It took me all damn day, but there's a ton of new stuff up on the site. For one, I've updated the "crazy crap" page. Or started anyhow. It's now a page solely for the works of my buddy Steve. It's got 5 pieces on it now, three new. Most are now links. The rest will change soon enough. It's under the Articles link, to the right, and then under "From the Mind of the Steve". You can't miss it. Well, you could, but you're really be missing out. It's got some good stuff.

Secondly, what may very well be my favorite article ever (in that it's a huge blob of my favorite things) is complete. All in less than ten hours. It's huge, it's long, it's got bigass pictures. You go and enjoy that now. You may not enjoy it because you feel differently, are a Playstation fanboy, or are a dumbass (X-Box fanboy), but it's what I like, so HA! *points and laughs*

Another article will be done soon. You will come to understand it's theme in due time, should you choose to read the one mentioned above. And I'm going to buckle down and do my big CD review soon too, so stay tuned for that. It's a new year, and with it, I hope to get back to writing these articles. Work is really a big obstacle to overcome, but I guess I'll have to give up some of my Ryan time for the sake of my site. I want to keep doing it, I do, but it's just so hard to fit everything in now that I have to work and get proper sleep so I can work and not die.

So yes, that's it for this year. I hope you had a good one, and I'm sure we'll have plenty of good times in the next one. I'd like to reflect some more, but I'm trying to wrap this up so I can go and eat.. Me so hungy...

I promised you a new comic on Monday, so here you go. Pretty surprised that I actually put it up on time, aren't you. I know I am. Not that I have much more time to ramble on about shit, but you kind have to pay close attention to get what's happening in the comic. Much the opposite of what the comic is about. Oh, and I created a little "comments.txt" on the work PC in the directory I keep the comics in, and people have been leaving me many words of praise and admiration. So at least I know some people are enjoying them for more than just images to butcher. This makes me happy. It's a nice reminder of how well my Spare! comic did back in the day. Maybe I should get back to scanning those. I'm thinking I'm just gonna take them straight out of the notebook and just enhance the text so they're readable. It's lower quality, but it's a lot easier on me than recopying them all.

I guess it's unavoidable topic, so here goes. Christmas was pretty good for me this year. My plan is to do not a review on all the stuff I got, but individual reviews on key items, and then a summary for the less-reviewable things. I'm also going to put together a list of the 10 best games I've played this year. This is in no way related to Penny Arcade's annual "We're Right" Awards. No way. So that's it then. I hope to get something done by about Friday or so.

Yes I said I'd be doing this yesterday. But alas, I was sidetracked. Fortunately for me, it was by hockey. My dad took my brothers and I to one of the World Junoirs games last night. Switzerland vs. Finland. It would have been nice to see a Canada game (my cousin's boyfriend is their starting goalie), but it was one hell of a game to be sure. I'd go into greater detail, but this is gonna be a really long post as it is, so my words must be sparse. It was disappointing that the game ended in a tie, as I would have liked to see Finland win (I'm Finnish you know), but there's not much that can be done about it. So now that my alibi is strung together, onto the preamble!

As I was rattling on about in the last post, I read a review of Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door in TV Guide. While I cannot truly disagree with the article on the whole, there are quite a few inaccuracies and the reviewer missed many important game elements. So as a site first, I shall taketh this review, and ripeth it apart paragraph by paragraph, and give my impressions on each. This also saves me from having to actually review the game myself. I would love to, but I'd have to play through again to get screenshots, and I have way too many incomplete games to start replaying one I've beaten. Now onto the feature!

Plumbing the depths
Heroes are a dime a dozen in gamedom, but few of them have the longevity or popularity of Nintendo's Mario the plumber. The little man and his games are practically bulletproof.

No real problems here, except for nobody in the history of ever has ever called him "Mario the plumber".

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is the follow-up to the N64's original Paper Mario, which stretched the corners of his side-scrolling 2D world into a 3D adventure. It was his first appearance in a role-playing game, which was about the only kind of game that he and his crew hadn't yet starred in.

Fuck. Just fuck. SUPER MARIO RPG: THE LEGEND OF THE SEVEN STARS, you twat. It's only the most popular of the four Mario RPG games. You really shouldn't make wild assumptions about things you clearly know nothing about. It's not like anyone that knows better reads TV Guide anyway (except for me, apparently) but that mistake totally destroyed any credibility this guy once had. Not only that, but there was also at least one other 3D Mario game. Say, Super Mario 64. What a douche. And for the record, the Mario Party games were pretty damn 3D too.

Considering that Mario titles are usually aimed at kids, The Thousand-Year Door is long and pleasantly sophisticated. There's plenty weird and wonderful in The Thousand-Year Door, as there is in all his trippy titles, but nothing is unfamiliar. Princess Peach reprises her role as the damsel in distress, various nefarious skills have been grafted onto his Goomba foes and the guy can't seem to get through an adventure without wallowing in the sewers.

OK, most of this is pretty good, but there are a few things that were omitted (if only for the sake of fitting it on a single page). But before that, we'll adress the "aimed at kids" issue. I don't think Mario is aimed at kids. These days people label anything where intestines don't spill as "for kids". This is not true. Mario has always transcended age. If anything, Mario's character is built more for adults. He's a fat Italian plumber from Brooklyn. Come on. If there was only one specific group that could enjoy the character, it's certainly not kids. So anyhow, there is plenty of unfamiliar in the game. From a town that could be called "a wretched hive of scum and villainy" in another time and place to his first jaunt into space in a very long time (Last time was in Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins. Mario Pary games don't count.), there is plenty of new territory to be covered in this game. It's even got Russian Bob-ombs. Oh, and let's not forget the glory that is actually playing as Bowser (though it doesn't last long, it's awesome). Finally, Peach does reprise the whole damsel in distress role, but this time she does it right. There isn't nearly as much boring Peach gameplay in this one.

The most novel feature here is the battle system. As with other heroes - guitar, gladiatorial or other - Mario has to perform with style is he wants to win hearts and minds. Battles in The Thousand-Year Door are literally staged events, complete with rising curtains and, at least if the battle is going his way, an audience whose enthusiasm spurs him in combat.

All true, there isn't much else to say here. An (inter)active battle system is a good battle system. But really, the audience isn't good for much other than filling your star power. This is a vast improvement over that wishing thing or whatever it was you had to do in the first Paper Mario. Anything else they do is usually insignificant or bothersome, like turning on fog machines to reduce accuracy or "accidentally" freezing Mario with onstage ice machines. Yes, they may throw you a Dry Shroom (Dry Shroom = worthless) every once in a blue moon, but most of the time, they just throw rocks.

Mario has been hardwired from the beginning to be heroic and doing the right thing is pathological for him. When allies ask what the next move is, there is never any choice for him to contiune doing the right thing. It's not a bad lesson for the kids at Christmas, but it doesn't exactly break gameplay wide open.

I smell a Fable fanboy. It's not that impressive. With all that crazy crap you can do, the real game is probably short and boring. But I'm not really out to bash Fable. I've not played it, (but I will have after Christmas) so I can't say for sure if my intuition is correct on this one. Anyhow, I guess I can't really attack this paragraph, but you do get choices a when it comes to a lot of things. Only most of the the time they just repeat the question infinitely until you pick the answer they want to hear. And I'd like to see any other game where you can fold up into a plane or a boat. And if there is, I bet the method of getting those abilities isn't anywhere as amusing as how you come across them in this game.

The Thoudand-Year Door doesn't present any real choice and in many ways is as linear as the 2D side-scrollers from the days of the SNES.

Must... suppress... urge to kill... If he knows so much about the days of the SNES, how in the hell did he miss Super Mario RPG?! How!?!? And for the record, his NES side-scrollers were much more linear than the one (Yoshi's Island doesn't really count) on the SNES. You had many path choices in Super Mario World. As for this "doesn't present any real choice" gobbledygook, I don't think the reviewer knew anything about the badges. Being able to customize Mario's strengths and abilities to no end is quite a big one for the "choices to make" category. Oh, and then there's the level-up system, in which you choose how you want Mario to develop, rather than in other RPGs where they just dole out random stats each level-up. And what is this about "linear"? Of course it's linear you ass. Pretty much all games are when you get down to it. At least this one presents plenty of amusing sidequests, puzzles and mini-games to keep things interesting.

Yeah, that's the end. I wonder if this guy has ever written a conclusion. His intro was good, but if that whole "no choices" thign was the conclusion, he probably got a 0 our of five on all his essays for whatever novice writer's class he took. Not that I'm saying I'm a better writer than he, but at least I conclude the stuff that spews forth from my mind. It's usually crap in itself, but it's there. And his conclusion is nowhere to be seen.

Well, I've accomplished my goal (and used the word gobbledygook in the process!). I critiqued an overall positive review of a game I like, and managed to come out sounding like I was trying to protect the game from words of hate. I guess it just happens. Mostly, I just wanted to make fun of the writer and his lack of conviction. It is a pretty flip-floppy review. I'm not sure whether he liked or disliked it (due to no conclusion), but the praise was more abundant than the hate. So that's pretty much it. Like I said, I've accomplished my goal. So I'm leaving.
NOTE:The comics are going to be weekly, so you'll have to wait until Monday for the next one.

OK! The computers are fixed (except for mine is now French), and I can start trying to get back on track of actually writing things for the site. First off - and most importantly - New comic! It's nice to have some good comic material, even if it does mean I have to work. While you may not get the full extent of the hilarity (as this one is more for those on the inside), you should be able to find some sort of humour in it. If nothing else, I really like how the last panel turned out really well. And all my co-workers are loving these. I'd better start hocking my site at work...

I read a review of Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door in TV Guide today and was absolutely outraged. It was a good review, but there were many errors and omissions of key game elements. I plan to do a comparative review on it tomorrow. That's my plan anyhow. It may fall through, depending on whether or not I can get on the computer at all.

And that's pretty much it for today. I threw you a couple freaking bones, so I think my job is done, and with as little bullshit as I can muster. I mean, there is an expected level of bull from me. I am just a novice writer and I do tend to ramble. Just look at that last sentence. Hm. Better just stop now.

Things have gone from "worse" to "as bad as it gets". Which, on the upside, is really more inconvenience than actual bad happenings. So yes, I've lost all my new site files (the old articles and crap are still safe), but fortunately, a good percentage of them are still hanging out on the internet, from where I can poach them quite easily. Poach was probably a bad word for that sentence.

So it'll be awhile until I've recoved everything and resume the few things I've been working on lately. But you know what won't take a little while? The band of the month feature. I know the title is all wrong, and it's past the halfway through December point, but I'm not just going to sit here and let it go undone. It's gonna be half-assed though, since I've got very little time to be updating. I really should be tending to my site restoration and Windows-loading. But meh.

This month's band: Disturbed. Notice how I didn't even bother to put in the picture. Yes, that's how lazy this is going to be. So I quite like the band. As far as I know, they've got two CDs, and only one song has ever even made it close to mainstream. Of course I could be wrong, as when it comes to mainstream music, I really have no clue what's going on. all I know is I saw the "Prayer" video on Much Music one time and that's pretty much it. Anyway, back to what a good band Disturbed is. We all appreciate metal (or should anyhow), and Disturbed does a pretty good job on that front. At least on the first album.

The Sickness is the first of two Disturbed CDs, and probably the faoured one of fans. I'm not sure, that's just usually the way things play out when a band makes two CDs that sound very different. So back to this. Again. It's a great CD, which I only recently got around to purhasing. It contains many great songs like the infamous "Down with the Sickness" and "Stupify", which was featured on one of the Big Shiny tunes CDs of yore. Back when they had good music on them. Another great song is their cover of "Shout", aptly renamed to "Shout 2000". You know how I said HIM's cover of "Solitary Man" was freaking awesome back when I reviewed their greatest hits CD? Well it's like that - only more hardcore. My personal favorite song on the CD however, it the first, "Voices". It's a great song to start off on, and sets stage for the rest of the songs quite well. "The Game" is also quite a noteworthy track. All in all, excellent CD.

The newer release, titled Believe is not quite as good as the first, but is also a CD worthy of my praise. The main factor in this judgement is that fact that it's a lot slower than the Sickness. I mean, of course, most of the stuff is pretty hard, but it's also softer at the same time. It's quite hard to explain. You'd have to listen for yourself to truly understand what I'm trying to get across. All in all though, it's good CD, boasting some exellent tracks such as "Prayer", "Liberate", "Remember" and "Darkness".

I'm really sorry this has to be so short, but I'm really pressed for time, and I just couldn't let it go undone any longer. It's not like I could have extended it much more without getting really redundant and going over the same things over and over again. But I guess I'll go out saying that Disturbed is a great band, and I'm certainly looking forward to their next release. I just really need ot get to bed now. I've got work early in the morning, and I've already stayed up far too late. I'll fix typos some other day.

I've not posted in what may be ages. Though it may have just been eight or so days. Close enough. So what's my explaination this time? Well, those new computer parts I bought haven't exactly been putting themselves together. And apparently, I have no idea what I'm doing. Naw, I got it set up and shit, but it won't load the Windows, and it seems that reloading Windows in the only way to make it work. I'm neither capable or willing to do that at the moment, so I left it sitting there for like a week, only now putting this one back together because of a serious case of the blue balls. A week is a long time to wait between these kinds of things.

So since I'm using the FrontPage-free PC (not by choice either. the good one's still brokies) I can't really update too well or efficiently. So I posted the next Work Blog, and while it's not much, I've also got a related surprise for you waiting here. I know some of you will get your hopes up for more once you see it, and I do have some secret plans up my sleeve.

As for that mysterious ??? on the sidebar, I'm going to be opening up a new Angelfire account for it, so you can expect many great things, and possibly even a revival of what was the main attraction of my site before this blog came along... Band of the Month isn't going to be around for a while still, and it's killing me. I love the feature, but I just can't bring myself to do the mass updating needed for it without FrontPage.

Now that I've cleared up any confusion about whether I'm dead or not (because someone out there was bound to think so), it's back to video games for me. And while that may seem like a knock against site productivity, trust me - it's not.

I added the November archive to the, uh, archive. And all the sidebars and such. Still haven't figured out the band of the month, but I've got it down to two. A new banner is on the way to commemorate a special occasion. You see that ??? on the sidebar? It's not really the greatest of ideas, but I've got a special surprise in store. Though in reality it's just kind of a way to minimize things I have to post on the articles page. Site productivity will be close to 10% of what it was a week ago due to the broken computer and its holding all my site files hostage. The next installment of the Work Blog will be up sometime this week, possibly tomorrow - and a nice little surprise along with it.

As usual, I'm sure there was something else I was supposed to tell you guys about, but I've forgotten. My poor attention span doesn't have the kind of logevity necessary to type out everything I need to without getting distracted by something and forgetting stuff. So I guess this is the end of the post then, as I really have nothing more to say.

The family PC is yet again inoperable, so I've taken matters into my own hands and stolen the modem. Now I'm hooked up to the net in my room, and it's not nearly what I thought it would be. For one, I have no FrontPage, so I have to do this in the Angelfire editor, which is really inconvenient after working in FrontPage for so long. Secondly, for reasons unknown, most pictures refuse to display in my Internet Explorer browser. I haven't installed Opera on this PC, but I'm thinking maybe it's time to try. On the upside, I did get my sound working properly again. I switched out the sound card, and now it works perfectly again.

So that's my alibi for not posting until now. I've got a lot to post about, and I still wanna do an article on Metroid Prime 2, so fixing the main computer is of the greatest importance right now. Sadly, it seems as though the only way to do it is to reformat the thing. This is bad, because all of my site from July up until now is on that hard drive and not backed up. Fortunately, it's on the internet as well, so I can salvage mostly everything if it becomes necessary. Yeah. I guess I should type some stuff about someting a little more interesting now.

Saw the Spongebob Squarepants movie on Saturday. Was delightfully surprised at how good it was. I was expecting it to be decent at least (I do enjoy the show to some extent, after all), but it came out close to awesome. Pretty much in the "see it twice" range. I wouldn't buy it, but I would be radiant if it were given to me as a gift. I guess I should tell youse a little bit about the movie, as I was planning on doing a mini-review of it anyway.

the plot is a little strange, but it's spongebob, so that's easily forgivable. It starts with the grand opening of the Krusy Krab 2 (a sequel to a restaurant?? Right beside the original??), and Spongebob is rather hyped, as he is sure that Mr. Krabs will name him the manager of the new store. But as is surely forseeable, Spongebob is not given the job, on account of he is just a kid and not nearly mature enough for the responsibility. He is then struck by depression, and goes on an ice cream bender (and I mean it, he literally gets "drunk" off the stuff) with Patrick, and then the real plot noses itself in.

Over at the Chum Bucket, Plankton is distraught that he has exhausted all of his evil plans. "From A to Y" as he says. but then his computer wife pipes up, suggesting that he try Plan Z. And boy is Plan Z a dastardly one. The tiny genius sneaks into King Neptune's palace, steals the king's crown, and sets up Mr. Krabs to take the fall. King Neptune is ready to execute Krabs, but Spongebob comes in an claims that he and Patrick will return the crown, which has been taken away to Shell City. they are ridiculed, on account of they're just kids, and Neptune's daughter Mindy convinces him to let them try. He agrees, and gives them six days to return with his crown, and freezes Mr. Krabs solid, just to make sure he doesn't high-tail it outta there.

The two heroes leave for their quest in the promotional Karbby Patty car, and then the plot thickens. Everything is going perfectly according to Plankton's scheme, and he sneaks into the Krusty Krab and steals the secret recipe for the Krabby Patty as Krabs watched helpless, encased in ice. Everytihng works out for him, and soon everyone is eating at the Chum Bucket, and as a bonus, Plankton even gives out free bucket helmets to everyone. And that's not even the last phase of the plan...

Meanwhile, Spongebob and Patrick are having a rough time on their quest, facing many dangers including a giant eel, tough biker fish, several deadly deepsea fish, mocking gas station workers, and a bounty hunter that goes by the name of Dennis. They lose the car twice (you'll se...), and eventually come to an impassable trench. Mindy shows up and uses her "mermaid magic" to "make them men", which gives them the courage to jump into the trench and strut right through. It's also one of the very few musical scenes in the movie. I say few, because I expected there would be many, and I was surprised that - not counting the theme song - there were only two. Maybe Disney's just fucked my mind to the point where I expect lots of crappy songs in any cartoon movie. I don't know. Stupid Disney.

So things progress and the plot gets thicker and such, with pseudo-zombies, a "cyclops", some evil cackling, and David Hasselhoff. I'm not going to spoil the rest of the movie, but I will tell you that the climax is quite awesome. Not giving any specific details, Twisted Sister ends up saving the day. Well not directly, but it's surely a sight to be seen, and a song to be heard. Really, it's a great ending that may surpass even the tons of one-liiners and jokes as the best part of the movie. Definitely a great ending for a great movie.

As for why the movie is great, well, it's Spongebob. If you ever watch the show, you know what kind of humour to expect. Only it's magnified about a thousand times. In the end, it falls just short of side-splittingly hilarious. Yes, it is mostly idiot humour, but I was very entertained throughout by it. Not quite as funny as Shaun of the Dead, but it surely does it's job well. It's kinda funny though, that for most of the movie, I got a really big PeeWee's Big Adventure vibe. The movies are somewhat similar in terms of plot and events, and I'm not sure how to finish this sentence. I also found the movie to be even more reminiscent of Ren & Stimpy than the show is. Not really noted as a good or bad thing, I just thought I'd mention it.

That's pretty much it. I strongly urge you to go see the movie. Unless you absolutely can't stand Spongebob Squarepants. And if you only hate him because he's so damn popular or you think you're too cool to like Spongebob, shame on you. Definitely a movie worth your so dollars, and possibly even worth a second full-priced viewing. So if anyone wants to go, I'm in.