Puss in Boots 3D (2011)
[#26 in The 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2026]
Sunday, 17 May 2026
Video Games
007: Everything or Nothing
Back when I got my Steam Deck, one of the first things I did was set up emulation to be able to play this Bond game — I’ve actually owned it for years (it was released on GameCube, though I can’t remember if I bought it then or picked it up later when I had a Wii) but never actually played it. I even spent a tonne of time fiddling around to make it nicer — not just living with the default settings, but getting the emulator to render it in HD, getting the widescreen working (much harder than it should be), and buying an adapter so I could use one of my original GameCube controllers. After all that tinkering, I got it just right… and then went and played other stuff. For eight whole months. Ha.
I’ve been meaning to get back to it ever since, especially with the new Bond game looming, and today I finally pulled my finger out. And immediately… spent over half-an-hour fiddling and faffing again because it wasn’t running right. I guess some update or other to the emulators broke it. (I dread to think that it’s done the same to my (also perfectly set up after much fiddling) copy of Wind Waker, but I didn’t dare check.)
But I got there in the end… although, to be honest, it didn’t feel as pleasant to play as it did last time. I don’t know if the emulator software’s changed, or if I didn’t get the settings quite as just-so as before, or if I just replayed the opening level so many damn times back then that I’m misremembering how easy it was because I simply got so good at it. Certainly, I found some levels more of a struggle than I expected — don’t know if that’s just my skill level, or the barrier of using old kit (the controller is quarter-of-a-century old and has spent most of that time in storage, after all), or just how game design has changed in the intervening years.
In fact, there are multiple ways the game feels odd beside from the gameplay / level design. For example, there’s a “level” which is just a series of cutscenes — no interaction, you just watch them. For no apparent reason, some are pre-rendered but some are realised in-engine. At one point, there’s a pre-rendered shot of Bond and Q riding in an elevator for a couple of seconds, which they exit and it cuts to the scene proper which is in-engine. Why?! I don’t know if it was always odd or that’s just a way things have changed since. Amusingly, the pre-rendered scenes were no doubt meant to be higher quality moments back then, but now they’re low-res and blurry and riddled with compression artefacts and glitches, whereas the stuff rendered in-engine is in HD thanks to my settings changes and so looks much better.
Still, I overcame all that to progress through 7 of the game’s 32 levels, about an hour of playtime, before — frankly — I’d had enough. Bit disappointing to find it so underwhelming and awkward after I’d been looking forward to playing it for so long. I do intend to finish it, but with a bit less enthusiasm now.
Back when I got my Steam Deck, one of the first things I did was set up emulation to be able to play this Bond game — I’ve actually owned it for years (it was released on GameCube, though I can’t remember if I bought it then or picked it up later when I had a Wii) but never actually played it. I even spent a tonne of time fiddling around to make it nicer — not just living with the default settings, but getting the emulator to render it in HD, getting the widescreen working (much harder than it should be), and buying an adapter so I could use one of my original GameCube controllers. After all that tinkering, I got it just right… and then went and played other stuff. For eight whole months. Ha.
I’ve been meaning to get back to it ever since, especially with the new Bond game looming, and today I finally pulled my finger out. And immediately… spent over half-an-hour fiddling and faffing again because it wasn’t running right. I guess some update or other to the emulators broke it. (I dread to think that it’s done the same to my (also perfectly set up after much fiddling) copy of Wind Waker, but I didn’t dare check.)
But I got there in the end… although, to be honest, it didn’t feel as pleasant to play as it did last time. I don’t know if the emulator software’s changed, or if I didn’t get the settings quite as just-so as before, or if I just replayed the opening level so many damn times back then that I’m misremembering how easy it was because I simply got so good at it. Certainly, I found some levels more of a struggle than I expected — don’t know if that’s just my skill level, or the barrier of using old kit (the controller is quarter-of-a-century old and has spent most of that time in storage, after all), or just how game design has changed in the intervening years.
In fact, there are multiple ways the game feels odd beside from the gameplay / level design. For example, there’s a “level” which is just a series of cutscenes — no interaction, you just watch them. For no apparent reason, some are pre-rendered but some are realised in-engine. At one point, there’s a pre-rendered shot of Bond and Q riding in an elevator for a couple of seconds, which they exit and it cuts to the scene proper which is in-engine. Why?! I don’t know if it was always odd or that’s just a way things have changed since. Amusingly, the pre-rendered scenes were no doubt meant to be higher quality moments back then, but now they’re low-res and blurry and riddled with compression artefacts and glitches, whereas the stuff rendered in-engine is in HD thanks to my settings changes and so looks much better.
Still, I overcame all that to progress through 7 of the game’s 32 levels, about an hour of playtime, before — frankly — I’d had enough. Bit disappointing to find it so underwhelming and awkward after I’d been looking forward to playing it for so long. I do intend to finish it, but with a bit less enthusiasm now.
Saturday, 16 May 2026
Films
The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
[#25 in The 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2026]
Blindspot 2026 #3
This was meant to be part of WDYMYHS 2019. Seven years late, I've finally got there!
[#25 in The 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2026]
Blindspot 2026 #3
This was meant to be part of WDYMYHS 2019. Seven years late, I've finally got there!
Video Games
Buffet Knight: Decadent Full Course
Had felt a little like I was going back and forth over the same areas making minor progress... then opened up one new pathway and loads more of the map. Fun times. Probably playing it incredibly inefficiently, just wandering around, back and forth, but hey, that's kinda what I was taught to do by...
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition
Placid Plastic Duck Simulator
I don't really know if I should log this — it's kind of like logging wallpaper, considering it just sits there. Though wallpaper doesn't drop a new varient every now and then that you can give a name, I guess.
Had felt a little like I was going back and forth over the same areas making minor progress... then opened up one new pathway and loads more of the map. Fun times. Probably playing it incredibly inefficiently, just wandering around, back and forth, but hey, that's kinda what I was taught to do by...
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition
Placid Plastic Duck Simulator
I don't really know if I should log this — it's kind of like logging wallpaper, considering it just sits there. Though wallpaper doesn't drop a new varient every now and then that you can give a name, I guess.
Collection Count
Collection Count tracks my DVD/Blu-ray collection via a number of statistics every week.
This week, a trio of Masters of Cinema titles turned up a whole week early, thanks to ordering direct. Plus another Akira Kurosawa in HD from the BFI, and a feature-length Hammer documentary from, er, Hammer themselves. Two of those are upgrades, but in both cases the previous copies are in box sets, so they're going nowhere.
Number of titles in collection: 3,695 [up 6]
Of which DVDs: 965 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 2,730 [up 6]
— of which Ultra HD Blu-rays: 528 [up 1]
Number of discs in collection: 8,862 [up 7]
Number of films: 4,749 [up 6]
Number of additional cuts: 494 [up 1]
Number of TV episodes: 10,134 [no change]
Number of short films: 1,296 [up 3]
See you next week, faithful reader.
This week, a trio of Masters of Cinema titles turned up a whole week early, thanks to ordering direct. Plus another Akira Kurosawa in HD from the BFI, and a feature-length Hammer documentary from, er, Hammer themselves. Two of those are upgrades, but in both cases the previous copies are in box sets, so they're going nowhere.
Number of titles in collection: 3,695 [up 6]
Of which DVDs: 965 [no change]
Of which Blu-rays: 2,730 [up 6]
— of which Ultra HD Blu-rays: 528 [up 1]
Number of discs in collection: 8,862 [up 7]
Number of films: 4,749 [up 6]
Number of additional cuts: 494 [up 1]
Number of TV episodes: 10,134 [no change]
Number of short films: 1,296 [up 3]
See you next week, faithful reader.
Friday, 15 May 2026
Thursday, 14 May 2026
Fiction
Swords Against Wizardry by Fritz Leiber
IV. The Lords of Quarmall pp.61–92 [the end]
And that is also the end of The First Book of Lankhmar, meaning I'm theoretically halfway through the series. That said, I've read four of its seven books, which cover 24 stories and leave 13 to go. It won't come as much of a surprise, then, that those 13 include three of the four longest tales (Lords of Quarmall ranks third), including the only full-length novel — which is what's up next (after I read an unrelated book or two first, just for variety's sake).
IV. The Lords of Quarmall pp.61–92 [the end]
And that is also the end of The First Book of Lankhmar, meaning I'm theoretically halfway through the series. That said, I've read four of its seven books, which cover 24 stories and leave 13 to go. It won't come as much of a surprise, then, that those 13 include three of the four longest tales (Lords of Quarmall ranks third), including the only full-length novel — which is what's up next (after I read an unrelated book or two first, just for variety's sake).
Video Games
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition
When I started Skyrim, I aimed to not use fast travel — half the fun is traversing the world and stumbling upon things. Eventually I caved and began to use it to quickly transport loot for sale; then, after I’d explored some regions so thoroughly there were no more landmarks to discover and the random encounters were becoming repetitive, I allowed myself to skip around those areas sometimes. I think this ‘limited and specific’ kind of use is preferable to both “no fast travel whatsoever” and “using fast travel willy-nilly”.
However, there are some quests that require you to ping back and forth around the map to complete their objectives. I’ve mostly tried to treat these as either a way to explore new areas (setting off to the next objective, getting sidetracked by a gazillions things on the way, and eventually reaching my goal several hours of playtime later) or let them sit in my journal, thinking “I’ll do that next time I’m in the area anyway”. The latter is part of why I have a lot of stuff backed up; and, honestly, I can’t remember the storylines associated with many of them, because in some cases it’s been literally hundreds of hours since I received the quest. I did once do a quest like that by fast travelling back and forth to its various objectives. It meant I completed it promptly, but it also felt kinda unsatisfying to ‘cheat’ like that.
Nonetheless, with the amount of stuff I’ve got sat waiting, and the aforementioned struggle to follow storylines properly (I’ve also completed quests where I’ve just ticked the boxes having forgotten why I’m doing what I'm doing, and that’s even more unsatisfying), maybe it’s time to allow myself to do a bit more teleporting and get a few things properly completed. I mean, I’ve still got three cities left unvisited, including some major ones (one is part of an entire new island), and they’re definitely gonna bring a whole lot more stuff to do! And that's without starting/resuming any of the major questlines...
When I started Skyrim, I aimed to not use fast travel — half the fun is traversing the world and stumbling upon things. Eventually I caved and began to use it to quickly transport loot for sale; then, after I’d explored some regions so thoroughly there were no more landmarks to discover and the random encounters were becoming repetitive, I allowed myself to skip around those areas sometimes. I think this ‘limited and specific’ kind of use is preferable to both “no fast travel whatsoever” and “using fast travel willy-nilly”.
However, there are some quests that require you to ping back and forth around the map to complete their objectives. I’ve mostly tried to treat these as either a way to explore new areas (setting off to the next objective, getting sidetracked by a gazillions things on the way, and eventually reaching my goal several hours of playtime later) or let them sit in my journal, thinking “I’ll do that next time I’m in the area anyway”. The latter is part of why I have a lot of stuff backed up; and, honestly, I can’t remember the storylines associated with many of them, because in some cases it’s been literally hundreds of hours since I received the quest. I did once do a quest like that by fast travelling back and forth to its various objectives. It meant I completed it promptly, but it also felt kinda unsatisfying to ‘cheat’ like that.
Nonetheless, with the amount of stuff I’ve got sat waiting, and the aforementioned struggle to follow storylines properly (I’ve also completed quests where I’ve just ticked the boxes having forgotten why I’m doing what I'm doing, and that’s even more unsatisfying), maybe it’s time to allow myself to do a bit more teleporting and get a few things properly completed. I mean, I’ve still got three cities left unvisited, including some major ones (one is part of an entire new island), and they’re definitely gonna bring a whole lot more stuff to do! And that's without starting/resuming any of the major questlines...
Wednesday, 13 May 2026
Video Games
Buffet Knight: Decadent Full Course
Completed the second dungeon today, of which I believe there are five, and I was thinking "this game is going quite quickly"... until I realised my playtime so far is 3½ hours, which means five dungeons + I presume some kind of equivalent endgame is likely to be over 10 hours, which is a perfectly reasonable game length, especially for an indie. Skyrim may have distored my perspective...
(Actually, it's almost the perfect time for this comparison, because 3½ hours is exactly how long I played Skyrim on Monday, during which I completed a couple of bits of some quests (I don't think I did a whole one) and spent a lot of time running around 'n' admining — vs doing about ⅔ of Buffet Knight in that time.)
Completed the second dungeon today, of which I believe there are five, and I was thinking "this game is going quite quickly"... until I realised my playtime so far is 3½ hours, which means five dungeons + I presume some kind of equivalent endgame is likely to be over 10 hours, which is a perfectly reasonable game length, especially for an indie. Skyrim may have distored my perspective...
(Actually, it's almost the perfect time for this comparison, because 3½ hours is exactly how long I played Skyrim on Monday, during which I completed a couple of bits of some quests (I don't think I did a whole one) and spent a lot of time running around 'n' admining — vs doing about ⅔ of Buffet Knight in that time.)
Tuesday, 12 May 2026
Monday, 11 May 2026
Fiction
Swords Against Wizardry by Fritz Leiber
IV. The Lords of Quarmall pp.36–53
I didn't mention it yesterday because I was too busy waffling about something else, but this story was co-written by Leiber's mate, Harry Fischer, who actually co-created Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser with Leiber in the '30s (vaguely based on themselves). While Leiber became a fairly prolific author, it seems Fischer did not (his Wikipedia entry is entirely concerned with his role in co-creating this pair, citing no other works, but elsewhere I found a reference to him becoming a businessman). Exactly how much he contributed to the conception of the characters and their world is unclear, but this story was his only published contribution. He wrote 10,000 words of it in 1937 (one of the characters' ealiest stories to be penned, therefore) and Leiber finished the remainder over 25 years later (adding over 20,000 words). Maybe it's because I know this fact, but it does feel like the style of prose in this story is slightly different; not glaringly, egregiously so, but enough that I noticed it.
IV. The Lords of Quarmall pp.36–53
I didn't mention it yesterday because I was too busy waffling about something else, but this story was co-written by Leiber's mate, Harry Fischer, who actually co-created Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser with Leiber in the '30s (vaguely based on themselves). While Leiber became a fairly prolific author, it seems Fischer did not (his Wikipedia entry is entirely concerned with his role in co-creating this pair, citing no other works, but elsewhere I found a reference to him becoming a businessman). Exactly how much he contributed to the conception of the characters and their world is unclear, but this story was his only published contribution. He wrote 10,000 words of it in 1937 (one of the characters' ealiest stories to be penned, therefore) and Leiber finished the remainder over 25 years later (adding over 20,000 words). Maybe it's because I know this fact, but it does feel like the style of prose in this story is slightly different; not glaringly, egregiously so, but enough that I noticed it.
Video Games
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition
3½ hours this evening. That's quite definitively back on the horse.
3½ hours this evening. That's quite definitively back on the horse.
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