It has been a big decade for technological advancements of all stripes. The last three years in particular have seen quite a bit of movement, in an interesting microcosm of the larger historical landscape – where the vastly greater number of technological advancements has taken place in the last century or two. Mobile phones are among the greater, more tangible and more accessible manifestations of this spate of advancements, and everyone and their mother can attest to how increasingly compact and streamlined hardware integration and increasingly versatile and flexible software capability have made everyone’s lives both more efficient and more enjoyable.
Enjoyment comes in many forms, whether through higher-quality ringtones and the like, or through the proliferation of various diverse software applications supported by smartphone platforms like the iPhone. Among these are video game apps, which may be streamlined and simplified adaptations of big console properties or new games created from whole cloth, and may cost anywhere from nothing to $10 or thereabouts. One game that debuted quite a while ago but marked considerable innovation for its time is a MMO-style adaptation of a comic property that – fittingly enough – also marked considerable innovation for its time, despite having debuted quite a while ago.
Watchmen: Justice is Coming is an adaptation of sorts of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ seminal comic property Watchmen, which saw the deconstruction of the superhero story genre in general and superhero characters in particular phrased in real-world terms amid a backdrop of impending cold war. The story’s grim circa-1975 world is the real-time 3D setting for Justice is Coming, a title which is itself a play on words on the story’s The End is Near theme. Players create their own character to patrol the streets of New York, battling crime in a Watchmen-inspired storyline while tracking down hidden artifacts and completing various story objectives.
A player’s all-original avatar can battle preprogrammed foes [new criminals were added at around the time of the release of the Story 2.0 expansion “We Are Compelled”], or even other players in the MMO-style gameplay set amidst five different environments – Downtown, the Cemetery, the City Park, the Financial District, and the Red Light District. All this is powered by a strategic 3D combat engine, monitored by persistently-updated gameplay stats and supported by real-time online chat. The latter half of 2009 featured an update, with the aforementioned “We Are Compelled” story episode, also adding “Rooftops” to the battle environments and a Rorshach-like journal for reviewing one’s progress.
While generally well-received for the ambitious translation of the comic’s compelling concept, the game doesn’t deliver as much as its potential might suggest. The innovative Rorshach test establishing a created character’s personality isn’t put to use at all in the actual gameplay, and plenty of connectivity issues have always seriously impeded the game’s attempt at full-on MMO-style play. However, the difficulty meeting the higly-raised bar of potential was somewhat expected of anything tying in to such a momentous graphic novel, and the graphically- and musically-excellent translation does remain faithful, down to newspaper stand and kissing-silhouette graffiti. All told, however, Watchmen must continue to wait until future updates finally resolve the various fundamental issues and change Justice’s status from “coming” to “here,” thus living up to the storied story’s potential as an adapted property.
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