For Halloween this year, and in anticipation of Konami announcing new Silent Hill titles, I have adapted an old blog post about the Lakeview Hotel of Silent Hill 2 into a YouTube video essay. The video essay includes some revisions, including clarifications of certain points, further explanation of some of the assumptions and head canon that go into my interpretations, and so forth.

This video was available exclusively to Patrons for 2 weeks prior to its public release. If you would like to support my content creation, and get perks such as early access to content, please check out my Patreon page and consider becoming a contributor. And be sure to take the Patron entry survey to tell me which content you like the most, so that I can try to produce more of that type of content.

Editing of the video and its release to Patrons was completed a couple days before Konami announced its upcoming livestream in which it would announce new games, so I sadly did not know about the new slate of Silent Hill games (including the official announcement and trailer of the Silent Hill 2 remake). At the time of releasing this video, all of that was still rumor -- and not entirely convincing rumor, considering the bevy of Silent Hill rumors that have been floating around since the cancellation of Hideo Kojima's Silent Hills all the way back in 2015.

I recently posted a new video to my YouTube channel about my frustrations with the design of Control's "challenging" gameplay. I'm not going to transcribe the entire video here on the blog because most of what is in the video is already in my previous written review of the game.

In summary, the video compares the "tough but fair" design philosophy of From Software's games (most notably, Dark Souls) with the way that difficulty is implemented in Control. Even though I found Control to be a much easier game overall, and I suffered far fewer deaths in Control compared to Dark Souls, I did feel that Control lacked that "tough but fair" feeling that Dark Souls is famous for. Control uses a lot of seemingly cheap tricks to artificially inflate the difficulty of the game. If deliberate, then they are cheap tricks. If not deliberate, then they are faulty game design. I may not have died as often in Control, but the few deaths that I did suffer rarely felt deserved.

The video also contrasts Control's healing system with that of Doom (2016) and Bloodborne. All three games seem to be trying to encourage fast-paced, aggressive play by rewarding the player with health for relentlessly assailing the enemy. Yet this intent doesn't come through as clearly in Control because the player needs to be close to where the enemy dies in order to pick up the health, but most of Control's action is done at medium or long range. Doom and Bloodborne, however, give health to the player when the player performs melee attacks, ensuring that even if the health is dropped on the ground as a pickup, that the player is always close enough to immediately get it if they need it.

One thing that I neglected to mention in the actual video, but which I want to add here, is that Control also has enemies with hit-scan weapons. Most enemies have machine guns that instantly damage the player if the enemy has line of sight. Attacks are not always projectiles that travel across the arena and which can be dodged, blocked, or otherwise avoided. This means that exposing yourself to crossfire is almost certain death if your health is critical in Control, and it contributes to the player needing to slow things down and play cautiously and defensively, instead of maintaining that fast-paced, aggressive play.

Last year, I put up a poll asking my Patrons what topic they would like me to discuss in a video critique for the 2020 series of independent football video games. At the time, I only had a handful of Patrons, and the winning topic (which won by a single vote) was to discuss the "football knowledge" of Axis Football 2020 and Maximum Football 2020. At first, I wasn't sure if there would be enough for me to talk about, but I ended up having plenty of criticism. I broke the critique up into three broad topics, which were further divided up into sub topics. Each major topic received a video, and altogether they added up to over two hours -- the length of a feature film!

At the time that this is posted, only my Patrons had been given the link to the third video in the series. I'm posting this blog a few days before the final video is scheduled to go public on YouTube, so that my loyal blog readers can also have early access to the new content. There is also a new poll available on my Patreon page asking which topic(s) I should cover for the fall 2021 indie football game season.

I'm not going to reproduce a transcript of the entire video series in writing here, but I will summarize each, with each video embedded in the corresponding section.

First, I want to point out that the criticisms in these videos may seem harsh. These are small, independent studios with only a few developers and limited money and resources. I can't expect them to produce games with the polish and production quality of EA or 2k. But that being said, both games are trying to compete in the "simulation" football market. If we are going to take them seriously as simulation football games, then I believe that we should give these games the same level of scrutiny that we would give to a game published by EA or 2k. We can do so while still acknowledging that these games are coming from smaller studios, and we can set our expectations accordingly. I don't expect Axis or Canuck to address all of the issues that I point out overnight, but I still want to point them out in the hopes that they will be addressed in future iterations of the games.

Topic I: Play Design and Concepts As Old As Football

The first video topic was the design of play concepts in each game.

Axis Football and Maximum Football currently do not do a great job of replicating certain common play concepts. I started by demonstrating how neither game properly models timing routes, especially, short, quick routes that are common in west coast schemes. If you press the button to throw the ball to a receiver prior to the receiver completing his route, the quarterback in both games will throw the ball in the direction that the receiver is running (at the moment the button is pressed), instead of throwing to where the route is supposed to go. If, for example, the route was a curl, and you press the receiver's button just before the receiver turns around, the QB will throw the ball down the field as if the receiver is running a streak. This can often send the ball right to the waiting hook zone defender or safety, even though the play is explicitly designed to get the ball underneath those specific coverages.

The second sub-topic in this first video was how each game implements power running plays, which have been a staple of football since its inception over a century ago. Maximum Football does not support pulling linemen, with the sole exception of one single play in the Canadian rulebooks. Even the play designer does not support the ability to add pulling linemen.

Axis Football does have pulling linemen, but they don't work quite right. Blocking schemes aren't designed to isolate or "trap" certain defensive players, which means that plays like Traps, Counters, and Power plays do not create the running seams that they are designed to create.

Hi readers,

It has been brought to my attention that the "Contact page is not working properly, and I am not receiving emails sent through that page. I migrated the blog over to a new hosting server a couple years ago, so the problem may have begun then -- even though I tested it, and it worked at the time. I'm not sure. If you've tried using the "Contact" page to send me an email in the past year or two, I did not receive the message. I was not ignoring you, and I hope you do not take it personally.

I'm going to investigate this issue when I have the time and hopefully fix it soon. I apologize for the inconvenience.

In the meantime, if you need to get a hold of me, I recommend that you do one of the following:

• If the message is OK to be seen publicly, post it in the comments of this page.
• Otherwise, send me a PM at twitter.com/MegaBearsFan, or at youtube.com/user/MegaBearsFan/, or through my Patreon page. I will most likely see any messages sent to those accounts.

UPDATE I've tried testing the Contact page, and it seems to work sometimes. Some emails go through; others do not. I have yet to be able to determine why that is the case. Emails from actual readers have not been received, but I have a spam box loaded with advertisements and solicitations from French companies. I'll continue investigating as time permits, and will update my readers once I have the Contact page working reliably. In the meantime, I encourage you to continue posting comments, or use the contact methods listed above.

Civilization VI's third expansion, Gathering Storm recently released and has added a handful of new civilizations and leaders. I am hoping to write a strategy for each of them, but I also want to continue to write guides for the civilizations that were already in the game. I put up a poll on my Patreon page for my patrons to vote on which civ(s) they would like to see. The three top vote-getters (from all the three people who voted) were Khmer, Aztec, and Norway. It's been a while since I've done a strategy for a religion-oriented civ, so I thought I'd do a strategy for Jayavarman VII of the Khmer. The Khmer were present as a playable civilization in Civilization IV's Beyond the Sword expansion, but they were not present in Civilization V. They appeared as a DLC civ prior to Rise & Fall's release, but this strategy should work for players of the new Gathering Storm expansion as well.

The city of Angkor, the capital of the Angkor Empire (also called the Khmer Empire), is believed to be the largest pre-industrial urban center in the world, stretching for roughly 400 square miles and housing roughly 0.1% of the entire global population at its zenith. This empire controlled most of mainland southeast Asia from the ninth century CE to the 15th century CE, reaching its zenith between the 11th and 13th centuries. Many impressive ruins still stand in the site of Angkor, and many have been restored by local archaeological organizations and UNESCO, including the impressive Angkor Wat, the largest single religious monument in the world. Satellite imagery has also revealed an intricate network of irrigation channels which were likely used to manage the regions unpredictable monsoons, as well as to support the population.

Around 1150 CE, the kingdom of Angkor was invaded by the neighboring Cham empires, who succeeded at toppling the capital. General Mahaparamasaugata (believed to already be over the age of 60) lead a successful campaign to push the Cham out of the Khmer capital, and he ascended to the throne in order to continue the war and conquer much of the Champa territory. He relocated the capital to Angkor Thom, where large monuments were constructed in his honor, including the temple of Bayon. He went on to re-unify the empire, building a network of roads connecting every major town, complete with rest-houses every 9 miles and hospitals for travelers. He reigned successfully until his death at the impressively-ripe old age 97 or 98, and is regarded as the last great king of Cambodia. He was posthumously re-named Jayavarman VII, after a line of Cambodia's greatest kings.

DISCLAIMER:
Civilization VI is still a "living game". Strategies for the game (and for specific leaders and civs) may change as Firaxis applies balance patches, introduces new features, or expands the game through further DLC or expansion packs, or as the Civ community discovers new strategies or exploits. As such, the following strategy guide may change from time to time. I will try to keep it up-to-date, and will make notations whenever changes are made. I'll also post links in the official 2K forums and CivFanatics, where I'll also report any changes made. If possible and practical, I will try to retain the original content of the strategy for posterity.

I welcome any feedback or suggestions that readers wish to offer. Feel free to post on the linked forums, or by posting a comment at the bottom of the page.

This guide is up to date as of the release of the Gathering Storm expansion (ver. 1.0.0.314) (Antarctic Late Summer Patch, April 2019)

Khmer is a strong religious civ who gets extra food from Holy Sites, and extra faith from Aqueducts, as well as other bonuses to food and amenity. It can build and support large populations in its cities, and gets relics from its missionaries and apostles much more frequently, which can contribute to a culture victory.

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