DVD Empire is pulling out of the video game... err, game. They've posted quite a scathing letter outlining why they made the decision, and it makes for very interesting reading into how the video game market works... albeit from jaded participants.

The good news is that they've got a 20% off clearance sale...

Read the letter.

In retrospect, I shouldn't have been all that surprised. After all, nobody likes it when they visit one of their favorite sites on the Web and find it looks completely different from what was there yesterday. Still, I was caught off guard when saw what seemed like an endless stream of posts on the TG Forumz pleading for us to change Tom's Hardware Guide back to the old design. I couldn't understand some of the comments from longtime Tom's readers; for example, they were upset we ditched the Forumz ticker on the front page, which listed links for the most recent posts.

Still, I was perplexed that most people didn't like the new design, arguing that that it was too bland, hard to navigate and lacked the personality of the old design (which can still be found at Tom's Hardware Guide U.K. & Ireland for the time being). As a result, we resurrected the Forumz ticker and are also planning on a few other tweaks and changes to the site in regards to readers' suggestions and complaints.

After reading and responding to more than 10 pages of posted feedback, it began to dawn on me why there was such a backlash. I and my THG co-workers knew this was coming and had seen various versions of the redesign over the last several months, so it was no surprise to us. But most of these readers had no idea the redesign was coming. Therefore, it was like walking into their house and finding all the furniture rearranged with new paint on the walls. That's the kind of personal connection that people have with the Web. At my old jobs in the world of print journalism, you could redesign the newspaper and magazine, constantly change the color schemes, layout, sections and fonts and very few people seemed to care.

The Web is a different world. And I can certainly relate. For about 10 years now I've been a faithful visitor of Yahoo Sports. I found it to be a great resource for NCAA basketball coverage, which I needed for my fantasy league. Plus, the site always loaded quickly because it wasn't bogged down with a lot of junk like video and banners and enormous images. It was basically a "Plain Jane" meat-and-potatoes kind of Web site - never flashy but always reliable and easy to navigate. But Yahoo decided to give its Sports section a major overhaul recently and now the site looks more like ESPN.com, which is so busy with photos and slick graphics that you can barely find the headlines and section tabs.

I resisted the Yahoo Sports change - after all, what was wrong with the old site? Well, from my perspective as a user, nothing was wrong with it at all. But then I started thinking like an editor, and I came to a different conclusion. The old Yahoo Sports had an amateurish design that lacked a professional feel, and that's not a good thing. From a journalistic perspective, if a site doesn't look professional (or "corporate," as some THG readers wrote) then it won't be taken seriously by the industries and people the site covers, nor will it garner interest from advertisers. And that's the kind of stuff that can't put a news media site out of business.

Eventually, I came around on the new Yahoo Sports design. I still don't think it's great, but I gave it enough time to learn the new navigation and layout. And I understand that the old design was getting, well, old and needed a more mature update. Oh well.

Anyway, we're continuing to make changes and improvements to Tom's Hardware Guide, as well as our other sites such as Gear Digest, TwitchGuru and TG Daily. Hopefully, they'll make everyone happy (though I doubt it). In the meantime, please continue to give us feedback, suggestions and constructive criticism.

Delays are pretty much standard practice in the game development world. But that doesn't mean I have to like it.

Word just broke that Valve has pushed back the release date for Half-Life 2: Episode 2 from its intended summer release to "fall 2007" or autumn, if you prefer. This isn't good news for a couple reasons. First, I like Episode 1 quite a bit and it had a killer cliff-hanger. Two, with Ritual Entertainment being bought by casual game maker MumboJumbo, it's possible that the SiN Episodes may be discontinued, which would leave Valve and the HL2 franchise carrying the torch for episodic gaming.

And third, the game has already been delayed from its initial release date of Q1 2007 to the summer. Now it's been pushed back again. If Valve hits the new release date -- and there's guarantee it will -- then Episode 2 will be out more than a year after Episode 1 was released (June 1 last year). That's not good news for episodic gaming. After all, part of the reason developers are in favor of episodic gaming is because it allows them to churn out smaller amounts of content in less time. Thus, gamers would only have to wait months, not years, for sequels to their favorite games. And game developers themselves could relax a bit more a and enjoy a higher quality of life instead of being swamped for 2-3 years under a mammoth blockbuster project.

That doesn't appear to be the case now, and it worries me. And what's even worse is that I have to wait another 8-10 months to find out what happens to Alyx Vance. Aaaarrrggghhh!!!!!!

The PC demo for the spiritual successor to Total Annihilation came out this week, and Chris Taylor's new RTS (real-time strategy) game Supreme Commander looks and plays just like you'd expect a Total Annihilation sequel to play.  If you're unfamiliar with Total Annihilation, then you missed one of the legendary RTS games.  TA was released in 1997 from Chris Taylor and Cavedog Entertainment and was the first RTS to feature 3D versions of its all-robot armies.  It wasn't the graphics or the story that made it a fantastic game, though, it was the carnage.  TA games were heavy on action and the ruined husks of dead robots would literally cover the ground as the game went on (they were recoverable as resources).   The original unit count was modest, but Cavedog released downloadable units on their site that could be installed into the game.  The eventual list of available units became almost ridiculous.  Since the economic model was set up with infinite resources (meaning the resource points on the map could never run out), games between seasoned players would usually degrade into a stalemate, but they were still a lot of fun.

From what I can see in the Supreme Commander demo so far, Taylor and Gas Powered Games have taken all the ideas from Total Annihilation (big maps, lots of robots, production queues) and upgraded them with a new graphics engine, which brings me to the downside.  Supreme Commander will crush lesser systems.  Maybe not while playing the demo, but the maps in the full version are enormous and each side can have up to about 500 units each.  Having a dual-core processor, 2GB of RAM, and lots of video memory may become necessary for gamers who want to experience all Supreme Commander has to offer.  Players with big displays and high resolutions have a tactical advantage because they can see more of the map without scrolling (not to mention the dual-screen support if you have two monitors).  The game does allow you to zoom out to an overall map reducing your units to strategic icons while still allowing full control, but when you scroll into the big battles the user-interface really gets in the way.  I wish that Gas Powered Games took a cue from The Battle for Middle-Earth series and gone the way of reducing the user-interface to context sensitive pop-up menus.  This giant bar at the bottom of the screen in Supreme Commander is really intrusive.  Despite this complaint, it could turn out to be the Total Annihilation sequel we've all been demanding for the past ten years.  It is scheduled for release on February 20^th.

Yes, yes, I stole this off the internet, various sources including this one. But it's funny, so we're publishing it. Kudos to whomever first came up with this. Given the preoccupation with cows, I'd be willing to bet he or she was Irish.

Sheep are for the Isle of Man people.

Government:

FEUDALISM: You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.

PURE SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. You have to take care of all of the cows. The government gives you as much milk as you need.

BUREAUCRATIC SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and put them in a barn with everyone else's cows. They are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and eggs as the regulations say you need.

FASCISM: You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them and sells you the milk.

PURE COMMUNISM: You have two cows. Your neighbors help you take care of them, and you all share the milk.

RUSSIAN COMMUNISM: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk.

CAMBODIAN COMMUNISM: You have two cows. The government takes both of them and shoots you.

DICTATORSHIP: You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you.

PURE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbors decide who gets the milk.

REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.

BUREAUCRACY: You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. Then it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.

PURE ANARCHY: You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbors try to take the cows and kill you.

LIBERTARIAN/ANARCHO-CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.

SURREALISM: You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

Economy:

TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM:
You have two cows.
You sell one and buy a bull. Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows. You sell them and retire on the income.

AN AMERICAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows. Later, you hire a consultant to analyze why the cow dropped dead.

A FRENCH CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You go on strike because you want three cows.

A JAPANESE CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. You then create a clever cow cartoon image called Cowkimon and market them World-Wide.

A GERMAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You reengineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.

AN ITALIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows
But you don't know where they are. You break for lunch.

A RUSSIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You count them and learn you have five cows. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. You count them again and learn you have 2 cows. You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.

A SWISS CORPORATION:
You have 5000 cows
None of which belong to you. You charge others for storing them.

A CHINESE CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You have 300 people milking them. You claim full employment, high bovine productivity, and arrest the newsman who reported the numbers.

AN INDIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You worship them.

A BRITISH CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
Both are mad.

AN IRISH FARMER:
You have two cows.
You claim government subsidies for eight cows

The reviews for God of War II are out (despite the game not being available until March), and, no surprise to me, they are extremely positive.  I'm an enormous fan of God of War, but it's hard to pick any one thing that makes it such a fantastic game.  It's a strange thing when all the pieces of a game fall into such wonderful alignment, but in the case of God of War, I knew after playing it for a short time that it was going to be something special.  What lessons can be learned from this?  How can developers be inspired by the success of God of War?  First of all, it was an original property as opposed to a sequel.  I love sequels as much as the next guy, but sequels rarely break ground or introduce new concepts.  They just improve on the original idea (and, yes, I see the irony in the fact that this whole discussion is started by a sequel that basically improves on the original, but we're talking about the first game here).  God of War took the action platform game and ramped everything up as high as it would go.  It was ridiculously violent, the bosses were huge, and just when you thought you scraped through a fight by the skin of your teeth, you find that you still have to fight three more of the same monster at the same time.  Second is the star of the game, Kratos himself.  This is a fantastic game character in every aspect.  He has a unique look, an original backstory, devastating moves, awesome signature weapons, a clear motivation, and is excellently voiced by actor T.C. Carson.  Kratos is the kind of character that could also carry a comic.  Third, the gameplay is easy to learn and difficult to master.  Getting Kratos to wield the Blades of Chaos in a satisfying way is easy in the start of the game, but as you face the more difficult enemies in later levels, you're forced to string together more combos.  Hitting those high-hit combos is also extremely satisfying.  Lastly, the musical score is incredible.  Many games feature a strong musical component these days, but the God of War music really pushes you along.  When you hear that theme run through the music, you feel that you should probably be kicking more ass now. 

So I'm really looking forward to God of War II on the PS2.  Shortly after the release of two new consoles, I am most looking forward to a game for a console released almost seven years ago.  Just a reminder that all the fancy pants new graphics and hardware only amount to so much, and sometimes you don't want to "really feel like I'm swinging a bat!!"

IGN has posted a story claiming that J.J. Abrams ("Lost", "Alias", "Mission: Impossible III") is in place to direct Stephen King's The Dark Tower series in live action form.  Now, take this with a grain of salt since no official word has been given yet, but King, who regularly writes for Entertainment Weekly did a story for EW with J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof where they each professed much admiration for the other's work.  That does lend some legitamacy to the claim, but it could all just be heresay.

I'm not sure how happy I am about this.  On the one hand, I'd love to see a live action, slavishly loyal adaptation as an HBO series, and with Abrams' television success that seems possible.  I don't think movies would work, and I don't think they'd be able to get the approval to do seven, which means they would cut elements out (probably the flashbacks, which are my favorite sections).  I'm not really a fan of Abrams' television shows.  I tried watching "Alias", but after reading that the ending didn't go anywhere, I lost interest.  The same thing happened with "Lost".  I know you "Lost" fans out there love your conspiracy theories, but trust me on this, guys...that show is going nowhere.  They are making it up as they go along.  I'll wait to judge J.J. until after I see some of this (if it is really happening).  I do think he has a good eye for direction, and as long as they don't steer too far from the books, I'll probably be on board.  My vote for Roland is Viggo Mortensen.

I know this is extraordinarily optimistic, but I think this looks pretty cool.  The first "Resident Evil" movie was decent, but I thought the second one was an absolute waste.  I'm not sure what "Extinction" is about, but from the trailer, it looks like it has some big set pieces in a post-Apocalyptic Las Vegas.  It's getting more and more difficult to gauge a movie's quality from the trailer, because the art of the trailer is getting better and better.  For instance, the 300 trailer is one of the best trailers I've seen in a long time, but I'm not convinced the movie will be as good.  There are several films out there where I've enjoyed the trailers more than the movie.  Whether it be the music accompaniment or the editing, sometimes stories work better as trailers.

So, the trailer for "Resident Evil: Extinction" is good.  I have no idea about the movie. 

Think James Cameron's been laying around on his enormous pile of Titanic money
and goofin' off for the past ten years? Think again. The self-proclaimed King of
the World is back and ready to reclaim the throne with his next film Avatar.

Cameron wrote the treatment for Avatar, which takes place 150 years in the
future on an alien planet, before Titanic, but put the project aside because the
technology wasn't quite up to speed to create what he wanted. A decade later the
technology still isn't completely there, but he's tackling it regardless.

Cameron told Time, "I couldn't make this when I wrote it...it wasn't technically
possible. At a certain point I said, the technology may not 100% mature, but
it's time." Cameron's also upping the ante by making the film in 3D. "If people
are going to get out of their homes and go to the cinema, the cinema better show
them something it hasn't in the past," he continued (Joe Letteri and Weta Digial
will be doing the CG effects for the film, although Dennis Muren at ILM was also
in the running).

As always with any Cameron film, he's creating new technology as well. For
Avatar, Cameron has created "3D fusion" cameras that can combine live action and
CG in real time. No more waiting for the CG to come back from the effects house.
Jim Gianopulos, the co-chairman of Fox told the New York Times, "This will
launch an entire new way of seeing and exhibiting movies...Jim's not just a
filmmaker, every one of his films have pushed the envelope, in aesthetic and in
technology. This is an astounding undertaking, and one only Jim could do justice
to."

Avatar, which will be shot on digital video, is set for a Summer 2009 release.
Cameron told the Hollywood Reporter he feels there will be 1,000 digital
projection theaters by the end of this year, and 1,500 to 2,000 digital 3D
theaters by Avatar's release. He told Aint-It-Cool-News that he should have a
cut of the film by this November, "and then the rest of the time after that is
just going to be me working with the effects guys day in and day out tog et the
visual caliber up to the highest level."

Cameron told the Reporter the reason he hasn't made a film in ten years is it
took him that long to find a project hard enough to tackle. Screenwriter Jay
Cocks, who co-wrote Strange Days with Cameron and worked on Titanic uncredited,
says, "Jim is the only guy I know who will take his first vacation in ten years
and go to Antarctica in the depths of winter! He's a guy who needs perpetual
challenge." Avatar should provide plenty.

If Martin Scorsese finally wins Best Director this weekend, he won't be the only
Italian maestro to receive a long overdue Academy Award. Composer Ennio
Morricone will also receive an honorary Oscar for a lifetime of incredible music.
His amazing scores include The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in
the West, 1900, Cinema Paradiso, The Mission, and The Untouchables, among many,
many more.

Besides his honorary Oscar, there's been a critical mass of Morricone tributes
as of late, including his first ever American appearance at Radio City Music
Hall where he conducted some of his greatest scores. Six films he scored also
recently played at the Museum of Modern Art, and twenty-six films he scored
recently played at the Film Forum in New York. Metallica have opened their
concerts with "The Ecstasy of Gold," from The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, since
1983, and their cover of "Gold" will be on the tribute album, We All Love Ennio
Morricone.

Morricone has scored hundreds of films, his entire filmography on imdb.com
prints out to 28 pages, but he recently told the New York Times, "compared to
Classical composers like Bach, Frescobaldi, Palestrina or Mozart, I would define
myself as unemployed." As the Times reported, he doesn't compose at the piano,
but goes straight from his brain to the scoring page when he writes. One can
only imagine how incredible a tour of his brain would sound.

Yet Morricone remains modest about his accomplishments, calling the art form
he's generously contributed to "the strange miracle of music" in the Wall Street
Journal. Like Sergio Leone, who worked hand in hand with Morricone, Ennio wasn't
afraid to experiment and break the rules. James Hetfield of Metallica told the
New York Times, "He has taken so many risks, and his music is not polished
whatsoever. It's very rude and blatant...There's so much character in it, and I
appreciate that in such a polished world of soundtracks." What can we add except,
Bravo Ennio, Bravo.

THE SET LIST FROM MORRICONE'S RADIO CITY MUSIC HALL PERFORMANCE:

"LA VITTA E LA LEGGENDA"
THE UNTOUCHABLES
ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA
Deborah's Theme - Poverty - Once Upon a Time in America
The Legend of 1900

NUOVA CINEMA PARADISO

MALENA

"THE MODERNITY OF MYTH IN SERGIO LEONE'S CINEMA"
THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY
ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST
A FISTFUL OF DYNAMITE
THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY - "THE ECSTASY OF THE GOLD"

"SOCIAL CINEMA"
VITTIME DI GUERRA
ABOLISSON from QUEMADA

"SCATTERED SHEETS"
H2 S
IL CLAN DEI SICILIANI (from THE SICILIAN CLAN)
METTI UNA SERA A CENA
UNO CHE GRITA AMORE from Metti Una Sera a Cena (from CHE!)
COME MADALENA

THE MISSION
GABRIEL'S OBOE
MISSION
IN EARTH AS IN HEAVEN

Set List Courtesy of Chris Poggoli.

Gomez has been one of my favorite bands since I first heard the album "Liquid Skin" back in 1999. For the life of me, I cannot understand why they're not more popular. They have a die hard following of fans, but they haven't broken through to become a household name. I can count on one hand the number of times I've heard a Gomez tune on the radio. Maybe that's a good thing, because I can still get to see the band play smaller, more intimate venues like the Wiltern in Los Angeles.

Gomez played the Wiltern last night and it was one of the best concerts I've ever seen, right up there with Metallica at Foxborough Stadium in 1993; Phish at (hard to pick one, but here goes...) the University of Virginia in 1994; Rush at Great Woods in 1997; Radiohead at Suffolk Downs in 2001; Wilco at the Orpheum in 2002; and Los Lobos every time they play the Paradise in Boston.

The first Gomez show I saw in New York years ago probably belongs in that list too, but last night's show was better. It reminded me why, with Phish retiring, there is no better live band than Gomez. They jam, they improvise, and they play with an infectious enthusiasm rarely seen by most acts today. Some of the highlights of last night's gig included kicking the show off with "Here Comes the Breeze," rocking, jam-filled renditions of "How We Operate" and "Blue Moon Rising," and an encore of "Devil Will Ride," which might be my favorite tune.

I love this band and everything about them!

Scanning the headlines about Martin Scorsese's long overdue Oscar win, it was
hard to find one without the word FINALLY in it. And indeed, when Martin
Scorsese did finally win the Academy Award for Best Director, with typical
Scorsese humor he asked, "Could you double-check the envelope?" Who could blame
him? This was his sixth nomination, and as he told the press backstage, "I've
just been used to not winning, so I just make the movies, guys..."

At least one Oscar pundit claimed a little gold guy for Scorsese this year would
be a lock, and Dana Stevens of slate.com predicted, "If Scorsese doesn't win
this award at long bloody last, he might as well leave the Kodak Theatre in
sackcloth and ashes, holding a sign that reads 'The End Is Nigh.'" Well,
thankfully that didn't happen.

Of course he's always wanted an Academy Award, and often would remind
interviewers that many greats, such as Hitchcock and Welles, never got one. With
Harvey Weinstein's Oscar shenanigans turning the Academy race into all out war,
Warner Brothers chose to play it cool with The Departed, and it paid off big
time.

The Associated Press reported that Scorsese didn't mind the wait, because if he
had won earlier, who knows how it would have changed the course of his career?
"Thank God we've been able to make so many films over the last 36 years without
winning awards. But we've been able to get the pictures made." He also said,
"I'm glad it's taken this long. It's been worth it."

When CNN posted the news, they ran a photo of Scorsese backstage at the
microphone with him arms stretched out wide, looking relaxed and relieved at
finally winning cinema's greatest prize. You could just imagine him belting out,
"My Way."

The Best & Worst Movies of 2006 Here are the best movies of 2006 - at least, the ones that I saw:

Inside Man: Okay, I'm a Spike Lee fan boy, but I can honestly say this is one of his best. No one remembers this genre picture with style and substance, and its shame.

United 93: Speechless. Stunned. Horrified. Inspired. And yet I knew what was coming every step of the way. That's how great this movie is.

The Descent: The scariest movie I've seen since 28 Days Later, maybe scarier. Do yourself a favor and watch the U.K. version, not the U.S., for the real ending.

Brick: A detective noir thriller graphed onto a high school movie, Brick is one of the most original and stylish movies I've seen in years.

Hard Candy: I'm not going to write a single word about this movie other than 'Go see it.'

Clerks II: Kevin Smith will never make another Clerks, and that's okay, because he can still make excellent comedies like Clerks II that are sharper than virtually all other comedies.

Little Miss Sunshine: A fantastic, poignant comedy from start to finish. Memorable characters, great writing, superb acting - what more could you want?

The Departed: Martin Scorcese's best film since Goodfellas - though I'm still puzzled as to how Mark Wahlberg got an Oscar nomination out of all those great actors.

Casino Royale: I'm still partial to GoldenEye, but Daniel Craig, Eva Green and a smart script made this Bond film the best.

[Blank]: I'm saving a spot for "Pan's Labyrinth," "The Fountain" or "Children of Men," which I've seen yet.

Runners Up: Half Nelson, The Prestige, Down in the Valley, An Inconvenient Truth, Slither, Grandman's Boy, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Jackass Number Two, This Film is Not Yet Rated. Didn't See: Borat, Dream Girls, Letters from Iwo Jima, The Queen, The Pursuit of Happyness, The Last King of Scotland, or The Devil Wears Prada.

Worst Movies:

Hostel: Boring and not remotely scary. Eli Roth did far better with Cabin Fever.

Snakes on a Plane: A bad big budget studio movie trying to be a hip B-movie.

Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest: Great CGI effects and stunts, but otherwise a complete rambling mess that made no sense.

V for Vendetta: S for Sucks.

Lady in the Water: An arrogant M. Night Shamylan completely loses touch.

American Dreamz: Horrendous send-up of American Idol and the Bush Adminstration.

Posiedon: Could be the worst remake of the year.

X-Men: The Last Stand: Like a dagger in my gut, this one was so disappointing. The Godfather III of comic book movies.

p>Independent game developer Introversion Software announced today that it is currently developing a multiplayer version of its award-winning Darwinia title. The new multiplayer version, dubbed Multiwinia, is scheduled for a 2008 release as a stand-alone title. According to Introversion, the game will be considerably different than the original Darwinia, which won three awards at the Independent Games Festival last March, including the Seumas McNally Grand Prize. Multiwinia will feature both co-operative and competitive battles as well as new challenges and levels.

"We've always known that Darwinia would naturally evolve into an incredible multiplayer game and right from day one I'd had visions of massive Darwinian armies converging for the ultimate Darwinian death-fest," Chris Delay, co- founder and creative director of Introversion Software, in a press statement. "Multiwinia will be a great game, not only for those who knew and loved Darwinia, but also for complete newcomers."

Introversion also said that developer John Knottenbelt has taken on the role of lead designer of Multiwinia to allow Delay to begin work on other new projects. Last fall, Introversion released DEFCON, the anticipated follow-up to Darwinia. DEFCON, a nuclear war simulation inspired by the movie "WarGames," has since garnered critical acclaim and a strong following. For more on Introversion and DEFCON, click here.