Last night's stream of Final Fantasy XIV was pretty casual, with an initial focus on doing on the Wondrous Tales that I needed to wrap that up for the week. A big focus of the stream was spent leveling up Blue Mage and Fishing. I really do find the fishing part to be good part to just chill out. Leveling Blue Mage is a bit tough, finding some FATES seems to really help in that regard, particularly if I end up doing one that folks are working on.
I did discovered that Blue Mage can do some of the side quests, which does mean some actual content can be done with the class. Problem is remember all the areas where I skipped the side quests as I was really focused on Main Story and Featured quests! I thought about doing a Pandamoemum raid, but since that gives major spoilers as it relates to Endwalker I held off on doing that. Kind of figure those would be wise to do on stream one the first of Endwalker's Post-Content comes out.
Now will I watch the Final Fantasy XIV live letter tonight to see what's coming? Nope, that happens at 9 PM Eastern and I will be in the middle of my stream for the evening, but I'll check out the notes afterward to see what's coming and what's expected.
For the raid we dropped in on x9abenonymous9x who was playing We Were Here Too along with FNDanteSavage over at twitch.tv/x9abenonymous9x
Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Daily Workout was 31 minutes with Double Combo #2, Advanced Combo #2 and Left-Right Step Combo for an estimated calorie burn of 566 kcal.
Messed around a bit with the X-Box 360 version of Mortal Kombat IX, aka the reboot game which came after Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe. For a fighting game, it actually has a good tutorial in that it teaches you the basics to make sure you know what buttons do what. Now I have played the Steam version years ago, but because it didn't have a borderless windowed mode, I never streamed it. So we'll more than likely will be featuring the story mode of MK9 in the near future. In terms of achievements, there are some I feel I could get, with some real heavy grinding... and probably making use of the broken wired controller I used for Capcom Arcade Stadium to go after the 24 hour playtime with one character.
Mortal Kombat Achievements
Fatality!: Perform a Fatality!
Block This!: Perform a 10-hit combo with any fighter
Where's The Arcade?: Complete Arcade Ladder with Any Fighter
License to Kill: Complete Fatality Trainer
A For Effort: Complete Tutorial Mode
Thinking about having a new logo made, and going to DaemonsW0lf (www.darkwolfcreative.com) for it is an obvious choice.
For tonight's stream we will be starting up Persona 5 Royal for the first time. Now my familiarity with the Persona series is pretty limited, with my
first real exposure to it coming via Blaz Blue Cross Tag Battle...
granted that game featured characters from Persona 4, but it caught my
interest. And since I do lurk around the Fan Fic writing community, I've
obviously seen stuff focused on Persona 5, granted without any real
context, it was all Greek to me, so those will in no way affect my first
attempt of playing it.
But what are my expectations for tonight's stream... well I'm not sure. I know the P5 community can be a little divided over some decisions that one has to make during the course of the game. At the same time, the amount of potential insight and actual help from the chat could be a lot of fun... I know most people are very picky about backseat gaming when it comes to Persona 5, but I've never been one to shy away from getting help with a video game!
So with that said, we'll see you later tonight for Persona 5 Royal over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!
Last night's stream was super casual, as we opened things up with Forza Horizon 4, and spent the first chunk of time on Fortune Island, going around finding all the roads, doing a few challenges and making progress on it's story of working our way up the ranks. Really finding simple and easy achievements in Forza has given it a nice life as a weekly feature on my Twitch channel.
Then Iceman joined in as we switched things to Gears 5 to do some collectable hunting, using a guide and jumping to the chapters where we missed stuff. Some were more obvious than others in retrospect, but still we've foudn everything except for four that are located in Act III Chapter 3, which look like they will be out in the open world. Thankfully we were able to skip cut scenes and things went pretty quick for the most part.
For the raid we sent the fun over to x9abenonymous9x who was playing We Were Here with FN_Dante_Savage over at twitch.tv/x9abenonymous9x!
Forza Horizon 4 Achievements
Made the Cut: Reach Round Two of the Island Conqueror.
Not Just Straight-line Speed: Earn at least 1 star at a Trailblazer Gate.
Paved with Gold: Drive every Road in Fortune Island.
For today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout was 28 minutes with Body Hook Combo, Body Uppercut Combo and Uppercut Combo #2, estimated calorie burn was 435 kcal.
Went back into both Kingdom Hearts III and Battleoads to knock out a couple of achievements in each that I felt I could do in fairly short order. The achievements for Kingdom Hearts III are for the ReMind DLC content and a lot of grinding, heavy searching and getting really lucky. For Battletoads, what's left involves achievements focused on luck as well as multiplayer Co-Op. Both games have been uninstalled from my X-Box One, with the possibility of re-installing Kingdom Hearts III down the road to do the aforementioned DLC content.
KINGDOM HEARTS III Achievements
Flanmeister: Complete all of the Flantastic Seven missions.
Dreadnought: Fully power up the Leviathan.
Battletoads Achievements
Pacifist: Survived the first space battle for 45 seconds without shooting.
B-B-B-BLOCK BREAKER!!: Smashed through 50 enemy block attempts.
I am not at all surprised that the second AWE's Money Mark (aka Tony Khan) became the head of creative, stripping Cody Rhodes of the role of booker that Cody would end up leaving the promotion that he basically started to go crawling back to the WWE
Speaking of the WWE... if Stone Cold Steve Austin actually has a match at WrestleMania I... will not watch it. Quite frankly, it would take more than a guy who was already deteriorating as a performer in 1998, let alone one who has not taken a bump in 20 years to spark my interest as a wayward wrestling fan.
Had a better time of stuff in Final Fantasy XIV last night than the
previous night, no questionable approaches seen during the one dungeon I did. Still need to tackle a few things to finish up the Wondrous Tales for this week.
For tonight's stream we are going to hang out and do stuff in Final Fantasy XIV, probably a few raids, daily challenge, level up Blue Mage and Fishing some too. Just a chill out night.
Last night we finally finished Kingdom Hearts III... and boy did the pacing of the final act of the game had so many issues, everything little thing having a cut scene to try and time up as many of the loose ends as possible while setting things up for the future of the franchise. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a lot of the game play, as fighting the hordes of Heartless and getting to see the Train attraction in action was a real treat. Donald Duck's epic solar flare was really bad ass, as was the return of Xion being the trigger to solve the issue with Roxas being stuck in Sora's Heart.
But my goodness, every member of Organization XIII getting a send off with the cut scenes of you defeat basically interrupting the fight is just completely asinine. I get it, they wanted to give these characters closure to various degrees and this was a problem caused by having an uneven number of Warriors of Darkness and Light. The pacing issue is all over the place, where you enter an area have a cut scene, walk to another area, have another cut scene. It really bogged things down. Last night's stream was about 4.5 hours... I think 2 hours were just cut scenes.
Now the question becomes would I willingly want to play Kingdom Hearts III again... no, absolutely not for two reasons. the first being pacing issue as mention before. The other reason is I don't trust Tetsuya Nomura when he's both the writer and director of a project... and all the pacing issues seen in Kingdom Hearts III's final act falls on his shoulders.I mentioned this yesterday, but the fact there are lines of dialog in the game talking about how overly complicated the plot is is a tell-tale sign Nomura has bogged down the franchise with too much stuff. Hell when I think about it, all the Disney worlds in KH3 could've been swapped out for almost anything else and would've worked the same way, they were just window dressing.
This brings me to the future... and the fact that Sora will still be the lead character going forward... eand Kingdom Hearts III went out of its way to set it in tone that he's a fucking idiot. I believe the next main installment must have a new lead character. That's not going to happen, but it should considering there are close to a dozen characters that could step into Sora's place as the lead.
For the raid, we dropped everyone off over with JonnieTortilla who was playing Minecraft over at twitch.tv/jonnietortilla!
KINGDOM HEARTS III Achievements
Rook: Defeat 5,000 enemies.
No Matter What: Reunite with Kairi.
The Battle to End All: Begin the final confrontation with Master Xehanort.
Another Chapter Closed: Finish the game and view the ending.
Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout was 28 minutes with Front-Back Step Combo, Hook Combo #2 and Beginner Combo #1 as the exercises for a calorie burn of 450 kcal.
So I made it official, Friday's going forward until the game is finished will feature Persona 5 on the PlayStation 4. This will start this week! I'm both excited and dreading what this will be like considering how nuts the Persona 5 community can be.
So for the first time ever during my time playing Final Fantasy XIV I grew frustrated with what I was seeing, namely being stuck with a trio that were clearly grouped together that had no intention of actually accomplishing the task in question. The fact that the one who was Astrologian said that they didn't feel like playing was a first sign indicator, which clearly was the attitude of the other two folks they were playing with, and for the first time in any MMO that I've played, resulted me intentionally quitting the dungeon. I'd rather have that 30 minute penalty to put up with that nonsense
Swapped all the skins for there characters in Overwatch to basic legendary skins for each character, not that I use everyone, but it's a good just in case..
For tonight's stream, we're going to lead off with Forza Horizon 4 and then try and do some collectable hunting in Gears 5!
Let me begin by saying, I have not seen Big Hero 6... and after playing the San Fransokyo level of Kingdom Hearts III, I'm not sure that I want to. I kind of feel like there could have been a lot more done make things stand out to inspire me to see the film... but the entire world felt like it was there for the sake of being there. Which is a shame because I do like the designs of the characters and the city was really cool. So with this being the last of the Disney levels to go through in Kingdom Hearts III... I feel like I understand why it has a mixed reaction, the selection of worlds as a whole were clearly meant to make sure some Disney's big money makers looked really good (Frozen, Pirates of the Caribbean).
That said, I did enjoy some of the gimmicks of San Fransokyo with it just basically being a big metro area for folks to do battles with various enemies for level grinding purposes. It's the only world in Kingdom Hearts III that has two distinct phases, (Day & Night), so if one just wants to go after treasure boxes, just set it to day and not deal with any enemies. I didn't really care for the final boss battle in it, as it felt really hokey to play.
I really liked what came afterward, granted, it was a ton of cut scenes, but to see direct tie-ins to Birth by Sleep with Aqua being rescued and Ven being awakened really helps tie things together. There was a great moment of Axel saying how impossible it was to explain everything that has happened to get new comers caught up, and he's not kidding... a coherent, easy to follow story from a casual stand point is not a strength of the entire Kingdom Hearts franchise.
But at the same time, Aqua has this line about 'waiting 10 years to be rescued, which if you think about it makes sense... Birth By Sleep came out in 2010 which ended with Aqua being stuck in the realm of the darkness... Kingdom Hearts III came out 10 years later. No wonder she was pissed, she had to wait a decade to get her story resolved!
Now, near as I can tell, based on the achievements list, I should need one more night dedicated to Kingdom Hearts III to finish the story, and that's what we're going to do for tonight's stream. I considered maybe saving it for Friday, but I might want to dedicate Friday's for a particular game on the PlayStation 4.
For the raid we dropped in in Hawleigh who was playing Horizon Zero Dawn over on twitch.tv/hawleigh!
KINGDOM HEARTS III Achievements
Making a Difference: Adventure through San Fransokyo and complete the story.
Hidden Kings: Complete the Lucky Emblems section of the Gummiphone.
The Hearts Joined to His: Gather the seven guardians of light.
True Captain: Sink 200 enemy ships in The Caribbean.
(Note: If clip links don't work, it's because Twitch deleted the clips for some reason, as I mention last week, I only have this issue with Kingdom Hearts III)
Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout was 28 minutes long and involved Defensive Combo #2, Double Combo #1 and Defensive Combo #1 for a calorie burn of 446 kcal.
My off-stream Final Fantasy XIV adventures resulted in a revaluation regarding the Wondrous Tales weekly challenge... unless it's things that are common for folks to do, getting 9 done is going to result in a lot of waiting around in queues for specific things. Still I got my gear story up high enough to try out the first of the Pandemonium raids.!
Going out of my way to say it that Ben Simmons clearly exposed himself to be a fraud, as he lied about his 'mental health', dude's a fraud and he basically made things more difficult for those who have issues who will now have a harder time of seeking the help they need. Wonder how quickly he'll fold now that he's under the spotlight of the New York Media.
For tonight's stream, well you read it earlier, Kingdom Hearts III is on deck to see if we can finish it. Now I did jump back into it after the stream (hence why Grand Mage is listed as an achievement unlocked which was not done during any of the KH3 streams). I also put in some heavy grinding toward the 5,000 enemies that need to be slain, we're up to 91% on that, so that should probably be accomplished before finishing the story. Regardless, depending on when we finish the story we might do some other achievement hunting as well.
Last night’s stream of Overwatch was rather interesting, with quite a few people early on finding spots to hide during a match, and I hate to say it, quite few were reported for inactivity and game play sabotage. Still things gradually turned our, as we put in the time to unlock the Porcelain rewards for the final week of the Lunar New Year Event, which means I’ll be going back to switch everyone’s skins to something else until the next Overwatch event probably in late March / Early April.
Big thanks to PandaSweet and BangBangBang for joining in many matches last night, it’s always nice to have other being apart of the chaos and mayhem that is Overwatch on a Sunday evening. Also picked up four plays of the game, all as D.va! Other characters I used were Tracer, Solider 76, Moira and Mei.
For the raid, we visited Flint_Locke over at twitch.tv/flint_locke who was doing a full Voice Acting stream of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni: Tsumihoroboshi!
Sad news, Ivan Reitman,
director of such films as Stripes, Dave and Ghostbusters has passed
away. This makes his contributions to Ghostbusters: Afterlife all the
more special.Funny thing that I learned about Reitman is that he was the
executive producer of Mummies Alive!, a syndicated cartoon that aired
(where I lived) on weekday afternoons. Goes to show you can learn a few
things here and there.
Top 5 Favorite Films Directed By Ivan Reitman
Ghostbusters (1984)
Stripes
Dave
Kindergarten Cop
Ghostbusters II
So
if you look at that list... you'd probably wonder why Meatballs and
Twins are not on it. Well I've never seen Meatballs, despite being aware
of it, and as for Twins, well, the whole conspiracy to keep the
brothers Benedict (played by Danny DeVito and Arnold Scgwarzenegger)
apart from each other their mother (played by Bonnie Barlett) has always
bothered me as it didn't make any sense.
Today’s Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout featured a 31 minute workout that had Triple Combo #2, Intermediate Combo #1 and Biceps Shape Focus Combo for a calorie burn estimated to be 543 kcal.
My off-stream Final Fantasy XIV adventures has seen a focus on the dailies, and trying to really push towards boosting my gears score. I do realize that getting the level 90 bow is probably going to be the toughest things to do since that is going to be tied to the Pandemonium raids. Still getting used to doing the daily raids does mean seeing the same things over and over again, but unlike with Star Trek Online, Final Fantasy XIV does not have 20 different in-game currency types to worry about,
PandaSweet noticed there was some crackling ambient audio being picked up by my microphone, turns out it was some sound being heard from my monitors, So I moved my mic to where it's a foot in front of the monitors instead of hanging over them. So things may sound a little different on streams going forward.
For tonight's stream, we're going to move Kingdom Hearts III from Fridays to Mondays, as we'll be looking to deal with the next major world in it while also going after the remaining Lucky Emblems!
It's no secret that I am a big fan of the Life is Strange series, hell everyone saw that last fall when I played all four games to completion and made it clear that I was super excited for the remastered version of Life is Strange and Life is Strange: Before the Storm, even when it was announced that they would be delayed from September 2021 until February 2022, as the Covid-19 Pandemic played havoc with many video game releases.
Not Photoshop-ed, Chloe and Joyce actually looked like this in Episode 3!
So this gave Deck Nine, the Developer of the original version of Life is Strange: Before the Storm extra time to iron out the kinks in it's remaster, as well as that of the original Life is Strange game developed by DONTNOD. Needless to say the extra time still resulted in a buggy mess. I already talked about the issues with Life is Strange: Remastered on Monday and Tuesday of this week because of the 'Save Game' issue, but with Before The Storm... one would assume that since it was already created in-house, surely Deck Nine would not drop the ball with it... right?
Well... after doing a marathon play through of all three episodes of Before the Storm: Remastered last night, I can say they didn't drop about 75% of the ball. Like many other players, I've experienced numerous graphical glitches last night, most notoriously when it comes to skin tone shading, but also with assets rendering and objects that should have disappeared remaining floating in the air (the Gnome Bard for example). I'm not a video game designer, but surely some testing had to had to be done... but this makes me wonder how broken was the Life is Strange: Remastered Collection back in September when the original delay was announced.
Even the ending montage which was basically just a video was not safe from the glitches
This probably bugs me more than it should to be honest, but I do recall that it was announced that the Nintendo Switch version of of the Life is Strange Remastered Collection would be delayed, which just makes me wonder as to why the Steam, X-Box and PlayStation versions weren't? If it was because the Remastered Collect was a bonus for those who pre-order Life is Strange: True Colors and they announced that it would come out in February 2022, then we could've waited longer for it... but instead we got an inferior version of the games that made us fans of the series.
Still we did finish the game, and unlocked all of the achievements making it the 25th X-Box game I've finished to be 100% Completed. I really do wish the experience was a lot more positive to compare it to the play through of the original version I did back in September. Will I play it again? Well, if it gets some major patches we could revisit it in 2023, but that''s a big if at this point.
We had two big raids during the stream last night, the first was from Kalenal who was playing Final Fantasy XIV over on twitch.tv/kalenal, and the other was from m0zz_stix who was also playing Life is Strange: Before the Storm: Remastered over on twitch.tv/m0zz_stix! Always awesome to get raids, so huge thanks!
For the raid, we dropped in on TaterSalad21 who was playing Lost Ark over on twitch.tv/TaterSalad21!
Life is Strange: Before the Storm Remastered Achievements
Recreational Vandalism: Complete the optional graffiti #1 in Episode 1: Awake
I See U Saw: Complete the optional graffiti #2 in Episode 1: Awake
The Last Unicorn: Complete the optional graffiti #3 in Episode 1: Awake
Home Unimprovement: Complete the optional graffiti #4 in Episode 1: Awake
Rock Idol: Complete the optional graffiti #5 in Episode 1: Awake
Dramatis Personae: Complete the optional graffiti #6 in Episode 1: Awake
Mulligan Stew: Complete the optional graffiti #7 in Episode 1: Awake
Pioneer Spirit: Complete the optional graffiti #8 in Episode 1: Awake
Face Your Anger: Complete the optional graffiti #9 in Episode 1: Awake
Awake, Dear Heart: Complete Episode 1: Awake
Lucid Writing: Complete the optional graffiti #10 in Episode 1: Awake
Stagehandwriting: Complete the optional graffiti #1 in Episode 2: Brave New World
Radical Piratical: Complete the optional graffiti #2 in Episode 2: Brave New World
Feels on Wheels: Complete the optional graffiti #3 in Episode 2: Brave New World
Canon Wall: Complete the optional graffiti #4 in Episode 2: Brave New World
Wishlist: Complete the optional graffiti #5 in Episode 2: Brave New World
Tread Harshly: Complete the optional graffiti #7 in Episode 2: Brave New World
Friendly Forest Friends: Complete the optional graffiti #6 in Episode 2: Brave New World
Permanent Record: Complete the optional graffiti #8 in Episode 2: Brave New World
Vanity Fare: Complete the optional graffiti #9 in Episode 2: Brave New World
Creature Feature: Complete the optional graffiti #10 in Episode 2: Brave New World
O, Wonder!: Complete Episode 2: Brave New World
American Graffiti: Complete the optional graffiti #1 in Episode 3: Hell Is Empty
Extra Credit: Complete the optional graffiti #2 in Episode 3: Hell Is Empty
Peer Review: Complete the optional graffiti #3 in Episode 3: Hell Is Empty
Monthly Masterpiece: Complete the optional graffiti #4 in Episode 3: Hell Is Empty
Spit Take: Complete the optional graffiti #5 in Episode 3: Hell Is Empty
Hello Nurse: Complete the optional graffiti #7 in Episode 3: Hell Is Empty
Venting Machine: Complete the optional graffiti #6 in Episode 3: Hell Is Empty
A Penned Appendage: Complete the optional graffiti #8 in Episode 3: Hell Is Empty
Drunk Drawer: Complete the optional graffiti #9 in Episode 3: Hell Is Empty
Before the Storm: Complete Episode 1, Episode 2 and Episode 3 of Life is Strange: Before the Storm
All the Devils are Here: Complete Episode 3: Hell Is Empty
Normally I would have extra to say, but Blogger had a glitch where it
didn't save the original version of my rant regarding all the glitches
with Life is Strange: Before the Storm Remastered that I had to redo it
all! Still I did get in a little post-stream Final Fantasy XIV to do
quick Alliance Raid before choosing to write this entire thing over again... and since I was so wired up I just decided to do my daily set of Fitness Boxing 2.
So with that said, today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout featured 34 minute workout with Difficult Challenge Combo #2, Difficult Challenge Combo #3 and Difficult Challenge Combo #1 for an estimated calorie burn of 660 kcal.
Let me touch on Lost Ark, briefly, with what I saw on TaterSalad21's
stream, the game certainly looks great, but from what I understood, the
controls are more mouse heavy with no use of the WASD keys for
movement... which means I will not check out Lost Ark. Sorry, but I need
to know that I'll be able to have as much control over my in-game
movements as possible... plus many have seen my slow reaction time to
AOEs in Final Fantasy XIV.
It's the start of a new week, but let's look back at the games featured over the previous seven days. Last week we played: Overwatch, Life is Strange: Remastered, Paladins, Frrza Horizon 4, Gears 5, Final Fantasy XIV, Kingdom Hearts III and Life is Strange - Before the Storm: Remastered!
For tonight's stream we will be going after the Porcelan skin for Wrecking Ball with our weekly Overwatch streams!
Technically we did two streams last night... thanks to Comcast causing some issues at around 9 PM Eastern, where the upload speed was all over the place! Seriously the last time I seen my Upload speeds being that erratic were one year ago, and it took a letter to the FCC to get it sorted out!
Anyway, the stream(s) featured Kingdom Hearts III as we covered the Caribbean part of the story, which ties in with Pirates of the Caribbean films, namely the third one which I have never seen. This introduce a big wide open world where a lot of sailing is involved, ship-to-ship combat, searching everywhere for chests and goodies. Since the PotC movies are live action, that meant Donald and Goofy got more realistic looks, particularly Donald whose feathers really looked incredible.
Now the ship to ship combat aspect certainly took some getting use too in regards to how maneuver the Leviathan, figuring out max range of the canons and trying to build up the meter to unleash some special attacks. I think more effort was put into it than the the Gummi Ship portion of the game, but that's just my opinion on the matter.
Now, having never watched the Pirates of the Caribbean films, I can't say how much was used and if too much was worked into the game, but at at least the music wasn't as much of an ear-worm as it was in Kingdom Hearts II! There really isn't that much interaction with Sora, Donald and Goofy with the characters from the PotC films, but at least that was explained away with Sora, Donald and Goofy needing to make sure they were prepared before going to the final battle.
Managed to get the Blademaster achievement, which is for fully powering up a Keyblade, which was pretty cool. Only 6% of those who have played the Xbox version of KH3 has done that.
Next time we featured Kingdom Hearts III we have one more Disney tie-in world to visit, and the last set of Lucky Emblems to find,
For the raid we dropped in on PrincessPashley who was doing a live remote stream over at twitch.tv/PrincessPashley!
KINGDOM HEARTS III Achievements
Blademaster: Obtain a Keyblade that is fully powered up.
Way of the Pirate: Adventure through The Caribbean and complete the story.
Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout featured 31 minute workout with Hip Shape Focus Combo, Straight Combo #2 and Sway Back Combo for an estimated calorie burn of 468 kcal. As of today we're up to 34 out of 50 hours for the Hiro's Champion EX Achievement
Fitness Boxing 2: Rhythm & Exercise Stats For 2/6 to 2/12/2022
Punches Thrown: 10,283
Estimated Calorie Burn: 4332.59 kcal
Worked on just doing some dailies in Final Fantasy XIV, think I'll save some things for streaming purposes. Ended up doing The Final Day trial twice last night... which is a bit much for that particular fight, but the 2nd time was randomly selected because of the dailies.. Also got downed and resurrected four consecutive times during that 2nd... that was not a good experience at all! I do have my Gear Score up to 562 as a Bard.
Saw that the Chrono Cross Remaster is up for pre-sale and its going to be a cheap one, think we'll grab that closer to its release date.
For tonight's stream we're going to do a full run of Life is Strange: Before the Storm Remastered, we're going to have a guide up to get all the collectables and to hopefully have an incident free experience with it unlike with Life is Strange: Remastered.
