Joe's Segues - 10/25/22

Ladies and gentlemen, we are inching close to the end of October to get to November and next Monday is Halloween, so be sure to grab your gear and go trick-or-treating and get your Halloween blockbuster ready as today's Joe's Segues is on your way. So far, 2022 is becoming the best year and a ton of things have happened, but there is one bad thing that recently happened. I'll get to that later on. Now, on to the segues.

To start things off, I have changed my display name to KnockDownJoe. But that's okay. I now have a new name, but the same old me. I'm sure you'll get used to it.

With that out of the way, the ungulate based fighting game Them's Fightin' Herds came out on consoles one week ago and I wanted to get the physical version since it comes with the Season 1 Pass, but I decided to buy the game and the Season 1 Pass digitally. I have a 4 TB game drive that holds up to 100+ PS4 and PS5 games for a reason. Anyway, the game is great. Four legged creatures are cute, but deadly. It has a dynamic music system that adds unique character themes and intense flow to the infight music. The console release became a huge milestone, courtesy of Modus Games, who made console ports of Them's Fightin' Herds possible so that they don't have to play the Steam version on offline tournaments.

The reason why is because the Steam version of Them's Fightin' Herds is a pain to deal with on offline tournaments when it comes to issues with setting up the buttons. That happened at Combo Breaker. But with the console ports being inevitable thanks to Modus Games and once they are complete and released, they will no longer have to play the Steam version on offline tournaments and they are shifting to playing the PS4 version to greatly relieve button setting issues. Frosty Faustings is around the corner and Them's Fightin' Herds are gonna be played there, but this time, players are shifting to the PS4 version. Maybe we'll get a trailer for the next Season 1 Pass character there.

Isn't it wild that Them's Fightin' Herds is able to get console ports thanks to Modus? Even with Humble Games, console ports aren't simple and that's why they currently had no plans. And now that Modus Games acquired MANE6, boom, console ports and localization have happened and released with the Astral Heat-esque lv. 3s. It was worth yelling out "Astral Finish!".

They had to release the console ports and localization with the unfinished Story Mode because they demanded more time. And now that they are complete and released, they can get back to finishing up the Story Mode, which I won't play on until it is finished. In fact, playing Them's Fightin' Herds on console is gonna hold me off until Black Dahlia is fully released. Same with Marie and future characters (preferrably the ones who are eligible for a BBTAG palette and a ticket to my special online casual).

And the Astral Heat-esque lv. 3s; they are savage. I'm even working on a tier list that determines the ranking of the lv. 3 supers, which I'll probably tell you more about it in the next one. I think the dynamic music system needs unique character themes that play during their lv. 3 with a post-KO theme that plays when lv. 3s KOed an opponent while on match point. That's where I come in to yell out "Astral Finish!".

Originally, they wouldn't develop new characters until Chapter 2 starring Velvet is finished, but with Modus' help benefitting more than one combat developer and now that the console ports are completed, Chapter 2 is now continuing production. So is the first new character in the Season 1 Pass, Texas. No, not the Lone Star State. But rather, a bull named after the Lone Star State.

You see, Texas is the father of Arizona. That means his wife is Minnesota. He is first seen on Chapter 1 starring Arizona and he's the first male character to join the roster voiced by the talented fighting game voice actor, Patrick Seitz. You don't want to get ran over by him. Nappy's dream of wanting a true grappler into the game is becoming a reality and Texas is that true grappler.

After all, he is a character in the Prairie area of Foenum where characters named after US States live at, which I know it's interesting. Texas' Astral Heat remains a mystery until sometime in November when he is released. I'm sure other Season 1 Pass characters will have theirs. After Texas is the next character that is probably one of the characters in the Tundra area judging by the winter theme. The first two characters in the Season 1 Pass have a background of their new stages as a hint to make guessing easy. The last two, however, may be characters in the new areas. Great fighting game. I recommend trying it out.

And that brings down to the next topic that entails the declining of the most popular rapper known as Kanye West, a.k.a. Ye. He made and published shoes associated with himself called Yeezys. I know I'm not a big fan of rap music, but it is what it is. He became famous, until the situation that happened recently. Ye is getting cancelled and facing declines as several organizations and star athletes have cut ties with him because of his antisemitic comments. I'll go over the most obvious one, Gap.

Gap, Inc. opened a contract with Ye to sell Yeezys. The brand has surged in demand and going places, until Gap has terminated their contract with Kanye following that antisemitic rant. It means that they will no longer sell Yeezys and the website where it only had them is shut down. Adidas is following suit in light of Ye's antisemitic remarks. A petition to urge Adidas to cut ties with him is created and over 180,000 people have signed.

That is a big L for him as he is facing a big decline after he made antisemitic remarks and he becoming a low, declined rapper because of the situation. That's not good. None of this would have happened if that rapper hadn't said any antisemitic comments. It is even worse than the part where Mike Z said sexual comments to his employees. That's following the part where he falsely claimed the drug killed George Floyd, not the police officer's knee. This is why they said antisemitic remarks have no place in their environment. What made the situation even worse is that he is no longer a billionaire after Adidas has cut ties with him. It hurts so bad. My condolences as this is the end of Kanye West and his popular shoes. I'm sorry it had to end like this because of his antisemitic remarks that caused brands and associations to terminate their contract with him.

It was no different than the situation with Indivisible regarding the guest characters and the two missing characters that are cancelled because of Mike Z's actions that exploded a perfectly good indie studio. Wow. First sexual abuse, then sexual harassment and now antisemitsm? No other scandal from people who make an unsafe environment should happen.

There is more stuff that I want to go over, but I'll have to end this because the situation is getting me down. Now, the moral of the story is, don't make any antisemitic comments because their environment has no place for antisemitism. You guys have a wonderful day.

Joe's Segues - 10/2/22

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to yet another episode of Joe's Segues. It has been a while since my previous episode. What makes it interesting is that I wanted both Annie from Skullgirls and Tianhuo from Them's Fightin' Herds to be in BBTAG, so I written them a moveset in a BBTAG format with an Astral Heat as a cherry on top. Neat stuff. So what's on the docket? Before we get into them, October is here and this is the month when spooky stuff are happening and spooky bone chilling Halloween blockbusters are coming at you.

First off, we'll start with the elephant in the room, a popular hero shooter that is gonna come out soon; Overwatch 2. Now, in case you didn't know, Overwatch 2 is in two days. PC players, have you pre-loaded Overwatch 2? If you have, then you can wait until October 4, and that's when it comes out and when console players can pre-load it. The best part to this is that it's gonna be free-to-play. That means you console players no longer need a PS Plus, Xbox Live Gold or a Nintendo Switch Online membership to play Overwatch 2 as it is gonna be completely free-to-play.

The update cadence for Overwatch 2 is how it goes. Every nine weeks, a new Season launches. Season 1 offers new maps and three new female heroes Sojourn, Junkerqueen and Kiriko. It's kind of crazy for Season 1 to give us three new female heroes, but it's fair. It needs more female characters anyway. For existing Overwatch 1 players, you will automatically earn access to all of the 32 heroes. But for new players, however, they must play 100 matches to unlock the rest of the cast. Good thing I am an existing Overwatch 1 player so I can have access to all 32 original characters. To unlock Kiriko, you must purchase the Battle Pass. If not, you'll have to buy her directly.

As I was saying, Season 1 offers new maps and three new heroes. Season 2 offers a new hero while Season 3 offers a new map. Going forward, after Season 1, even number seasons give us a new hero, starting at Season 2 while odd numbers seaons give us new maps starting at Season 3. Each season has a new battle pass. Oh and by the way, be sure to watch out for that fat bearded piece of crap Torbjorn when Overwatch 2 drops. That's what Torbjorn is. A fat bearded piece of crap, like Barik from Paladins. I find it hilarious like I did when watching the Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy for that craziness and experiencing the part in GameSpot where one user trash talked at that moderator real hard.

Be sure to play Overwatch 1 while you can because today is the last day of Overwatch 1's life cycle before the shift to Overwatch 2. The Overwatch servers will be taken down for maintenance that will last all day in preparation of Overwatch 2 tomorrow. And beware. Since Overwatch 2 is gonna be free to play, there will be microtransactions because you can't have a free to play game without microtransactions.

Speaking of microtransactions, a lot of you have known that microtransactions are required to have a free to play game and they aren't that bad if you just keep your purchases small. We've been going through a lot of shenangans about platform fighting games. Super Smash Bros. was the first platform fighting game to be developed in '99. But then, another platform fighter was announced and it has iconic characters from Warner Bros. That free-to-play platform fighter is MultiVersus.

You guys heard of MultiVersus, right? It is a free to play platform fighting game that has your favorite iconic WB characters from Looney Tunes, DC, Scooby-Doo and more. Since the open beta came out, I enjoyed MultiVersus to death. The voice lines are off the chain like in Team Sonic Racing and BBTAG.

Mightykeef has a couple videos dedicated to it. Critics said that MultiVersus is a Smash Bros. clone with WB characters. Nintendo was ticked that Warner Bros. is gonna rise up against them. The characters are off the chain and Arya Stark is freaking legit crazy and dope as heck. I wouldn't want to consider her the Lucina of MultiVersus, yet Black Dahlia is considered the Nine the Phantom of Skullgirls that Walpurgisnacht would be a perfect fit benefitted by her elemental rounds. People cared about this game. I never felt that emotion in years. Even the one and only NBA superstar LeBron James is on there because he is the main character in Space Jam: A New Legacy. Great movie, by the way.

What makes it even crazier is that Rick and Morty are on there. Let's just pretend that it's NOT weird. It IS crazy that Rick and Morty made their debut to MultiVersus. After all, Cartoon Network is under the Warner Bros. umbrella. That's why they had to put Rick and Morty into the game. Now that's the crazy thing that gets the Team Sonic Racing seal of approval. I actually watch Rick and Morty sometimes. So far in Season 1, they added Morty, Gizmo and Rick. Who's next?

Here's to seeing more iconic characters being added. I'm thinking of a character that will make MultiVersus even crazier, like Godzilla, Kong, a Lord of the Rings character, a Dune character, or something even crazier. If Warner Bros. developed a live action Sailor Moon movie that is probably rated PG-13 for sequences of violence, action and suggestive content, a Sailor Moon character would be crazy awesome in MultiVersus.

But you know what else would be great? If they given us some sort of pack that unlocks both current and future characters so we don't have to keep grinding enough gold or spending real money to buy Gleamium and probably make some fixes and improvements to the subtitles, which have an issue for when a character dies, the subtitles display the character's voice line for two seconds.

But I had one problem while playing MultiVersus. The game has rollback netcode, but sometimes, there are some lag spikes that ruin the experience. That's when I was playing with bots and I'm not ready to play with real players yet. Thankfully, the devs are working on mitigating lag spikes so that our experience will be smooth and stable. What are you waiting for? Jump into MultiVersus today. I mean, what else are you gonna do? Travel to a real life Westeros? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Any of you YouTubers out there. The Nevercake twins are back and they have posted a first OH! So Spooky Show episode over on their own YouTube channel. It started when one mysterious man was searching in the woods to the rickety house looking for something. A VHS tape with LED lights, wrapping and a Nevercake icon was found and he picked it up and put it in a small TV with a VHS player built in.

I watched the whole thing and it has one of the parts that given me some PBS vibes because you know, PBS has viewers like you bumpers and that's the only thing I like the most. The twins are back, but that's just the beginning. More Oh! So Spooky Show episodes are coming your way. The future of Nevercake is no doubt bright and the SMITE Lore series is going back strong. Even the 100th episode celebrates the series' 100th episode milestone with a song. Crap's getting crazier and crazier with Nevercake coming back after years of their hiatus since the pandemic.

What I like about the OH! So Spooky Show is that it has a warning message at the beginning read by a deep scary voice. But content for the astute? Lamentable goofs? That's ridiculous.

That about wraps this up. I'll see you next time. Remember, today is the last day of Overwatch 1's life cycle, so enjoy it while you can before tomorrow when the servers enter an all day long maintenance. Remember, try that on my Arya Stark or suffer the consequences.