🎮 Bored of the deadly slowness of modern zombies? Give the undead a mighty bike! And ride into the action. In this game you have to guide your zombie through the trials and tribulations to reach.

It was a time for war. It was a time for heroes. It was a time for war.. and heroes. It was a time for war, heroes, vampires and cowboys. It was a time for bad voice actors to try to sound like that man who does all the film trailers in that stupid voice. It was time for all of those things, with more cowboys and vampires. Lots of vampires. But it was not a time for fun.

It's an ineffable problem. There hasn't been a decent vampire shooter since mankind crawled out of the soup, nor a truly landmark cowboy shooter, either. So you decide to do something different instead? Don't be silly. You decide to merge the two. Cowboys and vampires. Genius.

Or is it?

The problem is, what with the end-of-generation malaise that inevitably sets in, we're jaded and restless, and if you're going to do an FPS, you have to do something big, spectacular and special. Having a concept - 'It's like a vampire shooter, but with, wait for it (snicker), COWBOYS!' - is not enough, except for the most diehard of VamBoy fans.

The game opens with its laughably bad voice-over. The wannabe-it-was-a-time-for man growls his way though some badly written nonsense about, well, vampires probably. I wasn't really listening. That kind of voice isn't conducive to listening.

Once you have control of your twitchy cowboy, you are dumped at the start of a train and told to fight your way through vampires and blow open a hatch. This you dutifully do, as the rubbish creatures waddle in waves of gittish embarrassment towards you, and you hack them to death. So far, so bland. When you blow open the safe, only narrowly unimpeded by an angry and oddly-modelled woman who later turns out to be a colleague, you discover that you have unleashed a great evil on the world. It's curious how often that happens in games.

A short while after, your new woman-at-arms screeches at you in the most unconvincing way some other absurd contrivance, (Oh noes! That have feasted on my sweetmeats. I am become vampire!), and that's all the plot. From thence until tedium, it's vampire-slashing all the way, with your slow descent into and battle against the forces of yawnsomely familiar gaming territory.

It wishes to appear to be some horrific chimera aesthetic between cowboy and vampire, which it only delivers in the loosest sense. In practice, the attempt to blend two styles has produced a look which is dark and eminently forgettable. There are scenes of 'Boy galloping across open desert, on lumpen horses, but because it's usually grim and dark, a necessity of the Vam', it ends up being satisfying in neither context.

The game is full of tributes to all manner of FPS brethren, such as Half-Life, Halo and Medal of Honour. Unfortunately, these tributes merely remind you how much you'd rather have been playing those games. Tributes to other games don't cover up for your own shortcomings.

Like other games which have featured open-ended 'morality' systems as either gimmicks or a central tenet of the game, this good-bad aspect doesn't really work. Ultimately, the claim of open-endedness is seen to be a sham. Invariably, you are led down one direction rather than the other, the direction in which the game developers expect you to go; the direction of good. The rewards for being good are more fun and useful than the alternative. You'd only be bad to make things difficult for yourself.

There are another couple of problems with the game that prevent it from rising above the mire of generic shooters. The most obvious flaw is that in one-player mode the game is drab. Fight your way through the vampire hordes in a canyon, ride a horse while shooting. Repeat.

There are also significant collision and twitchily irritant movement problems when fighting melee enemies. If you get trapped in a corner by a spawn-zone, you frequently get stuck until you are killed; much hilarity does not ensue, especially when it keeps happening.

The powers earned through the amorality systems really aren't that special, either. The melee attack is vicious and fun, but for the most part you can run, jump and frag through game without need to recourse to anything else.

The most unsatisfying element is the progress of the story. Eventually, the unending onslaught of cut-scenes grinds you down. Ooh, there are lots, too, full of those morality choices that make the whole game up but ultimately make no difference, since it's already been decided which way you'll go, and even then the ultimate outcome is the same, and neither surprising or entertaining.

Fortunately, apart from the voice-over at the start, the voice acting quickly matures into something which is quite enjoyable, even if they commit the standard game-voice crime of undue pomposity. The music is, again, curious and not entirely welcome of Cowboy thematics and vampire leitmotifs. Unusual, chromatic, well-orchestrated but not pretty. The music suffers from the same schizoid attitudes as the visual appearance, and it doesn't benefit from it at all.

The Xbox online mode is, reportedly, pretty good (replete, as it is, with online co-op mode, which is always a plus in our book), but given that we were lumbered with the split-screen-only PS2 version to review, we can't even vouch for whether such claims hold any water. As it is, the split screen mode on amplifies the manifest flaws of the single-player offering.

Ultimately, Darkwatch adds up to a generic and quickly tiresome shooter, with a contrived premise which, unfortunately, does nothing to elevate it. The most honest advice we can give is not to even think about paying full price for it. This game has little to offer that dozens of other shooters have done so much better.

5 /10

PS2/Xbox Preview - 'Darkwatch'

by Geson Hatchett on Dec. 8, 2004 @ 12:58 a.m. PST

Genre: First-Person Shooter
Developer: Sammy Studios
Publisher: Sega/Sammy Studios
Release Date: March 3, 2005

Pre-order 'DARKWATCH':Xbox PlayStation 2

They must be putting something in the water over near these here game development companies.

Some kind of super-brain-enhancing agent, or something.

Whatever it is, I want some.

It wasn’t long ago that the arrival of a capable console first-person shooter could be categorized as a once-in-a-while event. Yet, in the same season, I’ve been treated to the likes of the phenomenal Halo 2, the surprisingly solid Goldeneye: Rogue Agent, and just recently, Darkwatch, which will be released by Sammy next year.

Darkwatch puts you into the role of one Jericho Cross, a vampire who slays monsters and the undead, and—should you prefer to go that route—makes things safe for the human race. He’s a guy with a toothful sneer and a style that makes the likes of Blade or Van Helsing look tame by comparison.

When a game gives you an option for fanning your pistol hammer as a primary means of firing it, you know it’s on to something. Other weapons include crossbows whose projectiles embed themselves into targets and explode, and old-style renditions of shotguns and sniper rifles. Grenades are replaced by dynamite, most vehicles are powered by steam, pretty much everything’s given an Old West look, or something similar to it.

Speaking of looks, this is one pretty game. This is the Playstation 2, yet game play yields a consistent frame rate, and some of the smoothest graphics ever seen on the system. Even on a high-resolution medium such as S-Video, jagged surfaces are nonexistent, and colors and textures are distinct. This bodes quite well for the atmosphere, and I’d actually found myself scared a few times when the game would throw monsters at me that looked like something out of Resident Evil or Ghostbusters--and were just as much trouble to kill. The action’s already non-stop and never runs out of enemies to toss at you from angles you’d never even dreamed of, but when you’re staring into the bloody fangs of your would-be demise, trying to tactically search for weak points isn’t exactly the first action that springs to mind.

There are a number of reasons to like Darkwatch besides looks, however. The first is the control, which, once again, defies Playstation 2 convention. People who own more than just that system may have noticed over the years that the PS2 has the loosest and slipperiest analog controls since… well, anything. This makes for game play that can be somewhat tough to cope with, and first-person shooters often suffer due to aiming and/or movement issues. Not so with Darkwatch, however.

Supposedly, the programmers spent extra time fine-tuning, testing, and re-testing the control routines for this game via multiplayer bouts. Me, I prefer that to think that they just used magic. For the first time in a first-person shooter, I can snipe--and I am a person who gives away his sniping position in multiplayer Halo without fail, with no kills to show for it. Seriously, once you get used to the controls, they’re heaven.

Look for other neat touches such as being able to peer around corners and get shots off without the enemy being able to see you, which allows you to keep your precious cover, You can also double-jump (or “Vampire-Jump, as it’s called here), giving you the major high-ground advantage should you so choose to use it; and “Blood Vision, which allows you to easily detect enemy whereabouts. Jericho is also able to absorb the blood and essence of downed foes so that you may power up your “Blood Meter, which allows you to unleash special techniques that will be covered in just a little bit.

Another great thing to notice about Darkwatch is its knack for dynamic setting. One of the playable levels had Jericho take on a train full of undead baddies. He started out on horseback (yes, horseback), and had to take out the fortification around the train before actually being able to board it (and even then, he still had to take out oncoming riders). He then moved through the train, cleaning it out, and picking up some great weapons along the way, including a very effective shotgun, and a sniper rifle which he used to take care of enemies on top of cars further up without getting his hands dirty. When the front of the train was reached, his enemies decided to up the ante and come at him full force and in high-numbers—no problem, because there was a nifty gatling turret right beside Jericho (one which he’d “liberated a few minutes ago from some undead grunts) for him to hop in and start laying waste.

It’s about that point where the player realizes that they have an evil, conspiratory smile on their face. Levels like this make purification less of a job, and more of an adventure. The best part is that Sammy promises more of these types of levels, involving both horseback, and high-octane steam-powered vehicles. Definitely a step in the right direction.

Finally, Darkwatch has one other big card to play; its alignment system. Based on your decisions, Jericho can walk the path of the light, become a major bad boy, or just be one of those typical non-caring neutral antiheroes that anime seems to love so much. Hey, it’s all up to you. In all truth, alignment isn’t the deepest of aspects in Darkwatch. It doesn’t have truly RPG-like consequences, but it does have some perks. The main one is that it ties directly into Jericho’s ability-upgrade system.

Every once in a while, you have to save someone from the clutches of evil. Destroy everyone around them, and once you approach the victim, you’ve given a choice. You can use your vampire mojo to return them to their normal human state, or you can simply “assume that they’re too far gone, and finish them off like any other dirty rotten zombie. The former, of course, is the “good method; the latter is “evil. Jericho gets different rewards based on what he decides to do, such as different powers that he can activate when his Blood Meter is full. (The preview copy yielded temporary unlimited firepower if Jericho chose good, and temporarily invincibility if he chose evil.) There will also be outcomes based on leaning entirely to one side further on into the game.

Darkwatch brings a lot of new ideas to the table; some that you may have already seen before, just not in the medium of first-person shooters. It also reinterprets existing innovations. The end result is something that gets increasingly harder to keep to professional terms when writing about. (Seriously, I’m this close to bringing back the term “keen gear here. But that’d be more trouble than it’s worth.)

Anyway, keep an eye on the shelves next March, people. All signs point to this one being another diamond in the gaming rough.