he only thing spookier than Clint Eastwood with a Colt revolver is Clint Eastwood as an "undead vampire demon from hell" with six-gun-packing fists and a preternatural hankering for hemoglobin. That's essentially what Highmoon Studios has delivered with Darkwatch, a routine first-person shooter, but with frenzied action sequences steeped in vampire myth and Weird Wild West leitmotif.
The year is 1876, and notorious outlaw Jericho Cross' luck has finally run short. Targeting a secret treasure train, Cross inadvertently bumps guns with the Darkwatch, an ancient sect dedicated to battling supernatural evils. It turns out the Darkwatch are transporting a deadly vampire lord named Lazarus to the Darkwatch Citadel for interrogation. Assuming the cargo is big money, Cross blows the train vault and unintentionally releases the vampire lord, who promptly returns the favor by biting Cross and setting him on the path to damnation.
Using the left and right joysticks to move and aim, respectively, and the right trigger to fire weapons (the control scheme is very similar to Halo), players assume the role of novice vampire Jericho Cross as he struggles first to evade and eventually to confront the vampire lord Lazarus. Along the way, Jericho must collect new gun-based weapons, destroy hellspawn hubs, revive his essence using blood clouds and ultimately make ethical decisions, which in turn affect the nature of his powers—good or evil—as a rookie vampire.
Vampire powers are acquired gradually and come in "good" and "evil" flavors. Jericho can super-jump and use blood vision (highlights enemies and key items) out of the gate, but will eventually earn abilities such as Vindicator, a "good" power that incinerates enemies with chain lightning, or Turn, an "evil" power that converts Jericho's enemies into slaves. Connected to Xbox Live, players can fight head to head, battle in teams to capture the opposition's flag or fight to be the first to collect the most blood clouds in a variation called "Soul Hunter."
Much good, little bad, no ugly
For a game that often feels a tad rush-paced and rough around the edges, Darkwatch is certainly tight when the bullets are flying, which is most of the time. This is a game in which the thin narrative is like an event announcer, stepping in periodically to bark off standings before drawing up the gates on some new, more hideous cadre of phantasmagoric minions. At the end of the journey (which is, alas, a bit on the short side), there's a visceral sense of having been shot from a cannon several dozen times.
Put simply, Darkwatch is a good enough first-person rip elevated by its innovative genre-mixing, and despite its often furious pacing. Who wouldn't want to run around with all the superhuman powers of a vampire? Sure, it's been done before, and admirably so in games like Soul Reaver, but with thumping horseback gunfights against Undead Ryders? Cavern crawls replete with suicidal explosive-barrel-laden Keggers? Did I mention the trench coats and cowboy hats?
Yes, it's linear; yes, it's about mowing down waves of dumb bad guys in confined spaces; yes, it's the usual mix of ranged and melee encounters; and yes, it's a blatant Halo knockoff, but Darkwatch brings its own unique style to the fray and ponies up where it matters. Though they share the same control schemes, nothing in Halo quite matches the galloping insanity of pirouetting in the saddle of your horse and trading fire with Undead Ryders on horseback, or the delightful "swish-swish-whick-SNAP" sound the dual fire pistols make as they're twirled by Jericho following an attack. It's little touches like the blade in the stock of a rifle that you can use to decapitate an enemy up close, or the irritatingly smart way Gunslingers dodge (all over hell, in fact) that keep Darkwatch appealing and challenging in this era of first-person yawners.
The bad isn't terrible, but enough to hold the game back from greatness. The second phase of the vampire double-jump is much too "floaty," probably to accommodate some enormous platform leaps without compromising the much more realistic single jump. The enemy AI is, no surprises here, a bit on the dim side overall, bearing in mind that Darkwatch is more in the vein of a "shooting gallery" FPS than something with considerable strategic elements, such as Half Life 2. The biggest problem is the way the story jerks forward too quickly, and several of the levels (at start) feel disconnected, as if the designers created an interesting environment first and the writers slapped a hasty segue in to explain the abrupt transition after the fact.
When it comes to combat, Darkwatch fires all chambers to keep its bloody ballet interesting and fun, even if it often feels like Halo with a facelift. There are certainly worse compliments to pay a game than to compare it on several key levels to one of the top 10 or so best-selling games of all time. Watch the short play time on the middle difficulty levels; otherwise Darkwatch is easy to recommend, and especially to fans of vampire-horror, westerns or a little of both.
With some attention to pacing, better level-to-story tie-in, and tweaks to a few of the action mechanics, this could have been a classic.
—Matt
Back to the top.
