CDV Night Watch review

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Verdict:

Review Date: 23 Oct 2006

Price when reviewed: inc VAT

Reviewed By: David Ludlow

Our Rating 3 stars out of 5

Review
Specs

Night Watch is based on the Russian movie of the same name.

If you haven't seen it, it covers the battle between good and evil and their uneasy truce. The Night Watch is the organisation set up to watch the Dark ones and ensure that they are not breaking the rules. With sorcerers, shape shifters and the mystical parallel world called the Gloom, there's plenty of fodder for an exciting game.

It's a shame, then, that the developers have trotted out an average turn-based strategy offering. Its starts out quite well, with an interesting, if poorly acted, introduction scene that gets you to pick your two characters' classes: mage, sorcerer or shape-shifter. A mage can fight with magic, a sorcerer can enchant objects, and a shape-shifter is a good fighter.

From here on, though, it's all downhill. The turn-based fights are mundane and the poor graphics remove any excitement you might have had. The parallel Gloom world should add an extra element, as stepping your characters into it alters how much magic and how many action points they have. In practice, though, this doesn't make a huge difference to the game.

Control is mainly through the mouse, but the cursor keys let you scroll round the current level. You can swing round your characters, zoom in and tilt the whole screen. You can't tilt that much, though, so it can be hard to see what's going on or get close to the action. The graphics are horribly dated and look like they're from a game that's a few years old rather than a brand-new title.

The storyline is rather engaging and the investigative part works quite well. If you're a fan of the Night Watch film or turn-based games, it's a worthy diversion. However, we had much higher hopes.

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