Gaming cosplay articles are where substandard gaming bloggers show how much they wish they worked on Maxim (For Men), or Poorly Constructed Sexual Metaphors By People Who’ve Never Been Involved In The Process (For Virgins). For every awesomely engineered Big Daddy there are ten thousand shots of Cammy’s ass described in terms which would make a horny chef blush, and every single one seems to think they’re the first to think of saying how they’d like to “Cannon Drill” it.

That’s why we’re looking at five fan-made efforts with nary a sex organ in sight. Which means we’re not only alone among cosplay collections, but may be unique among websites.

1. Amazing TF2

Ryan Crasmussen and Grep Peltz utterly utterly destroy Hollywood in a single shot, and despite holding a rocket launcher that refers to a camera. Movies can’t make game characters look good despite access to millions of dollars and Milla Jovovich (who can make orange plastic dungarees look amazing). Ryan and Grep managed it in their spare time.

You didn’t/won’t look this good on your wedding day.

The most important is the incredible photography work of Alex Tkatcheva: unlike everyone else on the internet, it’s nice to see some people understand there’s a reason professionals don’t use blurmatic cameraphones to share sights with the world..

This may be the first time in history anyone has happily exclaimed “Look at those grenades!”

2. Really Left 4 Dead

If these guys looked any realer I’d start headshotting hoodies on sight

Seattelite cinephiles, as well as sounding like they watch movies in space, are part of the mix making zombie production Night Zero. It’s as photorealistic as a comic can be because it’s actually real photos, shot on location (and more professionally than you’ve ever done anything) before being touched up for final release. The sign of a real creators, however, is how they don’t hide from other incredible products in the same field - they engage with them.

She’s now the obsessive fantasy of at least one person. Welcome to the internet.

They turned their talents to Left 4 Dead, recreating the ultimate zombie killing game in gritty detail and releasing the shots just to prove how good they are. That’s how you make it online, and now far more people know about Night Zero - and think it’s cooler - than if they’d whined about doing it first or “better”.

I’ve never put this much effort into Left 4 Dead and killing zombies is my job.

3. Counter-Strike

This may be the greatest cosplay of all time.

Sure, anyone can collect the necessary clothes, spend ninety-nine cents on the fakest gun since you drew one on Etch-a-Sketch*, and hunch around a convention like “Keyboard-based Spine Deformation” and “Dodging bullets” were the same thing, but this man has the true spirit. He genuinely looks like he wants to kill you. That’s a simmering cauldron of repression, rage, and hastily assembled equipment intended for just one function. He couldn’t me more of a Counter-Strike terrorist if his elbows were pointed.

You must suppress every junior high urge to not give him back his orange-tagged backpack.

*Escher-style angled clip projecting out to one side extra!

4. The Heavy

At conventions TF2 cosplay isn’t just popular, it’s practically a nationality (just count the number of scouts vs the number of Ghanans at any event). Something about the slick cartoon style just lends itself to awesome group shots, but none have ever beaten this:

And just this once, we’ll admit to staring open mouthed at that beautiful girl: Sascha. If you were looking at anything but the minigun, there’s something wrong with you. Props are where most TF2 attempts fall flat (RED or BLU clothes aren’t that hard to find), but one is so un-flat it’s a fizzy Mt Everest. The reast of the Heavy costume is also excellent, is appallingly good, but if she’d turned up in a business suit and a judge’s wig Natascha alone would still have made it work.

BONUS: From the same photoset by frzdragon, more backstabbing than Judas Iscariot in a Tom Clancy novel.

5. GoldenEye

Transcending mere costumes is College Humor, who truly capture the spirit of GoldenEye - one of the most important games in FPS history. The N64’s incredible Bond game kicked the entire concept of shooting people in the ass (the manliest sentence you’ll read today) and showed that controllers could be tolerated in a good enough game long before Halo. They don’t just dress the part, they don’t just play the characters, they truly capture everything about the game in two minutes.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 21st, 2010 at 8:29 am and is filed under CS ProMod News, Counter-Strike: 1.6 News, Counter-Strike: Source News, Left4Dead News, Team Fortress 2 News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.