The Office – A GIF Retrospective

With The Office finishing up as we speak, I thought it was appropriate to remember the good old times, and the bad recent times in the best form the internet has to offer…gif form.

Season 1

The early days were about Jim and Pam and stolen looks. Whilst a recycled moment from the UK, this moment still set the tone for what would become a great show.

Whilst the two worked great together, this might just be the least subtle, “dat ass” checking out in history.

Season 2

Dwight and Angela worked really well in the early days. Once their secret was out? It was completely ruined.

Michael himself really hit his straps in season 2. He stopped trying to be David Brent and just enjoyed being Michael Scott.

Jam was still going strong of course.

So much love. I hope they don’t get together and ruin it all!

Season 3

Suddenly Pam wanted Jim, even though she told him she didn’t want him. Then she immediately called off her wedding but didn’t ring up Jim and tell him to come back because… well it is kind of stupid when you think about it. Best not to think about it then, because the show was still good.

All up though, it made things a bit awkward.

Jim meanwhile was really lucky to have such a wonderful and supportive girlfriend by his side.

But he threw that away and they finally got together with Pam. It was another great moment and a wise choice to still have somebody who would support his dreams so strongly…

Season 4

No other words for it. Awwwwwwwwww. Season 4 started and we all wanted to see the pair together and happy. The show delivered.

Then season 4 trickled along without much happening until the final episode of the series, “Dinner Party”. This is the moment when the office finally stopped being a great comedy and laid itself to rest.

Which finally lead us into the final perfect finish.

Jim and Pam happy together, just being themselves and enjoying their lives. It got a bit rocky in the past few episodes, but The Office finished with a decent enough finale and I was left satisfied.

….

Season 5

Wait what? This thing is still going? Why? Boy I hope it works out well and they don’t ruin all the characters!

Well Pam left, which was a reasonable move considering that plot-line was now a dead end. The chemistry with Michael and the pair was still always great.

Season 6

This season was a train wreck from start to finish. But screw the haters, the wedding episode was still great to watch. It was one last happy (and believable) moment in a now mediocre show.

Season 7

The show is now incredible stupid. Dwight left the Christmas party to construct giant snowmen…because you would wouldn’t you?

Michael then left, which was an extremely smart career move. With him gone, the show had one last chance to redeem itself, but it needed something drastic. Luckily Dwight came through by killing off Andy.

Unfortunately I must have just dreamt that, because the show rolled on and Andy (and his singing) was made an even bigger part of it.

Season 8

Remember this story line with Andy and Erin? Probably, even though the writers pretty much forgot about it. Instead of concluding it in a reasonable way, they just hooked her up with a brand new character for…reasons.

Not content with that, they then introduced more characters, mostly big names, who were not really funny at all.

Season 9

Leading us into the Loony Tunes finish.

Forget the whole Ryan and the baby thing..which was down right offensive. The second finale hit all the right notes and the Michael cameo was well done and not overplayed. We were just missing a shot of Holly and a baby at the back of the wedding, but you can’t have everything right?

It ended well, we can all relax now.

It was a long journey and it is now finally over. Will it end happy? Well of course it will, it ended happy half way through season 4. Will they completely destroy the legacy of the show as one of the greatest TV series of all times? Possible, but I doubt it.

Either way it is the end of an era. I can’t help but feel a little sad at this point. It is more than time for it to end…but yeah, that old life clock never stops ticking does it?

Time to re-watch it and remember.

FGC – Fighting Game Gifs again

Because why not right? This week I’m focusing on reactions. Did everybody watch Topanga? You should have, it was the best SF4 play in ages. Xian in particular did extremely well to take some close matches…

and lose others

Madcatz is really related to fighting games right? Well how about some Madcatz wearing girls fighting?

Well not so much fighting as dancing…but it is still…well it was nice.

To wash away any nasty thoughts, get a load of this:

Yeah I thought that would do the trick. One final one. I didn’t make this Gif, but I thought it was appropriate. The Nintendo themed one has always been a favourite of mine, as it is completely nightmarish. This one? Not so much. Kappa away.

Being Hamish – First draft complete

Then he just got really confused.

So ends Being Hamish, my hopefully soon to be second self-published novel. 60k odd words, 17 chapters and a title, done.

As predicted, the final two and a half chapters was quite difficult to write. Not because I was stuck, just because I was fatigued from all the writing and needed a bit of a break. This break worked, because I was able to get back into it and finish it off tonight. It feels good, it feels really good.

From here? Well I’ll have the terrifying first read, then editing, more reading, editing…you know the drill. For those that don’t know the drill, I’ll post up a bit of a self publishing guide at some stage to maybe help people out.

That all comes later though, for now? Party time…

… well actually off to bed, but that is good too.

PPSSPP – 0.7.6 Update

As reported in the comments previously (Thanks John) PPSSPP has received yet another update to 0.7.6.

The good news? Games like Persona 3 Portable are apparently fixed. Are they? Let us check:

Using our trusty save we try to enter the first battle. Previously the screen was blank with no geometry. Following this? A simple black screen and no gameplay possible.
Now we get this guy show up!

An excellent start. In the actual battle though?

Still a few bits and pieces to sort out. The good news is it runs at a solid 60fps. JCPSP looks better, but at a very slow framerate. As with most emulation, you’ll take playable over “correct” just about any day of the week.

So to me, this tips PPSSPP over the edge as the PSP emulator of choice. Both options are still suboptimal though, so if you have a game like BBS you want to play? You’ll still want to have both around.

Eclipse: New Dawn for the Galaxy – First Impressions

I’ve just played around with Eclipse for a while and then completed the tutorial. Here are some early thoughts noting that I didn’t really know much about it going in, besides that it looked like a cool 4x game…and I often like cool looking 4x games. I also think Neuroshima Hex is an extremely well put together game, so I was happy to at least give this game a chance (every good dev gets one!):

Check it out on itunes here!

First a screen so you have an idea what I’m talking about. Note the hexes, because they are important to my impressions:

The first thing that struck me is that it isn’t really a 4x game in the traditional/Orion sense. It is actually based on a board game, that I of course have never heard of (and hence have no idea how faithful to it this game is, or even if it is worth referencing).

What does this mean? Well each round consists of you taking actions. These actions may be expanding your territory, researching new technology or upgrading your ships. Each action takes up points, and some turns you may even end up passing to conserve them.

This isn’t too unusual for a 4x game in the least, but when you first “explore” and you add a hex to the “board” you realise what you are really going to be doing in general gameplay. The new hex may randomly have planets with resources or an enemy or nothing at all. You then assign the wormholes leading in and out of the new hex (connecting it to your existing territory and perhaps other promising directions) and repeat. Your opponents then do the same and the board gradually expands as you build up your fleets and choose to research with your acquired materials.

Sounds simple enough… but from there, things get a little more complicated…

Apart from managing your resources, you’ll want to be acquiring victory points. These points go towards your score at the end of the game and will ultimately decide the winner. Often you may be given choices about if you want to acquire these points now or later. For example winning a battle might give you a choice between two victory points or a new gun for your ships. This appears to add a nice layer of strategy to your actions which could get quite complicated with a large number of players.

Sooner or later things will get real in the world of Eclipse and you’ll find yourself in battle. Once you clash with an “Ancient” (neutral hostiles) or your opposition, combat plays out via a series of dice rolls. Your ships are chosen via their initiative priority and you choose which enemy ship to attack. If your roll is high enough? (modified by upgrades) you hit, Otherwise you miss and probably get blown up yourself.

The combat interface is slick and fights play out quite quickly. You’ll also get into them quite often because the board seems relatively small and there are not many resources to go around. I haven’t gone through a full online match yet, but I’m thinking they will be relatively quick compared to the more epic encounters of other games in the genre. You are limited to 8 rounds to get as many victory points as possible, so there will certainly be a lot of strategy involved in deciding upon your approach. Basically you shouldn’t expect Orion type 6 month matches here.

If this all sounds complicated, then it probably is. By no means have I wrapped my head around it all yet, and I somehow doubt given my backlog I ever will. The very good news is that (on an ipad at least) the interface is extremely slick. The icons may be very cryptic to begin with and the screens daunting, but once you work it out, there really isn’t too much going on. You’ll notice in the screens a row of extra buttons along the bottom, but they are just short cuts to the pop out menus on the side rather than completely new functions in themselves.

Functions like upgrading ships are easy to perform. If you capture a new technology from defeating an ancient? Simply drag it onto the type of ship you want to upgrade and all ships of that type are upgraded automatically. Upgrades concern things like giving your ships two shots instead of one, or providing modifiers so that you only need to roll a 5 to hit rather than a 6.

In general, everything drags and drops nicely and the screen is easy to navigate around on and responds well to zoom in and zoom out with a pinch. Other games, such as Orion and ascendency have been a little clunky in this regard as games dragged on, but the large hex based approach keeps everything well laid out.

There are lots of little nice touches too. No loading times to jump between menus here, screens snap in and out promptly and nothing is too hidden behind other options. Even little touches like the ships having a flashy “warping” animation between hexes add to the overall effect of something that the developers spent a lot of time on. Which it should, because they took forever.

Would I recommend it? I really have no idea. It is a little pricey at $7.50 (Aussie taxed price) so it is hard to just relatively jump in and give it a go. My feeling is that because it is more of a board game with set rules rather than the traditional 4x release and patch for ten years until it turns into a game model, it is probably well worth a look if you are the least bit interested.

In the meantime, I feel hardcore board game players might have a much more detailed take on exactly what is going on with the game and if the depth and long term viability of the design decisions is there to sustain the game. For now? I’m happy to have spent the cash and look forward to spending some more time with it.

Want to learn more? Try checking out this video review which breaks things down well:

Note: Tested on an ipad 2 after ~150MB download. No crashes or other technical issues to report but only after about an hours play. No IAPs sighted.