Afro Samurai: Hip and Artful

Take a wildly popular manga series, Afro Samurai, that melds hip hop sensibilities with the ancient Japanese samurai tradition and make it into a game? Oh god, not another game set up merely to pump cash into the wallets of the series creators… But wait! What’s this? It actually looks fantastic? No. It can’t be!

Game’s got styyyyyyyyle.

Something that is sadly lacking from a lot of newer games. Now it’s all about making it as realistic as possible, as graphically challenging as possible, down to the minutest detail…games like Afro Samurai, Eco, and Okami are so pitifully few and far between, but they, more than any other games out there, truly represent the “games as art” slogan that we’re all supposed to be supporting and shouting from the rooftops.

Here’s one that we can really get excited about, provided that Namco Bandai sticks to the characters…er…roots and lets the mish mash of cultural representations do its thang.