The Two Game Showcase!

The Blog To Win Two Game Showcase!

Hey everyone, I’ve had this idea in my head for a while, but now I’m putting it out there.

This is the two game showcase which, simply put, is you trying to sum up your taste in games in two video games.  They don’t have to be your two favorite games, or the ones you’ve played the most, ( but hey, they might be the two games you’ve played the most/favorites) but rather, just the ones that you feel do a good job encompassing what you love about gaming.

So how do you add to this?

1. Find two games and one screenshot of each (or I can find them for you)

2. Write Two to three paragraphs worth of text. (try to stay in the 20-500 word range for each entry)

3. If you want stuff like pictures in the text, like this: message me, we can make it work.

4. Send it to mashtowin@gmail.com and I’ll put it up!
5. The due date is November 6th (Sunday) 2011. 

Just as an example, I'll put up mine.

Kam's Two Game Showcase:

Rhythm Tengoku Gold

 

Rhythm Tengoku is a melting pot of everything I like. The graphics are the perfect blend of old school sprites and new school pop art. Each of the songs are (for the most part) wonderful, only made better due to how interactive they are. And the entire game is about keeping beat,  usually in really fun ways, like making love potions, and winning a drumming duel.

I don’t know, something about this game wins me over. It’s so elegantly simple in design, but it never comes off as shallow. The whole thing just feels like the perfect game to show my love for the kind of exclusive strangeness video games have.

Seriously, few games (especially few modern games) do such a good job taking an idea you could write on a bar napkin, (keep the beat) and turn into engrossing timesinks. I could go on talking about why I love this series for a long time, but instead I’ll sum it up:  Rhythm Tengoku is the best kind of simple fun, a perfect way to shake off a bad mood, and well, a great video game.

The Last Blade 2

If Rhythm Tengoku represents all the randomness and spontaneous creativity games have; then Last Blade 2 represents the opposite side of the equation. Last Blade shows how a game can be obsessively refined.

Everything about this game is beautiful. The music, the animation, everything.  This is the only game I’ve played that almost feels alive. You can almost feel the embers of the burning building, hear the roar of the massive waterfall, and see how much painstaking detail the artists put into sunset of a barren field.  Backing this all up is Senno Aki’s amazingly confident character design; which to me, is still the gold standard of fighting game character design.

Honestly, this is one of two fighting games that has everything I love about the genre. The fights are always tense, not in a Melty Blood/Guilty Gear adrenaline rush kind of tense, but a methodical, “blink and you’ll die” tense. In a time where all fighting games now either use ugly 2.5D models or go overboard with moe, Last Blade 2’s elegance and somber atmosphere still stand out.

It’s an amazing fighting game, not only being SNK’s best, but also the greatest samurai game of all time.