Having now seen the film I can say that whilst good, it has lost a lot of the comic series feel, neglecting some of the finer points of the books that made them so great and original, the ending, whilst not as nuts as Alan Moore’s original makes more sense for most of the public who have not read the books. All of the characters really worked well and the action scenes, which were a bit too violent, looked pretty good. The director’s taste in music shines through, at points the soundtrack seems to intrude too much, whilst at other moments it was sheer genius (a very faint Tears for Fears track on a particular Ozymandias scene). Now I have to wait for the BluRay version to see what has been included in the definitive cut, this means more waiting but hey, that's all us fanboys seem to do. Now back to the game review.

 

 

Following the preview I now understand where this game ties into the Watchmen mythos, it is a bit of a mixture of the comic and the film, the film did not really go into detail but Rorschasch and Nite Owl had their own hero team called The Crimebusters. For the game the developers have just renamed it as the Watchmen to make sense to the film goers. Rorschasch and Nite Owl involve themselves to try and stop a prison riot, as they deal with the rioters they find out that the Underboss has escaped and that the riot was just a ploy to break him free. So the team go off to track the criminal mastermind, taking the player to familiar venues from the film, each one offering new and harder enemies.

 

The End Is Nigh is a co-op beat-em-up, having you control either Rorschasch or Nite Owl, each has their own set of moves and fighting styles. You start the game with a very basic set of moves, light and heavy attacks and a block, as you play through the game you collect tokens that will unlock new moves like a throw, a counter and some new combos like a stun move or a more powerful attack. The action is pretty fast and violent, and there are plenty of thugs to deal with between each new area. If playing with the AI partner they tend to hold off enemies rather than defeat them like a human player would, making you have to prioritise the larger and weapon wielding foes first. Normally in the old 2D beat-em-ups if you got surrounded you tend to get a beating, in this 3D brawler though you are able to juggle attacks quite well, punching one baddie then flicking the control stick to have a pop at the bottle wielding nutter behind you.

 

Using the control stick to target specific enemies makes for some great punch-ups but at times the lock goes a bit haywire, causing your character to run after an enemy without you controlling them. When you are in real trouble you can use your rage move, this builds up as you attack people, with the press of R2 it will release an extra powerful move, Rorschaschs is the best as he will run head first into enemies, knocking them over so you can put the boot in as they lay on the floor.

 

On top of the endless punching and combos there are also some ultra violent moves that you can pull off, attacking a baddie that has a weapon will allow you to either steal it off them with a counter or grab from the floor when they drop it, letting you swing a crowbar or bottle someone. When some enemies are on their last legs you can also pull off a particularly violent finisher, a button command will appear over their heads, just walk up and press the correct button, sit back and enjoy watching the beating you dish out.

 

 

To break up all of the action there are a few minigames and co-op moments like lifting grates for each other and also a fun but tricky little lock picking game that gains you access to more tokens, these break up the action quite well but they do feel a little out of place.

 

In reality this is just a beat-em-up, lots of hitting, then walking, then hitting some more, people feel this gets boring but sometimes all I want to play is a mindless computer game and this ticks all of the boxes. After playing the recent Mega Drive Ultimate Collection and going over some old favourites like Golden Axe and Streets of Rage, Watchmen: The End is Nigh holds itself well with the old school and is a must for any beat-em-up fan.