Watchmen - The Mobile Game Review

Anannya Sen’s Review

The game before the film.

I really wanted to like Watchmen the mobile game. After all I am a huge fan of the comic (showing my age in that I was around when it first came out) and now of the film (Zak Snyder, I doff my cap to you sir). But I'm really not sure what's going on during the game.

First of all it's set before the events of the film, and other than showing some of the characters really has nothing much to do with the film itself. In the story mode you play as Nite Owl in "modern times" (still the late 70s and 80s) and then switch to playing as the Comedian during the Vietnam war. In between levels you do get some excerpts from Rorschach's journal and in fact these are actually more interesting than the game itself.

Essentially Watchmen is a 2D side scrolling beat em up in the mould of the old Double Dragon or Target Renegade games. You have a certain number of enemies on a screen you have to dispatch before you can move further right along the playing area. These enemies have various methods of attack from guns, machetes, fists and even rocket launchers. Wander around the screen taking them out and using their weapons against them. Every now and again you will be confronted by a boss type character that you have to dispose of in addition to the annoying standard enemies on the screen.

The heroes have a combo of attacks, accomplished by repeatedly pressing the 5 or action button. Pressing 1 or 3 will do their special move (for the Comedian it's a flying kick - very Double Dragon - and for Nite Owl he throws a batarang type thing) and you have to recharge this before you can use it again. In addition to this each of them has a limited number of superhero attacks which is denoted by the grenades on the bottom left of the screen. Comedian throws a bunch of grenades and Nite Owl zips out of the screen while his ship Archie, you guessed it, throws a bunch of grenades. You can pick up and throw people and objects as well if you really want.

The action here starts off as being reasonably appealing and in addition to throwing stuff, there seems to be a number count when you pummel villains, until you get hit. I'm not sure what this is for. Then you realise the entire game is pretty much like this with a few ridiculously easy flying levels thrown in between. This wouldn't be that much of a detraction if not for the fact that the hit box is very very annoying. You have to be right next to the boss to register any hits, yet on some enemies you can hit about 4 of them even though they're not right next to you. Sometimes you seem to hit people easily and others the game seems to require a perfectly adjacent strike. Also with the random enemies floating around, getting into a corner would be fine except that they seem to float through and around you when moving.

Worse still is the staccato movement. It's like the characters have had their growth stunted so their limbs don't work properly and they move zombie-esque around the screen. It's not very well animated, and in fact the old games I mentioned above had smoother movement. The actual animation of the fighting isn't bad, and the sprites for the characters are reasonably detailed, but the items are tiny on the screen. Sound is pretty average with some loading and in game tune that becomes more annoying the longer you hear it.

There are 4 chapters in story mode which didn't take me that long to complete. I thought that would give me the code(s) I needed to unlock the secret level and God level (they are listed in the options!!) but nope I got nothing. And now that I have finished the game and can play survival mode as either character I really don't think I can be bothered to do so, even if it would give me these codes.

It would have been cool to have the game bear more than a passing resemblance throughout to the film. Or allow you to play as some of the other Watchmen and see how their powers are and get some variety in the fighting. You could have even had a bluetooth co-operative mode in the vein of some of the old 2-4 player beat em ups, but nope, what we got here is a poor hashed attempt to make a game connected with the film.

Average graphics, below par animation and repetitive gameplay (with that annoying hitbox) means that this falls far short of the movie and even Dr Manhattan couldn't save this game. If not for the above average graphics, this would have got our infamous wooden spoon. But avoid it anyway, nonetheless.