First Impressions of Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise

Good morning everyone,

Every do something random and are surprised with the results? That's what happened last night!

The stream featured Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise, and let me point out, I have some very basic knowledge about the manga and anime the game is based on. 

Thankfully this game does a very good job of introducing new people to the franchise giving backstory and motivation to Kenshiro, establish the world and introducing a lot backstory to give new comers a fine entry point. Hell the tutorials do a fair job of trying to get the player learning how to control Kenshiro exactly how he would in the anime and manga.

In terms of presentation (Graphics, Audio) it is really top notch, and apparently it uses the same game engine some of the Yakuza series (which I've never played). The voice acting for the English dub is very solid, and every sound effect sounds impactful. The musical score really helps set the tone. 

Found several mini-games as well, with an in game casino having Poker and Blackjack, but the winner is a Baseball game, where you use a steel beam to smack raiders on motorcycles. It's silly and requires good timing, but it's fun.

Oh the in game combat is also pretty fun when beating up multiple enemies, and some of the boss battles can be very direct one on one encounter... though the fight against the giant in the Gladiator chapter took some thinking on how to take that down.

Safe to say Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise will be featured at least once a week going forward until we finish the game!

Following the stream we sent the fun over to MATURISHBAMBINO_ who was also playing Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise over at twitch.tv/MATURISHBAMBINO_!   

Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise Trophies

1. Achiever: Completed an achievement.
2. Revenged: Defeated Shin.
3. The Man who Wandered: Completed the Prologue.
4. The Successor Rises: Unlock 3 abilities.
5. The Man who Fought: Completed Chapter 1.
6. The Man who Won Freedom: Completed Chapter 2.
7. The Man who Defied: Completed Chapter 3.
8. The Man who was Brought Low: Completed Chapter 4.

Twitch Clip Links

• Mess him up man!
• Stone Mountain Splitting Splash 
• There he goes!
  

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout featured Weaving Combo #2, Straight Combo #1 and Beginner Combo #2 for a duration of 31 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 474 kcal.

Overwatch's Winter Wonderland event went live yesterday, and while no need game modes were added, the new skins are pretty awesome, in particular the Wooltide Tracer, which is the first one avaliable via the weekly challenge which is to play at least 27 matches to unlock. Wrecking Ball, Dva and Orissa all have the best skins for those that are only available via the loot boxes, and to be honest its about time D.va and Orissa got holiday related skins considering how long they've been in the game

My progress with Final Fantasy XIV last night after the stream saw me moving the plot up to the end of the Extinguishing the Last Light and it's startling revelation that the Warrior of Light (aka my character) is now a danger to the world of the First because we absorbed the Lightwardens. It basically kicks off the last leg of the original Shadowbringers content, which means we're now on course to face  Emet-Selch to close out what was third major expansion to the game. Chance are we might actually feature that on Saturday's stream.

Tonight's stream will see Pokemon Shining Pearl stepping back into the spotlight as we are reaching the point of the story where Team Galactic's intentions are starting to become known!

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

More Forced Jumps And Gears Warred

Good morning everyone,

The grind for glory is real, but some times it's about the journey and not the destination... right?

Last night's stream lead off with Jump Force as my quests to grind out various achievements added another one to the list of things I accomplished in that game, so at this point the biggest challenge is going to be mostly focused on getting S Ranked on Free Missions on the Hard, Very Hard and Expert Difficulties. We did clear the complete 100 missions achievement

Around the half way point of the stream, the fun switched over to Gears of War 4, where Iceman joined in so that we could finish the Co-Op campaign, something that turned out to be a very rare accomplishment. It was certainly a lot more fun with a friend than my original play-through when it came to knowing someone had my back. 

The fifth Act of Gears 4 did strike a cord with me in regard to just how bland a main character JD is, and since I am aware that Kait becomes the lead in Gears 5, that's probably for the best considering its her lineage that is at the heart of the story.

Iceman and I also messed around with the horde mode, clearing 9 waves before we got overwhelmed by the enemies. Managed to some achievements out of it, and much like the other Gears of War games, it does give some heavy consideration to revisit them... for things other than just getting the collectables.! 

Following the stream we sent the fun over to PradoxGamerAU who was playing Final Fantasy XIV over on twitch.tv/pradoxgamerau!

Jump Force Achievements

1. Prospectus: Cleared 100 or more different Free Missions.
   

Gears of War 4 Achievements

1. The Sound Of Silence: Carried the Customized Lancer Marcus gave you to the end of Act V Chapter 2
2. Brothers Till The End: Completed all Campaign Acts in Co-op (any difficulty)
3. Level Up! : Reached level 2 in one Horde class
4. Ribbonator: Earned 5 Ribbons
5. Level 10: Reached level 10
6. Level 5: Reached Level 5
7. Level 15: Reached Level 15
   

Twitch Clip Links

• 5 Seconds left on the clock!
• The Phyiscs Make Very Little Sense 
• Slice it!
• Overkill! 
  

Now I know I didn't post the usual screen shots of the results of yesterday's Fitness Boxing 2 session, it was because i had the Twitch graphic to show. And I like to only use about 4 images at most in a blog post. That said, today's daily work out session featured Intermediate Combo #2, Advanced Combo #1 and Weaving Combo #1 for a duration of 31 minutes and a estimated calorie burn of 493 kcal.

I'm pleased that the DC character known as Powerhouse is getting their own series on the CW, titled 'Namoi'. The reason being is that Powerhouse is not a forced re-work, change for the sake of change legacy character (Example The Flash's Iris West-Allen & Wally West)... Powerhouse was created in 2018, and in that span of time was able to garner enough credibility with the comic book reading audience to give the character a bigger platform. 

My Final Fantasy XIV adventures saw a lot of time spent with the dwarfs and seeing the whole point of the Lali-Ho greeting. There are some little comedic moments sprinkled around the featured side quests. The main story plot was advanced up to That None Shall Ever Again, and there is the theme of uniting the entire world of the First, which kind of is a smaller version of basically a condensed version of everything done with Eorzea in uniting various city states to face the empire. 

Messed around a little with Pac-Man Championship Edition 2... I forgot how overly complicated the ghost trains can get in it when it comes to the score attack mode.  

Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 Achievements

1. SCORE ATTACK > EXTREME 3: Obtain Rank A or higher in SCORE ATTACK > EXTREME.
   

Every time Bret 'Hitman' Hart is interviewed about his career, the most delusional he becomes. Hey, I was big fan of the guy, but his recent claims that he inspired every Canadian wrestler is pretty damn silly. 

Found out my younger brother and his family caught Covid, hopefully they have a quick recovery.

For tonight's stream I'm not completely sure yet of what we're going to feature, I have a couple of ideas, but we'll see what shakes out!

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

I'll Be As Drax As I Wanna Be

Good afternoon everybody,

Well thing were shorter and longer than I expected yesterday, but at least when I woke up this morning i saw something I was expecting. to do was not going to be on the agenda for today, so I just went back to bed.

Anyway last night's stream of Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy basically covered chapters 5 thru 8 of the game, meaning we reached the Half Way point. Turns out the big plot revolves around Nikki, the apparent daughter of Starlord, witnessing the death of her mother and has gained god-like powers which has lead to the creation of a crazy space cult. Now i'm really stretching my brain on this but in the comics I don't think Starlord has a kid... but I could be wrong.

The Knowhere space port was really we designed, certainly in most games there would be a lot to do there, but since I want to make sure the Guardian's pay the fine, there was clearly some temptations to mess with some apparent mini-games, but they seemed more like rigged games of chance... so I didn't risk it.

The use of Starlord's mother in this game certainly draws strong parellels to the the Guardians of the Galaxy: Telltale Series game from a few years ago,. I did like the supposed dame over bad ending that takes place if you don't resist the illusion .

The combat within the game is certainly getting more hectic, as Chapter 8 probably took a lot longer than needed, because I actually died a few times during it. But the check points are pretty fair... for the most part.

Following the stream, we hosted Maximilian_DOOD over at twitch.tv/Maximilian_DOOD as they were playing Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid. I admit, the host was mostly because I needed to hit the rest room, because I do like to chat a little with whoever I'm raiding.  

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy Achievements

1. Like a Glove!: Find and equip one Outfit.
2. Aim Assist: Execute an Auto-Combo with Rocket.
3. Timber!: Execute an Auto-Combo with Groot.
4. Dynamic Team: Invest in at least one Special Ability for Gamora, Drax, Rocket and Groot.
5. Due or Die: Complete Chapter 5.
6. Family Intervention: Defeat the Blood Brothers.
7. Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Complete Chapter 6.
8. Shock and Awe: Acquire the Lightning Element for Star-Lord's guns.
9. The Crowd Goes Wild: Execute a Flair Attack 10 times.
10. No Way, Nova Corps: Interrupt a Nova Centurion with Gamora's Call to Action.
11. Canine Confusion: Complete Chapter 7.
12. Mama's Boy: Defeat the Meredith Quill delusion.
13. Bullet Hell: Defeat 15 enemies with Star-Lord's Fan the Hammer ability.
14. The Matriarch: Complete Chapter 8.

Twitch Clip Links

• And they robbed me
• Ball?! BALL!!!! 
• Beat On 'Em Good! 

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Daily Workout featured Triple Combo #1, Body Straight Combo and Uppercut Combo #1 for a duration of 31 minutes and a estimated calorie burn of 434 kcal

I received the Twitch Recap 2021 email, and there were a number of things of note in it.

• I was live for 1,796 hours
• My viewers watched 3,6098 hours
• I had a total of 125 unique followers
• I had a peak of 87 concurrent users
• My most watched categories were Overwatch, Mass Effect Legendary Edition, Star Trek Online, ESPN Major League Baseball & Dragon Age Inquisition
  
• The largest hype train was 68% on August 27, 2021
• The emote LUL was used in chat 567 times
• Viewers accumulated 133,645 channel points
• LVStrikR had the most channel points with 61,800

Facebook has new video publishing tools... now that I think of it, when was the last time YouTube updated their own?

I really have no dog in the hunt as it relates to everyone being mad at Toei... because lets face it, Japanese fair-use laws are different than fair-use laws in the United States. That said, TotallyNotMark is overrated 

My off-stream Final Fantasy XIV adventures saw a little bit of progress, as I knocked off 20K Gil for the Doma Enclave reconstruction effort, and knocked off some Main Story Quests (namely the ones from 'The Ladder' to 'Meet The Tholls'). Since I discovered the Tholls featured side quests, I'm going to tackle those before advancing the story ahead, just so I'm not missing anything. I suspect, this will lead so something where I need to have a crafting skill leveled up to like 80 or something... which is rather silly.

For tonight's stream, we'll lead off with Jump Force as we grind towards some single player achievements and we'll also play Gears of War 4, to wrap that up!

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

You Got To Be Groot At What You Do

Good morning everybody,

I'm strongly considering adding Dragon Ball Z Abridged quotes to my stream deck's sound board...as I found a full playlist of them on YouTube the other day.

Anyway, last night's stream featured Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, and let me say it, there is a lot of parallels between some elements of it's story beats and quick time events and it's Telltale counterpart. Which is cool, as it would warrant an alternate play through to see how things shake out different based on dialog choices.

That said, I found its game play, graphics and sound mixing to be pretty damn good. Some of the dialog in combat situations can be a little (okay very) repetitive, but the fact that the other members of the team make fun of Starlord (the character we the players directly control) for wandering off more than makes up for it. Of course since I am streaming it, the games awesome licensed soundtrack can't be heard, but I am surprised that the use of the games own original 80s rock music isn't heard instead... so that would be the one downer.

In regards to the story, outside of the Guardians pissing off the Nova Corp at the very start by going to in a quarantine zone, and the loose plot point of a dude looking for 'god' in the quarantined area , everything in the first four chapters of the game feels like it's just a typical day. Of course when I wrapped up tonight's stream, it felt like those apparent loose plot threads will be back in full force!

Big thanks to Iceman7667 for renewing his sub to my Twitch Channel!

Following the stream we sent the fun over to LifeWithStan who was playing The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt over on twitch.tv/lifewithstan!

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy Achievements

1. Eat It, Rodent: Win the bet against Rocket.
2. Self-Improvement: Purchase your first Star-Lord Ability.
3. Llama Wrangler: Capture the Quarantine Zone monster.
4. A Risky Gamble: Complete Chapter 1.
5. Busted: Complete Chapter 2.
6. Flash Freeze: Acquire the Ice Element for Star-Lord's guns.
7. Stagger Swagger: Stagger 25 enemies.
8. The Cost of Freedom: Complete Chapter 3.
9. Killer Friendship: Execute an Auto-Combo with Gamora.
10. Unstoppable Force: Attain the maximum possible Momentum 10 times.
11. Katathian Handshake: Execute an Auto-Combo with Drax.
12. Pick Me Up: Revive a fallen team member.
13. Squid Kicker: Defeat the Dweller-in-Darkness.
14. The Monster Queen: Complete Chapter 4.

Twitch Clip Links

• Why Am I Explaining This!
• Yes He Can! 
• Sweet!
• Get it! 
  

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Daily Workout featured Left-Right Step Combo, Double Combo #2 and Advanced Combo #2 for a duration of 31 minutes and a estimated calorie burn of 557 kcal.

Made more off-stream progress on the Jump Force achievements yesterday afternoon, outside of clearing 100 different Free Missions, I don't think any of the remaining achievements would be possible this week.

Jump Force Achievements

1.  Upgrade Master: Performed 50 or more upgrades at the Upgrade Counter.

My off-stream Final Fantasy XIV adventures saw the focus on the Main Story Quests from "A Fresh Start' up through 'Paradise Fallen' which wrapped up the level 76-77 quests that were apart of the original Shadowbringers release. The dungeon, Malikah's Well and it's bosses were pretty straight forward. The solo quest in 'A Feast of Lies' was interesting in that it was a much more straight forward fight one on one against Ran'jiit... then again after facing him the other night only as Thancred, remember Ran'jiit's attack patterns when having the full use of my actual character was a walk in the park.

With luck I should have the level 78-80 quests that end with the actual quest called 'Shadowbringers' by the end of the week. We shall see, depending on long in queues and the stuff that I do on stream.

For tonight's stream we will continue Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy and continue to have a great time with it!

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

Using More Than Just The Usual Heroes

Good afternoon everybody,

Yesterday was certainly a day, ending up watching Jingle All The Way during the afternoon... I refuse to put to Cookie Down. What prompted it is that I was playing some Jump Force during the day, and well I wanted something to act as some back ground noise. More notes on the Jump Force progress down below.

Now Last night's stream of Overwatch was also a bit different as I ended up using a lot of folks I never play, such as Sigma, Ana, Zenyatta, Wrecking Ball and Zarya. This lead to me trying different stuff with these characters to see if they can fit my play style. We were also joined by PandaSweet which is always awesome.

Also had a couple of Plays of the Games, one with D.va and the other as Brigitte, so we've kept a streak of getting a POTG once per every stream thus year... or at least it seems that way!

Following the steam we sent the fun over to Joilet4 who was doing a music stream while out on the road over at twitch.tv/joliet4! 

Twitch Clip Links

•  Oh Boy...
•  Really?!
•  A Little Back Door Dva Bomb

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout featured Uppercut Combo #2, Body Hook Combo and Body Uppercut Combo for a duration of 28 minutes and a estimated calorie burn of 425 kcal

And here's the update on the current EX Achievements I am chasing in Fitness Boxing 2, some are clearly a few weeks away from completing.

• 36/50 hours for Karen's Champion
• 367/400 stamps for Honored Stamper
• 501,620/540,000 HITs for Immortal Weight Puncher
• 84/100% for King EX Fighter
  

By my estimation, the next EX Achievement to be reached should be Karen's Champion somewhere around the 10th of January, while Honored Stamper should be reached around the 15th of January. 

Made some progress towards achievements in Jump Force yesterday afternoon as I'm starting to see patterns in the A.I. on the harder difficulties. Namely in that if I can lock them down with a ranged beam like a Kamehameha with my lead character, and have the 2nd character also do a beam attack every so often that basically keeps the enemy at the far side of the arena unless they charge in. Hell that's basically how I cleared a Free Mission on Expert difficulty.

Jump Force Achievements

1. The Frontiers of Battle: Cleared Free Mission on Expert one or more times.

So what is left is primarily things involving grinding for levels, gold and item drops in Free Missions, plus getting S ranks on 10 missions each for Hard, Very Hard and Expert difficulties. These are going to be quite difficult to pull off.

The off-stream Final Fantasy XIV adventures had a bit of a snag, as I was trying to get  The Whorleater on Extreme done... but no dice, so that was a wasted hour. But I did get the Main Story progressed to where the Minfilia of the First now has her own name in Ryne. I think I'm going to hold off on doing any of the weekly journal stuff until after I finally caught up on the Main Story.

For tonight's stream I'm not 100% sure what we're going to do yet, but I'll make up my mind before the start of the stream that is for sure.

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

Only i could combine Solitaire and Final Fantasy XIV...

Good afternoon everyone,

Thinking Square Enix actually got the log in congestion under control... but since during the week I play starting at a later hour, it confused me when I saw a 3000 long in queue minutes before tonight's stream.

So as we waited in the queue for two hours... we loaded up Microsoft Solitaire Collection and played that for a bit. Managed to win a couple of games, and turns out there were achievements I could earn that count towards my X-Box gamer score. So that was cool.

Once we got into Final Fantasy XIV at about 9 PM... and we mostly stuck with the Main Story Quest, even though it's certainly more text heavy and it meant a lot of down time in the action, but we covered what was basically the first half of the level 76-77 quests, from 'When It Rains' to 'A Convenient Distraction'. We also knocked out several things required for the Adventure Journal as well, tried to get  nine things done to turn it in, but some things were just not popping. 

This does raise a question of if I should move Final Fantasy XIV off of Saturday nights and maybe feature it during the week. Or maybe I should do the smart thing and log into it a few hours before I start the Saturday streams to avoid having to find filler!

Following the steam we sent the fun over to Sw33ts_Gaming who was playing Smite over on twitch.tv/sw33ts_gaming! 

Microsoft Solitaire Collection Achievements

1. On Parole: Won a game where you never had more than 2 cards in the cells at any given time in FreeCell
2. First of Many: Gained a level in any game
3. XP Chaser: Completed a game on Hard difficulty on a day that Bonus XP is available for that game
4. Perfectionist: Won an Expert difficulty game in any classic game mode without using an undo

Twitch Clip Links

• Getting that win :)
• We Play Like An Expert
• A Suspicious Man
• A Bard Versus Shiva
• Just another successful trip into Syrcus Tower

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Daily Workout featured Front-Back Step Combo, Hook Comb #2 and Beginner Combo #1 for a duration of 28 minutes and a estimated calorie burn of 445 kcal

Looking over the stats for this year versus the last couple of years, the move back to the 6:30 PM Eastern start time did not do as well as it did prior 2020. Maybe I should consider doing 9:30 PM start times... would mean a change in my work schedule if i choose to do that in 2022.

Since the stream last night was dedicated to Final Fantasy XIV... and getting back in after taking time to put the highlight reel over on facebook.com/fredCasdenGaming would've been impossible, I loaded up Jump Force to continue the grind towards getting as many of its achievements that I feel are possible. Granted all of them are possible, it's just a matter of my sanity.

Jump Force Achievements

1. At the Zenith: Cleared Free Mission on Very Hard one or more times.
   

Here are my favorite Twitch Clips from this past week, which featured Overwatch, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Gears of War 4, Jump Force 4, Mario Golf Super Rush, Pokemon Shining Pearl, Final Fantasy XIV and Microsoft Solitaire Collection!

For tonight's stream, we will of course be playing Overwatch...more than likely it'll only feature Quick Plays this week since I doubt Mayhem will be cycled through on the Arcade Modes.

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

Three Gyms In One Night

Good afternoon everyone,

You ever find yourself reaching a point you didn't plan on reaching in something you're doing?

Well that was the case last night for me during the stream of Pokemon: Shining Pearl. Now I knew I was going right for one gym at the start with the possibility of a second one... because I assumed there would be more of a straight forward path based on when various abilities were unlocked (namely the Surf ability)... but nope, after passing the fifth gym, I was basically told to go back to the beginning areas of the game to drop in on a town which happened to have the sixth gym.

Thankfully, my team of Pokemon were balanced enough to deal with it, as I prefer to over level my Pokemon to basically roll over the gym leaders... those of you who have seen the Pokemon Shield and Let's Go Eevee streams know this. So this raises the question for the next Pokemon Shining Pearl stream... do I just go straight for Valor Lake, or do I head into the underground and use the powerful Pokemon down there to level boost. With six gym badges I could easily level up my squad to 70.

Other notes is four members of my squad evolved, so the team now has Roselia, Staraptor, Prinplup, Rapidash to go along with Mew and Luxray. Kind of weak against Ground Type Pokemon, but for the most part by level boosting I should be able to steam roll anything with this lineup.

Following the stream we hosted Maxomilian_Dood who was mess around with one of the Halo Infinite over on twitch.tv/Maximilian_Dood!  

Twitch Clip Links

• Catching Marill
• And it dies just like that! 
• Victory Is Ours
  

Today marked one full year of Fitness Boxing 2: Rhythm and Exercise, and for today's session, the exercises were Double Combo #1, Defensive Combo #2 and Defensive Combo #1 for a duration of 29 minutes and an estimated calorie burn of 438 kcal.

Fitness Boxing 2: Rhythm & Exercise EX Achievements

1. One Year's Hard Work: Perform Daily Workouts for 365 Consecutive Days
   

What does a year of Fitness Boxing 2 look like? Well here are the totals the three important total.

• Total Punches Thrown: 498,755
• Estimated Calorie Burn:  211,235 kcal
• Exercise Duration: 223 Hours 38 Minutes

Since yesterday was a work day with no work for anyone (again figure that out) I put in some more time on Jump Force to get an idea of how the grind towards a lot of the remaining achievements is going to go.  The Level Training Missions are solid enough on Normal or Hard Difficulty to net a good amount of XP to do some boosting that way, and the Gold Missions seems to help for the ones related to in-game currency. Safe to say Jump Force will still be featured and might gets it's own dedicated night for grinding.

Jump Force Achievements

1. A Natural Fighter: Got S rank 10 or more times on Normal Free Missions.

Happy Birthday to my father who turned 67 years old. 

Rita Repulsa has been added to Power Rangers Battle For The Grid... and since there are achievements in that I still want to try and get I really should resume playing that at some point. 

My off-line Final Fantasy XIV adventures continued with a heavy push on the second-half of the level 74-75 quests in the Main Story... that saw Y'shtola nearly die... again. Seriously, it is a running joke at this point with how Y'shtola seems to have a fake-out death. Still another Lightwarden was defeated defeated, so that is three down and three to go... but I do suspect that my character absorbing all the light may lead to a calamity of some sort.

For tonight's stream, we will be playing Final Fantasy XIV, and since I'm in the Shadowbringers part of the game, no one has to worry about spoilers unless you have not reached that part of the game yet! Still I might just do random stuff, maybe fill out an adventure journal and such.

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