Jamie Donnelly
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GameWatcher Latest Reviews
Lost Planet 3 is competent, but lacks any real soul. The Rig is a cool idea, and adds an interesting perspective to what is an otherwise pretty standard third-person shooter where waves of enemies come at you again and again, but even that brightest spark falls apart in execution. There’s never any real horror or drama, as you’re just pushed from point to point, making even the most potentially tense moments feel humdrum. It’ll give you some joy and a few cool moments, but nothing to vi...
No matter how annoying these aspects can be, though, they’re part of the charm. Ducktales Remastered is a nostalgia trip from start to end, frustrating, life-taking warts and all. There are mine cart levels, collectibles that ding when you pick them up, a bank vault full of money that exists for no reason other than to let you dive in. It’s clear that this was a project of care and love, with attention to detail ever-present - everything new is there to accentuate the old, and it results ...
Even if the jumping had been solid, though, it still doesn’t quite capture the magic of games it takes inspiration from like Super Meat Boy. It always feels too much like you’re doing exactly the same thing again and again, with the super-quick levels and a poor diversity of obstacles both contributing to the deja-vu that kicks in pretty soon after you start your Cloudberry Kingdom. High score chasers may forgive it for that, and its high-level of challenge means it appeals to difficult-j...
Neverwinter is a polished, if uninspiring MMO. There’s a welcome fluidity to combat, but it doesn’t do anything innovative, taking the successes of Star Trek Online and implementing them in a D&D world, as well as borrowing from other post-World of Warcraft action-orientated MMOs. Ultimately, it’ll live or die on the lasting success of The Foundry, which promises potentially unlimited creative content that will let you experience stories far beyond the cookie-cutter nature of the ones i...
These issues aside, though, Reus is a fantastic god game - even if it departs from the usual defining staples of that genre and feels more like a puzzle game. Working out its puzzles to help bring your people to prosperity is challenging and rewarding, and while the need to keep referring to tooltips and the slow speed of your giants can get frustrating, you’ll want to keep returning to Reus, trying again and again to make your world as prosperous as it can be.
Grid 2 is a racing game that rewards skill without punishing you for the tiniest mistakes, letting you master a simple system with a forgiving attitude. It may stray too close towards the easy side of the scale at times, and it’ll be interesting to see how the game works online (which unfortunately wasn’t tested in this review), but its career mode is well worth playing and you won’t be satisfied until you’ve mastered every single corner.
Terraria is a fantastic game of exploration and survival. You can occasionally feel lost in its open-world that lacks any real signposting, but the simple joy of digging and crafting means you’ll keep playing to discover the naturally-occurring progress. The new version is in no-way half-assed, and it sits on the platform as if it was crafted for it from the very beginning. Terraria was a great PC game, and now it’s a great Xbox 360 game as well.
It’s shifted the focus to action without fully understanding how to make an action game work, resulting in a game that develops slowly from start to finish, and, at least as far as the combat goes, never does anything to surprise you. I was very sceptical before I played Dead Space 3, but I oh-so-desperately wanted to love it. Unfortunately, it never does anything to earn moderate positive feelings, let alone something approaching love, and instead it offers a vapid experience: one that lo...