Video Game Review: ‘Watchmen: The End is Nigh’ Feels Like Relic From Era of Book’s Publication

Video Game Rating: 1.5/5.0

CHICAGO – If Alan Moore still paid attention to the products based on his creations, the downloadable game “Watchmen: The End is Nigh” might make him give up once and for all. His book that so masterfully deconstructed the superhero genre has been turned into an old-fashioned brawler, in which the player is supposed to get thrills from beating up an endless stream of bad guys. “Watchmen” truly has become like any other superhero franchise, complete with a lame video game to accompany it.

“The End is Nigh” tries to provide back story for the Zack Snyder film and Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons’ book by offering up some of the heroic, butt-kicking adventures of Nite Owl and Rorschach, played by Patrick Wilson and Jackie Earle Haley in the film. But it turns a story about man’s capacity for evil and the fallibity of the hero into a button-mashing brawler. And not a very good one at that. “Nigh” is a dull, repetetive game worth maybe the cost of a rental but far from the $19.99 plus tax you’ll have to pay online.

Watchmen: The End is Nigh
Photo credit: Deadline Games

The games that “End is Nigh” reminded me of most are ones most of us stopped playing years ago. I’m talking “Golden Axe” years ago. Watch as five guys run at you. Watch as they take turns standing there and waiting for you to kick their butts, break their limbs, or smash their heads in. Watch another five guys run at you. Repeat with the occasional cut scene.

Watchmen: The End is Nigh Photo credit: Deadline Games

The very loose story for “End is Nigh” takes place ten years before the events of the legendary book. You can play as Nite Owl or Rorschach, as the two face a stream of useless bad guys with some of the most ridiculous AI in a long time. The story attempts to explain how Richard Nixon stayed President until 1985.

“Nigh” feels like an incomplete game, like you’re playing a beta version of a half-complete title. Yes, there are some cool finishing moves and other elements that work, but this fan of the book can’t help but feel that the brutality of the game kind of goes against everything Moore and Gibbons were attempting. It fits with Snyder’s shockingly violent film but not the dialogue-driven original source material.

A punch, a kick, a special move, and a finishing brutality can be fun, but it’s the numbing repetition of “Watchmen: The End is Nigh” that’s truly shocking. It’s almost literally the same fight after fight from Chapter I to VI and through the roughly two hours the game will take you to finish. So, the game costs more than seeing the movie, takes less time, and is nothing but repetition.

Watchmen: The End is Nigh Photo credit: Deadline Games

What works about “End is Nigh”? The voice work is good (although the enemy banter is horrific and repetitive) and some of the backgrounds are impressively rendered. It almost makes it more depressing that the gameplay/AI don’t live up to the rest of the design. And the lack of online play is shocking. If you’re going to pay $20, you should be able to play co-operatively with someone online. How is that NOT included in a title so tailor-made for online, co-op play?

With titles like “Flower” stretching the boundaries of gaming and coming in at half the cost and the acclaimed “The Lost and the Damned” DLC for “Grand Theft Auto IV” stretching 12 hours with multiplayer capabilities for the same cost as “The End is Nigh,” this offering feels like a relic of a time gone by. It might have worked as the first downloadable game or at half the cost, but “The End is Nigh” is just another poorly-made movie-licensed game. “Watchmen” fans deserve better.

By BRIAN TALLERICO Content Director HollywoodChicago.com brian@hollywoodchicago.com