No, what truly hurts is that AMY squanders more potential than a philosophy student. Especially to me, as the game combines a favorite genre, Survival Horror, with a favorite game, ICO, and adds a dash of novelty by using a character you don’t often get to play as: an average woman ill-prepared for combat using her cunning to get by.

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Climb On Up and Talk With Me, in The Dialogue Tree! First things first. Though this blog used to be known as The Metro City Reform Committee, it has been rechristened as “The Dialogue Tree” for reasons that should be obvious: I often leaf behind the roots of my topics and branch out into fruitful [...]

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To trace the place that is space like an ace. So LAST TIME, I spent about a thousand words or so explaining stuff before getting to the danged point. But at least I was thorough, and ended up making a major point pretty early on in that intro, and it’s what we’re going delving into [...]

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The First and Foremost Frontier. LAST TIME I was discussing time, and how the usage of it, and specifically how the developers of Dark Souls and Skyrim let players manipulate time, reflected a core difference of focus and design philosophy. Letting the player have any modicum of control over the 4th dimension (aside from pausing) [...]

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LAST TIME we were here, I said I wanted to keep talking about Skyrim, and so I will. But in lieu of a neat conversation I had, I think how I’m going to talk about it is going to change a bit from my original intentions. There were two big fantasy games that came out [...]

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Hey there folks! Its been . . . a while since the Metro City Reform Committee was last called into session. I wish I could say it was due to something exciting. Like time continuum paradoxes I run into due to my future self warning me of upcoming apocalyptic events which I then spend the [...]

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Skyrim is the name of cold, northern regions of a continent called Tamriel, on a planet called Nirn; a magical land home to elves, orcs, skeleton warriors right out of a Harryhausen film, and more than enough prophecy and legend than you can shake a Tolkien at. If that level of fantasy geekery gives you acne and a dateless Saturday night just thinking about it, Skyrim is definitely not going to be your cup of mead.

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Improbably well-informed terrorists, led by an improbably super villainish man named Vladimir Makarov, have initiated World War 3 by installing a war ready Ultranationalist party to take control of Russia (MW1), and then used false flag terrorist attacks to goad them into invading the United States ala Red Dawn (MW2). Now it’s up to the player to take control of various soldiers (some of whom will perish) in order to wrest Soviet control of America’s eastern seaboard and traipse around the world trying to prevent the war from going all-out nuclear while it still rages throughout Europe.

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With all these issues aired though, Batman Arkham City can still be summarily broken down to one simple fact: it’s more Batman Arkham Asylum, with improvements across the board, more characters, and a better plot. Considering that game is deservedly hailed as one of the greatest things to come out of England since The Beatles, that’s not only an endorsement for you to simply go and enjoy it for yourself, it’s also my guarantee to end up as “Best Game of the Year” barring some sort of “Second Coming of Samus.”

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So why would anyone submit themselves to such a nightmarish test of their sanity, and drain time into such a bleak and foreboding world? Especially since the “story” is pretty much a series of footnotes to make the world come to life, the plot is a joke and the ending recalls Ghouls and Ghosts levels of “totally not worth it”? Because while it may be one of the most nightmarishly crafted experiences in gaming that you will encounter, it’s also one of the most amazingly executed. The world is truly breathtaking, and the combat is beyond superb with surprising depth while maintaining functional simplicity.

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