The Watchmen movie is set to hit theaters on March 6th of this year. Regarded as one of the greatest graphic novels of all time, it's something a lot of people are really looking forward to. The Watchmen: The End is Nigh is a two player co-op beat em up from Warner Bros Interactive, which is set to be released right before the movie on March 4th. You'll be able to obtain this two to three hour title from Xbox Live, PlayStation Network or on the PC via Direct2Drive or Steam.
In our recent Co-Op Beat Em' Up Retrospective, we talked in depth about how this genre seemed to be all but dead - but thanks to a few recent announcements we may have been proven wrong. Joystiq has some impressions of the title, one in which you play as either Rorscach or Nite Owl. They decided that game has a particular old schoo flavor to it, but that it actually seemed to fall short in some respects.
The beat-em-up genre hasn't progressed very far over the years, and it's clear that The End is Nigh makes no effort in changing the status quo. We're disappointed that some obvious features, like online cooperative play, won't be included with the game's release. Another obvious feature that's absent from the game: cooperative attacks. Although two players can play the game together offline, the lack of cooperative attacks limit the multiplayer aspect of the game. There's no way to do combos in tandem, nor is it possible to attack the same enemy with the two heroes. The multiplayer aspect is, essentially, two single player modes that happen in tandem.
That seems particularly disappointing. Even games like Streets of Rage, which came out well over 15 years ago, had these kind of features. It seems if we want to get our beat em up fix, we may have to look to the recently announced Invincible Tiger.
The official Watchmen site has a new trailer for the game.