| 11 February 2010
Overview
While he didn't participate in the Crusades himself, Dante Alighieri the poet was a member of the Guelph cavalry, in the years before he penned the three parts of one of the greatest pieces of literature in the history of the world, the Divine Comedy. This epic consisted of three parts, the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. They described a journey taken by Dante, guided by the Roman poet Virgil, and later his unrequited love Beatrice, as he became lost and misled at the midpoint of his life. He descended through hell, Virgil teaching him about each of the nine rings and some of the inhabitants within, then ascended through purgatory's nine levels and eventually into paradise's nine levels. The poems were unusual in that while they did tell a story, story telling was not their primary purpose. Instead, they served much more as a sort of roadmap to the journey, crafting through word and prose a vision that to this day defines hell, and to a lesser extent purgatory and heaven. That roadmap is the one that Visceral Games decided to illuminate with their own interpretation of Dante's Inferno.
| 01 February 2010
Overview
Batman has been a fixture in the world of DC Comics since he was created in the late 1940's, rising to become one of the trinity pillars of DC's many, MANY superheroes. Dark and brooding, though he has allies in his personal war, Batman has most often stood alone against the criminals that overrun Gotham. His personal rogues gallery includes some of the most colorful figures of villainy ever devised, from the sexy and seductive dryad-like Poison Ivy to Gotham's Crown Prince of Comedy himself, the Joker. Gotham city itself, the protectorate of the dark knight, has grown to become a living, breathing entity over the years, a creature fighting to overcome the sickness trying to devour it. And in all of Gotham, if there's one place that could be called the source of the infection, it would have to be a small island in the middle of Gotham Bay named Arkham Island… the home of Arkham Asylum.
