One Shots: Up close and very personal
I am pleased as punch today because several of you took me up on the screenshot challenge to get an "up close and personal" picture of an enemy. Without stealth or a sniper scope, this is a very tricky proposition, but even so, three of you came out with the photographic proof.
First up is reader Wolfger, who escaped by the skin of his teeth in Guild Wars 2. "Here's a shot of Brewer Foster getting up in the face of one of the game's favorite loot piñatas, the champion boar in Queensdale. It catches the beast reeling from a blast as our hero is facing it down with a... slingshot?"
Mmm... anyone want a ham dinner? Either way, scoot closer to your monitor and prepare to have your eyeballs blown from the awesome images to come in this week's edition of One Shots!
Just when your heart can't take any more excitement, meet a foe that doesn't even have a working heart to begin with! Reader Takofanes went on the scene in Champions Online to capture the following picture of an undead villain with bad breath and an even badder attitude.
"This lich is behind the events of the Blood Moon," Takofanes writes. "He even goes as far as to control the zombified versions of heroes who perished in the Battle of Detroit all those years ago. I was pretty lucky (or unlucky) to grab this screen because this particular instance of the encounter was bugged, making the big guy untargetable."
Have we thanked our developers enough for their steadfast devotion to bringing us plus-sized insects in every MMO we visit? I think not. It's a labor of love and passion, and I wonder what trauma in their past caused these men and women to take it out on the playerbase this way.
"Here's a close-up screenshot of an Architect in RIFT's Dendrome territory," reader Bill submitted. "Players of the game will be familiar with these bugs since one of the daily quests involves killing 100 of them. Mostly they travel in roaming packs, so it's not as tough as it might sound."
Reader Dirty Klingon has our final screenshot, this one not of an enemy but of a player-built landscape in Landmark. As the closed beta is heating up, I expect more of you to send us in cool-looking shots from this title!
"I was heading to check out a group build advertised on Twitter when I came across this building," he said. "That's a solid two or so kilometers away from me! It was late at night, so you can only barely make out the epic 13-claim city behind it!"
Our screenshot challenge this week is to submit a few pictures of your favorite in-game hangouts, past or present, with an explanation as to what you enjoyed about that area. I can't wait to see them!
Want to be featured in a future edition of One Shots? Send your favorite MMO screenshots to oneshots@massively.com, and don't forget to include your name, the name of the game, and a description of the scene. Large, colorful, UI-free shots that tell a story and really show off the game make for the best images. Look ma, we brought back One Shots!
