Clip: Wah! Son Of A Biscuit!

Twitch Clip: Let's Freaking Go!

Twitch Clip: Get Out Of My Ring!

Now Bloodborne wasn't the only game to arrive yesterday: Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise, Uncharted Collection, Uncharted 4: A Thief's End & Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness were all added to the collection..

Because of other circumstances, there were no Xbox achievements unlocked last night, granted I could jump on after posting this to tackle some, but other circumstances involving heavy objects will now allow for that. I had a pretty good streak of 39 days, with 200 achievements unlocked. My personal best was 87 days with 483 achievements acquired. 

However I did start work on a little Overwatch Fan Fic idea last night involving Moira and Tracer, based around a character interaction dialog they have when they are on the same team. I figure I could get something out of that would fit quite nicely over on HF.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Session went 31 minutes, with an estimated calorie burn of 501 kcal. We are now up to 66 out of 100 for the Laura's Best Friend achievement. As we can see the point addition is sometimes 2 and sometimes 3. There doesn't seem to be a set pattern but we'll get there eventually! 

Tonight's stream will be focused on DC Super Hero Girls Teen Power, picking up with the start of Chapter 4, which seems to be a Batgirl focused chapter, so it should see a lot of quirky stuff happening. 

We'll get that started about 7 PM EST over on twitch.tv/fredcasden! See ya then!