In the nick of time!

GorillaMask.net has gone through a major change. It’s been totally revamped, and you probably wouldn’t recognize it at a glance. And to think that I stole the site layout for myself just more than a month ago. That certainly was close. I guess this means that I’m not directly copying anyone anymore? Oh well.

There is more than that little note afoot, however. Two things, to be exact. Firstly, and it’ll be more important to my friends than anyone who’s stumbled across the site and has kept reading for whatever reason, I’m going to stop drawing new Spare! comics. As much as I loved doing it, I’ve realized that this comic endeavour is more of a big joke than anything else. Ever since I started reading Penny Arcade I’ve wanted to write my own webcomic. Reading Real Life made me consider starting a new site devoted to the comic, but there are two major obstacles in my way:

1) My source material is gone. With no more school to attend (for the moment), I’ve got nothing to write comics about. Sure, I could try to make some up on my own, but looking back at the fictional ones that I’ve already done, they’re some of the weakest ones there (bar the “imaginary girlfriend” saga, I really like those ones) and I’m just not good at writing funny. If someone would like to write for me, that would be excellent, but out of the people I know, and no offense to you guys, we’d need a whole team of writers to get anything done.

2) No webspace. Yes, I have a few options, but none of them sit quite right with me. Making another site on Angelfire is not something I want to do. Hell, I can’t wait to find an alternative for this one. I hate having to rely on free providers. A friend’s webspace? No. That way, I lose a lot of immediate control. And I wouldn’t be able to put up spur-of-the-moment stuff like this. It just wouldn’t be right. I could make my hard drive into a web server thing, but then my site would be a number, and people are less likely to remember a number than a name (not that “Torrential Equilibrium” is easy to spell either…). Someday, I’ll buy space and a domain name, but as it stands, that won’t be happening soon.

So as it stands, the comic is dead. I’ve begun the slow and painful process of Painticizing them, but that’s not looking too bright as an option. Nobody would respect a webcomic done in Paint. I’m probably gonna get a scanner for/around my birthday, so I’ll at least have them all up for viewage in a month or so.

Now, onto the other thing I needed to rant about. Damn, I went on so long about the comic that I’ve forgotten. Well, I’ll just leave this then. My brothers and I have all decided to forsake our Christmas presents this year, and will instead be getting a new computer (hopefully) sometime in November or early December. Yes, it’s a long time away still, but I’m pretty pumped. Obviously, there aren’t any ideas on the table yet in regards to specs or manufacturer, but it’ll certainly be able to run Doom 3, so I think that “the shit” is a pretty good ballpark description. Personally, I’m most looking forward to the possibly huge (looking at 200+ GB) hard drive. Living with ~10 (considering space for other users) gigabytes of storage space is very hard these days, what with current games taking anywhere between 500MBs and 6GBs each. Now that I’ve let out enough geek for the day, I think I’ll go do something productive, like mowing the lawn. Yeah right.

Ah, Hell. Now I remember. Planet MegaMan is currently offering MP3s of the entire soundtrack to RockMan X Command Mission. A pretty good bunch of tunes, if I do say so. Not quite as great as the original NES games’ tracks, but enough to tide me over until the game is released over here in the West. Go and download them now if you want ’em, as they probably won’t be up there long.

Boo curfew

My dad has received the title “Computer Nazi”.

All summer, my brothers and I have all been vying for time on the internet-ready PC. It’s usually theirs during the day, and every couple nights, I manage to get on during the split-second that they try to switch off. I like to think they’re working against me. So one of us is usually on until the wee hours of the morning. Just look at most of my posting times.

My parents do not like this trend, and have reinstated a new regiment so that my brothers will get back to a normal sleep schedule before they go back to school. The new rule is that no-one is allowed on the computer after midnight. Bullshit? Yes. But they never really enforced it until last night.

I was casually flipping through the Real Life archives, and my dad came down at exactly midnight, and hovered over me until the PC was turned off. I tried a menacing glare, but no such luck. I gave up and sought to come back an hour or so later when he’d be gone to bed. I went upstairs to take a bathroom break, and as I turned back, I saw him unplugging the computer.

Now you see that giving him the nazi title is totally justified. I don’t see why this rule should affect me, as I’m not going back to school right away. In fact, I’m trying to get the midnight shift at the local Tim Horton’s.

The situation was dire, but as I pondered a way for revenge, I found my loophole. If he had only taken the power cable, I could simply steal the modem and hook it up to my PC with my TV’s cable line. I had been wanting to try this out for a while now, and never had the right opportunity, so now was definitely the day of reckoning.

As things turned out though, he had not stolen the power cable, as I had previously assumed, but in its stead, he had removed the cable that connects the modem to the PC. This was a stupid move, not so much because my plot was foiled, but because his rule was breakable. The PC was still in working order, there was just no internet access. So I was free to do all the non-internet things I wanted. Unfortunately, the internet is like cyber-cocaine for some (me included), and a PC seems totally useless without it. Gah, this blows.

But on the upside, it’s been a month now since I redesigned the site, and I must say it’s been a huge success. Not only have I been posting a lot more (it helps that posts are easier to write than articles), but my hit counter has been steadily increasing as well. For a while before I changed the site, it was stuck at around 800 for days, and within a month, it’s gone up by approximately 150. That’s pretty awesome for a site that nobody knows about. And that means the 1000 hit celebration is due any day now!

TV notes

Being the deadbeat I am, I’ve been spending most of my summer days watching TV. I usually don’t watch a lot, but I go on little TV benders every once in a while. And lately, I’ve just picked up on a lot of things that I think might need a little discussing, or just some things that pass through my head.

  • Win Ben Stein’s Money must be on about ten times on the Comedy Network every single day. I like the show, but playing it every hour and a half is a bit much. and it’s always the same episode all day. At least I can watch it once alone, then again with people and look smart because I know all the answers. Normally, I’d skip out on multiple repeats in a single day, but Nancy’s damn hot.
  • The Bobroom is awesome.
  • I think that “Rolo Chocolate Cone” commercial is bullshit. Either that guy is really freaking desperate, or he’s just atotal douche. I’ve seen the specialty ice cream freezers, and those things are at least 4 bucks. And he just lets that harpy take it? I rarely givethe time of day without expecting something in return, and he’s just giving away expensive-ass ice cream? What a douche.
  • Will the slogan change to “I Am Half-Canadian” because of the Coors-Molson merge?Odd Job Jack needs more/better time slots. It’s only on one day of the week (kinda), and that’s Saturday night. At 10:30. And most people are doing something on Saturday night at 10 (but not me… sadly). Still, I manage to miss it often, and then my only other chance is at 5:30 AM. If I didn’t mind stayng up all night and sleeping the day away, this would be okay, but that’s just not the case.
  • I saw Daryn Jones (from Buzz) on “The Comedy Network Presents” the other night, and suffice to say, he was fantastic. Uh, fantatically funny, that is. The guy is a genius, totally killing any other comics I’ve seen in a while. And the best part is that his parents were right at the front of the audience, and he was going on about them and their buttplugs for the longest time. How many other people would have the balls to do such a thing? I sure wouldn’t.
  • I’m watching this commercial for the new movie “Without A Paddle”, and I’m thinking that it’s just a modernized (so to speak) copy of City Slickers. Just look at the premise: three guys having life troubles go out on an adventure to find themselves. Sound familiar? I swear, if they mention anything about a do-over…
  • TBS may censor a lot of stuff, but damned if I don’t love its weekday lineup of Friends, Everybody Loves Raymond and Seinfeld. I get all the TV elements I need for the day in one sitting: Joey, smartass old people, and Seinfeld. Ah, I’ll never get tired of Peter Boyle.
  • How is it that I still haven’t seen Kill Bill?
  • I was just channel flipping when I stopped on this one good show. It was about this college professor or something teaching his students about sex. There was a whole lot of other things going on, and it seemed to be a first episode, so I guess everything was still in the process of setting up. Anyhow, it was a pretty good show, funny and interesting so say a couple things. Then I learned the title was “Naked Josh”. Good thing I found that out afterI watched it.
  • Brent Butt was on Comedy Now! the other night (morning at that point), and he was going on about how big his head is. Made me wonder how big mine is, and I went to measure it. Soon as I got up, he says “You know you’ve got a big head when you want to measure it”. Dammit.
  • How can you make a Batman prequel? There would be no Batman to speak of (as I imagine that his encounter with the Joker was near the beginning of his career). Prequels are almost always a bad idea, unless it works like the Lufia games for the SNES.
  • “We’ll save the princess or die trying!”
    “Die?”
    I love it. Donald Duck rules.
  • I love Teletoon. Any channel that revives both Family Guy and Futurama is a winner in my eyes. They just need to pick up the old TMNT for their “Teletoon Retro” time blocks to make everything perfect.
  • There’s that damn Cheerios commercial. You know the one where the guy is teaching his baby about football with the cheerios. You know, “You just ate my tailback”. Well, upon watching this I said to myself, that I wanted one of those, those babies. Then I realized that what I was saying was proposerous and that I certainly do not want such a thing. Upon this realization, I swiftly fell off the bed and vowed never to think such heresy again. Stupid brain. Trying to trick me again.
  • I wish “Starsky and Hutch” had been a good movie. Carmen Electra and Amy Smart just couldn’t save it alone.
  • One word: Rollitos!

And that’s pretty much everything I’ve thought while watching TV over the past month and a half. Now you have further proof of my insanity. And holy cow, I’ve been posting a lot lately. I think I’ll take a little break for a while. Oh, say three days. By that time, the new site will have been up for a month, and I’ve been thinking about something special for the occasion. So stay tuned, loyal readers. All two of you.

Of things that should come

I’ve totally forsaken sleep for it, but it brings me great joy to present you with the very first CG strip of my “Spare!” comic. I made it all by myself. Click for proper-sizedness.

As you may have been able to tell, I did it in MS Paint, like so many before it. I just don’t know how to use any of the advanced tools in Photoshop to make it look all pretty and such. But how I made it isn’t important. It’s why I made it. And Hell if I’m going to explain that.

I said I’d post again today, but this isn’t what I’d intended to put up. See, I was reading my new favorite webcomic “Real Life”, and decided I should go back to producing my own comic. Then I realized that I’ve totally lost all will and patience to draw. The problem is: I need a class to slack off in. Seriously, math class was one of my most productive comic-drawing times. But now that I’ve defeated high school, I have no proper comic making environment. It’s just not the same, and I discovered while making this one, that if I were doing it on the computer rather than by hand, I’d have a much easier time (thank the G man for copy/paste!) producing it. So I guess that I’ll have to learn Photoshop skills if you ever want to see more than this little teaser of sorts.

A little behind the scenes commentary: The last line used to be different, but I felt this new one was more sarcastic, and therefore would better suit the character’s personality. To see the original ending, you’ll have to get your mitts on my holy notebook or wait for the DVD.

I think that’s about it. I’ll post again tomorrow. I hope.

This is so morally wrong

Okay, before we continue, I’m going to make it clear that what I’m about to do is very, very wrong. It goes against my policy of not invading other people’s privacy, but I’m going to do it anyway. Besides, do files that are left out in the open on a PC even count as private stuff? Yeah, I know they’re supposed to be between only those who made them, but when you save your chat logs, you’re pretty much looking to give them away to those who have nothing better to do than go through every folder on the hard drive. I guess if I do have a purpose, it’s simply to show how bad kids are at typing. The fact that the horrible “slang” is intended is just the icing on the cake of my hatred. What can I say? I can’t stand net-speak.

So if you personally have a problem with looking at these, then by all means – don’t. I put them up here for the sake of light entertainment and not to reveal any deep and scarring secrets (although…), so make your own decisions, but you’re responsible for what you read.

(NB: the files have been removed. It was just so… not cool of me to put them there in the first place)

This first one is the long one. It’s just babbling between my brother and his girlfriend. Like I said, these aren’t anything really important.

I just wanted the link from this, really. There’s nothing else of interest.

Very debatable if this should be here. It’s kinda personal, and something I probably should confront him about. But, it’s for the sake of me exposing something else to be pissed at: IM chain messages. God, it just gets worse and worse every day.

There you have it. Nothing else of specific interest, or even a proper length to waste time with. Tomorrow or later today I’ll post something else that is a little more revealing of my own state of mind. And sanity. Oh I feel like something’s gonna bite me in the ass for doing this…

New feature! Band of the Month!

Yeah, I think I need a new feature for the site. It really doesn’t have that much of it’s own personality yet. Mostly just taking ideas from other people and changing them up a little. But this one, I thought up all on my own. Yeah. Okay, it’s not original, but I don’t read any sites that have the same thing, so I’ll call it my own for now.

So here’s a brief rundown of how it’s going to work. Basically, every month I pick a band to do a short review on (and I mean short. I’m not sure how to review bands/music.). I guess for the most part, it’ll be whatever band I’m listening to the most at the time. Unless I’m still listening to the same thing two months in a row, in which case I’ll choose one at random. To kick off this little feature, I present to you My Chemical Romance.

I’ve honestly only been listening to them for 4 or 5 days, but I cannot deny that MCR is one kickass band. Plainly stated, they rock. Solid guitar work, some impressive drumming, and excellent vocals all wrap themselves together quite nicely to form one helluva band. The genre issue is a little up in the air with these guys, as they sound like they could be either punk or rock, while having a slight tinge of goth and/or emo in the lyrics. In the end though, genre doesn’t matter much, because they still kick ass.

A relatively new band, MCR has realeased a grand total of two albums in the last two years. While their debut I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love is a lot more praised by their fans, the new one, Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge is in my opinion just as good as the original. While I haven’t heard most of the songs on Three Cheers…, what I have heard is just as impressive to me as the stuff off their first disc. I guess a good place to start would be taking a look at some of the songs.

I’ve listened to the entirety of I Brought You My Bullets… and there are a lot of things to pick out. First off, the apparent most popular song (and incidentally the first I listened to), “Vampires Will Never Hurt you” is a great song, but I don’t really see what the hype is about. I personally prefer the upbeat and ironically worded “Headfirst for Halos”. It’s fast, almost poppy (while retaining the hardcore), and the lyrics are the exact opposite. I’m not going to get into it much more, but they contrast with the music in an almost artsy kind of way. Another song that I like quite a bit is “Skylines and Turnstiles”. It’s mostly your basic rock, and I just find it more catchy than most of the other songs. “Drowning Lessons” is damn sweet too, but I find “Cubicles” to be a little irritating. An overall great album, with a good bit of variety without changing the way they play. Very nicely done.

At this point in time, I’ve only listened to two songs from Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, but I love the songs. One, “The Ghost of You” is one of those slow songs that isn’t a slow long, like Lifehouse’s “Hanging by a Moment”. It’s got a lot of emotion in it, and some of the best vocals that frontman Gerard Way has ever sung. The other song “You Know What They Do to Guys Like Us in Prison” is a real grab bag of sounds. It starts off sounding reminiscent of Hoobastank’s “Can I Buy You a Drink”, but then quickly goes to a much faster paced and takes on a tone suited well to speed metal. Well, maybe not that fast, but the chorus is pretty damn fast. Oh, and the song kicks absolute ass. If you’ve never heard of MCR before and want to download something to see what they’re like, go with this one. It’s my favourite song from the guys, and it’s just (for lack of a better word) “fun” to listen to.

Now, I need to point out some general things about the band. The one thing that I really notice is that a lot of their songs have obscenely long titles. If I had a band, I’d use almost all one word titles, but that’s just me. I don’t know why, but this bugs me. I’ve never seen any bands with such a tendency, but then again, I haven’t listened to a lot of lesser-known bands. The other thing that I took note of right away is that most of the time, the vocals are particularly screamy. I’m not a fan of bands that scream a lot (how the Hell do I like Slipknot?), but it’s not too common to be annoying, so I’ve no trouble tolerating it. Lastly, it’s often hard to make out the lyrics. Not quite AFI hard, but if you like to know what they’re saying, you’re going to go through some frustration if you try to figure them out on your own. Me, I like to know the words so I can sing along, so I’m slightly annoyed, but like the screaming, I can brush it off easily.

Overall, My Chemical Romance is an excellent band, and for the sake of keeping it real, it would be a lot better off if they didn’t get the mass attention that ruins a lot of bands (see Good Charlotte, Serial Joe, etc.). They’re definitely on my “good enough to buy” list, and I suggest going to check them out right away, cause I’m pretty confident that 100% of my readership has never heard of ’em. Now, can anyone tell me if I’m supposed to use underline for album titles and quotation marks for song titles? I did it the other way for the HIM CD review, and I have no clue which way it’s supposed to be. I just never know. I’d use italics, but I find they’re too hard to make out with this font at this size.

Anyhow, that’s this month’s “Band of the Month”, and I hope that I can do this for at least a couple months before I forget about it. It seems like a good idea to me, and I like the feature, so I’ll be keeping up with it as best as I can.

He’s back in business, folks

It’s been a long damn time, but I’ve finally willed up the attention span to finish another of those full-length articles that you all love and missed so much. It’s the fifth Disney World article, if you hadn’t guessed, and you can find it conveniently placed in the Articles section of the site. But you knew that already, right? It’s not like I get new visitors all the time, and if there were, the site is simple enough to navigate. But enough of me trying to make this post longer. More articles, particularly the sixth and last Disney articles, are on the way. These guys are a dying breed, what with the site’s new format working out so well, so cherish them while you have the chance.

Also, in the past few days, I’ve also added a couple links and other things to the sidebar, so make sure to give anything new to you a click. You might just find something you like. Ooh, and hits are way up since the format change, so I guess that means people like it then? Maybe I am getting new visitors? I know I’m the sole Google search that brings up “torrential” and “equilibrium” together (not the only site to contain both, but elsewhere they show up separately.) So if some naive buffon types them in on a whim: Booya! Free hit. I guess that mostly wraps up what I needed to say. Until some other time, I’m out.

Looking for a fun RPG? Look no further.

I used to enjoy RPGs. Even now, I play one every once in a while, but there’s just one little thing that’s really starting to get to me. That stupid menu-driven battle system that most of ’em use. I never thought that I needed any sort of pace, never mind a fast one, but that’s just how it is. And RPGs, my friends, are certainly not fast-paced. So it was about time that I found a game that would last me a long time, afford me a chance to play through something with more than a slight suggestion of a story, and let me go on a whole bunch of side-quests that would be useful if they could be done before the end of the game. And boy, did Namco deliver.

Tales of Symphonia is definitely my new favourite RPG of all time. It blows away the Mario RPGs, kicks Pokémon in the ass, and utterly destroys Final Fantasy. Gone are the days of mindlessly mashing the “confirm” button over and over to win the battles, and in comes the Tales series’ famous Linear Motion Battle system. In 3D. Of course, you can still just mash the same button over and over, but this can go far beyond that. The way it works, is basically like every other RPG in that you get taken to a separate field of play, where you square off against the enemy. The battlefield is in 3D, but your character functions on a 2D plane. You choose an enemy to lock-on to, and you move forward or away from that enemy. Of course, there are other baddies on the field as well, and you can change the lock-on to focus on them instead. If you’ve played Super Smash Bros, you’ll notice that the two are very similar.

So once you choose an enemy, it’s on to the fighting! But rather than simply choosing commands from a menu, you are actually in control of one of your characters. You can run, attack, jump, block, use techniques, and all sorts of other good stuff. The controls are simple, A is for basic attacks, which can be diversified with the control stick, and B does techniques, also using the control stick to use different techniques. X blocks, while tapping up on the control stick makes you jump. R is used to change your target, and the d-pad is for quick tactic changing. The Z button will allow you to use a Union attack, where your whole party unleashes a quartet of attacks upon a stunned foe. The Y button opens a menu which lets you use items and make more complex strategy changes during battle.

Symphonia’s battles are more focused on the usage of special attacks and magic than basic attacks. Of course, these skills are dictated by TP, Technique Points. You wouldn’t want to abuse them, right? While your party members will work on their own most of the time, you can map your own techs to the B button, and even set a couple commands to the C Stick. Like Smash Bros, you can have four different techniques assigned to the B button, but unlike the fighter, you can choose from a whole list of different skills. You can even choose from two different branches of skills based upon how you’re raising your characters. If your character it aligned towards the S-Type (Strike), he/she will learn more physical and damaging attacks than one aligned towards the T-Type (technique). It’s a nice way to add a little bit of customization to the game.

While you can only directly control one character at any given time, there are almost always three other characters in your party. They’re normally controlled by the AI, and I have to admit that it does a pretty good job, even though it does like to spend TP rather frivolously (but it slowly regenerates after each battle). And if you don’t like how the AI is doing, you can always (at any time, except for story sequences) go into the menu and change how they fight. You can set how they use skills, how they attack, what kind of distance they keep from the enemy and even which enemies they should attack. There are even quick settings so that you can change your whole party into a defence or attack mode at the press of a button.

Your party is all very customizable, and if you still don’t like it, plug in a few controllers and get your friends in on the action. Yep, there’s multiplayer. And it doesn’t even require everyone to have a GBA. Hooray. It does require other people who want to play, though. So while it won’t cost you extra money, you’ll have no luck if you’re the only one in your group of friends/family who likes video games. While it isn’t very clear how to set up other players, it’s as simple as plugging in a controller and setting the character to “manual” or “semi-auto” mode. There is only one little problem with the multiplayer mode, and it’s that the camera has a bad tendency to focus and zoom in on the first player. Now if player one were to be a magic using character, the camera would stay zoomed out most of the time, but if he’s playing on the front lines, well, you’re not going to see much of the other players. If you can look past this little oops, it’s really an excellent feature.

Well look at all this text, and imagine that I’ve only been talking about the battle system. Huh. Well I guess it would be best to tell you a little bit about the rest of the game. For starters, it’s the second (I think) two-disc GameCube exclusive. To translate for the casual gamer, that means it’ll take you a long time to finish it. I myself took about 50 hours to go through it once, and I missed pretty much every side-quest and optional boss. That and it’s got a hard mode and “mania” mode (which unlocks after you beat it once) to play through, so if you want to say you’ve truly seen it all, you have to play through three times. Also adding to the replay is the New Game+ feature, but it works a bit differently here. During the game, you earn GRADE in battle. You can use it to buy a few things in-game, but it’s better to save it all for the end. For once you start a new game from your finished save, you’re taken to a GRADE shop, where you can spend you hard-earned points to carry over skills, various data, money, and even get upgrades like double EXP points. Taken into account that you have to be good to accumulate a lot of GRADE, these bonuses are very useful if you don’t want to start some things from scratch (like the Collector’s Book and Monster List).

As for aesthetics, the entire game is done with a beautiful cel-shading technique. It looks even better than the Wind Waker, and I had thought that that was the pinnacle of cel-shading effects. There is a lot of hype surrounding the anime cutscenes in the game, but to tell the truth, there really aren’t that many, maybe four or five at most. And most of them are somewhat short and uneventful. The only two that stand out are the first, which is the opening video, and the last, the closing video. While they aren’t too overwhelming on the whole, they are done very nicely and fit in well with the rest of the game. Overall, the graphics are some of the nicest non-realisticness you’re ever going to see. Though it does bother me that the characters’ expressions never change. The sound, on the other hand, is a little less impressive. A lot of the game is voice-acted, and as far as I can tell, it’s done very well. The music is a bit on the down side though. The best pieces in the game are the battle themes, particularly the fights with the summon spirits. They’re all very catchy and never get old, which is good, because there is a lot of battling. The overworld/town/event music is much less enjoyable though. Not that it’s bad or anything, but it just doesn’t seem right at some times. In fact, there are a couple town themes that are downright annoying.

I’m reviewing an RPG here, so I bet you’re expecting a drawn-out impression of the plot, right? To put it simply, it’s good. I’m not the best at knowing a good story from a bad one, but Symphonia’s seems pretty sound. It starts out with the general plot all laid out for you, but as time goes on, things change and plot twists are thrown in like chocolate chips into cookie batter. There are some that will surprise you a little, but there’s a little foreshadowing for almost every twist, so nothing is going to make you fall over in shock. What really shines here is character development. All of the characters grow substantially during the course of the game, and they all manage to maintain their little tics throughout its entirety. Even most of the less-important NPCs (the ones just good enough to get names) have been given personalities that could dwarf that of any high-school jock. There are even little skits that let you in on what the characters think of each other and their quest. There are also spots where you have a chance to better (or worsen, if you so choose) the relationship between two characters.

And that’s about all that I can think to say for now. In conclusion, for the first original RPG on the GameCube, Tales of Symphonia sure cleans up for itself. This one’s got some massive potential, and keeps good the Tales name. Heck, back in the day, I thought Tales of Phantasia for the SNES was pretty awesome, and seeing how similar the two games are made me happy to see that the formula is obviously working. I may have missed them all, but if the Tales games in between Phantasia and Symphonia were as good as those two, this is definitely one series that is not to be messed with. I’d easily recommend this game to anyone who owns a GameCube. Even if you don’t like RPGs. This one’s got all the action that those other ones are missing. Yeah. Definitely go buy it. Awesome game + multiplayer option = meaty gaming goodness. That’s all you need to know. Buy or buy not. There is no rent.

BEST. CD. EVAR. And some other issues, too.

The title really says it all. I don’t buy a lot of CDs. Not to say that I burn them all (only OC Remix CDs these days…), but music just isn’t that big of a priority for me. I do listen to it a lot, but I’m rather satisfied with the library I have now. All I really want for it is to complete my Queen and HIM collections. And a couple days ago, I got one step closer. This here, if you can’t read the text on the pic, is HIM’s greatest hits CD, entitled “And Love Said No”. I can easily say that it is the best CD that I own, and possibly one of the best CDs that I’ve ever listened to. If you haven’t ever listened to HIM, go check them out right now. I know you have the tools to do so.

So why is this CD so great? Well that’s obvious. The music rocks. HIM is in a tied spot for my second favourite band (competing with Rammstein, Queen is #1) and there is nothing that could please me more than a CD comprised entirely of their best songs. “Razorblade Romance” was damn near close enough, but it does lack a couple of my favourite songs, particularly The Funeral Of Hearts. “Love Metal” was excellent too, but they both had their weaker points. This CD, as you might expect from a greatest hits CD, is indeed the finest bunch of their songs that you can find. It’s even got my three favourite songs; the aforementioned The Funeral of Hearts as well as Your Sweet 666 and Heartache Every Moment.

What’s even better, is that there are some totally new songs on the disc as well! Or at least that’s what I’ve been told. The title track, And Love Said No, is in my opinion one of the best songs ever, being possibly the catchiest rock song ever. And that’s quite a feat, as rock songs aren’t normally “catchy”. This is one you’ll probably be humming/singing for days on end, if you’re anything like myself. The other new track, a Neil Diamond cover by the name of Solitary Man is equally great. The original song is pretty good as far as old-type stuff goes, and HIM’s cover just totally blows it away. The only thing that could have possibly made the CD better would have been the inclusion of Endless Dark.

And that’s my two cents. Take a penny, leave a penny, whatever. I suggest going out to buy the disc if you know the band and like them at all, or just downloading a song or two listed above to see if you like them and then going to pick up the CD. It’s definitely worth the cash, but while I was searching for the cover, I found that there is also a 2 disc version that includes an extra track and a DVD bonus disc. I never saw this while I was looking around at music, but it’s not that big a deal. I got what I wanted, and even if I do miss out on a couple videos, I don’t mind. I still love this CD.

As for other things that I need to blab on about, I’ve noticed a couple defects in the site. For one, I don’t have a proper logo image. If anyone with any Photoshop-type skills feels like taking a little time out of their day to whip something simple up for me, I’d be very appreciative. I’d prefer to do it myself (I take great pride in being able to create great art), but I don’t have the necessary skills to make anything half decent through a digital medium. You’ve seen my art gallery.

Secondly are some things that I have absolutely no control over. The first is a little trouble that seems to pop up in the Opera browser. When I’ve table’d an image to the side of some text, it goes back to red, rather than that nice yellowy colour it is supposed to be. I’m not sure if it’s got this issue in any other browsers, but it works fine in Internet Explorer, and I’m not about to comprehend the stylesheet just so I can fix a problem that would affect a minimal amount of surfers. and the next problem stems from me using Angelfire as a web host. They’ve gotten rid of the ads, and instead have forced IE to open the search window on the side of the browser. It’ll happen each time you open a page, so you can’t close it and be done with it. Me, I’ve just pushed it as small as it will go and cope with it. After a while, it’s not so bad. I’m not sure if this affects other browsers, but it’s not such a big deal that it’ll cause mass disarray. And that’s really about it for today. I’m thinking about posting a nice review of Tales of Symphonia either tomorrow or soon and getting the rest of that Disney stuff out of the way, so make sure to check back regularly.