Disaster movies make blowing up cities pervertedly entertaining. But, one in particular seems to be ground zero (too soon?) for destruction: New York City.

Cloverfield's monster left the whole of the city's skyscraper a slanted heap of scrap metal. Armageddon rained space crap all over Central Park residents (before moving on to the rest of the world). Jake Gyllenhaal saved whatever was left of the public library after a freaky ice storm in The Day After Tomorrow. And now we're seeing the same in video games with Activision's Prototype being just the most recent example. Protagonist Alex Mercer gains shapeshifting powers after an outbreak of a deadly virus threatens to kill everyone. 

But, why is the Big Apple such a breeding ground for all of this mayhem? We wanted answers, so we walked briskly toward the offices of one Chris Ansell, director of Studio Marketing at Radical Entertainment and asked him why they chose NYC for the aforementioned Mr. Mercer's playground. We said, "Tell us what we want to know, or else this random baby gets it," and we're happy to announce that the baby—we named him Megatron—is still alive. Here are his three reasons for killing virtual New Yorkers (other than contributing to the creation of (Sex and the City):

YOU KNOW IT
"It's perhaps the most famous city in the world and is instantly recognizable to anyone who see's it, even in passing. One reason we chose NYC was that it just screams 'adventure' when you look at it's skyline and that was fertile ground for a shapeshifting anti-hero such as Alex Mercer."

YOU CAN SQUISH THE ANTS
"The sheer noise, density of people and cars and amount of random shit that surrounds an everyday existence in New York lends itself perfectly to a video game. Previous games set in NYC were presenting areas like say, Times Square, with no more than ten characters walking around. That's definitely NOT the New York that we wanted to portray in Prototype. When Alex lets his biggest attacks explode, we wanted a game that showed the effects of seeing hundreds of people and cars take emergency action. In short, we wanted a realtime video game that puts the player into a game version of a blockbuster action film. We love New Yorkers, but we also love to drop Alex Mercer into the middle of them and see what happens next."

YOU CAN BE LIKE "MACHO MAN" RANDY SAVAGE ON EVEN MORE STEROIDS
"What other city has the kind of skyscrapers that enable Alex Mercer to perform an 80 story elbow-drop onto a bunch of tanks and soldiers? Case closed."