Upon booting up Deadlock, Valve's latest MOBA/hero-shooter hybrid, players are treated to a hell of a visual: the New York City skyline plunged in shadows, illuminated only by the windows of its skyscrapers and a series of occult sigils. One in particular sits above the tallest building in the shot, and above it, a dark swirl builds in the clouds; ghastly pigeons perch on a nearby roof, emitting an eerie, green glow. There's clearly magic at work here, and it keeps sucking me back into the orbit of Deadlock's "Cursed Apple."If you were to ask me, I'd tell you that New York City has always been a touch magical. At least, I was frequently led to believe it is. As a boy, I read books like Suzanne Collins' Gregor the Overlander, which imagined a vast Underland just beneath New York City's surface filled with humans, giant talking rats, and bats named after figures from Greek mythology and history. I also came up on Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series, which always supposed that Manhattan's skyline was merely a facade for the new home of Mt. Olympus, and that the larger-than-life figures and monsters of Greek mythology were not only real, but around every corner, disguised by a supernatural mist.Plenty of other fiction has played with the trope of there being a magical society underneath the city as well. Look no further than Remedy Games' Control and its upcoming sequel, Resonant. In that world, the Federal Bureau of Control operates out of an imposing and impossible brutalist structure called The Oldest House that, despite being in the middle of Manhattan, magically conceals itself and all the supernatural goings-on occurring inside its shifting halls. Even Dimension 20's two seasons of The Unsleeping City deals with the thin veil between the mundane and the magical in New York City, and films like Night at the Museum have posited that when the city that never sleeps does in fact grab a wink, our most precious touchstones and pieces of history come to life and play behind our backs.Continue Reading at GameSpot