Do you remember that movie from the early Eighties, Night Shift, with Henry Winkler fresh off of 'jumping the shark' and Michael Keaton in his pre-Mr. Mom days as two guys who open a prostitution ring out of the morgue where they work nights? It was a career launcher for Keaton, the first major feature directed by Ron Howard and major showings of the skills of Winkler and Shelley Long. It was a very funny movie. But it has nothing to do with this game.

This game, Night Watch, is in fact based on a movie, which is in turn based on a popular Russian book series. The basis of the fantasy action thriller stories is that there are 'Others' among us, people with supernatural abilities who are naturally attuned to the Light or Dark aspects of what is known as the 'Gloom'. The Gloom (or Twilight as it is interchangeably known in the game) is a separate magical realm, accessible only by these Others. For countless years there has been a struggle between the light and dark powers, with a treaty being signed many centuries ago to avoid the total destruction of both sides. That treaty put boundaries and rules around what each side could do and placed an Inquisition as the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong with regard to violations of the treaty. Each Other is naturally aligned to either light or dark (there is conflict here between the book and the movie) and the game opens with the main character Stas lining up a women in his sniper scope, getting ready to perform a hit and unknowingly placing himself in the middle of a huge battle between light and dark.

Technically Night Watch runs on the Silent Storm engine, much like 2005's Hammer & Sickle. This means that at its core it is a squad-based shooter with a turn-based combat system that plays out on small grid-based areas. One legitimate question is "How much better does role playing integrate with tactical combat in this game than in Hammer & Sickle?" I would say that it definitely works better, but it is an important enough issue that I'll give it a detailed treatment further into the review. Let's start with the 'nuts and bolts' though.

Graphically the game looks pretty good - for a game from 2004! The realization of games based on the Silent Storm engine has not greatly improved from the original game through Hammer & Sickle to this release. Character models are blocky and not very well defined for a modern game and the in-game cuts cenes feature voiceovers but no lip-syncing. The maps are bounded rectangles - you never really believe you are at the train station because you can see the edges of the world, as if you were on a tabletop. Everything is still destructible though, and it's a great feeling knowing that if you throw someone into a car that they will take secondary damage from that impact and tertiary damage if the impact causes glass to shatter or the engine to explode. Overall the graphics work well enough within the context of the tactical combat nature of the game, but they suffer greatly as a result of a major design choice - the Gloom or Twilight. The book describes the Twilight as a shadow world in which time and space operate differently, in which your life essence is taken to further feed the Twilight, and as an area where normal people cannot see you. In the game, the developers wrapped everything in the twilight in a sort of water lens that distorts details and edges and makes everything indistinct. The problem is that your spend about 90% of the game in the Twilight, so instead of making the best of the graphics quality they have, the developers have submerged us in the worst possible view of the game for the majority of the time we're playing. Bad choice - perhaps it was necessary, but it leaves a lousy impression.

The music is up-tempo techno and rock oriented music that feels quite appropriate for the game world. The book details much of the music that Anton listens to on his portable CD player and the feeling of the music in the game matches that description very well. The voice acting is an interesting thing - it sounds like Russian voice actors speaking English translations of the lines, but that is perfect for the story. The story takes place in modern day Moscow, after all, so it is appropriate that the characters are Russian. Having heavy accents and dubious sentence structure actually works - it is very much in contrast with several other Easter European RPGs where the translations made the game feel amateurish - in this case it actually helps with immersion in the scene.

The combat system is where the game really shines though. As it is based on the Silent Storm engine, it's a solid turn-based tactical shooter for starters. It is what the developers added that makes it really interesting though. You have two levels of reality - the real world and the Twilight, and there are melee attacks, ranged weapons, and magic and shapeshifting skills. The game does an excellent job of capturing the feeling that the Twilight is constantly eating away at the energy pool you have as an Other and that when it is gone your life essence gets drained. There is attack magic, defensive and supportive magic, direct and area effect spells and more. It is a fully varied battle system that forces you to carefully plan your moves - you only have so much energy and so many action points per round. This makes battles long, difficult and strategic - and some of them are really difficult. You also learn quickly to take your time regenerating before moving on, because there is often another battle right around the corner and if you're not at the top of your powers then you're as good as dead. This also makes it fortunate that you can save pretty much any time outside of cut scenes. The multi-tiered battles that feel like a combination of military combat, fantasy action and something else are just a wonderful experience and easily the best implemented part of the game.

But how well does it work as an RPG? That is somewhat of a mixed bag, I'm afraid. There are many areas that could be successful or unsuccessful - implementation of story, presentation of characters, development and advancement of the main character and the overall flow of the game. The story itself is quite good, but as I mentioned the game engine seems to work against a homogeneous flow of storytelling. It also feels limiting in terms of presenting the characters - the cut scenes give tidbits of information, but outside of those little is learned. The only comments are snide remarks when you try to make your character accomplish something without enough action points. The character development system is deceptively straightforward - once you choose your path all you do is allocate new skills. However, you need to make careful choices, because there are various times throughout the game where your companions change - ending up with two offensive mages with no support or charm or melee skills in a party will have you quickly retreating to old save games!

Night Watch has an interesting story - good enough that while playing the game I also rented the 2004 film and read the book. There are some significant differences between the film and the book, and the developers have borrowed liberally from both in formulating their realization of the Night Watch world. This should be a good thing and in terms of the combat system it is very nice - the best of both play into making combat very satisfying - but this game forces me to believe that no Silent Storm based game will ever be able to support a good story; the juxtaposition of story and combat is entirely too disjointed and cumbersome to be compelling.

In the end, Night Watch the game reminds me of something Semyon tells Anton in the last section of the Night Watch book when Anton has gotten drunk on Cognac. "It is all wrong, he says - Cognac is for the heart, Vodka is for the soul…" So they share a couple of bottles of Vodka. This game has a very good story to tell but its attempts to tell it through a combat-based game engine felt all wrong. So to paraphrase, I'd say that the Silent Storm engine is for combat but not for storytelling. Enter the game knowing that and let your soul drink deep from the well of glorious turn-based combat and you'll be satisfied. But go looking for a great sweeping storytelling experience and you'll be left unsatisfied and feeling hung over.

Reviewed by Michael Anderson for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).