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.