14 DAY TRIAL // The comic book frenzy has clearly hit games and even as comic book heroes fuel multi million dollar grossing movies, like Iron Man, Hulk 2 and the upcoming Watchmen, which comes sometime in early 2009, some of the interest for super heroes is trickling down into videogames. The Iron Man game was a mediocre effort, but now Watchmen is getting the videogame treatment and hopes are high that comic book inspired games will offer an interesting experience.
Watchmen will be delivered in episodic format, with some of the episodes coming before the movie and some being offered as the movie begins to show around the world. Development is handled by Deadline Games, which is currently working on Faith and a .45. The game will be available as downloadable content on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and on the PC. It seems that it will be a third person action game, with a lot of brawling action, focusing on the adventures that the characters from the comic went through before 1985, the year that the comic book events are set in. The protagonists will be Nite Owl and Rorschach, which at one time fought crime together.
It's worth noting that while comic book creator Alan Moore is not involved in the Watchmen movie and in the videogame, Len Wein, a reputed author in the comics world, is doing the writing, while the graphical element of the game will be supervised by Dave Gibbons, who created the original art for the comic book.
It will be worth seeing if the videogames, especially as they are episodic, manage to retain the dark atmosphere that the original comic book had. Alan Moore conceived a universe where nuclear war is always a looming threat and where masked heroes have been outlawed. The characters are all more human than superheroes, with deep psychological scars that affect their thoughts and actions.