(MA)

SYSTEM:PS3, Xbox 360, PC

DEVELOPER: Deadline Games

RRP: About $20

LAST night I had a bad dream involving brainless bullies, gratuitous swearing and masked heroes with the charisma of a sweaty sock.

Wait. That wasn't a dream. That was The Watchmen game - the latest movie-to-game release that goes to prove that just because it worked well on the big screen doesn't mean it will translate well to the little screen in my house.

From the end of the opening sequence to the roll of the last titles, this Warner Bros special falls harder than King Kong from the Empire State Building.

If you don't mind a bit of smash-n-bash action you might, and I say that with some trepidation, get some enjoyment from donning the masks of vigilantes Nite Owl and Rorschach.

You will spend your brief hours in the weakly-designed environs pummelling (make that button-mashing) your way through hordes upon hordes of dense enemies until the only thing that stands between you and ultimate defeat is a bruised thumb.

The creators have tried to emulate the very dark overtone of the movie and the comic books it's based on but all they've really created is a platform of senseless violence dripping in more droppings of the f-word than you'll find in a brothel.

The Watchmen is a by-episode downloadable game so perhaps there's some hope developer Deadline Games (which made the very playable Chili Con Carnage) will improve on this.

The game is set before the happenings of the film and follows Rorschach and Nite Owl (you choose the character) at the start of their bloody careers. I played as Rorschach - the trench-coated vigilante with the morphing inkblot on his mask.

He looked kind of cool, but his actions were wooden and in between thumping and dumping, he spent his time with hands in his pockets - which is where I should have kept mine instead of giving The Watchmen a whirl.