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     Why are we so obsessed with this city?  Okay, that was a dumb question.  Let me try this again.  Why does it feel like every game released recently has to take place in New York at some point in time?  It’s one of the biggest cities around, I get that.  It’s the center for economic power in the U.S., I get that.  But does that really justify making every single game about the place? 

     Off the top of my head, I can name Infamous, Prototype 1 and 2, Crysis 2, Grand Theft Auto IV, Resistance 3, Mortal Kombat 9, and Enslaved: Odyssey to the West as being recent games guilty of throwing New York or some New York lookalike into its fantasy setting.  Heck, one of the Modern Warfare 3 trailers shows a New York City under attack by Russian forces!  And these are only the more recent games.  I could list a few more (Deus Ex (the first one), most of the Def Jam series, etc.) that come with the standard fare setting.

Somehow this attack is WORSE than the one on D.C.!

     Maybe it’s just lost its impact on me.  Or maybe it’s never had an impact at all.  As a Southern Californian who’s never seen a lick of the state in his life, I really don’t have that strong a connection to this place that everyone talks about.  It’s like talking about Candyland, or The Fairy Kingdom, or something like that.  It’s like a fantasy setting.

     There’s nothing inherently wrong with that.  The problem for me is that this fantasy setting  keeps getting reused time and time again.  It’s getting old and stale.  I’ve seen the map so much that I probably know my way around the city more than most of my neighbors, and I’ve never even personally gone! 

     I’m actually getting sick of it.  Every time New York is destroyed or under attack we’re supposed to feel some sense of loss, or at least try and grasp the characters’ similar emotions.  But when it happens every other game it’s become more of a routine for me.

     Maybe developers want to use cityscapes more in their games, and maybe they keep using New York because it’s the prime example.  It’s not like New York is the only city, though.  I would just like for there to be some diversity in the urban development of games.  Maybe Seattle, or D.C., or San Francisco, or Los Angeles.  Those are all very large, well-developed urban areas.  I don’t get why we can’t see more of that around.

     Deus Ex: Human Revolution accomplished this task quite nicely.  It featured the locales of a futuristic Detroit, Hengsha, and Montreal, never once resorting to throwing us into the Big Apple.  And Deus Ex: HR is no slouch of a game.  With this, we know that it is indeed possible to create an imaginative urban jungle without using the N.Y.C. blueprints. 

     Is it the dawning of a future of diversified cityscapes, or just a glitch in the Long Island System?  Is anyone else sick of New York, or am I just talking crazy?  Drop a comment and please, let me know.

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