Watchmen: The End is Nigh dropped today, and being the Watchmen fan I am, I excitedly downloaded it. Here are some quick impressions.




-This game is absolutely fucking gorgeous. Easily the best looking arcade game ever. The street glimmers, the blood is beautiful, and every environment is gritty and dark, encapsulating the novel's graphic tone. I spent about 2-3 minutes simply walking around as Rorschach; his stance and strut is exactly the same as the novel, and being such a huge fan, it feels awesomely cool to just be Rorschach. If you ever aim the camera at his face, you can see his mask slowly changing shapes, and little details like this make the game feel like you are living the novel.

-The gameplay is seamless, and incredibly satisfying. Each animation looks smooth, and Kovac and Owl fight exactly how you would imagine them to; Rorschach is rough, brutal, and filled with rage. He plays like a serious psycho, which is fitting. His attacks are brutal, sloppy, yet absolutely neccessary. Performing his finishing moves feels great, and just makes you say "Ouch. That was awesome." Night Owl fights in a much more calm, collected manner, using high kicks, and graceful, smooth moves to take down his opponents. Each character learns new moves as the game progresses, whether it's throwing an enemy into a wall to watch him go splat in all of his ragdoll glory, or a bull rage, where Ror runs head first into an enemy, slamming them hard. You can pick up weapons for new moves, and there are different special moves for each character to learn and perform.

-A lot of reviews have claimed that it's repetitive, and I get that. But isn't every brawler? The fun of playing beat em ups comes from the fun of just that, beating fools up. The gameplay is ridiculously fun, and the superb presentation makes smashing heads in just. plain. fun.

-The game features many nods to the novel, so fans of the original will surely smirk at some moments.

-Yes, the game is short. Were you really expecting a 10-12 hour experience from an XBLA beat em up? The game is great while it lasts, and is great for whenever you need to kill stuff for a while. Plus, if you play through as Rorschach the first time, you can beat the game as Night Owl, who uses a different fighting style, and feels like a new character. Clones with different skins, they are not.

-No online co-op. This sucks.

-The price. Yep, 20 bucks is a LOT of money, I know. This game is far from perfect, but it's ridiculously fun. It doesn't overstay it's welcome, and the splitscreen co-op makes for some good times. The first Penny Arcade game was 1600, and didn't a ton of people buy that? It was a great game, don't get me wrong. W:TEIN is really just a retail game that's ridiculously short. Would I pay 60 bucks for this? Fuck no. But 20 dollars will get you a beautiful, polished beat em up that is just a fun title to play for a while. While I definitely agree with a lot of it's downfalls stated in various reviews, I think most reviews have been a little too harsh. I can think of a LOT worse games to spend 20 bucks on.

8 Hurms out of Ten.