Remember yesterday when I promised I'd write an article? Well I did it. Surprised you, didn't I? You can find it here. And now that that is done, I have some news.

Nobody will really care too much about this one, but we finally got a new van. That's right, no more rickety bucket for us! It's a 2001 Windstar Sport and it's pretty sweet as far as I care. It's really a nice van, and it sure beats the hell out of old red. Everyone in the family is pretty worked up about it, so I figured it was important enough news to mention on the site. And since the news is out of the way, it's ranting time! I've got a monkey on my back, and it's screaming for a rant. Oh it's screaming. And it's an angry rant, too!

What the hell is with stupid kids and their shitty websites? I really have no place in ranting about something as such, as my site is very novice-style, and I just got over my huge design change, but really people. This goes out to every kid who's signed up with a free webspace provider in hopes of making a personal site with no actual relevance. I hate you all for creating such crap and polluting the already shit-on-by-not-nerds internet. Your little pages are 100% crap. You have no reason to have webspace, and I hate you for wasting the time of everyone who stumbles upon your crap.

Now you may be saying somethign along the lines of "but Ryan, your website isn't exactly purposeful or relevant to anything.", and you know what, you're right. But at least my website has stuff on it that people can use for even a small bit of entertainment. the sites that I'm talking about are a dime a hundred dozen, and I can run down every element of them without breaking a sweat.

The index page is possibly the worst. Littered with tons of gifs and usually a full MP3 (loading hell for dial-up), they have a scant "hey this is my *current buzzword* website. It's real kewl and I hopes you love it. luv ya, -*owner*" And it doesn't stray too much from that. Sometimes there might be another phrase or something describing the content of the site, which is never much. Oh yes, and it's almost always written in a terrible combination of net-speak and keyboard symbols. See my mock page for an example of this jargon.

The second page on the page list is the "all about me page. This one is always the same too, giving out every single detail of personal information that this person has, including full name, exact location, and about three trillion photos. My parents never wanted me to have a web site so that I would never put this information out on the internet, but I went and did it anyway, becasue there's one little factor that plays a big role in this. I was a 16-year-old male when I made this. Low predator rate there. Not zero, but a helluva lot lower than for 11- to 15-year-old girls, the group that makes up about 98% of the population of idiots who own these crap pages. Not only that, but these girls are flaunting all this shit about being dead sexy and how they love to get with boys and shit like that, and if you ask me, that's just demanding that they be raped. Maybe I'm jealous because I'm ugly, but these girls really need to learn a lesson.

And next, we get the "mi friendz" pages. There are usually one or two of these, and they show a bunch of pictures of all their friends. Not only is this a waste of a page (nobody cares about your friends), but they've also got all their friends' info stuffed on there as well. Maybe I'm taking this too much like a parent (How many kids have been stalked/raped because of a personal site? Not rhetorical, I'm really asking), but it angers me that people would not only tell the world who and where they are, but put out all of their friends' personal information as well.

And then there's the guestbook. Filled with words of praise from all of their stupid friends who think the site is so shit-hot. Are these people blind retards or do they just not register the lack of any actual content? It makes my blood boil that people will be proud of sites that are so crappy and that other people will actually go and tell them that it's a good site. Me, I get compliments , but I also get constructive criticism. Never has anyone just flat-out said my site sucks (which would be a respectable opinion, I know it's not as great as I want it to be), but people have commented on my writing style, what articles they liked, what articles were weak, and which parts of the site just weren't interesting to them at all. And if this were in my guestbook, I would not just delete the post and accept only praise like these kids do. I've posted many message pointing out bad points of their site and how to get around them, and every last one of those posts were deleted. To all aspiring webmasters, take advice from people who know what they're doing, God knows your site will only benefit from it.

And after all this, sometimes there are other pages, like quotes pages and random pictures pages. These are equally stupid. The quotes, no so much, if you want to make a large collection of your favorite quotes, but it's still unappealing for readers. As for random pictures pages, I have one word. Why? That is what your entire site is! Why do you have to make a whole other page for it? I'm probably being too critical about this, but if you ask anyone who has a website that isn't described in the above paragraphs, they will probably agree with me. While it is all about creating something that you like, it should still avoid looking like a piece of crap and having absolutely no content besides pictures of you and your friends. Unless you're making an online photo album, but Yahoo will do that for you for free.

Oh it's nice to have that off my chest. It's been buggin me for a long time now, and I just needed to get it out there. It is kind of comforting to know that there is a kind of website that I hate more than the blog. If I were making what I hated most, it would look pretty bad. Heh. In light of all I've typed today, here are some pictures of my puppies. They're growing quite well. On the left we have just Gizmo, and on the right are both Giz and Harley.

That's all I neeeded to get out today, and that's probably all I'll be doing for a while. I'll have the new Band of the Month pic up on the 1st, but the actual review probably won't be seen until Sunday or so. Maybe on Thursday or Friday at the earliest, but not before that for sure. I still don't know which band I'm reviewing.

I go to the cottage for four days, and look what happens. My hit counter made it to 1000! Huzzah! I am the new Webmaster Grand Champion*. I guess this deserves some kind of celebratory something. Maybe I'll learn Flash and make an animation by tomorrow. Nah, too much trying invoved with that. Instead, I'll just whip up some kind of article or something. Actually, that shouldn't be too hard... I have just recently acquired some great material...

Anywho, my birthday is in about ten days. Buy me this. Seriously. I'll be getting a scanner in no less than that amount of time, so I'll be able to add tons and tons of my "artwork" to the site for all to see and critique. I drew a few "comic strips" this weekend that I really like, so you can expect to see those up right as soon as I get that scanner. Those, and a whole art book full of crap that contains a lot of drawings and sketches, even some from years ago.

Now why am I getting all excitied about being able to scan up my art book? Well for one, I love to draw. And when I draw something that I like, I want people to see it. Drawing is my single greatest passion. I may love to play video games and writing for this site, but I love drawing even more than those. I'm very much an artist, and I guess subconsciously I started this site mainly to show off my work. And rant. I love to rant too. Not necessarily angry rants like most people do, but just ramble on about stuff that nobody would really care to hear otherwise, like this. Putting my ideas into words or pictures and putting them up for everyone to see. I really wish I could put those doodles I did this weekend up now. They're not too original or funny but I like them. It's probably because they mainly feature my oddball personality.

Getting back to things I can do now, I'll have a new article up sometime tomorrow. I promise. It will be done, come sleep or Mario Sunshine. I've been playing that a lot lately, and after five whole days sans-Cube, I'm need a lot of CC's of Nintendo goodness. I predict it'll be up either just before noon or around 5-ish. There's no way I can tell for sure, but I'm starting to think this paragraph is getting to be more procrastination than explaination. So it's off with me for now. I'll catch you alls on the flip side.

*Ryan is in no way the Webmaster Grand Champion

On a happy note, new article! But that's not all that I have to go on about today. Plenty of whining, good news and bad news will now ensue.

Nintendo Fusion Tour? Damn, I need to go! Featuring Story of the Year, Lost Prophets and My Chemical Romance? Damn I need to go! Three other decent bands? Oh why can't I go? Only the closest they're going to get to me is Minneapolis and Toronto... My birthday is soon and tickets are 20 bucks. Somebody take me! OK, the money I can handle, but I'd still need a ride and someone to go with, and that's where other people come into play. Right now it don't really matter who. I just wanna go! Having no car/license and girlfriend sucks every once in a while.

In other news, I might very well be going to see Van Halen when they come here in October. I'll be going with my dad and brother, but it's freaking Van Halen. They are the band that got me into rock n' roll. It's just something I have to do as a man and a rocker.

Better news yet, the X-Box that's been dirtying up the house has been sold! Huzzah! As soon as we get rid of these Windows-based computers, the house will be Microsoft free!

Bad news, I'm out of mini bagels. This isn't really relevant to anything, but I loved those little things.

I know there was something else I was supposed to be mentioning about now... Ah yes, Wolf Pack Productions, my favorite anime subbing group, has teamed up with Planet MegaMan to provide torrents for several entire MegaMan soundtracks. Awesome opportunity, and a wise use of your bandwidth. You know I have them all already.

That's about all that I needed to get out of my system today. Now if you don't mind, I haven't played Tales of Symphonia for like a week and it's really starting to bug me. Ryan, away!!

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.

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 upstaris 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 prviously 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-coke 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!

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 a total 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 give the 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 after I 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.

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.

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.

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...

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 form 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 bad, 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.

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.

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 game 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.