Page disappeared from Google after changing canonicalization URL

[negative_zero]

On monday I posted a review on my gaming website. This is it:

http://www.negativeworld.org/article.php?id=8916

It was ranked page 1 for "little inferno review". However, I noticed that most other sites have more keyword friendly URLs. So I changed both my link rel="canonical" and my meta property="og:url" to this:

http://www.negativeworld.org/review/...u-eshop-review

All that happens when you go to that link is my .htaccess file redirects to the original link. Anyway, I submitted this new link to the crawl as Google, had it indexed, and...

Now my page is nowhere to be found. Not only is it not anywhere for "little inferno review", I can't find it for "little inferno review negative world", and when I put "negative world" into the keywords I can always find my pages on Google. I can find our discussion page for this game, but the review page is not there. However, when I search "little inferno site:negativeworld.org" I can still find it, so it is still indexed, but... it won't appear in regular results?

So... I think it is just gone from the results? But why? Is it because I chose a new canonicalization URL that isn't a concrete URL but just a server redirect?

I switched things back to the way they were and redid the whole crawl as Google / index thing, but no dice. It appears that this page is just plain not listed on Google anymore.

I'd really like to get back up there as this was one of my most popular reviews yet. I am still getting some Google traffic from other gaming sites that picked up my review, but I'd like to know why the direct link to my site is gone.

[negative_zero]

Another thing I just thought of, may be a huge factor. MY site is no longer appearing in the top results, but 3 of the first page results for "little inferno review" are pages that link to my review from sites that are much bigger than mine. I imagine Google doesn't want pages and pages of results that all essentially link to the same place, so it probably filters out duplicates in some fashion?

Could it be that the direct link to my site dropped because these bigger sites are linking to me? Just a thought. I don't really understand this stuff (hence asking here...)

That could even explain why "little inferno review negative world" isn't ranking my site, because a couple sites that link to me by name are ranked page one.

Does this make any sense? I'm a bit worried. Pretty much any other review I search for with "negative world" attached returns my site at the top.