Who Plays the 'Watchmen'

The little screen gets Watchmen love with "The End is Nigh"

There's a simple, reciprocal rule in the entertainment industry.  Don't make movies based on video games.  Don't make video games based on movies.  Why this paradoxical yet nearly flawless symmetry exists may, infact, be the best proof for the existence of a higher power at work, but every once in a while, just like that certain doctor on a certain Beagle, some one comes along a throws a monkey wrench into the whole, peacefully grinding works.  While Starbreeze's The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay may be the Darwin of video games in my increasingly muddled metaphor, it's quite possible that Watchmen: The End is Nigh for the Xbox 360 Live Arcade comes across more as the guy who invented Theological noncognitivism.  A nice try, but unlikely to convince many.

Ok so maybe it sounded like I was going to say that this was an exception to the rule, and while it's not completely, it sort of is.  Watchmen: The End is Nigh is a basic beat-em-brawler wrapped in a surprisingly pretty package, escpecially for a downloadable Live Arcade game, and healthy heap of Watchmen hype.  It's hard to find modern analogues to this game, as the 3D beat-em-up never really blosomed as a genre, and The End is Nigh almost feels like it shares more in common with its ancient Double Dragon and Final Fight brothers than modern next-gen titles.  That said, if you expect a bit more for your $20 dollar digital deposit than a reimagining of a nearly defunct genre, perhaps this isn't how you take your Watchmen.

Gameplay involves punching.  A lot of punching.  There is somewhat of a complexity built into the AI's ability to block and your ability to dole out combos and break their blocks, and everyonce in a while you get the chance to perform some form finishing move which are nearly, but no quite, as satisfying as the take-downs from Assassin's Creed.  But punching and kicking are the staple as you play either the visceral and brutal Rorschach or the refined and acrobatic Nite Owl through a recounting of one the casual asides from the Watchmen comic.  Oddly enough, the game as whole, despite it's refinement and polish, does feel a bit like a casual aside to the whole Watchmen hype-alooza, but for a casual aside, it's reasonably fun, and at least worth a download of the demo.  But is the whole package $20 of fun?  That's between you and your wallet.

Verdict: Meh to Meh+