Screenshot thread

[JarlFrank]

Generic WoW clone : Conan Edition. I hate the WoWish aspects(cooldowns, stat stickie itemization, low lethality, repetitiveness for eg), but love necromancy in this game. You can sacrifice your minions for AoE fear, siphon health from then, sacrifice defense for more minions, has dozens of then to chose and as a necromancer, you can also sacrifice all minion managing capabilities for more magical power, essentially becoming a "dark cryomancer"

As shit as this game turned out to be, the worldbuilding in it great. Love how they merged REH and HPL lore in later parts of the game - how Tower of the Elephant (and whole Khitai) and the demise of Atlanteans neatly fit with Yog-Sothoth/Azathoth. The later in the game you get, the deeper into the Mythos you fall. They did a good job of scraping whatever was in original stories and translating this into HPL.

The graphics in the early stages are pretty potato (lots of low-res, stretched textures and janky buildings) though the areas don't lack atmosphere. It definitely picks up in the expansion, the writing gets better, the visuals are more polished, but there's also a ton of great set pieces and environmental storytelling. Also there are hidden quests and whole quest-chains in later parts of the game. I sticked to the game for so long (6500+ hours), just so I can see with my own eyes what's was the "coffin of stars" that was brought to the Jade Citadel or what were the Atlanteans doing underground.

Base game can look real nice even if the models and textures are shit. No cartoony shit and great art design.

It has such absolutely gorgeous art direction, I only wish it weren't an MMO because I can't stand the things.

I love Conan Exiles, there you can play on a small server with friends, or have big PvP battles, or even play solo with your own server settings (like increasing XP gain and damage to make it less of a grind).
I tried Age of Conan a decade ago but it was just too MMO grindy for my taste.

 

[jackofshadows]

Fuck, I've wasted good 5 minutes assuming those letters indicate hexadecimal system with some simple patterns (apparantely, that's not the case at all).

Does anybody know where this was ripped from? A very cool mini-game.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

artist's depiction of smaug bullying ItsChon

 

[YldrE]

Spoiler

Ace Combat 2 (1997) on PS1

A long time ago, a wise hermit told me:

I recommend both Ace Combat 2 and Ace Combat 3 (Japanese version fan-translated ofc). Ace Combat 2 imo nails that cheesy 80s Top Gun the most in terms of aesthetics

The credits just rolled on 2 (and 1 right before that).

The technology in 1 is rough but everything that makes Ace Combat is already there; 2 is the same except with upgrades where it matters (textures in particular) and more chest-thumping guitar riffs.

You can fully remap the controls and that's why they so beautifully stand the test of time. It's fair to say "I'd like to try such or such old game but I'm afraid it's going to play like shit", but custom controls avert that entirely. It's the Ace Combat you know, except with a lower poly count.

One thing I found curious: 1 ended on a flying fortress boss fight but there was none of that in 2, and come to think of it, neither in my unfinished playthrough of 3 a long time ago. Considering how ubiquitous they would become, I'd say that's the one area where these early games differ from their successors.

Wise hermit, I apologize that it took me a while to get around to it, but you were right.

Moving on to 3 of course, and this time I'm not stopping until the credits roll.

Spoiler

 

[bozia2012]

Generic WoW clone : Conan Edition. I hate the WoWish aspects(cooldowns, stat stickie itemization, low lethality, repetitiveness for eg), but love necromancy in this game. You can sacrifice your minions for AoE fear, siphon health from then, sacrifice defense for more minions, has dozens of then to chose and as a necromancer, you can also sacrifice all minion managing capabilities for more magical power, essentially becoming a "dark cryomancer"

As shit as this game turned out to be, the worldbuilding in it great. Love how they merged REH and HPL lore in later parts of the game - how Tower of the Elephant (and whole Khitai) and the demise of Atlanteans neatly fit with Yog-Sothoth/Azathoth. The later in the game you get, the deeper into the Mythos you fall. They did a good job of scraping whatever was in original stories and translating this into HPL.

The graphics in the early stages are pretty potato (lots of low-res, stretched textures and janky buildings) though the areas don't lack atmosphere. It definitely picks up in the expansion, the writing gets better, the visuals are more polished, but there's also a ton of great set pieces and environmental storytelling. Also there are hidden quests and whole quest-chains in later parts of the game. I sticked to the game for so long (6500+ hours), just so I can see with my own eyes what's was the "coffin of stars" that was brought to the Jade Citadel or what were the Atlanteans doing underground.

Base game can look real nice even if the models and textures are shit. No cartoony shit and great art design.

It has such absolutely gorgeous art direction, I only wish it weren't an MMO because I can't stand the things.

I love Conan Exiles, there you can play on a small server with friends, or have big PvP battles, or even play solo with your own server settings (like increasing XP gain and damage to make it less of a grind).
I tried Age of Conan a decade ago but it was just too MMO grindy for my taste.

Yeah, in AoC to finish the main questlines you had to raid and to raid you had to train and grind. The community was so small there were only a handful of guilds running all raid tiers. I've spent months on each boss - even though we were one of the top guilds - because a single mistake by a single person would wipe the raid and the mechanics were crazy and guarded like secret. But I wanted to see the interiors of these mystical places, see the bosses, finish the storylines.

The community spent months in House of Crom trying to uncover its big secret and it was a way to summon the Lurker at the Threshold. It was probably the hardest and most unrewarding raid boss, but how fucking rare and cool was being able to do that?

But the sad part is that worlds like this will just fade into oblivion. The same with The Secret World or [insert your favourite "live service"].

I've played like 100h of Conan Exiles, but without any DLC - I plan to get back to it and play solo and just explore that version of Hyboria again. I wish they've added a solo mode to the game - I know you can tweak the server settings, but I'd prefer something with disabled server options and specifically tweaked for solo play.

 

[JarlFrank]

But the sad part is that worlds like this will just fade into oblivion. The same with The Secret World or [insert your favourite "live service"].

That's the saddest part about MMOs. Seen plenty of screenshots of cool-looking ones back in the late 00s, the heyday of the genre. Never played most of them because of monthly fees and I was a teen who couldn't spend that kind of money. Nowadays, free community-run servers exist but the gameplay balance is geared towards groups of a dozen people doing raids together, so any kind of solo exploration is impossible.

 

[Riskbreaker]

Northern Journey

Spoiler

 

[bozia2012]

But the sad part is that worlds like this will just fade into oblivion. The same with The Secret World or [insert your favourite "live service"].

That's the saddest part about MMOs. Seen plenty of screenshots of cool-looking ones back in the late 00s, the heyday of the genre. Never played most of them because of monthly fees and I was a teen who couldn't spend that kind of money. Nowadays, free community-run servers exist but the gameplay balance is geared towards groups of a dozen people doing raids together, so any kind of solo exploration is impossible.

Community servers are also not something that just happens - you need reverse engineering and enough large community to luck out on people who have the needed skills.

I'd love to get back to Age of Conan and Secret World sometime, but I don't want to grind and be dependant on other people to play. I already had a break from Age of Conan in 2012-2014, but installed it again to just travel the game world and photograph the vistas. Sadly I was noticed by an old comrade and it ended with like 2 years of the heaviest grind ever.

 

[Abu Antar]

Yeah, playing private servers is a mixed bag. Most likely not fun alone. We're a group of four that went back to Dark Age of Camelot. While it was fun, it took more time than we had. We stuck with it for a few months. It was nostalgia galore, for better or worse.

We did the same for Warhammer Online. But unfortunately, grown up, some married, some with kids, we could barely get any time in.

The last thing we played was the Mortal Online 2 beta. I'll keep it short: The game is not for me.

All four of us bought Mount & Blade 2, to play together, but that game is a massive dissapointment, right now.

We did even play Secret World. It felt like the least time consuming game in the mmo genre (we were lttp), but it felt like there was quick progress.

Of the newer games, we played TES: Online and Guild Wars 2. While they felt polished enough, I never really felt them. Especially not GW2, which I feel is much less fun than the first game. GW2 feels like playing a Ubisoft game. On the other hand, my necromancer was fun to play, and progress was relatively quick.

These days, though, I would never play an MMO on my own, recent or old.

 

[bozia2012]

We did even play Secret World. It felt like the least time consuming game in the mmo genre (we were lttp), but it felt like there was quick progress.

I think Tokyo is still grindy (if you want to go through the dungeons to end the questline) because of the additional layer of gear, but maybe things changed. Most of the group content is telegraphed attacks with patterns - no crazy stuff like in Age of Conan - so you can beat them almost as soon as you meet the minimum gear requirements.

I'd still replay it from the beginning for the 3rd time, because the world is so cool and I want to hear Halina again.

 

[Fedora Master]

Dysmantle offers EXTRREME value for your money. This is what I explored afterr about 14 hours of play.

 

[The Decline]

View attachment 21713

Dysmantle offers EXTRREME value for your money. This is what I explored afterr about 14 hours of play.

I'm at 11 hours and my map looks like yours except I haven't done the cold north area yet.

 

[Endemic]

Dysmantle offers EXTRREME value for your money. This is what I explored afterr about 14 hours of play.

How is the crafting and combat?

 

[Fedora Master]

Dysmantle offers EXTRREME value for your money. This is what I explored afterr about 14 hours of play.

How is the crafting and combat?

"Simple but not boring" - As far as crafting goes there is always something you can improve about your character so the progression is nice and steady. Combat is mostly "strafe around and hit from behind", although there are boss fights that are more involved as well. You get plenty of tactical options like land mines to deal with stuff. It's certainly not on the level of intricacy and deadliness as Dark Souls though.

e:

\m/

 

[JDR13]

 

[felipepepe]

Ho Tu Lo Shu, really interesting open-world wuxia RPG. Has lots of non-linearity and multiple outcomes to quests, as well as good turn-based combat with action points. Only issue is that it's all machine-translated by DeepL... it's playable, but can be very messy.

Spoiler

 

[Hag]

Those imperial soldiers sure know how to make a point.

Oh well, hope they had fun.

Don't fuck with me heh !

So far great game. Good writing, fair albeit a bit RNG-heavy fights, nice world all around. Good to have a game where you have to pick your fights and sometimes know when to walk away or avert your eyes.

 

[Hag]

What's wrong with her back ? Did she had her lumbar spine hammered ? How can she wuxia-fight with a compressed lower dan-tien ?

 

[Abu Antar]

Ho Tu Lo Shu, really interesting open-world wuxia RPG. Has lots of non-linearity and multiple outcomes to quests, as well as good turn-based combat with action points. Only issue is that it's all machine-translated by DeepL... it's playable, but can be very messy.

Spoiler

It's good to see more people trying this out.

 

[Danikas]

Horse too op killed half of Rattay before my game crashed.

 

[YldrE]

Would never have expected DICE of all people to have a subcampaign where you play as a WWII German. Even the "decent guy becomes jaded and realizes he works for an army of assholes" angle is pretty modest.

 

[Blutwurstritter]

Glory to the first men to die ! Charge !

Spoiler

Time for some air support








Ready to unleash eleven barrels of hell!

The game still looks gorgeous, especially in motion.

 

[Ninja Destroyer]

Spoiler

 

[Endemic]

Horse too op killed half of Rattay before my game crashed.

One thing that struck me as odd about KCD is how uncommon spears are, and how impractical the game mechanics make them.

 

[Danikas]

One thing that struck me as odd about KCD is how uncommon spears are, and how impractical the game mechanics make them.

Bigger problem is total lack of mounted combat in a medieval setting Henry is the only one that can use a horse for more than travel something that should be improved in the sequel also no crossbows in a game that takes place in 15th century still a good game but some obvious things are missing.

If the sequel is supposed to take place during the hussite wars they need to add hand cannons into the game those weapons are omitted in almost every medieval game when in fact by the 15th century they were commonly used by armies of the time.