Wednesday, April 27, 2022

Taking Our Time In Chrono Cross

Good morning everyone,

Last night's stream once again had an interrupt thanks to Xfinity, but on the plus side with the stream split it two, it does mean extra videos for the YouTube Channel. Got to look on the bright side right? In terms of what exactly was accomplished in Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition, since we went with the B-Set, that involves not saving Kid, we were able to recruit Macha, Glenn and Doc, plus also snapped up Grecco, Luccia, NeoFio & Pip, who are all not locked to one set of choices unlike the prior three. 


We did spend a lot of time facing enemies we probably could have avoided, but since their is the achievement of winning 500 battles, I do want to try and making that possible, but there is no real counter in the game that I can see to tract that progress. As far as the story itself goes, since we were taking our time, going back and finding treasures and such, the big chapter point was dealing with the Ghost Ship invasion of the S.S. Invincible, having Kid rejoin the party and then going to the Home World.

I do know the next time I play Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition (which is scheduled for next Monday), we'll be heading to Water Dragon Isle and the Dwarf Invasion, which means using a lot of Green Elements. I'll probably bench Glenn for that, because he'll be a sitting duck for and yellow element attacks. From there it'll be off to Mount Pyre and navigating the lava falls while trying to get the treasures

Twitch Clip Links

For the raid we dropped in on deathhand2277 who was also playing Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition over at twitch.tv/deathhand2277


Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout was kind of FUBAR because I got a call that completely disrupted my mojo this morning. Still managed to get a decent workout in.

Lost an important document, but thankfully I am smart enough to know how to get another official copy of it. Granted the process takes longer than it should, but it is what it is.

I did not get an invite for the Overwatch 2 PVP Beta that is happening, not sure how Blizzard is rolling that out because they really didn't make it clear how folks are being picked for it. Still did a few runs of Junkensteins' Revenge last night to wind down.

Did an Alliance Raid in FInal Fantasy XIV last night Labyrinth of the Ancients, in what would've been a smooth run, I got stuck with a group that was interested in everything but the objectives at hand. It was a real chore to get through.

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We might be adding two PlayStation 3 titles to the collection later in the week, Deadpool and Golden Axe: Beast Rider. Deadpool we have played before, and though the character is fully under the Disney umbrella, I highly doubt the game will be re-released anytime soon unless it's tied in with a third Deadpool movie. Golden Axe: Beast Rider is often blamed for the 'death' of Sega's Golden Axe franchise because of how troubled its development was. I figure that would be worth checking out.

For tonight's stream, the plan is to continue roaming around and gradually doing things in Fallout 76!

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

Tuesday, April 26, 2022

Chrono Cross'ing Xfinity Problems

Good morning everyone,

Well last night we started up Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition, using the Xbox One S console, and while the remastered music, graphics and sound all look great there are a couple of issues with the game itself. One being that the very first achievement getting through the dream version of the Labyrinth did not pop as expected. I go back to nab it by using the fast forward function I also saw some major league frame rate slow down during the post battle stuff against Lynx for the first trip though Viper Manor. 


To make this play through different than the one we did back in the fall of last year, I went with recruiting Guile instead of Nikki, which presented a few interesting problems in that Guile has fewer elemental slots, plus we're going with the not saving Kid route, which means we'll recruit Glenn. This does mean we will miss out on Razzly and how epic her magic is against Yellow innate enemies. This also means getting the Delta Force achievement will be off the table as well. Yes I know Glenn is also a green innate character, but the running joke of Razzly dropping a huge star on peopel's heads was one of the highlights of last year's play through of the original Chrono Cross.

Of course the biggest issue of the night was for the three time in three days (twice on Saturday), the stream went down to too issues with Xfinity, and thus the stream was divided into two parts, not by my own choice. It was so bad I had to do a fully on Modem Reset manually. The two previous occurrences (as seen during the marathon of Persona 5 Royal at between 2:30 AM and 3 AM back on Saturday, then during the Dragon Ball Z: Budokai stream on Saturday night at about 9 PM. Hell when Twitch's own Inspector site is giving me break down of Network errors, and Xfinity's own app says the modem has no signal, it is clearly on Xfinity's end.

Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition Achievements

  • Feeding Frenzy: Successfully feed the dragons 100 times in the dragon-feeding mini-game.
  • A Tactical Retreat: Flee from a battle.
  • The Awakening: Wake up after having cleared the labyrinth for the first time in the dream.

Twitch Clip Links

For the raid, we dropped in on Redneck_23 who was playing Farming Simulator 19 over at twitch.tv/redneck_23

Blizzard did post that anyone who is invited to play the Beta of Overwatch 2 will be allowed to stream it at any point during the beta period of the game. So hopefully we'll be able to take part in it. On a side note, did play a quick ranked match in Overwatch last night, scoring a win with 63% of the eliminations as D.va.

Elon Musk has bought out Twitter... since I mostly use it to post things related to my Twitch channel, I don't see anything changing unless he does what is expected and reinstates Donald Trump and goes out to protect his fellow psychopath. Because anyone Trump calls a 'Good Man' is clearly a scum bag. 


Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout featured Body Straight Combo, Uppercut Combo #1, Weaving Combo #1 and Intermediate Combo #2. Since Intermediate Combo #2 was set on No Mercy difficulty, I was able to get a perfect score on it, which sets the highest record possible for that exercise on that setting.

The Philadelphia 76ers handed games four and five to the Toronto Raptors and now risk some major embarrassment considering how dominate they were in the first three games of the series. Yes Joel Embiid is now playing hurt, which means this is where James Hardan has to be the superstar talent he is known to be, 

Sony announced plans for a sequel to Ghostbusters: Afterlife, to be the next chapter in the original Ghostbusters universe to follow up on the post-credits scene that showed Winston bringing the ECTO-1 back to the firehouse. Again moving on from the old team to a new team makes all the sense in the world, afterall, that is why many of us have fond memories of Extreme Ghostbusters from 1997. why Ghostbusters: The Video Game's  introducing of the Rookie (or Rookies if you played the PS2/Wii version) made so much sense. However, Bill Murray has landed himself in hot water with his at this point, very well documented issues during film productions. 

If you're looking for tools to help with streaming or communicating from home with work, check out what Xsplit offers over at Xsplit.com, use the promo code CASDEN to save 10% on your order! If you're looking for just general stuff, of course you can swing over to Amazon using my affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3L8N1Yj.

For tonight's stream the plan is to continue Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition, picking up right where we left off to pretty much recruit Glenn straight away.

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

Monday, April 25, 2022

Let's See What To Do This Week

Good afternoon everyone,

Last night's stream of Overwatch featured a few different things, some use of the Archive Missions, even a couple of runs at some of the challenges. We were joined by PandaSweet, BloodyClown and BangBangBang, which meant having a four-stack the majority of the night. We did run into some questionably good opponents to the point where it was obvious they were cheating. Getting nailed THROUGH walls and around corners when there was no way we could be spotted was just annoying. But we did have a lot of fun. Let's also keep in mind, that our group was a mix of PC and Console players, so we were seeing some suspect stuff happening from two different perspectives.


This week I mostly stuck with D.va and Moira, but got in some game play as Reinhardt, Cassidy, Mei and Torbjorn. Picked up four plays of the game, three as D.va and one as Reinhardt. I do have to remember to swap out the skins for all the characters this week.

Twitch Clip Links

For the raid we dropped in on Severomega who was playing Apex Legends over at twitch.tv/severomega!  

 


Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout featured Advanced Combo #2, Double Combo #2, Lefr-Right Step Combo and Triple Combo #1. Today also marks 500 consecutive days of Fitness Boxing 2. My overall streak is at 658 days when counting the original Fitness Boxing.

As you did saw, we had some issues with the Chroma Key with the Green Screen last night, so I'm going to experiment using a blue screen instead, which requires less lighting near as I can tell. Not sure what the issues were because I haven't seen it get that bad in a while.

I find it funny the Comcast Sports Philly twitter is trying to blame umpire Angel Hernandez for the Phillies loss when they had 5 hits to the Brewers 3, who managed to score 1 run while the Phillies did not. The fault lies with the offense. 

Something that came up during the stream was the question on if Overwatch 2 will be something that would be allowed to be streamed because of its Beta status. At the moment I'll plan for that to be on Saturday if its something we can do. If not I'll do some off-stream stuff and post notes here.

For tonight's stream we're going to start up Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition, I already installed it on the Xbox One S, and we'll play it using the Full Screen setting because to me that looks the best, even if it does expose how low res the original cut scenes are. 

So this would mean, the line up for this week will be

  • Monday - Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition
  • Tuesday - Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition
  • Wednesday - Fallout 76
  • Thursday - Final Fantasy XIV
  • Friday - Persona 5 Royal
  • Saturday - Overwatch 2 Beta or Something Random
  • Sunday - Overwatch

Seems like a strong week on all fronts am I right? 

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

Sunday, April 24, 2022

A Night of Dragon Ball Z: Budokai

Good afternoon everyone

Last night's stream featured Dragon Ball Z: Budokai on the PlayStation 2... and we went through the entire story mode to unlock every character, so that meant doing the World Tournament mode to end up unlocking Hercule. A lot of the inputs for many of the characters is the same, which meant a lot of tactics I ended up using ended up being the same for all the characters I played as. Visually, the game does hold up fairly well for being 20 years old (it was released in November of 2002), the sound mixing is pretty damn solid as well.

Now since we were going through the story mode to unlock every character (mostly for bragging rights), let's talk about how unbalanced it is. By default, you end up mostly playing as Goku thought all of his big fights (Raditz, Vegeta, Recoome, Ginyu, Frieza, Android 19 and Cell), before switching to Gohan as the focus in the Cell Games portion of the story mode. There is one opportunity to play as Piccolo, and it's for his first encounter against Imperfect Cell. The only opportunity to play as other characters, mostly more fights as Piccolo and Vegeta are avaliable when going back into the Story Mode for 'extra content', seeing some things from a different angle or 'What if' scenario, such as the infamous Cell absorbing Krillian scenario.

Of course Dragon Ball Z: Budokai is probably most remember for being one of the many Dragon Ball properties that had issues with its music because the original composer plagiarized the works for others. So when the game was re-released in a HD Collection with Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 3 in the Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 era, all the music was changed.

Twitch Clip Links

Big thanks to Kalenal for the raid, they were streaming Final Fantasy XIV over at twitch.tv/kalenal!

For the raid last night we dropped in on Phanir who was playing Dragon Ball FighterZ over at twitch.tv/Phanir!  


Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout involved Uppercut Combo #2, Body Hook Combo and Body Uppercut Combo.

Yesterday, over on The Game Theory YouTube channel, the content creator Mathew 'MatPat' Patrick probably said some of the most elitist bullshit possible by trying to say he has not contributed in any way to ruining the plans of Game Developers while also saying that 'Let's Play' content creators (like myself) aren't the real fans of many of the games he covers because don't dive deep into the lore like he and other 'theory' channels do. Now in that video, he said he was contacted by a developer who 'jokingly' asked if he had an inside source at their company because one of his videos was way to accurate as it related to something they were working on, while also pointing out that other developers admitted to changing plans because of things said on his and similar channels. The results some time can be completely different than what was clearly intended or make the game worse... and MatPat has the balls to say they shouldn't have done that, that the developers should've just let him be right about his theory.

So that all said,  let me explain something to MatPat, as someone who has done their fair share of theorizing on different things I enjoy, expanded on lore with my own personal head cannon to predict where things could go... it is the job of the creators of the video games to try and surprise the vast audience of gamers who want an entertaining experience, regardless of the genre. If the developers feel you are a hindrance to their efforts because of how accurate you happen to be, and feel that they have to change their plans, then guess what, it is your fault. People saw it with the Five Nights at Freddy's franchise, they saw it with Bendy & The Ink Machine, and they saw it with Hello Neighbor.

One last thing on this topic, if MatPat had the balls to claim credit for spiking interest in some of those games that I mention, then he should accept the blame when developers feel like they have to subvert expectations beyond what they intended to try and get to their end goal.

I gave Civilization VI a try last night, and boy... it's no where near as good as Civilization V... or even Civilization IV. I found the interface and changes to be extremely clunky and not as natural to figure out as compared to earlier entries in the series. Guess we won't be featuring that on a series of streams any time soon.

It's the start of a new week, so lets recap what we did last week with the Twitch Bits vid, which features Overwatch, Mass Effect 2, Fallout 76, Final Fantasy XIV, Persona 5 Royal, & Dragon Ball Z: Budokai!


For tonight's stream it's of course Overwatch as we'll messing around with it. If I'm able to get into the Overwatch 2 Beta this week we'll try and dedicate a night to it, depending on if things line to where we can feature it. 

Anyway we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

Saturday, April 23, 2022

Persona 5 Royal Does Take Your Time

Good morning everyone,

Persona 5 Royal has this little loading icon thing that says 'take your time'... and boy does that perfectly describe how I just sink so much time into it on Friday nights. Last night stream went 10 hours, and had one hiccup when the stream went a little wonky at the 9 hour mark. This was not planned, but the stuff with Futaba was just so good and I wanted to see how the story arc wrapped up, everything leading into the Beach day and end of the Summer vacation was just great.


That said, I did as much as I could to make up for the fact that I screwed some things up at different points, so we took a trip into Mementos (and nearly ran into the Reaper), did a lot of time spending with different confidants and managed to max out four of them, and I no longer have to have a Lovers or Chariot persona on hand as a result. 

One would think I would have a lot more to say about last night's stream, but it was after 4 AM when we rapped up and I was warped out of my mind. In the YouTube archives, the stream will be divided into three parts, two 4.5 hour long VODs, and one 1 hour long VOD.

Persona 5 Royal Trophies

  • True Confidence: Maxed out one of your Confidants.
  • Trash Into Treasure: Sold old clothing at Furugi no Neuchi.
  • Pyramid of Wrath: Plundered: Completed the pyramid Palace.

Twitch Clip Links

During the stream we had two raids, the first by x9abenonymous9x who was playing State of Decay 2 over at twitch.tv/x9abenonymous9x and the other by Redneck_23 who was playing American Truck Simulator over at twitch.tv/redneck_23

For the raid, we dropped in on Felkimchi as they were playing Mafia III over at twitch.tv/felkimchi


Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout featured Front Back Step Combo, Hook Combo #2 and Beginner Combo #1. We did this workout at 6 AM before I went to sleep.

Fitness Boxing 2 Stats For April 17 to 23, 2022

  • Punches Thrown: 8, 785
  • Estimated Calorie Burn: 3488.15 kcal.
  • 24 of 30 hours trained for Bernardo's Contender EX Achievement

I will not be surprised if Disney shuts down Disney World or goes about relocating it to another location in the United States due to the stupidity that is going on in the state of Florida because of Trump like stupidity from Ron DeSantis and the rest of his ilk. 

The first full week of Fantasy Baseball has two days left in it, today and tomorrow, and I'm only leading in two out of nine categories against my opponent. My squad has knocked in 17 RBI and has batted .273. The struggles of Anthony Rendon, Chris Taylor and Corey Seager has been bothersome, not to mention the roster moves I've had to make.

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For tonight's stream we're just going to take it easy and mess around with something random, total chill stream. 

So on that note I'm going to bed we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

Friday, April 22, 2022

Just your weekly night of Final Fantasy XIV

Good morning everyone, 

Last night's stream of Final Fantasy XIV saw the new raid being featured... and boy doing it on stream was a hell of experience of whatever could go wrong did go wrong. I'm still not fan of the first two boss fights of it, granted I only have done it once before. Now we did do some focus on the PVP side of it, as the Crystalline Conflict is a lot of fun, and I've managed to be apart of a couple of win. Best part about it is that the matches are fast paced and last only a few minutes.


Now of course we did dedicate some time to Fishing and Botany as well, gaining a couple of levels in both, as well as knocking out a job quest for both. I might not do the next job quest for Fishing on stream as it apparently involves spear fishing which might take awhile to accomplish from what I understand. We also did the World of Darkness Alliance Raid as well. So I've been seeing that one a lot lately which is fine.

Twitch Clip Links

For the raid last night, we dropped in on x9abenonymous9x over at twitch.tv/x9abenonymous9x  as he was playing Gears of War 2 with FnDanteSavage!  

Work has been surprisingly consistent this week, which is always nice... even if the assignment is for a less than quality client.


Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout featured Double Combo #1, Defensive Combo #1 and Defensive Combo #2. We might go back to ramping it up a little more next week with the exercises.

When I get around to playing the Assassin's Creed games, I can safely say that I won't have to worry about any online multiplayer achievements as UbiSoft shut down the servers that supported the mode in several games from the Xbox 360 / PlayStation 3 era.

Saw the latest excuse Sony is using for no proper emulation of games from the PlayStation to PlayStation 3 era on modern systems, and it all goes back to the shitty way the PlayStation 3 was designed. They basically over thought that system, and every game on it needs a full remaster to convert it to more modern systems. This is why when I got back into Console gaming in 2020, I went with the Xbox One S and Nintendo Switch. Hell if it wasn't for the fact there were some exclusives tied to the PlayStation 4 like God of War and Persona 5 Royal, I would have held of on tracking that system down.

By the way, the Amazon and Xsplit ads you see are authorize by me to be on this blog, as I'm an affiliate with both  So if you're looking for tools to help with streaming or communicating from home with work, check out what Xsplit offers over at Xsplit.com, use the promo code CASDEN to save 10% on your order! But if you're looking for just general stuff, of course you can swing over to Amazon using my affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3L8N1Yj.

For tonight's stream, we're back to Persona 5 Royal and the aftermath of Futaba's Palace after the epic stream we did last week. Looking forward to seeing what happens next in the story!

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

Thursday, April 21, 2022

We were Fallout and About

Good morning everyone,

Last night's stream of Fallout 76 certainly was interesting as I had a nuke dropped on me while on one of the early quests, and found myself in all sorts of random encounters. Big thanks to Iceman for joining in on the fun and games as we covered a lot of things I needed to do in the Northern part of the map.One thing I can appreciate is the side quests that certainly adds a level of detail of how warped things were in the world of the game and that's before the apocalypse started. I mean, having to track down missing young persons to see what happened to them is one hell of a cold case. 


We also ran into a couple of random glitches such as enemies running at light speed to attack, and some interactions not loading straight away. But bugs and glitches were par for the course with Fallout 76 when it launched, hence why I didn't start messing with it until long after it had some major updates.

Fallout 76 Achievements

  • Perked Up: Fully Rank Up one Perk
  • Pest Control: Kill 300 Creatures 

Twitch Clip Links

For the raid last night we dropped in on Kalenal who was playing Final Fantasy XIV over on twitch.tv/kalenal!  


Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout involved Intermediate Combo #1, Biceps Shape Focus Como and Triple Combo #2. Best part about that screenshot is that one has to realize the totals are only for the Fitness Boxing 2 portion, though the days in a row streak includes the original Fitness Boxing.

You know, with my day job, we get assignments from a lot of large firms who do a fair job of presenting both sides of an issue... but then there are the times we get blatantly designed polls that are set to push an agenda.

So what's going to replace Mass Effect 2 on Mondays and Tuesdays? I'm leaning towards Borderlands 3, which will be a challenge on the console side of things... or the Chrono Cross remaster.

My fantasy baseball team went a combine 6 for 42 yesterday... ugh.

Marijuana has been legalized here in New Jersey, I have no real feelings on it one way or the other.

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Played some Final Fantasy XIV last night off stream, for the Alliance Raid of the Day, it was World of Darkness, also managed to do some leveling on the Fishing skill set.  Of course for tonight's stream we shall featuring Final Fantasy XIV, we will do the new alliance raid and obvious work on a few different things.

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

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