Unique in its bundling of two short-lived Watchmen games plus a 24-minute longer "Director's Cut" version of the Watchmen film, released theatrically back in March, Watchmen: The End is Nigh, The Complete Experience for PlayStation3 is hard to peg; it's lesser than the sum of its parts.

On the one hand, the Blu-ray Watchmen The Director's Cut movie is a spectacular feast for the eyes, ears, and guts prone to churning, and none too shabby at telling a mind-bending, heart-wrenching, alternate-reality anti-hero tale to boot.

Based on 1987's landmark graphic novel (itself a compendium of a 12 issue comic book series), the movie treats its impossible premise with stark fidelity, delivering brutal savagery of costumed vigilantes coming out of retirement balanced with a somewhat doleful drama linking characteristic back stories with the immediacy of a looming doomsday fate.

Importantly, none of the Watchmen are actually super-powered, save one. Dr. Manhattan was once a man, a physicist disintegrated in a science experiments gone awry (go figure), fortunately able to reconstruct himself as a blue-hued full-frontal nude dude who takes weekends off to go end Vietnam wars. Well, once anyway. But that was the end of that little police action.

Dr. Manhattan's god-like superpowers are tempered by conflicting bouts of doubt, apathy, existentialism, zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, humanity and narcissisms.

All the other characters are merely mortal, albeit martial arts masters each, aided by at least one if not several crime-fighting gadgets, or sometimes plain old fists and guns and little restraint.

When they're not excessively pummeling criminals, each takes an intertwining turn at metaphysical brooding and post-traumatic angst. Basically, they're all damaged goods lugging around a ton of baggage and the odd dollop of sexual dysfunction.

Easily the most interesting of these mere-mortal introspectives is found in Rorschach, the primary in the ensemble who is as devoted to solving the murder-mystery at hand he is to his unadulterated, uncompromising brand of ferocious justice, which makes him the most tragic figure in the end.

As you might surmise, Watchmen is no teenybopper popcorn movie, though its comic book underpinnings might make it look that way at first blush. This probably explains why many film critics hated Watchmen, insisting the movie mixed too much melodrama with graphic action, or too much blood and gore with long-winded character studies, or just too much Manhattan dangling front and center like so much flaccid nonchalance.

However, watched on Blu-ray from the comfort of your couch, Watchmen cannot be considered anything less than landmark entertainment; perhaps imperfect, but also entirely original. It's vivid, vicious and thoughtful, gory, graphic and morose, all at the same time, prone to squelching cheers with sudden slams of sorrow. What a ride.

The Watchmen Director's Cut on Blu-ray also contains a rather magical take the ubiquitous "director's commentary" in that Zack Snyder - of 300 fame - often stands in the middle of the screen (as opposed to merely providing a disembodied ramble) with the full feature playing on his right while behind-the-scenes CG modeling and props visualize his commentary on his left. Not only is this "Maximum Movie Mode" worth watching for its technical revelations, but for a deeper appreciation of the film and the historic novel on which it's based. Watchmen, incidentally, is one of Time Magazine's Top 100 novels of the 20th Century.

That said, were you to buy Watchmen Director's Cut just as a Blu-ray movie, you'd also get a second disc of "special features" delving yet further into the movie made mythos, plus two mini-documentaries on vigilantism and the science of fiction, access to yet more content via BD-Live (internet connect player required), plus a third, digital copy disc (which you can rip to iTunes or Windows Media Player). All told, a whack of extra goodies for the lesser MSRP of $35.99. Pretty much and essential purchase right there.

Watchmen: The End is Nigh, the Complete Experience at $49.99, on the other hand, omits the digital copy and swaps the special features disc for a Watchmen game - two short game episodes on one disc, in fact. And that is where this particular bundle falls apart.

Here's the thing: Watchmen The End is Nigh Part 1 was originally available as a $20 download-only back in March. Promising a series of episodic games based on the movie/graphic novel, it offered about an hour of rock solid beat-'em-up gameplay featuring the has-been duo of Rorschach and Night Owl II, plus about four more hours of utterly redundant beat-'em-up action. By itself, it'd score a 2.5 (out of 5)

Watchmen: The End is Nigh Part 2 came available just recently with the release of the DVD/Blu-ray movie. Also available as a downloadable game episode for $15, Part 2 picks up where the last four redundant hours of gameplay left off, adds a hapless handful of gratuitous gore to the mix, and sets it all in a hooker-bashing brothel, which is about as pathetic as it sounds if not more so. Alone, it'd score a soulless 1.5 (out of 5).

While releasing the two parts together as a single hard copy might seem like a $35 value right there, it certainly is not. These episodes should not have cost more than $5 each to begin with - and they would have made great freebies as promotion material for the film or Blu-ray movie.

But even bundled with the Blu-ray movie and pretending at $20 "savings" over the sum of its parts, Watchmen: The End is Nigh, the Complete Experience still gives you the short end of the stick.

When (not if) you find this unique package in the bargain-bin, by all means, pick it up. But not before that.

Or pick up Watchmen The Director's Cut on Blu-ray right now and be done with it.