Happy Monday everyone

I hope everyone had a nice holiday or, if you didn’t get four days off, you at least had a nice weekend… I had a pretty relaxing weekend, though I definitely ate too much! How can one meal stretch out into overeating for four days straight?

I did play a lot of games during my time off, including Wizard 101 (Videos coming soon, just need to pull them off the camera and edit.) LOTRO, and some new games, Zentia online and Iris Online, that I saw Massively magazine posting about. I also got a new copy of ‘World of Goo’, which my roommate had on his old computer that died. That is such a fun, cute, and addictive little puzzle game, I’m sure I’ll be playing it constantly…

The new MMO games are interesting so far, though I’ve barely scratched the surface. Zentia I’ve seen a lot about, it’s pretty cool but hasn’t ‘grabbed’ me yet. Iris is cute, I love the graphics, but the fixed camera is really frustrating, especially since you can get stuck on objects in the world that you can’t even see because of the camera angle. I’ll play them both a bit and see if any of them hook me in like Wizard 101 did – somehow I doubt it 🙂

I had a fun and interesting LOTRO experience over the weekend – I was doing a quest in Thorin’s Hall that completely reminded me of the quests in Krokotopia! The quest is called ‘The Puzzle Vault’ and in it you have to pull four levers (Sun, moon, axe, jewel) in a specific order, based on a riddle! It really reminded me of a few of the Krokotopia puzzles, like the Test of Aptitude in the Temple of Storms.

So overall I’m a happy Fabricated American today and I’m looking forward to Ravenwood Radio on Wednesday – I’m sure it will be an awesome show! Until then…

See you in The Spiral!!

PLOX!

November 29, 2010 | Categories: Fabricated American, Gaming | Leave a comment

Ditto’s Current Games

Not a lot of movement on the current games this week – I finally got back into Wizard 101 and finished Katzensteins’ Lab, which was pretty awesome. I did find out that there is apparently a side-quest in there that you can finish as well, to defeat some elite side-boss called Smogger or something like that. I think I’m going to try for that – wish I knew about it before I exited the dungeon, because I think the pre-fight bosses were actually more challenging than Katz…

Ditto and Madame Jasmine, preparing for the first Clocktower

so now I’m ready to start the big Marleybone Finale – I started reading up on it and got great tips and pointers from readers, thank you SO MUCH for that! I ‘think’ I’m going to try to do each clocktower solo, then get a few friends together for Big Ben. Big Ben seems insane to try alone (though I did pull off Sunken City solo) – we’ll see what I can put together.

LOTRO
I did jump back into LOTRO again for a while, as well – I just love the look of this game, the epic feel of it. It’s a little overwhelming sometimes, it feels like there are a thousand different things you can be doing, where I’m used to the much more guided Wizard 101 quest lines. It’s still awesome, though, and I do still geek out when I see something I recognize from the books, like the dock for Buckleberry Ferry.
Right now I’m just questing and looking for crafting supplies to sell at auction, which is certainly a lot more involved than the Bazaar on wizard 101. It’s fun, though, and I’ve gotten some good gear for great prices just be being in the right place at the right time, so to speak.

Ditto the Dwarf riding across Middle Earth

Backyard Monsters
Backyard Monsters had a huge update this week, including a new level of Town hall which I’m currently in the process of building – it takes SIX DAYS! I also upgraded my catapult another level (I can now fling goo at my enemies – LOL) and unlocked the new ‘worm’ monster they just added, who has some underground burrow attack I havent’ tried yet. Sounds interesting but worrisome, as if it works the way I think it works, it will be VERY hard to defend against, especially since they didn’t seem to add anything that would defend against subterranean attack yet…

Other Games
this week was pretty much all focused on Wizard 101 to be honest, with a little LOTRO and my daily Backyard Monsters fix. I’ll try to find a new ‘Game of the Week’ for next week, because that is a lot of fun.

I’ll try to find a new and exciting game for my ‘Game of the Week’ next week.

November 12, 2010 | Categories: Fabricated American, Gaming | 2 Comments

Ditto’s Current Games 10/22/2010

Once again I discuss my weekly gaming fun – gaming from a Fabricated American point of view! Lots of great fun this week, and the best ‘game of the week’ I’ve found so far!! Of course not everything was hugs and puppies this week… there was tragedy as well – of the completely temporary virtual sort, anyway.

Wizard 101
Wizard 101 was at the top of my list with the new Halloween quests taking up lots of playtime this week – I am a huge fan of Jack Hallow and his pumpkin-headed brothers! I did some great ghost-busting and apple bobbing and pumpkin gathering, and soon I will be attacking those eerie towers floating over where the Death school used to be. Celestia fever is in high gear too, of course, but I’m not terribly worried about that yet. Wizard 101 was definitely my main game this week.

Chatting Up Jack Hallow

LOTRO
I played zero LOTRO this week, sadly – I was too tied up with other games and just never got a chance to log in. I will be playing soon though, as it looks like they have some cool seasonal event going on. I love these special seasonal events so I’ll definitely be checking it out soon – once I’ve finished all the Wizard 101 stuff, that is!

Backyard Monsters
So this week was all about attacking the new enemy tribes, and I did pretty well – I took out a few serious encampments and I’m refining my strategy – which basically means I’m updating the monsters I attack my enemies with. You’ve got a number of different kind of monsters that have differing costs and abilities, so it’s all about mixing and matching to get the best results. You could use a few high cost, powerful monsters, or a whole fleet of smaller monsters.
Of course when you attack them, they will sometimes attack back. Exhibit A – my fairly well demolished yard from earlier this week. Fortunately, even though I needed a lot of repair work to get back up and running, the attack was a failure, since my new defenses kept my town hall safe from harm. Power to the Monsters!

Ditto's backyard after an attack

Game of the Week
I have found an awesome Halloween-themed game this week – Braaains!!! It’s a zombie horde fight game and I became instantly addicted, because let me tell you – Monsters like zombies, it’s just a thing with us. We also like sherbet and chickens – trust me on this one….
The game is similar to things like Ninja Wars, but more fun – You dig up zombies from the graveyard, train them and equip them for battle, then attack other player’s zombie hordes. The currency is mixed – gold, brains (of course) and bones, and it really becomes a game of resource management. You can have a bunch of poorly trained, well equipped zombies, or fewer zombies that are much better trained and more effective. I’m going the ‘all the zombies I can dig up’ route and arming them as well as I can afford. It’s working for me so far. This game is definitely going to replace my daily School of Wizardry game, I think. At least for now.

The motley crew that is my zombie horde

Ditto's zombie horde taking on an opponent

So that’s it for this week’s games – I’ve got a big 100th video planned, I’m working on that now, plus more Halloween fun and hopefully I can connect with a few friends in game and film us doing Katz’ lab soon… That would be a ton of fun. Until next time!

PLOX

October 22, 2010 | Categories: Fabricated American, Gaming | Leave a comment

Ditto’s Current Games….

Here we are again, another Friday (Though as I type this it’s technically Thursday, but I won’t post until tomorrow, so for you, it’s Friday…) and here are the games I’m playing now. I’m going to start off with my current and then talk about my new ‘Game of the Week’… We’ll see how this goes – this post has been getting the most hits each week so I guess lots of people like it! Feel free to give me suggestions, etc… too!

Wizard 101
Of course I start off with my wonderful Wizard 101. Digby is still level 31, as I haven’t had a lot of time to play this week. currently he is fighting giant spiders in Hyde Park – why is it always Spiders?? I’m also farming scrap iron to finish up my crafting quests – that’s been really time consuming, and I never see it in the bazaar either. I’m almost there though – only a few more pieces needed to finish up my tasks.

Fighting giant spiders in Hyde Park

LOTRO
Yes, still playing, though again, not much this week. Ditto made level 15 and I got a nice surprise – he can add a surname, meaning he now has a first and last name! Of course that last name is Monster, so I am now a dwarf known as ‘Ditto Monster’! I am also trying my hand at crafting, or more specifically, ‘resource gathering’ – I became an ‘explorer’ who can gather wood and minerals and ore, natural resources, and supply other crafters with them, but not really ‘craft’ anything myself. That’s OK though – I think it will be a nice side income for me to get a house soon, which are EXPENSIVE!! In Wizard 101 I had enough gold to get a house when I wanted one – in LOTRO I don’t know how I’m going to get that much cash without doing a lot of auction house selling and resource farming.
One cool thing – I moved my happy little dwarf out of the cold and windy northern Dwarf areas and down into the lush green elf-lands! It’s so beautiful – kind of breathtaking really.

Ditto finally made it to the lovely elf-lands!

Backyard Monsters
Some big changes in this game this week – they have added new ‘wild monster tribes’ that you can battle for a PVP-like experience without actually PVPing someone, and these tribes will attack you back. It is actually a big change in game play and overall strategy, because fighting these tribes isn’t about stealing resources like regular PVP, it’s all about protecting your town hall and taking out their town hall. I’m going to be re-designing my yard to better account for this, as right now my resources are really well protected, but my town hall is rather exposed.

Ditto's yard in Backyard Monsters

School of Wizardry
I’m not posting about this one after this week. I’m level 125 and I believe I’ve unlocked all quests, so now I’m just going through the motions.

The Game of the Week!!
Here it is, Ditto’s ‘Game of the Week’!! This week I will be talking about ‘Sea Fight‘, a Free to Play pirate game. I found this game thanks to an ad on Facebook while I was playing ‘Backyard Monsters’, and the concept is simple – you have a ship, you sail around, you kill sea monsters and sink other ships. Not much more to it.
Overall the game is kind of a train wreck, sorry to say. The user interface is really simple, but that’s because you can’t do anything with it – to do anything other than sail around and kill sea monsters, you have to log out of the game, go to the website, and use the web-based interface there. And it’s not even a very good web-based interface.
They do start you out well, with a decent ship and both in game gold and ‘pearls’, which I believe is the ‘real money’ currency, and that allows you to better outfit your ship with faster sails, more guns, ammo like exploding cannonballs and flaming pumpkins, plus a crew of swarthy pirates. All the ‘elite’ gear does cost real world currency, but it’s fully playable and pretty fun – though limited – with the in-game gold stuff. I haven’t tried PVP yet, which seems to be a BIG part of this game, so my opinions might change on the viability of the ‘free’ stuff if I come up against someone fully tricked out in premium gear.
One of the crazy things about it is that you can complete a quest, but you apparently need to PAY to get the reward form the quests. Usually $.99 per quest. Seriously? That’s a bit crazy, sorry..
Overall it’s a fun diversion, it was very easy to sign up and get playing, and I do like pirates – who doesn’t? I’m known as ‘Captain Ditto’ and sail around slaying huge kraken and monster whales and destroy Blackbeard’s ships like it’s going out of style – wonder where he gets them all – but the game doesn’t have enough ‘hook’ to grab my furry orange attention and keep me playing. I think next week will be another ‘Game of the Week’, though I might update on this one again, depending on how things go…

Captain Ditto playing Seafight

October 8, 2010 | Categories: Fabricated American, Gaming | Leave a comment

My current games

So I’ve gotten into a few new games lately, and while I’m not recording myself playing them, I thought it might be fun to give a little update for each and to see what other people are playing. These are pretty much all family and kid-friendly (With one notable exception, which is much more ‘teen’ oriented) free to play games easily accessible to people, so if something sounds fun and interesting to you, you can give it a try…

Wizard 101
Of course I’ll start out with Wizard 101, my favorite game! I just hit level 30 and am making my way through the depths of Chelsea Court in Marleybone now. I’ve got multiple videos coming for Wizard 101, so I won’t talk too much about it – since that’s what pretty much this whole site is usually devoted to. I am still having a LOT of fun and I’m really, really looking forward to Celestia, which sounds like it’s coming pretty soon!!

Backyard Monsters
This is a Facebook game, and while I normally don’t get into these I have to say, I’m pretty well addicted to this one. I started playing because, well, it’s about monsters, and I’m a monster, so it seemed a good fit.
The premise is simple – you create a backyard ‘habitat’ for various little monsters. You have to harvest resources to build structures and defenses, like Starcraft, you have to plan out defensive towers and structures like a typical tower defense game, and you plan attack strategies to raid other backyards and take their resources.
I’m level 31 now, almost level 32, and my strategy has been all about resource production and protecting those resources. The only buildings that an enemy attack ‘scores’ on are your resource harvesters and silos, so if you’ve got them well guarded, someone coming in and knocking over your monster academy or even monster housing doesn’t really count against you, it’s just annoying. Make sure you build up all your turrets, and use the yard planner – it shows you a great overhead view of your yard and – most importantly – shows your turret ranges so you can verify you have adequate coverage.

Ditto's backyard in 'Backyard Monsters'

School of Wizardry
This is another Facebook game that I’m only playing now because of serious puppet-related OCD I think. I’m level 112 and every day I log in for five minutes, do all the current missions I can, cash out my real estate money, put it in the bank, and I’m done. I think I’m only playing now because I want to get to the ‘end’ of the game – get through all the last quests. I’m on the last quest in the ‘Wizard World’ section now, and about to start the ‘closure’ section, which is for levels 100+. It was a lot of fun in the beginning, but I’ll be honest – it’s gotten boring.

Lord of the Rings Online
So yes, I have a LOTRO account now, a level 10 dwarf named Ditto. He has furry orange hair and a bushy orange beard, he’s great!
I’ll preface this section by saying that, while an amazing game in many ways, I am not counting this as a ‘Kid/family friendly’ entry, simply because it’s so realistic, and because it doesn’t look like there’s much in the way of a chat filter. Naughty words definitely slip out pretty often in OOC chat, from what I’ve seen. It’s OK for a furry orange monster, but I sure wouldn’t let a five or eight year old sit there and watch me play. That’s my opinion, anyway. Your results may vary…
The game is beautiful at average graphics settings and breathtaking at the highest levels, the sounds and music are amazing as well, and I think that’s part of my problem. When one of my first quests was to kill wolves, the wolves were beautifully rendered, well animated, and the super-realistic ‘hurt puppy’ whimper they made when I hit them with my axe was heart-breaking. When you defeat the wolf, it lays there on the ground, very obviously dead. There’s no blood, but still… It’s not like a gobbler falling over and melting through the floor when you defeat it in a duel. I think that the game is just so real, it certainly earns it’s ‘Teen’ rating.

Ditto the Dwarf in LOTRO

Clone Wars Adventures
Yup, jumped into this one too. I’m trying to get the name ‘Ditto Monster’ for my avatar but all custom names have to be approved, so for now I just have a placeholder name.
The game is amazingly cute and cool if you’re into Star Wars/Clone Wars, but it’s definitely NOT an ‘MMORPG’ – not that this is a bad thing, I just think some people assumed it was more ‘MMO-like’.
What you get with Clone Wars is a cool character avatar who can run around a space station and chat with other people, meet Star Wars characters, and play some really fun Clone Wars themed mini-games. That’s about it. The mini games are great, and some, like ‘Saber Strike’, are down right addictive, done in the style of classic Pop Cap games like ‘Peggle’.
I’ve only just started Clone Wars, so I don’t know a lot about it yet, but it’s very kid friendly and the chat seems pretty safe so far, though again, I’m still a new. Installing was fast and straightforward too.

My Clone Wars dorm room - very empty right now!

Zombie Pets
Another Facebook game, I tried it because some of my FB friends were playing and it seemed interesting. Well – I don’t get it. Maybe it’s a Fabricated American thing, but this game confuses the fur off of me… It’s like you have dead pets and if you don’t feed them they get… deader? And if they ‘live’ you can, um, sell them to buy more pets to… yeah, I just don’t get it. Probably won’t be doing much with this one.

So that’s it – my current games, what I’m playing right now. Naturally 70% of my time is spent in Wizard 101, it’s still my absolute favorite, but there are some other really fun – and free – games out there you can try. I’ll probably be giving some general updates on the other things I’m playing in between my Wizard 101 daring adventures and exploits!

Until next time – PLOX!!

September 17, 2010 | Categories: Fabricated American, Gaming | 1 Comment

Sponsor Ravenwood Radio for Extra Life!!

As people may or may not realize, Fabricated Americans have had a long-standing tradition of helping kids – It’s just something we like to do, it makes us feel good. Personally, I like reading stories to kids and teaching them good life lessons, that sort of thing – it gives me a ‘warm, fuzzy’ feeling. Even warmer and fuzzier than I am normally…

So last night on the awesome Ravenwood Radio show, Leesha and Steve announced that they were doing something wonderful to help kids in need, in honor of a young wizard named Emma, and need people to help donate to the cause. They are going to be participating in Extra Life, a 24 hour charity gaming marathon for the Children’s Miracle Network. The money donated goes directly to hospitals to help kids, something I believe in strongly, and so I’m going to do what I can to help spread the word, too, because it’s a good and important cause and they definitely have my support!

So please, check out their web page at Ravenwood Radio, read about the charity and about Emma, and then click on one of those ‘donate’ buttons – or have your parents do that – and give just a little, because if everyone gives just a little, in the end that’s a whole lot, and the good it can do will grow even bigger than that!

Thanks all – I’ll see you in The Spiral!!

PLOX!

September 9, 2010 | Categories: Fabricated American, Gaming | Leave a comment