Doug vs. the interweb

October 20th, 2009 1:19 AM

Since my computer seems entirely unable to handle the Source engine anymore, I ended up idly looking of walkthroughs to Chrono Trigger. I finally beat the thing, after starting and abandoning who knows how many attempts after just losing interest. It informed me that I got ending #1 out of thirteen different endings. Sure I'll just fire the dang thing up twelve more times that sounds like a blast what a good use of time hooray. And while I'm at it, perhaps I should min/max my characters so their stats are all 99, and steal/charm every item possible from the final level, and then do it again at each point in time so I can get extra loot. What is the point? I think it was said best when someone mentioned that grinding at RPGs are a substitute of achievement for those who can't find it in real life. I enjoyed playing that game, but I'll be damned if I'm going to whip out Excel to maximize my entertainment or something. That was one of the easiest boss fights; how inane would it be if I had ground my dudes for 40 more levels and the countless plunder I could've amassed through unbearable repetition? I had been stockpiling, as usual, the more powerful items for the final stretch, and in the end I expended a single use of each of the top two, and that was it. But that's a problem endemic to any game that allows you to store powerups. You always win the game with a billion things saved 'just in case'. Boring!

Back to the aquarium issues. The pickerel frog has most likely hopped his last, but I'm remaining hopeful. I realized that the easiest way to describe his problem is some kind of reverse Zoolander: he can only turn left, and when he is startled, he spins in a frantic tornado of hilarity and sadness, usually ending up on his back, not even trying to right himself, even if that puts him underwater. So, his little isolation tank has only about a thimble of water. I looked around at all the various issues frogs can have, but nothing even remotely sounds like what's going on. I'll just have to see if he's still around in the morning. This is depressing!