A lot of buildings in Civilization V mention that they are affected by tiles or resources "near the city", but this quality of being "near a city" is poorly-defined within the game. So what exactly does it mean? I haven't seen any in-depth articles about this topic on the web or in the game's Civilopedia, so I thought I'd outline the important bits here.

Basically, a tile is "near" a city if that city was the first city in its respective empire to claim that tile within its workable radius.

So if you have a single tile or resource that lies between two cities, and both cities' workable ranges overlap that same tile, then that tile is not "near" both cities. It is only "near" the first city that owned that tile. This means that if you go into the city management screen and assign the second city to work that tile, it may receive yield bonuses associated with any improvements or buildings that affect it (such as the stable buffing pasture resources), but the tile's contents will not be considered "near" that second city for other purposes. This includes:

• requirement of an improved Horse or Ivory to build a Circus,
• requirement of an improved Horse, Cow, or Sheep to build a Stable,
• requirement of an improved Iron to build a Forge,
• requirement of an improved Stone or Marble to build a Stone Works,
• requirement of an improved Gold or Silver to build a Mint,
• wonder production bonus from nearby Marble,
• requirement that the city be adjacent to a Mountain in order to build an Observatory,
• trade route income from resource diversity,
• and so on...

Say you have two cities (for example Rome and Antium) whose workable ranges overlap a pastured Horse. Rome was the first city to claim the Horse tile. Rome can, therefore, build a Circus (assuming Trapping has been researched). If you go to the management screen of Antium, you can assign it to work the Horse tile (which prevents Rome from being able to work that tile), but Antium still cannot build a Circus. That is, two cities cannot build a building that requires they both have the same tile.

[LEFT] Rome has annexed a tile containing horses and is building a Circus.
[RIGHT] Later, that tile overlaps with Antium's workable radius, but it cannot build a Circus because the horse was originally claimed by Rome.

Alternatively, if a resource is claimed by a city's culture, but is outside of a city's workable radius (four tiles or more away), then it never counts as "near" that city...

As most internet-savvy Silent Hill fans know, the recent rumors regarding Hideo Kojima working on a Silent Hill game are true. Konami stealthily released a hidden teaser for the project within a demo for a fake game (called "P.T.") being made by a fake studio (7780 Studios).

I don't currently own a PS4, since there haven't been any interesting games out for it yet (although Bloodborne and No Man's Sky both look like they sell me a console). As such, I was a little bit late in getting a chance to actually play the "P.T." demo, but I finally was able to play it on a friend's PS4 over the Labor Day weekend. Given my strong opinions regarding the Silent Hill franchise, I thought I'd weigh in on this whole teaser thing.

It is, however, important to note that "P.T." is just an announcement teaser, and not an actual demo. As such, it is not necessarily representative of the final game - and in fact, the demo clearly states this in the final cutscene. So the demo doesn't really tell us much about the gameplay or story of the new Silent Hill game. At least not directly. And so any conclusions that any one comes to will need to be taken with some degree of skepticism.

The hallway is almost a character in and of itself, and it is gorgeously rendered in Kojima's Fox Engine.

Considering my nature as a Silent Hill "purist", I'm skeptical and cynical about any new developments in the franchise. As such, I'm going to begin by getting my concerns and fears regarding this project out of the way...

UPDATE (September 23, 2014 3:30 PM Pacific Time):
New Silent Hills teaser video released at last week's Tokyo Game Show

Last week, Konami and Hideo Kojima presented a new teaser video for Silent Hill at the Tokyo Game Show. I was going to write a post about my impressions from this video, but there's not enough new information to warrant a whole new post. You can view the video below:

The new video is very short, and doesn't give away much in terms of the narrative direction of the new game. In fact, it's probably just another "proof of concept" project, and not actually representative of the final product.

The hallway shown does look like it could possibly be the hallway of a school (or maybe a daycare). If it is a school, could it be a return to the familiar Midwhich Elementary?..

Despite being very excited about this game and pre-ordering the collector's edition (contrary to my typical avoidance of pre-orders), it took a couple months before I was able to spend much time with it. My strategy guides for Civilization V: Brave New World was a lot of work and took up a lot of time. I was only able to play bits and pieces of Dark Souls II during that time and didn't make much progress. I was hoping to have a review out in time for the PC release, but that didn't happen. Then I was hoping to publish the review before the first DLC hit, but that didn't happen either. I'll probably review the DLC later, once all three have been released.

Full disclosure: I haven't actually finished the game yet, but I do feel that I've played enough of it to be able to write a review. If completing the game changes my opinion considerably, then I will revise this review as I've done with other games in the past (including the first Dark Souls). I've also considered getting the Steam version, since it may be better than the console versions. If I do play that version, I may revise this review to include opinions on that version.

But for now, I've only played the PS3 version,

Table of Contents

• More versatile action
  • Master of the swords
  • Useful ranged weapons!
• Let there be light... Or not... It really doesn't matter
• Shaky world design
  • Compromises between Demon's Souls and Dark Souls
  • Warping around a less compact world
• A story that focuses more on the character
  • Losing your humanity bit by bit
• Online backpedaling
  • Initial release commentary
  • More Covenants, gods, and sparring leads to fewer invasions
• Failing to fit into an awkward middle-ground between two great games

Is Dark Souls II a victorious successor to a masterpiece of design and storytelling?

This is a game that caught my attention back in the beginning of the year. I was on the lookout for new horror games to whet my appetite, and the novelty of this little Indie game had me intrigued.

The teddy bear actually comes off as a bit of a creeper at the beginning of the game..

The novelty of Among the Sleep is that the player character is a two-year-old toddler. I actually think that this is a very clever conceit for a horror game. The world can be a very big, scary place for a small child, full of things that are outside of the child's control and beyond the child's understanding. A young child is completely dependent upon its parents or caregiver, which makes them inherently very vulnerable. Unfortunately, since the game is being played by adults, we can't play the game with the ignorance and naivety of a two-year-old, so we would see any real-world environment as exactly what it is: not scary.

So in order for this to work, the designers would have to be very clever in how the environments are presented. Easily he most effective part of the game is the early chapters when the child is lost in a closet and then exploring the house after waking up to find his mother and teddy are absent.

The first person perspective puts the camera very low to the ground, which makes the ordinary environments look large and menacing. The character moves slowly and clumsily (running for more than a few second results in the character falling on his face). Thus, simple hallways seem long and treacherous. Even interactions as simple as opening a door require a small amount of puzzle-solving since the character can't reach a door handle without climbing onto something. This section takes good advantage of the central concept of playing as a toddler by using the legitimate hugeness of the real world, and tapping into our own innate desire to protect and shelter children, in order to make the player feel small and vulnerable.

You even pause the game and access menus by covering your eyes with your hands! Hooray for a lack of object-permanence!

It is a promising start to the game.

But instead of expounding upon this and turning an otherwise mundane environment into an intimidating one, the design quickly shifts into a blatantly-imaginary, whimsical dreamscape. This disconnect from reality suddenly shatters the immersion of the child character, and squanders the inherent novelty of the game's central concept...

The mother plays an important role in the narrative,
but the player doesn't interact with her long enough to develop any attachment to her.

Sunset on the beach at Carlsbad, California.

Time sure does whiz by when you're busy. This year, I have been unusually busy. You all know that I've been neck-deep in Civilization V for about a year now writing strategy guides. I've also had a lot of home maintenance and repairs come up (but there's always so much more to do). I've been working on a stressful project at work. And my social life has also been surprisingly busy.

I was also recently stung by a scorpion in my home. The little bastard crawled up my pant leg and got me 3 or 4 times on the shin and inner thigh before I was able to kill it. Scorpion stings are really painful! That was not a pleasant morning. But supposedly I took it "like a champ".

Little bastard stung my leg 3 or 4 times!

I ended up sitting with a pack of ice under my leg the entire day. If I removed the ice, my leg would instantly feel like it was being stabbed with flaming hot pokers. Fortunately, I had a pain reliever to help me sleep, and the pain was mostly gone by the following morning.

I do not recommend a scorpion sting, no matter how much you want an excuse to take a three-day-weekend!

At least now I know that I'm not allergic to the sting of the common desert scorpion!

Beach view from the hotel.

Anyway, I had some time off of work the following week for a vacation, and I feel that it was well-deserved.

The original plan was to go camping in Yosemite, but my girlfriend and I had to scrap that plan on account of the park being on fire.

So instead, we decided to take a relaxing trip to the California beach at her favorite vacation spot: Carlsbad, California. No, not the one in New Mexico with the cave; it's the one half an hour north of San Diego..

I've never been to Carlsbad before, and I'm not a huge fan of the beach in general, but it was a very pleasant place to spend a week. We had a nice room in a hotel just across the street from the beach. The weather was comfortable - in the high 70's with a breeze - which is a great relief from the heat of the desert!