A Chang'e Of Scenery

Good morning everybody,

From this point forward, I'm dropping the Today's Notes & Date from the posts, just a minor change because In part some of these entries are written the previous day.

Last night's stream lead off with Smite, playing only Arena matches because they eat up a fair amount of time and were going to switch over to play The Division in the second half of the stream. We played six matches total, winning three of the, so a nice 50/50 split much like with Overwatch. Big thanks to LvStrkR for joining in on a few matches as well! Here are the specific match results and which god I used. Stats are Kills / Deaths / Assists with the KDA being how many Kills & Assists I had per each of my deaths in that match

Smite Arena Match Results

1. Chang'e - Win - 9 / 6 / 13 / 2.58 KDA
   
2. Chang'e - Win - 6 / 2 / 12 / 6 KDA
   
3. Chang'e - Loss - 1 / 6 / 7 / 0.75 KDA
   
4. Chang'e - Loss - 3 / 9 / 13 / 1.06 KDA
   
5. Chang'e - Win - 4 / 6 / 13 / 1.75 KDA
   
6. Athena - Loss - 4 / 11 / 18 / 1.18 KDA
   

Now you made notices the obvious that I was using Chang'e. and that's because Smite has long term achievements, and one is to use each character enough times to having reach Rank 10, and with Chang'e I'm at rank 7 following last night's matches. With over a 100 characters based on deities in the game, it's something that will take awhile to do, and often I run hot and cold with my willingness to play Smite. Also playing as Chang'e allowed me to use their name as a pun for this entry's title.

With the Division this week, Iceman and I focused on the Underground, going into each to random generated mission with the goal of finding collectables as well as leveling up. There are specific achievements tied to the Underground DLC for The Division, and it's a good way to keep going back to that game. As always big thanks to Iceman for being apart of the fun! Did earn one achievement last night

Tom Clancy's The Division Achievements

1. Those Signature Moves: Activate any of the Signature Skills 100 times.
   

Twitch Clips From Last Night

• New Funkos In The Collection
• How I Deal With A Scam Call 
• We Opened The Gate! 
• Very Much So! 
• Tinder is completely Useless 
• Striker Picks Up The Spare! 
• Jamming Device Disabled 
• Confirmed: Guile's Theme Goes With The Division 
• The moment I realized I should have said "Holy S... It's Viper" while playing Chrono Cross 
• Shocking... 
• Dude I'm standing in front of this dude! 

Following the stream we raided LifeWithStan (twitch.tv/LifeWithStan) who was playing Subnautica, they are very upbeat and engaging, be sure to check them out! 

Off stream, played some Street Fighter V and I realized I can easily do another Street Fighter V stream focused on chasing one achievement based around doing the story mode with the original characters the game launched with. Also picked up an achievement as well!

Street Fighter V Trophies

1. Win Or Die Tryin': It's about time you cleared Survival Mode on normal difficulty. You know what happens if you refuse, don't you? Let's just say the only way you live is if you keep on winning!

We added four Funko Pops to the collection yesterday. Moira (Overwatch / Pop! Games #490), Killer Frost (The Flash / Pop! Television #1098), Alfred E. Newman (Mad Magazine / Pop! #29) and Ripley Holding Jonesy (Alien / Pop! Movies # 733). The Ripley is marked as being a limite Edition  to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Alien movie franchise which is pretty cool. Currently looking for two more Funko's to complete a display that is on my desk's shelving. Once it's complete I'll share a picture.

Found my PlayOverwatch page featuring all of my PC stats: https://playoverwatch.com/en-us/career/pc/FredCasden-1202/. Real nice to have all my stats out there for the world to see... unlike most players who hide their stats.

Added a modified PlayStation Slim to the collection as well, as a way to both preserve the PlayStation 2 and 3, as well as possibly being able to play games that were exclusives to the PAL or NTSC-J regions. I have one in particular in mind that folks may be interested in seeing if I can track it down reasonably enough. Though the more I think about it, searching for a modified PS2 would have been more logical.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Daily Workout lasted 31 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 544 kcal. The exercises for today were Left Right Step Combo, Advanced Combo #2 and Double Combo #2. For the Lin's Champion achievement were are up to 47 out of 50. 

I see that Spider-Man: No Way Home is basically taking elements from the god-awful One More Day story-arc... which just serves as a reminder to me that Joe Quesada can go fuck himself.

For tonight's stream we will lead off with Star Trek Online, and once we've completed the Endeavor Quests and do some quick Task Force stuff, we'll be playing episode 2 of Life Is Strange. 

So on that note, we'll se you later tonight over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

Today's Notes 8/24/21: Lynx Is A Cat-Dude But Serge Is A Dude

Good morning everyone,

Last night's stream of Chrono Cross was basically a continuation of where we left off the previous night of hunting Dragons. 

First on our list was the Fire Dragon, and we took Miki and Fargo with us. This was the second encounter with the Fire Dragon which meant it would transformer into a mech-version of itself. We prepared for this fight by making sure Miki and Lynx had plenty of blue elements to pummel the red-innate boss into the ground. This was pretty much a straight forward battlethat involved keeping Fargo healed because of his vulnerability as a blue innate facing a red innate 

From there it was off to face the Black Dragon, still keeping Fargo and Miki in the party, but loading up white elements along with Blue to hammer this once sleeping giant down. Now what some may not know is that the Black Dragon is completely optional depending on when you clear out the monsters from Marbule in the Home World. If you did not do that prior to this point, the Black Dragon would be a sleep. Goes to show where actions can be important in a game like this one! A key moment in this battle was having Fargo steal the Black Plate which came in handy in two battles that happened later on

 The toughest fight of the game in terms of needing multiple attempts with the pain in the ass Sky Dragon. Not only does it and Lynx cancel each other out, but the Sky Dragon has a move called Ultra Nova which can and will wipe out the party.  My first attempt involved Fargo and Miki, but said Ultra Nova move basically ended that. The second attempt involved replacing Miki with Irenes and again Ultra Nova became a factor. Attempt number three saw me stick with Irenes and Fargo, and realizing I had two revives which meant I could split them between Lynx and Fargo because of their higher health stats. Funny enough by the end, Lynx was dead and it came down to Fargo and Iarenes to seal the deal. Now I know for this fight everyone would say use the Black Elements, but here's the problem using them basically triggers the reaction of the Sky Dragon pummeling the party with white elements... and I remember that strategy only working in a New Game Plus run.

Once the Sky Dragon was defeated it was off to Guldove to present the dragon relics to Steena who joins the party. I made the choice to skip over the Criosphinx side quests since defeating it requires quite a bit of planning and luck, and is really only possible on a New Game Plus run. However, we did went to do the Dario side quest. Taking Riddel to the Forbidden Island, we found the 'Home World' version of Dario who has the Masamune which possesses him into wanting to kill her thus triggering a very tough fight. You see when facing Dario, you cannot under any circumstances use elemental attacks on him Instead only use physical attacks and stock the party with healing and defensive elements. Since Riddel is n the party make sure she has the Black Plate from the Black Dragon. Any of Dario's skills that are directed at her which are black innate will heal her, but this does leave her vulnerable to physical attacks. Still having her in the party with the likes of Lynx and Fargo serving as heavy hitters  means focus on keeping Riddel alive and wearing Dario down. The big trade off of this completely optional battle is that Riddel gets her Level 7 ability SnakeFangs and the Mastermune becomes your weapon to use for pretty much the rest of the game unless you can craft a rainbow weapon

Lastly it was off to Fort Dragonia in the Home World where roaming around we were able to find some power elements (ThundaStorm, Iceberg, Tornando and Volcano) before making out way to facing Dark Serge. With Fargo and Irenis in the party, it became a focus of using Blue Elements wherever possible to try and turn the field completely blue to summon the Frog Prince, and then just outlasting Dark Serge's onslaught. Equipping the Black Plate on Lynx is a good idea for whenever Dark Serge using any black innate abilities on him so basically getting a heal boost. After facing Dario, this tough fight is rather easy in comparison. After the fight was done, made sure to hatch the big egg to recruit Draggy before making way up to the top of the tower to have Lynx be reborn into Serge and then going off to Marbule to pick up Irenis' level 7 ability Siren Song.

Also side note: When Serge is reborn... he's buck naked... where the hell does he get a full set of clothes from?!

So with all that done this sets up Monday's stream of going to the Sea of Eden and dealing with everything there as well as hunting down the level 7 abilities of various characters..Anyway, here's the list of clips from last night's stream!

• The Fire Dragon Has Gotten Huge
• Lynx Slays The Fire Dragon
  
• Defeating The Black Dragon 
• First Attempt To Defeat The Sky Dragon Ends In Failure 
• Second attempt to defeat the Sky Dragon... Also Ends In Failure
• Third Attempt to Defeat The Sky Dragon... We Did It! 
• Back From A Break With A Alcapurria
• Defeating Dario
• We Have The Mastermune!
  
• Taking Down Dark Serge!
• Draggy Joins The Party! 
• Some body get him some pants! 

Following the stream we raided Phoenix_face (twitch.tv/Phoenix_face) who was playing Tomb Raider, not the original one, but the awesome reboot. I really have to do a console run of that game at some point having already played it using the Steam version twice on stream. 

Now prior to the stream, I lost power around 5 PM and I was in the middle of a having a real good match as D.va in Overwatch, power came back up at around 5:45 PM so we were able to start on top.

Saw the police report of the chick from Laurel Springs who ran into my fest the Saturday before last. It's amazing how simple the form is.

Apparently OnlyFans has dropped its plans to ban adult entertainment from its services as the backlash it was receiving was clearly large enough to make them realize that doing so would basically kill their business pretty much the same way it did Tumblr. 

As a fan of the original anime of Cowboy Bebop, it does bother me that John Cho is playing Spike Spiegel... I mean, Spike is supposed to be in his late 20s early 30s... and Cho is 49 going on 50 with it really showing! Sure he's in great shape, but lest face, Spike was modeled in part on Bruce Lee in his prime.This also throws off how the character of Spike will relate to Jet Black who was in his mid to late 30s in the Anime... if Spike is gonna be in his 50s, that means Jet is gonna be pushing a hard 60, thus changing the dynamic and flow of what fans like myself want with a live-action version of an awesome show. I'm gonna say it now... the live action Cowboy Bebop series is gonna be a fucking train wreck.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout lasted 28 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 423 kcal. The scheduled exercises were Body Hook Combo, Body Uppercut Combo and Uppercut Combo #2. I did do an extra set with Difficult Challenge Combo #2, so the total workout was 34 minutes with a total calorie estimated burn of 537 kcal.

For tonight's stream we will play some Smite before Iceman joins in for some more fun in Tom Clancy's The Division.

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

Drace's Impossible Question: What franchise has produced the biggest roster of intensely f*ckable characters?

Over on twitter, one of my favorite fan fic writers Drace Domino asked the question, "In your opinion, what franchise has produced the biggest roster of intensely fuckable characters? Not your favorite one, not where your personal waifu lives, but the property that’s been the biggest hottie factory over the years". For me this is an impossible question to answer when I really sit down to think about it, but I'll through what I came up over the past hour.

Being straight up, as some know I spent a large part of my free time from 2004-2020 writing fan fics based around the world of pro wrestling with Kristi, and so I can easily say that the Professional Wrestling as a whole probably would be at the top of the list, since promotions typically will hire performers who have certain looks and appeal to bring in an audience. Hell a lot of people are upset at the WWE because they are turning NXT back into its intended purpose as a developmental show to help bring along the next wave of men and women that people will find appealing to watch and grow attachment too instead of being a 'super indy', but that's beside the point. The fact is sex appeal is a huge part of pro wrestling.

But going beyond that, let's talk about Star Trek where you will find a wide variety of characters that can easily fit the build of Drace's Question. Hell the original series alone basically had a 'babe / hunk' of the episode to various degrees, but then you factor in the Animated Series, the Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise...and then look at things beyond the shows. The Starfleet Academy PC game in the mid 90s certainly delivers with the characters of Faith Gage, Maggie Horn, Vanda M'Giia & Jana Akton. Now go look into the comics particularly when DC and Marvel there is a treasure trove of characters to pull from, but let's stick with the Starfleet Academy vibe where you got T'Priell, Kyethn Zund, Pava Ek'Noor Aqabaa & Kamilah Goldstein, 

But since we're moved in the realm of comic books with this, Marvel and DC Comics basically built up their their respective empires on the look and appeal of the men and women in the illustrated publications for close to 100 years now. From Superman to Wonder Woman to Harley Quinn to Nightwing to Spider-Man to Rogue to She-Hulk to Luke Cage, you really have no shortage of characters that one would consider doing the deed with, or imagining getting it on with others within their respective universe. Hell just look at the rosters of the Justice League and X-Men in any given year since the 1980s and you know there's a whole lot of fans figure out who's banging who.

But consider that Marvel has had a history of cross overs with Capcom, and this topic easily considers everything from the Street Fighter franchise, the Darkstalters franchise and so on. Hell fighting games in general have always been built around how characters look in addition to the game play. Consider how over the top the designs for many of the characters are in Street Fighter, and the backlash that came when Mortal Kombat 11's characters were 'tone down' in comparison to MKX and you realized just how much things like that matter to the core audience. Then you look at franchises like Dead or Alive whose entire premise is based around how fuckable the entire cast looks to be.

Then you got things like RPGs, JRPGs in particular... and big topic of interest whenever a new Final Fantasy game is announced is what will the characters look like, and hell folks had a fucking field day with the boy band looks of the Noctis and his buds in Final Fantasy XV, but then you go back and realize there were a lot of fuckable characters in every FF game, Tifa, Yuffie, Rikku, Lighting, Squall, Cloud, Tidus all instantly come to mind.  Hell just look at Chrono Cross, a game I'm currently featuring on my Twitch channel and realize that a good chunk of it's cast, male and female, folks would find fuckable. And let's not forget about Kingdom Hearts which combines the Final Fantasy aspect of things with Disney's beauties.

Disney has done more than it's fair share over the years, and everyone can easily find just about every character, male or female getting the Rule 34 treatment. Hell Frozen basically became a huge money maker for Disney based solely on Elsa's looks alone, but just go back to the 90s with the Disney renaissance of that period, from Aladdin & Jasmin to Eric & Ariel to Belle & The Beast, Disney knew what they were doing, and they weren't the only ones. Example: Everyone mocks the yellow jumpsuit attire of April O'Neil in the 1987 TMNT series now a days, but when you realize that outfit design showed off her figure combine with the fact in the first story arc you have Michelangelo basically copping a feel on her and that just speaks for itself.. Then you got My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and the very existence of its spin off Equestria Girls which is mostly based on the fact Hasbro realized what their audience included

I would be remiss if I didn't mention Overwatch, and that's a tough one where it certainly has a wild variety of characters but it's a real small sample size based on the game and it's expanded content in terms of books and comics. Hopefully that will be expanded upon in Overwatch 2.

Seriously, I could go down this rabbit hole all day trying to answer the question, because I didn't even go deep into Mass Effect, RWBY, Doctor Who, the Arrowverse... or just your typical anime with the likes the of Dragon Ball! 

Anyway, this was a fun little thing to write as it certainly got me thinking!

Today's Notes 8/24/21: Three Dragons Down and Three To Go

Good morning everybody,

Last night's stream of Chrono Cross saw a lot getting done in terms of side quests before getting back onto the main story to start hunting down the Six Elemental Dragons. 

First destination however was the Isle of the Damned in another world, taking Karsh to have a show down against Solt and Peppor regarding their belief that he killed Dario. Apparently like Radius, Karsh was possessed by the Masamune... but is that really what happened? Because I do know we have a boss battle against Dario coming up later in the game.From there it was off to the Hydra Marshes, where we saved a Beeba and got an ancient fruit before going on to face the De-Hyrate. Now that is a boss fight I have an issue with because of its name. Considering it's the ghost of a Hyrda that in 'Another World', were killed off long ago... shouldn't it be called a De-Hyrda? The joke still work!

Then it was off to Guldove where there is a fight against future recruit Orlha because she thinks Lynx and company are the bad guys. Really a battle because of a misunderstanding, but seeing how you fight folks who will be in your party at some point in this game, it's a nice way to see what Orlha can do. Heading to Guldove is also important as one most go to the Dragon Shrine to get the Dragon Emblem which you must take to the Home World's Dragon Shrine at Guldove. Also at this point, the Lv 7 abilities for characters start being unlocked which means probably a lot of going around and side quests to make sure everyone has their abilities!

Anyway once back in the Home World, I made sure Fargo and Irenes were my party as we head to SS Zelbess. Fargo is important because he basically steals the Zelbess from his counterpart and that goes into the long performance of Nikki and the Magical Dreamers as they play the song to awaken the ghosts on Marbule so they could be dealt with. The performance is really cool, but does make me wonder how it would look in a remastered format. Anyway, Fargo unlocks his Invincible ability, and once everything is done, if you talk to Nikki with Fargo and Irenes in the party, they have unique dialog. As a perk, Miki was also recruited. At that point, it was off to Water Dragon Isle to face the Water Dragon in a straight up fight, peppering him with red elements to wear him down fast before landing the finishing blow. Getting to the Earth Dragon on Earth Dragon Isle involved some light puzzle work in getting Rockroach's knocked into hole, the battle itself also straight forward by hammering it with green elements. 

Now getting to the 'Green Dragon' was a pain in the ass, as you must go to the Hyrda Marshes of the home world, fight an angry Beeba, then learn how to summon the Winagpede. This is why getting the fruit earlier helps out. Once you summon the Wingapede, you're taken to Gae's Navel where you meet Leah and you basically have no choice but to face every creature around the island to lure out Tyrano. Now that doesn't seem to bad, that is until you have to deal with the Prehysterics who cane cast confusion on your team and the animation for that gets real old real quick. Anyone, on top of that, once you lure out Tyrano adnd defeat it, you're pushed right into fight against the Green Dragon. The battle against the Green Dragon can be a nightmare in any of itself because of all the Status Effects it can cause... which was a great concern if a party isn't balanced enough to cover having some elements locked out for a bit. Anyway, once The Green Dragon is defeated, Leah joins the party.

So with all that done it sets up the next part of the game nicely for tonight! Now here are the clips from last night

• A Becky Lynch Action Figure Has Multiple Hands?
• Explaining the RWBY Anthology Manga 
• DragonSpike
• Defeating the De-Hyrdrate
• That was gentle & lady-like 
• Defeating Orlha
• Miki Joins The Party
• Defeat The Water Dragon 
• Defeat The Earth Dragon 
• Miki's Head Bopper 
• Defeat The Green Dragon
• Leah Joins-um Party 

Following the stream, we raided MommyBee (twitch.tv/MommyBee) who was also playing Chrono Cross!

We added two games to the collection yesterday. First The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles for the Nintendo Switch... and having played the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy back at the end of 2019, I'm looking forward to seeing what this game is like. The other game added is Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of AN Elusive Age - Definitive Edition... which is one hell of a long title. I have never played a Dragon Quest game but my understanding is that they are like Final Fantasy and each game can stand on it's own unless other wise indicated.

Also picked up RWBY: The official Manga Anthology volume 5 which focuses on Team Juniper (Jaune, Pyrrah, Ren and Nora) with some side stories for them. With this being the fifth volume, I wonder when team CFVY will get their own manga... or are their adventures going to be novel exclusives.

Added another Funko Pop to the collection, Becky Lynch (Pop WWE #65) and on top of that a Becky Lynch 'Elite Collection' figure that was released last year shortly after she vacated the RAW Women's Title. I do find it odd that the hands are apparently interchangeable. Now that I'm going to open it find out why that's the case.

DaemonsWolf (twitch.tv/daemonsw0lf) is working on the next art piece, and it will see the return of the Bunny decked out in Division gear! Looking forward to seeing the finished item and to make it the next start screen image! 

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Daily Workout lasted 28 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 430 kcal. The exercises for today Beginner Combo #1, Hook Combo #2 and Front Back Step Combo. We did a little extra with an additional Difficult Challenge Combo #3, so the  total session was 34 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 531 kcal.

For tonight's stream, we're continuing Chrono Cross and our quest of hunting down the remaining Dragons. We're heading after the Fire Dragon next and I'm gonna have all day to figure out the best course of action because I know I want Fargo in the party, but he's going to be an easy target because he's a blue innate while the Fire Dragon is a red innate which just spells trouble.

Anyway, we'll se you later tonight over on twitch.tv/fredcasden! 

Today's Notes 8/23/21: We Go Rolling Along

Good morning everybody,

We had a fun night of Overwatch, which started with a handful of Mayhem matches before focusing on Quick Play only. Big thanks as always to PandaSweet for joining in on the fun as we had plenty of wins and losses as we played all three roles of Tank, Damage and Support. It did surprise me that the queues for Damage we a lot longer than usual for a Sunday night. Anyway, we ended on a three match win streak, and it's always nice to end on a high note! Here are the match results for each match last night.

Overwatch: Mayhem Match Results

1. D.va - Loss
2. D.va - Loss
3. D.va - Win - Play of the Game
4. D.va - Win - Play of the Game

Overwatch: Quick Play Match Results

1. Moira - Loss
2. D.va - Loss
3. Moira - Win
4. D.va - Win - Play of the Game
5. Reinhardt - Loss
6. Moira - Win
7. D.va - Loss
8. D.va - Win
9. Torbjorn- Loss  
10. Tracer - Loss
11. Torbjorn - Loss
12. Tracer - Win
13. D.va - Win
14. Moira - Win
    

It is amazing when you look at the results, it's a 50-50 split of wins and losses! I should've made note of which matches I had resulted in not getting killed once because i had a couple like that.

Anyway here are the clips from last night...

• And the army goes rolling along... 
• Taking it to their doorstep 
• Scoreboard!
• Neato Dorito 
• This is what you call getting the hell out of dodge 
• There is a Widowmaker up there...
• The Mercy tried to hide 
• Let's Do This!
• Time Out! I'm Ready For Some Pudding!
• Aw BLEEP! BLEEPBLEEPBLEEP! BLEEP!
• Smashing 

After the stream we raided Sw33ts_Gaming (twitch.tv/sw33ts_gaming) who was playing Naraka: Bladepoint. I'll say this about Sweets, she loves her multi-player gaming!

Starting using the Xsplit VCam again, which we tried on the previous computer last year, but with the better hardware of the rig we got in February, it makes the Vcam a lot more smoother to use with no hindrance on OBS, plus it gives me an extra option of maybe taking down the green screen if I need to.

Off stream gaming, I messed around some with Pokemon UNITE, the Moba game that recently debuted on the Nintendo Switch, I'm not quite seeing where there are any pay-to-mechanics, as everything seems pretty straight forward, and the variety of Pokemon isn't exactly huge. Sure some Pokemon may be better than others, but I think that comes down to one's play style. I've stuck with Pikachu in the early going as him being an all-rounder seems just perfect for my play style of just roaming around doing stuff. We might feature this on a stream in the future, probably once I get a better understanding on things... which may not be much to learn considering I've taken the MVP spot a few times in the handful of matches I've played.

Before the stream yesterday started I found my two Military Cadence books that I got at Fort Jackson way back 2000... and man do I NOT remember how most of these are supposed to go in terms of which lines are supposed to be call response and which ones are not. Still that's why there is a clip of me doing The Army Goes Rolling Along. Also, flipping through both books one realizes that just how screwed up some soldiers and marines were when coming up with variations of particular cadences.

Here are this week's results for  Dr Kawashima's Brain Training World Champions Competition #80

• Dual Task: 46.99sec - #1806 out of 2788 - C+ - #196 out of 295 in 35-39
  
• Finger Calculations: 29.08sec - #1154 out of 1734 - C - #145 out of 199 in 35-39
  
• Calculations x 25:  26.63sec - #1945 out of 2855 - C - #206 out of 293 in 35-39
  
• Rock Paper Scissors: 35.88sec - #1193 out of 1704 - C - #130 out of 199 in 35-39
  

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout lasted 28 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 439 kcal. The exercises for today were Defensive Combo #1, Double Combo #1 and Defensive Combo #2. As of today, we're up to 45 out of 50 for the Lin's Champion achievement.I've done the math, and between what's left with Lin and the other trainers, I need to put in 290 hours to get everyone's Champion achievement.

 For tonight's stream we are getting back to Chrono Cross, and if memory serves me right we're picking up at a point where we'll be doing some side quests before going off to deal with the six dragons to advance the plot. Stream will start about 6:30 PM Eastern

Of course the weather says there will be thunder storms in the area, so hopefully they will be a non factor.

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

 

Today's Notes 8/22/21: We Have All Eight Badges

Good afternoon everyone,

I did not get up till 1 PM Eastern... just wanted to point that out first

Yesterday was weird as I called into work to see if they needed help, and imagine my surprise when I'm told 'yes' because 'everyone was falling behind' and I was too 'kick butt'. So what do I do is get back to back completes and suddenly everyone else got on a hot streak. Guess if I suddenly show up and get things done it means everyone else needed to get their butts in gear. So that was a good feeling.

Anyway, on to last night's stream of Pokemon Let's Go Eevee, which saw us heading for the Seafoam Islands first... and I happened to stumble across Articuno, I wasn't actually looking for it, I just happened to find it while working my way through the cavern of Seafoam Island. Imagine my surprise at how easily Eevee was able to take it on using the Buzzy Buzz, and then capturing it was no where near as big a pain in the ass as Zapados was last week!

From there we went over to Cinnabar Island to tackle the Pokemon Mansion to get the key needed to face Blane to get the Fire-badge. Oddly enough, there is a way to avoid battling his gym's trainers just by answering five trivia questions correctly, which is what we did by looking up the answers for the two questions I did not know! Between Eevee and Blastoise we were able to wipe out his entire squad of Fire Pokemon.

With now seven badges in hand, it was back to Viridian City to face Giovanni one last time to take the gym badge. We didn't have too much trouble, tackling Giovanni's trainers, but when facing him, he did managed to have one of my Pokemon, Victreebel, knocked out, but we just went to Eevee to seal the win and to get the Earth badge, making for a total of 8

So with this all done, next Saturday's stream will be focused on the journey to get to the Indigo Plateau to face the Elite Four... and that journey means we'll probably come across Moltres, the last of the three legendary bird Pokemon. If all goes right we should be able to finish Pokemon Let's Go Eevee next week!

Now here's the list of clips from last night' stream

• Eevee Versus Articuno 
• We caught Articuno 
• Eevee Paws 
• Wrong Move... But It Still Worked 
• Ooo Yeah The Glitzy Glow!
• Your Soul Belongs To Eevee!
  

After the stream we raided Kalenal (twitch.tv/kalenal) who was playing Final Fantasy XIV!, Kal does stream regularly on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays! 

It's Sunday which means we have a new highlight reel, and I've changed the format to use 30 second clips. Anyway this past week we played Fitness Boxing 2: Rhythm & Exercise, Overwatch, Chrono Cross, Ehrgeiz, Rampage: World Tour, Rival Schools: United By Fate, Star Trek Online, Life is Strange, South Park, South Park Chef's Luv Shack, South Park Rally, Vs & Pokemon Let's Go Eevee!  

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout lasted 31 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 519 kcal. The exercises for today were Triple Combo #2, Intermediate Combo #1 and the Biceps Shape Focus Combo. We're going to be sticking with Lin as the trainer as we now focused on earning the Lin's Champion achievement which is to train with Lin for over 50 hours. Currently we're at 44 out of 50 for that.

With all the organizing I've been doing of stuff lately, I thought I lost the journal I was using for when I was playing the Zero Escape trilogy... turns out it was sitting on a digital clock...

For tonight's stream we're playing Overwatch as we do every Sunday! There will be Mayhem matches in the first hour and then the focus will be on Quick Play matches. Also the Pirate Bastion skin is rather neat. We'll get started around 7 PM Eastern!

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

Today's Notes 8/21/21: Went down to South Park to have myself a time

Good afternoon everybody,

Well last night's stream was certainly interesting as it relates to the South Park Trilogy on the original PlayStation.. and we used the PS3 for these shenanigans... and this will consist of a few mini-reviews.F

So first up was South Park, the first person shooter that was originally on the Nintendo 64 and then ported to the PlayStation. It's controls are pretty strange, with no use of the analog sticks on the PS3, so we're using the bumper buttons to aim up and down. It looks pretty good, but the draw distance is so short it's makes you wonder if the town of South Park is constantly surrounded by fog. We played through the first five stages, coming and so we got to see a lot of things, such as how the town is laid out and how far we're roaming from the start point, and since we were using Cartman, I assume the start point was his house. Enemies seem to pick up in variation as you progress, but I got really tired of shooting the turkeys, and the enemy A.I. tendency to charge and swarm the player makes me grateful that this game does indeed have a god-mod and provides infinite ammo. This game's biggest strength is the fully voiced cut-scenes, which serves as a nice way to progress the story along.

Next up with South Park: Chef's Luve Shack, which is your standard Puzzle / Party game, similar to the Jackbox Party collections you can find on Steam. This supports up to four players, but can be played solo, but it's a real drab experience. The trivia portion has also sorts of topics such as pop culture of things prior to 1999, science and historical trivia, plus South Park trivia (Guess DJ Slope of Slope's Game Room was wrong about that one). Chef's Luv Shack really shines with it's mini-games, several of which are based around actual things from the show such as Cartman riding a mechanic bull, the Chicken Lover and the kitty wanting Cartman's Pot Pie. Really would bet these would be a ton of fun with two or more people, but with Covid, I'm not bringing anyone here any time soon/

Lastly, South Park Rally... which has to be one of the worse games I've ever player, and probably the worst game of the year for me. First the one positive is that you can fully customize the controls, reassign the buttons to what feels natural to you... now beyond there, there is nothing positive about South Park Rally. It's standard 'race' mode, is a hit check 4 check points over the course of 3 laps, which is fine, Forza Horizon 4 has a lot of races like that... but with South Park Rally, you can take any route you want,  making it very easy to get turned around and loss. But get this you have to unlock any of the other game modes as you play the Championship mode. I've played my fair share of racing games, never have I seen it where they basically prevent you from trying to see what you might like playing. I was very disappointed in it to the point I just said the hell with it and threw in something else.

That something else was Vs, which came out in 1997. Published by THQ, this game looks good,, controls well and has a killer sound track. Now most people will remember Vs. based on the ads that featured Mia in most gaming magazines back in the mid-late 90s. Oddly enough it doesn't have a standard arcade mode, but it does have a Survivor and Challenge modes which kind of play like an arcade mode, with continues and such. The controls can be customized, to where you can bind combination inputs like Punch+Evade to one of the bumper buttons. I wouldn't mind dedicating more of a night to it to see how deep the Challenge or Survivor Mode actually is.

Anyway, here's the list of clips from last night!

• Virtua Fighter 2 was on PC... I own a copy! 
• DJ Pon 3 aka Vinyl Scratch Joins The Collection! 
• A Garrus T-Shirt: Raise Your Hand If You Haven't Been Killed Before 
• 
  It's something special.... 
• I've got snowballs of steel 
• I was expecting an explosion... 
• That was an actual question 
  
• Cartman Rides The Mechanical Bull 
• Beefcake! BEEFCAKE!!!!!. 
• Revenge is the proper answer... 
• They are coming right for us! 
• The butchering of a Mitch Hedberg joke...
• It appears we are in the lead... 
• He we actually did it... and crashed!
• Go Cartman Go! . 
• First Time Playing This
• The Disney Plus Joke From The Chat 
• That did not take long
• Get them in the corner!
• He's a business man and he's dressed like that?

 Following the stream we raided Oldish22 over at twitch.tv/oldish22 who was playing Final Fantasy XIV! He's a good due, and you should check him out when he's on!

We added a new Funko to the collection, from My Little Pony DJ Pon 3, aka Vinyl Scratch, which is #05 in the Funko My Little Pnny set. I am currently on the trail of a Doctor Whooves Vinyl Figure.

While organizing my book shelves yesterday morning, I found some odd games from the Windows 95/98 era... Triple Play 98, Jazz Jackrabbit 2, Pitfall the Mayan Adventure & Virtua Fighter 2. VF2 was a great find because it does prove what I said that it was a a game I played on PC, and is why I play Pai. The version of Pitfall the Mayan Adventure is the one that came exclusive with IBM PC's back in the day. I am surprised at the retro buyers market for Jazz Jackrabbitt 2, but even more surprised that Epic you know the studio behind Fortnite, hasn't done anything with the franchise in over 20 years. Triple Play 98I remember playing better on a Windows 98 machine as opposed to a Windows 95 one, .

 

Today Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout lasted 34 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 647 kcal, but we did an extra 17 minutes with an additional calorie burn of 315 kcal, so the total session was 51 minutes with a total estimated calorie burn of 963 kcal. The exercises for today with the high setting for Difficult Combos #1 #2 and #3 for the daily workout, and for the extra, we focused on the low setting for those same exercises, because there were achievements listed for performing those. Now these Difficult Combos certainly are harder than the standard variants, and its very easy to get crossed up based on what you has gotten use to seeing in terms of a pattern.

Fitness Boxing 2: Rhythm & Exercise Achievements

1. Triple Shooting Star: Acquire a 3-star rating in every workout (low)
2. Triple Supernova: Acquire a 3-star rating in every workout (high) 
3. Extreme Trainer Lv. 1: Acquire 28,000 point or more in Difficult Challenge Combo #1 (Low) 
4. Extreme Trainer Lv. 2: Acquire 28,000 point or more in Difficult Challenge Combo #2 (Low) 
5. Extreme Trainer Lv. 3: Acquire 28,000 point or more in Difficult Challenge Combo #3 (Low)  
6. Extreme Trainer Lv. 4: Acquire 56,000 point or more in Difficult Challenge Combo #1 (High)
7. Extreme Trainer Lv. 5: Acquire 56,000 point or more in Difficult Challenge Combo #2 (High) 
8. Extreme Trainer Lv. 6: Acquire 56,000 point or more in Difficult Challenge Combo #3 (High)  
9. Monster Weight Puncher Lv. 2: Reach a total punch count of 360,000 HITS
   

We're going to go back to using Lin every day at the trainer since the next closest achievement to get is Lin's Champion which is to train with Lin for over 50 hours, and we already put in 44 hours. Each of the other trainers I used for 17 hours or less, so they were each take a while to get to their respective champion achievements.  Regardless we're at 72% completion of the EX achievements thus far. 

For tonight's stream, we're back to Pokemon Let's Go Eevee as we head off to the Seafoam Islands, we got a battles in between plus there will be attempts to catch whatever Pokemon we can find! The higher we can push out levels the hopefully easier time we'll have with the elite four!

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