You may have noticed a trend with video games that are based off of movies. This trend is that they suck in pretty much every way possible. However, there are a select bunch of titles that don’t attest to this notion: Scarface, The Chronicles of Rid****: Escape from Butcher’s Bay, The Warriors, erm… Metal Gear Solid 4’s cut scenes, and perhaps some others that I haven’t played, but the general consensus for the movie to game transition is a bleak one.



Watchmen: The End Is Nigh serves as a prequel to the movie and delivers the two chosen heroes, Nite Owl II and Rorschach, going about their daily routine of being a gruesome-twosome crime-fighting double act throughout New York City. They’re summoned to a prison which has turned victim of a crazed riot following some kind of beef over stolen lip-stick or something. It later turns out that a crime lord, known as The Underboss, used the riot as a ploy to escape the prison and do crime-lordy things. This annoys Batman and Rob- I mean Nite Owl and Rorschach, and they set out on finding this S.O.B.

If you’ve ever played The Warriors, you will be extremely familiar with the combat system and the actual combat itself. Hits are realistic (as in punches properly connect, arms don’t continue through the face as if it’s not there) and several combos and slow-mo finishing moves are unlockable. Most of the gameplay is simply repetition, as after an area full of bad guys is cleared out, the camera spins round to the location ahead and more bad guys appear, making the combos and finishing moves all that more welcome. Collecting tokens increases the move list and adds more to your rage bar, which can be used to add more power to your punches/throws/weapon strikes.

The weapons aren’t really plentiful, I spotted a baseball bat, a baton, a blade, a crowbar, a glass bottle and some kind of electrical baton (unless that was Nite Owl II shocking all the punks surrounding me…), each categorized into what I’m presuming by the finishing moves – long and short. Short weapon finishing moves end up with your character leaping onto the opponents back and repeatedly clubbing them in the head finished by a brutal direct hit to the face, and long weapons simply crack the foes skull in two. They’re quite spectacular despite the lack of variety, and being all bloody in slow-mo makes them look pretty cool.



Melee finishing moves are also striking, with one of Rorscach’s in particular opting for a Chris Jericho style backbreaker followed by an elbow to the, what seemed to be, groin/thigh area and consequently inducing smiles all round. Others include elbow drops, headbutts, monumental energy blasts and violent knees to the temple – all by pressing a big button when it appears on the screen.

Much to my disappointment, this is made all to easy by the plainly idiotic A.I enemies who spend half of their time Mexican waving with each other just waiting their turn to get pounded on. Again, the finishing moves help their clearout be a little less tedious and putting an above-average combo together to wipe out a big group is rather satisfying.

In essence all you really do is beat people up and pull some levers. The chapters are all extremely similar (despite the last) and begin with you taking some guys out, pulling some levers to open some doors, taking some more guys out, pulling some more levers, and then finally taking out the last wave of enemies and completing the chapter.



I was surprised by the visuals in Watchmen: The End Is Nigh. The main characters are extremely polished and even though the areas are either brown, grey, or on fire, and most of the game is set underground/at night, I didn’t find myself once think “oh, that doesn’t look too good” (that is until I ran into the GTA3 style helicopter which was as plain as a road). The animations were sometimes sloppy, mainly when I attempted to throw a guy off the top prison floor only to throw him into a wall, but it looked pretty funny. This is definitely one of the best looking XBLA games.

Is it worth 1600 MSPoints? No. Should Deadline Games have released this as a full title? No. Should they have bought it out at all? Yes. Watchmen: The End Is Nigh is a quick blast and a game that had potential – yet poor execution and a lack of online co-op sadly put this game in with the near-full “we’re movie-licensed games and we suck” club.