screenies – Stylish Corpse

Looking one’s best when dead

August 23, 2016 Ysharros_SC

OK, so I’ll admit the new Demon Hunters do look pretty cool.

And as far as leaving a stylish corpse goes, I can guarantee you that I’m really good at leaving a corpse, at any rate. The pre-Legion demon invasions are in full swing and I’ve spent a (relatively) quiet afternoon going from one to another and getting some new gear.

And dying. Lots and lots of dying. The fact that I’m not really bonded with my character yet, that she’s melee, and that I’m throwing myself at the bad guys like the stubborn guy in that Kids in the Hall sketch might have something to do with it, not to mention the fact that some of those demons do a lot of damage.

If you want serious leveling coverage of this event, go read Stargrace’s blog. Me, I’m just a tourist.

Finally and utterly a propos nothing, I have almost 700 screenshots in my WoW screenshot folder. It takes forever to load. I should probably archive some of the older ones or something.

That’s it. Move along. Go! Shoo!

Tabletop – d6 Campaign in action

February 13, 2016 Ysharros_SC

I have this vague feeling my players aren’t taking my Ship’s emerging self-awareness as seriously as they ought to…

FFXIV – Back in Eorzea

January 31, 2016 Ysharros_SC

On a pure whim, I went back to Final Fantasy XIV – A Realm Reborn, about a month ago. I have no idea why, aside from the fact that World of Warcrack just doesn’t appeal at the moment (I really need to cancel that sub), EQ2 seems like way too much trouble to get back into right now, and FFXIV lets me scratch the harvesting and crafting itch relatively well. And it’s a very pretty game, which EQ2 really isn’t no matter which way you slice it.

So here I am, having transferred to @Psychochild’s server – Midgardsormr – because I am nothing if not obedient to my friends’ orders. That was actually my first paid (and possibly first voluntary) character transfer ever, now that I think of it. Aside from not being cheap ($18), it was remarkably painless. And I’ve been taking screenies, because FFXIV is a game that sort of demands them, at least from me, and there are plenty of cutscenes as I whittle away at the main story quest. The good thing is the action pauses every time someone says something, so getting decent screenshots isn’t all that hard.

I probably wouldn’t have posted about it — the blog remains weak in me these days — but yesterday I acquired some new gear that made me look like a total ho and I figured I should share it. As one does.

The original pirate-ho look. Yes, it’s a plate-mail bikini… but at least I have a stylish tricorne and eye-patch! And the first thing I did after acquiring said armour was a dungeon (no really, me, in a dungeon) in a howling blizzard. Of course.

The pirate-ho look, slightly modified, now with shorty-shorts. Marginally less mortifying.

Psychochild found my deep embarrassment extremely entertaining. Admittedly, he’s been there himself.

A few other things I encountered in the last few play sessions include:

A cool dragon skelly in the snow. Oh yeah, and some plot and bad guy (actually corpse of the not-so-bad-guy that the bad guy murderised and impersonated).

A super cute but also mean sylph. Sylphs are awesome. I would totally roleplay one if I could. (You need to read the text. They all talk like that, only not all so scathingly. Though the NPC was remarkably stupid, I have to admit.)

A level 50 group-hunt type mob. I don’t really know much about those other than seeing them around, since I’m not level 50 in any class that matters (i.e. adventuring). It was the name/model combo that made me laugh. Also, me on a beach in pirate-ho costume, which seems appropriate.

Camp Dragonhead at sunrise. The landscapes are beautiful in the game and the weather is very well-done. Even the lens-flare stuff is awesome as opposed to overblown and tedious.

Me and my buddy Cid flying through the Eorzean skies in the good ship Enterprise. Yes, someone said “Engage”.

And finally the Mor Dhona loading screen because the loading screens are so pretty I want them for wallpapers. Minus the Moogle and text, ideally, but beggars and choosers.

And there you have it. As @Stargrace always says: Happy Gaming, no matter where you find yourself. And may the RNG be ever in your favour.

Sims 4 – Getting Together

January 10, 2016 Ysharros_SC

I actually pre-ordered the Get Together expansion for Sims 4, but what with holiday busy-ness and end-of-year business it was some weeks before I actually got to play it. I wasn’t too worried — as I’ve said elsewhere, the Sims seems to be the most lasting game I’ve played in the last few years, along with World of Warcraft. (And since I haven’t logged in to the latter in something like 6+ months, I’m seriously thinking I should at least cancel my sub and save myself 100-odd bucks a year. I can always resub later on.)

In any case I’ve got some playing done here and there in the last couple of weeks. Rather than try the expansion with my current Legacy family (the Stylishes), I decided to start a whole new game, and the screenshots below are from that. The gal in question in Leslie Free — I’d initially intended to let her do her own thing, hence the name, but my control-freakiness soon threw that notion out the window.

It also dawned on me that I’d never tried the Scientist career from the Get to Work expansion, so Leslie is well on her way to becoming a mad scientist. It’s fun. The job requests (for progress & promotion) can be a little silly and overly-pushy in terms of having you be a ‘mad’ scientist, but the workplace is fun. I wouldn’t mind a bit more variety in the work hours as you go up the chain — it’s currently Monday – Friday 10AM-7PM no matter what rank you’re at — but that’s a minor niggle. And I get to make TRANSMOGRIFIERS!! It’s not called that (actually you can name it that if you like), but that’s basically what it is. Pick an object, point the ray-gun, and zzzzzzaaappp! it turns into something else. So far it’s turned into nothing useful, though I did turn some flowers at the park into a lovely coffee table, but apparently later on this could be lucrative. As someone who is always spending all my Simoleons on house upgrades I remain skeptical, but we’ll see.

Anyway, here are some not-entirely-random screenshots that document Leslie’s progress so far.

My first club – the drinking and pub games club.

What do you mean, my party outfit makes me look like a bondage queen?

Here, taste this. What could possibly go wrong?

What went wrong. (There’s hot and there on-fire hot.)

The book club shows off its “dance” moves

IntPiPoMo – final miscellanea

November 25, 2015 Ysharros_SC

I was going to write about how the Sims seems to have ended up as my go-to solo game for the last 6 years (since the Sims 3 came out, in fact), but I can’t seem to find my old Sims 3 screenshots. They’re not lost — they’re just buried in what is now a secondary-secondary drive slaved in from the computer I had back in 2009. And I can’t be arsed to go find them.

Instead, here are a few of the other screenies I came across while looking for the ones you’re not going to see.

Guild Wars 2

I didn’t play it for more than a few weeks, but it sure was pretty.

FFXIV – A Realm Reborn

After a very unfortunate beta and first launch (tried one and therefore skipped the other), FFXIV came back better, stronger and faster. I thought I’d play it until the earth got swallowed by the sun, but like so many other MMOs I’ve played in the last decade, it didn’t stick. I’m not sure why, because I have very fond memories of it — aside from the need to do dungeons to progress the main story whether I wanted to or not — but as I wrote elsewhere I think that has a lot more to do with me and the lack of a constant group of known-people (friends, even) to play with than with any flaws in the game itself.

…Aaaand, that’s 50 (52 for the nit-picky). If Thanksgiving weekend food-excess and torpor allow, I might post a few more before November becomes December, but don’t count on it. Thank God for IntPiPoMo, or I might not have posted at all this month! Ahhh Blaugust, where art thou?

Happy Thankstuffing, US folks. Belated Thanksgiving, Canadia folks. Booyah, everyone else.

IntPiPoMo – Dragon Ages

November 20, 2015 Ysharros_SC

[For the benefit of Gamer Girl’s sanity, these are pix 22-43.]

I have not finished a single one of the Dragon Age games, but I still enjoyed the hell out of what time I spent in them — which is almost none for DA:Inq, but I’m sure I’ll get to it eventually; it pouts at me every time I open Origin and then click on the Sims 4. And I have literally five million screenshots from the various games, which in non-hyperbole-land translates to somewhere around 1,000. Which is still quite a lot.

So here are a few of them for IntPiPoMo. Click to enlarge as usual.

Dragon Age: Origins

[Edit — so I didn’t mean to put in quite so many DAO pix but seriously, they’re all awesome and they all bring back memories, which is exactly what screenshots should do. I might just have to play the game again over Thanksgiving…]

“What’s all this Ridley Scott pollen shit in the air anyway? My allergies are killing me.”

One of my favourite characters ever, looks-wise. Even though bald and tattooed isn’t usually my thing. She was just BADASS.

Another badass DAO character. Come to think of it, they were all badass, even the elves (and that’s saying something).

Yes, I really liked playing the Origin stories. Don’t judge me.

A) I’m kinda liking this bald thing. It’s a lot more comfortable under helmets. B) My armour may have totally ridiculous cleavage, but at least I’m not wearing a belt over my boobs like that witch bint up there.

But she does get all the best lines.

Shit just got real, yo.

Demon bad.

Hey hero lady, I don’t suppose you can do something about us constantly being covered in blood? My dry-cleaning and armour-scouring bills are killing me.

And of course, a dragon.. or eight.

Dragon Age 2 – The Unsubtitled

Still with the dragons?! Oh right, it’s Dragon Age…

Morrigan’s mum, also dragony, also clearly a graduate of the Maleficent School of Sartorial Style.

If the kid says “Enchantment? Enchantment!” ever, at all, where I can hear him, I’m going to gouge his eyes out with a spoon. And I’m not even sure why…

And, uh, that’s it apparently. I got a bit further than that in game but it just wasn’t grabbing me as much.

Dragon Age: Inquisition

Which is still better than how far I got in this game: maybe 3 hours and barely out of the tutorial (I think). Even so, I have 90 screenshots, which averages out to one every 2 minutes, so either I knew IntPiPoMo was coming up (a whole year down the line almost to the day), or I just thought the game was very pretty. Hell, even the “Game is loading” screen was awesome.

I should actually play this sometime, I suspect.

I’m only in the character creation section and already I’m way more badass than the other bints you made. Keep me. We will kill many things together.

Holy crap these game controls SUCK. Or YOU suck. You almost made me shoot an arrow up my own butt!

I swear, guys, I have no idea where that’s coming from!

DA:I demon – now with 25% more arachnid!

Did I die and end up in Medieval Band heaven? Well, at least the outfit’s not bad.

IntPiPoMo – Warhammer Online

November 9, 2015 Ysharros_SC

I have to do some Warhammer Online screenies, because getting into that beta and joining Casualties of War (a guild by bloggers for bloggers (and anyone else)) was what started this blog. And through this blog I’ve met millions and millions of new people — okay, a couple hundred maybe. And a few dozen of those I like a lot and am friends with (is it YOU? Is it not you? And if it isn’t you, why isn’t it you?!). And a handful of those I am now good friends with, some of them even IRL. So yeah, definite turning point that was.

Besides, it was an excruciating amount of fun, if only for a little while. It’s also the only MMO ever where I played a healer as a healer (as opposed to playing a Shadow Priest or a Feral Druid) and had fun doing it. I don’t seem to have many screenshots of Amariel the Archmage, but that’s probably because I was too busy spamming heals in scenarios to actually stop and take pictures. The pix below are therefore from Ysharros, my solo char.

I don’t remember what all the places are, but that’s ok. I remember the fun. And as a little nostalgia kick for anyone else who played, here’s a link to THE DUDE WITH THE THING. It actually applies to pretty much any PvP carry-the-thing scenario. There is one rule: KILL THE DUDE WITH THE THING.

Ysh and the Big Nasty

IntPiPoMo – LOTRO

November 4, 2015 Ysharros_SC

I tried to find just one, but LOTRO has the best landscapes of any MMO ever. Period. No, I didn’t play them all, but I’m still sure. These screenshots are 5 years old and date from my second foray into the game (I was in Beta/Launch for a while) — and even back then, with a scabbier graphics card and a much scabbier computer, the place is breathtaking, even in the low-level areas that I didn’t ever leave (I made it to… 35? maybe).

So here are half a dozen pix. It would have been 12-20 but I figured that was probably too much. Check out the LOTRO post tag for wayback-machine posts. I did enjoy the Ironman LOTRO I played for a while (= no quests! only mob grinding! arrrrrr!).

Click for larger versions.

Random landscape that I don’t remember where it is

InTiWhatNow?

November 3, 2015 Ysharros_SC

There is a new Thing in the blogosphere and it appears to be all Gamer Girl’s fault*. And I’ve never met a bandwagon I didn’t like, so…

I lie. I hate bandwagons. But I’ll get on this one, at least for today, because I’m using old TSW screenshots as my desktop wallpapers at the moment (nerd? moi?) and they’re all awesome. All of them. Every last one. But this one is especially awesome. Because nice ass, BFG, cool boots, BFG, awesome Baron Samedi hat, Big Fucking Gun (and sword) and sinister sunlight. How can sunlight be sinister? Go play The Secret World and find out.

Or buy The Park, I’m told it’s nice and scary (reviews and play footage over at Tyrannodorkus’s place). I will never know, because I like scary for about 3 seconds, or when it’s happening in print (and not on a screen). Which is why I’m forever stuck around Kingsmouth-Solomon Island-Blue Mountains in TSW. Oh well. Still great screenshots.

Here’s another one from The Park, in fact, only the TSW version. It’s from a cut-scene but that counts, right? Don’t miss the creepy little NPC waiting for me to roll on by on the left hand side.

Click for larger versions, natch.

That is all. It’s highly doubtful you’ll get 50 of these in one month. I am not having an optimistic day. Now fuck off my lawn.

———–

*Actually it wasn’t, but you can go read her post and get the actual history. Let YOUR fingers do the damn walking.

Blaugust Day 21.2 – Shadowrun: Hong Kong first screenies

August 21, 2015 Ysharros_SC

I’ve been playing Shadowrun: Hong Kong for all of an hour but it’s been super fun so far. Glad I backed this. I’ll do a proper post about it some other day because I’ve got some scum to kill and triad ladies to kowtow to.