When Citizen Kane: The Video Game was announced a year ago by publisher Square-Enix, disgust was essentially universally expressed by my colleagues at IGN, from popcorn fanatics to all out cineastes, at the thought of some third-rate shovelware-producing unknowns like Epicenter Studios.

Who the hell are they to cash in on red herrings and to crap all over a filmic legacy? This was really run-of-the-mill and hackneyed cynical prejudice that every film fan and gamer held, though.

In an idiosyncratic move, Square-Enix also steadfastly refused to show the game prior to the release date—a move that made the game be viewed even more intensely as unnecessary and awful. It is a brand of such a prestige, and they just brush it aside? That goes against every tenet of Marketing & Common Sense 101!

In a way, the story is similar to a real-life Silent Hill, replete with the haunting, proverbial and distorted reality that accurately mimics our worst fears and biggest desires—and how the two can often be intertwined.

It’s Citizen Kane which means it is Oscar-caliber; it is far beyond that, the game tells an fantastically unfantastically epic and multifaceted tale of the United States comparable to Philip Roth’s postmodern masterwork American Pastoral. Loosely based on the film in strict adherence, the game’s original tale will certainly please fans.

Imagine if the ghost of David Lynch besieged your favorite console controller, you would have this game’s intoxicating and naturalistically uninviting control scheme which will frustrate, abhor and cause much rejoicement.

Steel Battalion meets Wii Fit but on your controller and without the hulking plastic peripherals is what the controls could perhaps be described as.

The graphics are nothing short of unfurled visual onasis, an innovative blitzkrieg of beauty that never lets up in a manner bordering on relentless. And the style is indebted to the noir aesthetics of your, which the game renders immaculately.

But it turns out the marketing by anti-marketing, was for the best. Gaming grammar may not quite be the same after the cognizant, cogent gameplay of this game. This game has a little of everything, like Grand Theft Auto IV, but on steroids and far more incredible. The game creates a nonpareil kinetic bond, whether you like or not.

Quite literally but also metaphorically, Citizen Kane: The Video Game is the Citizen Kane of video games—a marvelously applaudable feat that gallantly contorts with the poise and consistence of a second-year community college dance appreciation professor as she stoutheartedly gallops on the morbidly determined divinity to provide a blitzkrieg of introspection into the most tepid slice of Americana.

[Alex Litel can be reached at alexlitel@gmail.com and occasionally found at alexlitel.blogspot.com.]