Game Info
Game Name: Watchmen: The End Is Nigh
Developer(s): Deadline Games
Publisher(s): Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
Platform(s): Xbox 360/PS3/PC
Genre(s): Action/Adventure
Release Date(s): March 4, 2009/July 21, 2009 (Retail)
ESRB Rating: M
The darkness is coming…in repetitive play…
There has been a major jailbreak at Sing-Sing Prison, and it is up to Nite Owl and Rorschach must stop Underboss who has escape. What is Underboss up to and why is he interested in two reporters named Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein? Plus, Nite Owl and Rorschach investigate a girl named Violet Greene caught up in a porn photography ring…but the right could test the friendship of the two as they try to stop Twilight Lady and her house of pleasures.
Watchmen: The End Is Nigh is an action-adventure video game meant to be a tie-in to the 2009 movie which adapted the classic graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. The game was released in two parts as a download but also was released in retail format.
I love Watchman, and I also actually like the movie (though many fans found it divisive when it was released). With this in mind, I hoped to play Watchmen: The End Is Nigh…but playing the game wasn’t the most enjoyable experience.
Yeah! A boss battle…a lame boss battle
The game fills in gaps in the Watchmen movie by presenting two different stories involving Nite Owl and Rorschach as a team. The first story is six parts and is tied to the Watergate cover-up. The chapters are shorter than the second download (only featuring three chapters) and the action is slightly easier. The second story take a more adult approach which Rorschach and Nite Owl invading a brothel full of dominatrix characters. It has longer levels and feels much more tedious (including an ending that has the two doing battle). The storyline features cutscenes inspired by Dave Gibbons’ art style for the comic book.
The game features co-op playing where the players can choose Rorschach or Nite Owl with the two characters occasionally splitting up. It does feature multiplayer gameplay, but the differences between Nite-Owl and Rorschach gameplay is minimal and hardly encourages replay. The story is interesting but the game gets dull quickly with only a couple types of enemies that can easily be defeated simply by doing defensive measures…over and over again. The puzzles aren’t difficult and the players have very little movement (aka they can’t jump or explore). This is combined with controls and moments that are rather clunky.
Nite Owl knows how to party!
The movie occasionally has decent visuals. The cutscenes are fun, and the actual game cut-scenes are sometimes impressive. Patrick Wilson and Jackie Earle Haley reprise their roles and Nite Owl and Rorschach. Sometimes the dialogue is poignant and on-point but often times it just repeats over and over again (and creatively extends to “I’ll rip your head off and s*#! down your throat” over and over again in the porn level).
Watchmen: The End Is Nigh is a rather lifeless action-adventure game. It is quite short so you can finish it in a day, but you probably won’t want to play it again. Fans of the comic might enjoy seeing more of the story, but it really isn’t worth the time or effort. Watchmen: The End Is Nigh can be skipped.
Related Links:
Before Watchmen: Minutemen/Silk Spectre
Before Watchmen: Ozymandias/Crimson Corsair
