Well So Much For Getting Back To Normal

Good morning everyone,

Well right before I was about to start work yesterday, I got a call saying the shift was cancelled, and now I'm back picking up spare hours on the evening shift, which means tonight's stream will start at 9:30 PM.

Anyway, last night's stream opened with Fall Guys, and shockingly, I was able to win a squad show being the last 'bean standing', I've certainly lucked out a fair amount, and we came close to winning a solo show as well. 

We also checked out PowerWash Simulator, and I can see why that game is both addicting and frustrating, because when it gets down to like a few percent points left, you end up wondering where to look to find the last few things to spray. At least there is an indicator of when something is clean before moving on.

But the main event of course was Resident Evil 6, and with Iceman along for the ride, we covered the first chapter of Leon's campaign. Now it turns out Iceman's difficulty is locked in on normal, while my difficultly is at amateur. The pace of play being faster than Resident Evil 5 is a huge plus, along with being able to do melee attacks. Now I did say during the stream we're playing it for shits and giggles, and there were plenty of both, and I'm really looking forward to next Wednesday's stream for more of the same!

 PowerWash Simulator Achievements

• Starting Out: Earn 5 Stars in Career Mode
• Soap Connoisseur: Own all cleaning liquids at the same time
• Fully Equipped: Own the Prime Vista 1500 and three of its attachments

Resident Evil 6 Achievements

• The Longest Night: Complete the tutorial.
• Gone to Hell: Complete Chapter 1 in Leon's campaign.
• One Is Better Than None: Purchase one skill.

We had two raids during the streams, one from Taffe316 (twitch.tv/taffe316) and from Edheldisrien (twitch.tv/Edheldisrien), thank you so much for bringing your communities on over!

For our own  raid we dropped in on SweetLindir who was playing Smite over at twitch.tv/sweetlindir

The latest short story commission request on the books is for another Mass Effect tale, and I have some ideas of what to reference during it in regards to Mass Effect 3, since it's taking place after the Cerberus invasion of the Citadel and involves the Virmire Survivor. 

Speaking of Mass Effect, that is the plan for tonight's stream, we'll hang out on Pinnacle Station to try and get closer to a couple of achievements before we move on to other areas in search for any side quests. We'll try to delay advancing the plot as much as possible.

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

Reached Mid-September in Persona 3 Portable

Good morning everyone,

Work yesterday was about as expected in terms of just being a bland day thanks to being limited by the script we have to stick too, but hey, it kept my mind focus. Unfortunately, I just got a call saying day shift for today was cancelled at the last minute...

Last night's stream of Persona 3 Portable saw about two hours spent in Tartarus as we made it floor 114, getting a lot of things done in regards to quests and trying to keep everyone's levels even proved to be tough considering how I try to always go for the advantage in fights, using the proper elemental attacks to go for Knock downs and All out Attacks as often as possible.That said, one thing is for certain that even with a guided playthrough I did screw up on keeping things timed correctly, so I'm behind on some social links and attributes.

In terms of the the story of Persona 3, Junpei actually getting character development due to his interactions with Chidori is actually adorable, because it's quite clear that he's the first person Chidori met that cares for her well being. The whole Strega story arc as an evil group of Persona users is interesting and I wonder if it's more fleshed out in the original version of Persona 3, or is just 'mid game' filler story that just acts as opposition because Persona 3's overall plot with the Full Moon battles not really having much justification for them other than they need to happen.

Next time we play Persona 3 Portable on Monday will see us reach the point we can fuse four and five personas at a time and basically march towards the next bit trip into Tartarus, which will probably be split over two nights, depending on the number of floors I need to reach.

Persona 3 Portable Achievements

• Paulownia Mall Power Control: Defeat the Hermit.

For the raid we dropped in on PowerThumbz who was playing Outbreak over at twitch.tv/powerthumbz

With work back to normal, tonight's stream will open with Fall Guys for the first two hours, and we'll be starting Resident Evil 6 at 10 PM since Iceman won't be getting home until late, so we might toss in a little filler of something as well. It could be a triple header night! 

Finished the Mass Effect short story commission, it's now up on the SubscribeStar page for those who know what that link is. I'll put in some work on the other queued commission requests that is WWE focused... until I get another one that's a lot more interesting.

Heard that Star Trek Resurrgence is great as a Star Trek story... but not quite a good game, guess we'll see for ourselves on Saturday.

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

August of Persona 3 Portable

Good morning everyone,

Work is back to normal starting today, but it's the assignment that I was doing during the early evening last week... and I'll have to do it for an extra hour... so ugh... it's going to be a long day, But the important thing is things will feel normal today.

Last night's stream of Persona 3 Portable opened up with us doing some grinding to try and get Junpei and Akihiko close to level 30, but after dealing with the August full moon, we experienced the summer break portion of the story, which saw Mitsuru signing everyone up for summer classes which basically ate up a week of in-game time, sure we got to learn about the Major Arcana, but the real highlight was completing a few social links, because it appears I've fallen way behind on the pace for maxing out the academic portion of the main character. 

Now we made sure to cover everything up to two nights before the September full moon, which means tonight's stream will open with a trip into Tartarus... as well as figuring out how I'm going to balance the party because Shiiniro, Koromaru and Ken have all joined the team, so trying to figure out the best way to use them in relation to the rest of the team will be a challenge.

Also way I figure, it'll probably take about eight more streams to finish up Persona 3 Portable, this is factoring in how the gaps between major floors in Tartarus seem to be getting wider, while also trying to anticipate any requests Elizabeth might have.

Persona 3 Portable Achievements

• Bunker Debunked: Defeat the Chariot and Justice.
• Fusion Expert: Perform 50 Persona fusions.

Big thanks to Kalenal for the raid following their stream of Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild over on twitch.tv/kalenal

For the raid we dropped in on zdleague who was also playing Persona 3 Portable over at twitch.tv/zdleague

Got some writing done yesterday, I intended to finish the Mass Effect short story, but then I felt the need to lay down and lost a few hours due to a nap. By the time I woke back up that nap it was nearly too late to have dinner.

Been looking at a lot of Jerry Springer interviews lately... and when you really think about it, he really was the greatest day time talk show host of all time, since he applied the same reasoning the like of Oprah did about giving celebrities a place to talk about their struggles, but for the every day person instead.

I looked over the achievement list for Star Trek Resurgence and near as I can tell, it will require three play throughs to get all the achievements that are tied to various choices. We'll start our first play through on Saturday.

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

A Big Night As Wrecking Ball

Good morning everyone,

Yesterday was kind of a weird day, as I ended up laying down quite a bit, still I got some writing done, and found out that the client who is commissioning the Mass Effect series of short stories would like me to do Resident Evil stories down the line.  

Last night's stream of Overwatch 2 was a lot of fun, we were joined by PandaSweet for the entire stream which was fun. Between the two of us we had 9 plays of the game, with mine being as Reinhardt (3), D.va (1), Orissa (1) and Wrecking Ball (1). Other characters I used were Junker Queen, Sombra, Tracer, Roadhog and a few others.

Now the best moments of the night involved Wrecking Ball in that we got both of his character achievements. The first involved playing on Defense on the Eichenwald map, in a match Panda and I were resigned to practice, so somehow absorbing 1250 damage without dying was shocking considering I was diving in and backing out. The other achievement involving rolling through three enemies at once... and that was done via a moment where I knocked three enemies off a ledge.

With both of these achievements, I know have 65 of Overwatch's 164 achievements, which is pretty good with all things considered/

Overwatch 2 Achievements

• Adaptation: Absorb 1250 damage with Wrecking Ball's Adaptive Shield without dying in Quick or Competitive Play.
• Strike: Roll through 4 enemies within 2 seconds as Wrecking Ball in Quick or Competitive Play.

For the raid we dropped in on x9abenonymous9x who was playing God of War over at twitch.tv/x9abenonymous9x

 The plan for tonight's stream is resuming Persona 3 Portable, as we're going to be in good position to try and knocking more of Elizabeth's requests and put in some leveling for Junpei and Akihiko to keep them caught up to Mitsuru, Yukari and Aigis. How much grinding we'll do depends on much time I want to spend trying to get gold shadows to appear.

Had one solid lead for a possible job interview via Zoom later this week, which if things go right, could see me back in the travel industry. We'll see how that goes on Thursday.

I have a full series of Star Trek Online on Xbox One videos schedule to premier on Mondays at 9 AM on my YouTube channel, which means I can use the Wednesday slot of the week for other types of content creation while being on camera.

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

We Had A Variety Night

Good morning everyone,

Yesterday I did plan to wake up early, but... ended up waking up a lot later than intended, but still got a few things done.

We had a fun stream, as it was a variety night, opening with Fall Guys and running into instances of dudes self sabotaging the team in so many ways, including diving off the platform in Block Party. No wins, but we did make it the final round once.

We switched of Ghostbusters Spirits Unleashed after I learned they added some cosmetics from Extreme Ghostbusters, so yeah that caught my attention. We had a couple of victories but mostly got chased out by the ghosts. Didn't really get a good look at the new map but it's nice to see there are stuff still being added.

We played some Smite for the first time in a long time, winning three out of the four matches played (2 in Arena, 1 in Assault), with those victories being as Athena, Terra and Nike respectively. I actually forgot how long Assault matches can feel because of the random nature of who everyone has to use, Still I'll take the wins.

Now all of those games were played on the Xbox Series and Xbox One consoles, because lastly we hooked up the PS3 in probably a year I think, and we played the X-Men arcade game, USA Rom version on Hard, using Dazzler. It was a solid run, and a good test of how it looks and plays on stream after all the hassle I went through to improve the picture quality.

Now I did consider doing an extra night of Persona 3 Portable or Mass Effect, but I figure bouncing from game to game and console to console made for a more unique experience.

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

Getting back to Mass Effect, did some writing on the short story commission yesterday afternoon, and I figure it's now about 40% done, just need to do the action sequence.

The plan for tonight's stream, well it's Overwatch, even though we are all disappointed in being lied too by the developers of it regarding the PVE content, since they already had a live game to service in place. I will not be surprised if someone files a class action lawsuit against Activision Blizzard over this  

Good thing I ended the stream when it did, because a few minutes afterward, my internet went down!

I continue to mess around more with the Xbox version of Star Trek Online and discovered there is a very noticeable lag when doing anything in the tailor, like tweaking uniforms and so forth. In fact in an upcoming video scheduled for July on my YouTube channel, it takes about 20 minutes just to switch the uniforms of my starting crew from the TOS era to the 2409 uniforms.

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

FIrs Impression of Kena: Bridge of Spirits

Good afternoon everyone,

Work yesterday was positive, mostly for the fact that we can go back to our normal schedules, so on Monday we're back to the 6:30 PM Eastern start time! 

Last night's stream of Kena: Bridge of Spirits, and I can safely say it is a gorgeous game with a great musical score. The combat can be a little iffy, but there are some game play styles similar to Alice: Madness Returns. The biggest thing that gets me is the puzzles because the game is so pretty that I end up getting turned around and lost repeatedly. 

Now I am taking the super casual approach to playing it, and I can safely say it will not be a game that I can finish in two streams, even though a guide listing indicates I'm nearly half way through. but the trade off is that it will provide a nice alternative in the weekly line up as being something modern that visually stands out differently from the other big games I'm playing considering the open world nature of how I play Mass Effect.

Kena: Bridge of Spirits (PS4) Trophies

• Found a Friend: Hero Rot joined your team.
• Haikyo: Discovered the Village.
• Say Cheese: Captured a picture in Photo Mode
• Good as New: Restored a Flower Shrine.
• Into the Woods: Discovered the Forest.
• Hunter in the Forest: Learned the Bow Ability.
• Rot Commander: Use 5 Rot Actions in a single combat.
• Taro's Fear: Found Taro's Knife Relic.
• Taro's Love: Found Taro's Food Offering Relic.

We had two raids last night, one from oldish22 (twitch.tv/oldish22) and from b00mpowsurprize (twitch.tv/b00mpowsurprize) 

For the raid we dropped everyone off over on alexirmen who was also playing Kena Bridge of Spirits over at twitch.tv/alexirmen

Not sure what's on the agenda for tonight, we might go with a variety night, but we'll see what we end up doing.

As something to mess around with off-stream with the potential of streaming it, messed around with the Xbox version of BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma EXTEND, which is the definitive edition of the 3rd game in the series. So not sure if we'll stream its story mode without the context of the first two games on the final game.

BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma EXTEND Achievements

• Lesson Is More: [Tutorial] Finished the stylish and beginner lessons in Tutorial Mode.
• Impersonal Trainer: [Training] Dealt a total of 100,000 Damage.
• Good Grief: As Makoto, land an attack with maximum Impact Gauge.
• Just a Taste: [Arcade] Completed Arcade Mode.

Tried to put a dent into grinding for the last two engineer achievements in Mass Effect by doing 'laps' at Pinnacle station. Not sure how much I was able to accomplish.

Did make progress in the Mass Effect short story commission, it'll probably be finished by Monday for my Subscribstar followers.

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

A BSOD Style Damper

Good morning everyone, 

Work yesterday was okay, more of the same of trying to work with the very wordy script we have to use, but hey, as I said the other day, we just have to try to make it work, if we managed to get anything out of it, great, if not... we tried.

Last night's stream of Mass Effect was very much focused on side quests and level grinding, as we bopped around the Milky Way finding various missions from Admiral Hackett, plus Garrus and Wrex's loyalty missions as well as quests that originated on the Citadel. We did hit Pinnacle station to try and start grinding on the final achievements associated with the engineer (AI Hacking and Neural Shock).

Now next time we play Mass Effect, we'll probably focus on the Pinnacle station quests, then do Bringing Down The Sky, the big DLC mission before focusing on the main story of the game.

Of course the end of last night's stream was weird, as a sudden BSOD occurred indicated a bug of some kind, but every scan and diagnostic tool I can think of indicates nothing was wrong. Last thing I need is yet another computer going down this year.

Mass Effect Achievements

• Damping Specialist: Use Damping Field 75 times

We didn't do any raids following last night's stream because of the 

The plan for tonight's stream is to start up Kena: Bridge of Spirits on the PlayStation 4, from what I understand this game is very straight forward, with trophies attached to combat and collectables. So we'll take a casual approach to this game.

Got some writing done on the Mass Effect short story commission, getting a good portion of the intro done. Since it focuses on Miranda's 2nd meeting with Shepard on Citadel, it's already in the perfect location for various dialog.

Anyone ever noticed that in the Super Mario Bros Super Show episode with the Quirks, the little aliens play the Legend of Zelda theme? I noticed that last night after the stream.

With that said, we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden