caleb-06008 Reviews

Fortnite: Chapter 4 (2022 Video Game)

It just keeps getting better

[8/10 · 18 November 2023]

I'll admit, I am biased as I have been playing this game for over 5 years now, but I am much less biased than the reviewers that come on here to complain about "Fortnite is too popular!!! It's a kid's game!!! I didn't like playing it because I lost!!" rather than making any actual criticism of the gameplay or mechanics or design.

Fortnite has continually re-invented itself year after year, and the evolution of the game over the last 5 years has been remarkable to watch. New weapon pools, areas, events, and characters show the endless creativity from Epic's team. There have been some duds and poor additions to the game along the way, but they have all been removed over time and heavily outweighed by the dozens of iconic additions. Zero Build mode specifically has revolutionized the game, and the Ranked playlist is some of the most engaging and rewarding Ranked gameplay I've ever competed in.

Fortnite looks amazing, it plays amazingly smoothly, and it is all around an engaging and fun experience for all ages. The current OG mini-season has been a brilliant source of nostalgia and I have thoroughly enjoyed it from start to finish. It really does feel like I'm back in 2018 once again, and that's a feeling no other game has ever provided me before.

Pac-Man World Re-Pac (2022 Video Game)

A faithful remaster

[7/10 · 31 October 2023]

As someone who played the original Pac-Man World games at a very young age, I was extremely excited when I saw PAC-MAN World Re-Pac had been released. I was disappointed that there was not a remaster of the second game, as that was my favorite, but I bought it anyways, and was not disappointed. This game is a close to perfect copy of the original PAC-MAN World, and thus it does an amazing job of recreating the magic the original game had, but it also contains the same issues the original had. The movement is sloppy at times, and the level design feels very early 3D platformer. Even though all the graphics look much better, the original levels were so low-poly it still feels aged. I think it would've been better off taking more liberty by tweaking some of the original levels'a designs so some wouldn't feel as barren. Also, everytime I died more than 2 or 3 times in a level, the game would practically beg me to turn on easy mode. After saying no multiple times, I felt like the game was almost making fun of me by continuing to ask. "Do you want us to hold your hand and turn on baby mode? You clearly keep dying."

Still, PAC-MAN World RE-PAC still makes for an enjoyable platformer, and it is not a bad game by any stretch. I am quite close to 100% completing it, and I have had a great time along the way. If a second remaster is released, I will gladly purchase it too.

Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars (2011 Video Game)

A weaker game of the LEGO series, still fun though.

[6/10 · 18 October 2023]

LEGO Star Wars III was the first ever LEGO game I owned as a kid, and even as a kid I knew there was something off about it. At multiple points I would reach an area that gave 0 explanation on what to do and I would aimlessly run around for 20 minutes until giving up and looking up a walkthrough online. As I got older and stopped playing, I thought that I was just too young to understand the flow of the levels, but upon revisiting LEGO Star Wars III as an adult to play with my younger brother, I realized that my criticisms as a child still hold a lot of weight today. About 1 in 3 levels contain a segment where what you're supposed to do to make progress and reach the next level is completely unclear; leaving you to randomly run around destroying things until you by chance figure out what you're supposed to do or give up and google how to complete it. I think the developers went a little over the top in changing up the level design to be more complicated than the earlier games, because if an adult with thousands of hours on challenging story-based games is confused how to make progress in a KID'S platforming game, something went wrong in the design process. Also, the battlefield levels and segments are insanely tedious, time-consuming and just plain boring; yet they're the central focus of way too many levels.

That being said, this is still a LEGO game, so the expansive character roster and brilliantly fleshed out hub world is just as good as any other LEGO game, and the majority of levels are straight-forward and very enjoyable! The humor in the cutscenes is peak LEGO game humor, and even as an adult I still laugh out loud at most of them. This is one of the last LEGO games where the cutscene jokes didn't boil down to stuff like "oh look a chicken! There shouldn't be a chicken there!", and I wish newer LEGO games had the sense of humor this game does. All in all, LEGO Star Wars III contains most of the elements that make LEGO games fun to play, and I appreciate that it doesn't hold your hand and set the difficulty to baby mode like some of the newer games do. However, there's not really anything special that sets this game apart from the other games in the LEGO Star Wars series, and it has multiple flaws that can make progressing feel like a chore. LEGO games should be fun, light-hearted experiences, not boring & confusing puzzles. This game feels like the latter a tad too often, and so I give it a 6/10.

The Amazing World of Gumball: Christmas (2013) Season 2, Episode 15

One of TAWOG's greatest

[9/10 · 26 September 2023]

I believe that The Origins and The Choices are the only episodes in the series better than Christmas, this episode is by far the best holiday special of the entire show. Richard's attempts to get back on the nice list are some of the funniest and most iconic moments of the show. Nicole's story and payoff of her experience with Santa is exceptionally touching.

For all my praises, I still give this episode a 9/10 because the "Christmas is Cancelled" song is a tad cringey and the ending sequence of landing the sleigh was a bit too conventional. However, the episode still ends on a warm, heartfelt note with one last final joke for the credits to roll in on.

TV: The Movie (2006)

Just... bad.

[2/10 · 22 February 2022]

This movie came out when I was 4, but all of the humor is so dated it might as well be prehistoric. As another reviewer put it, the cast are great stuntmen and skaters, but they are most definitely NOT actors or comedy writers. Recently, Steve-O said in a YT video about his "acting" career that 1/3 of the entire movie's budget was spent on cocaine, and after watching this hour+ showcase of cheap garbage I'm surprised it wasn't 2/3. Virtually every sketch has a lower production value than most high-school film projects, and the setups and jokes are just plain unfunny. The Mexican COPS "parody" is just a million consecutive dated stereotypical racist jokes all delivered in the worst put-on Mexican accents. The "female" news anchor (just another male cast member wearing a wig and talking with a feminine Steve-O voice) is so pointlessly dumb and unbearably annoying that when "she" interviewed Satan (Centaur Steve-O with horns) I actually preferred listening to Steve-O in a horrible edited voice pretend to be Satan and make a woman suck his centaur youknowwhat, because it meant I didn't have to hear the only possible voice worse than Steve-O's. The Miami Vice ripoff is really bad, and the the Circus Clown rehab ending is just hard to watch when you know it was Steve-O's genuine mindset at the time. This movie tries to be offensive, but it does so by just recycling unfunny racist and sexist jokes, and where it does try to be creative, it just gets worse. The mental asylum "Girls Gone Wild" is just a gross setup to show boobs for 3 minutes, but the prison humor is especially gross. The "prison gays" scene is so exceptionally bad and out-of-date I'm genuinely surprised none of the actors in it have been cancelled for it yet. NEVER let that scene air on Twitter or it will legitimately be the end of their careers.

Giving a 2/10 because despite how absolutely awful 95% of the movie is, there are a few genuinely funny bits that made me laugh out loud, namely the Wee-Man Jackass doll and Steve-O's ad for Trojan High-Risk condoms. Steve-O's MTV Cribs rip-off is also pretty ironic when you realize that while he was acting it up in that scene, he literally did end up become a rapper who WAS that bad on drugs.

The Book of Boba Fett: Chapter 3: The Streets of Mos Espa (2022) Season 1, Episode 3

What are they doing with Boba?

[5/10 · 9 February 2022]

I don't know if the writers have gone for another "subversion of expectations" on our perception of a character in the style of Luke from The Last Jedi, but it's not working. Writing Boba Fett to be different from how he's been portrayed in the past isn't fleshing him out as a character, it's just making him old and generic. This series makes him out to be weak and non-confrontational, but yet somehow invincible. Boba Fett is a human, but yet got punched in the face and thrown across a room full force by a Wookiee with ELECTRIFIED BRASS KNUCKLES like 10x and doesn't even have a single bruise?? Everybody's complaining about the ridiculous chase scene being unrealistic to the universe, but those rainbow colored speeder bikes hold nothing in comparison with Luke Cage Boba here who (in his 40s, btw) can walk away from a brutal attack on his life without so much as a bruise. The chase scene was also really bad, but other reviewers have explained why better than I could.

Person of Interest: 2 Pi R (2013) Season 2, Episode 11

Brilliantly dumb opening stakes taint the overall quality

[6/10 · 23 July 2021]

The last 40 minutes of this episode are great. The opening concept of "we can only hold these men for 72 hours without charging them" is brilliantly dumb when you arrested all 4 well-armed men in the middle of a broken in and exploded bank. Pretty sure u can charge them.