Summary

If you’re a rabid fan of vampires, the Wild West, or vampires in the Wild West, then Darkwatch might just tickle your fancy. Developed by High Moon Studios (formerly Sammy Studios), Darkwatch is a no nonsense run-and-gun first person shooter that takes a lot of its queues from similar FPS games like Painkiller and Serious Sam in terms of mechanics and frantic gameplay. The result is a game that almost gets everything right, but offers an otherwise enjoyable experience. Darkwatch follows the story of a train robber named Jericho Cross who during one of his robberies manages to accidentally release Lazarus, also known as the son of Satan who makes sure to turn Jericho into a sort of half vampire before making his escape. A woman named Cassidy witnesses all of this and insists that you help her to undo this mess that you’ve caused. Cassidy belongs to an organization called Darkwatch who specialize in this type of thing. Jericho spends the early portions of the game making his way to the Darkwatch headquarters and prove his loyalty to them. After loyalty is proven, Jericho must set out in search of Lazarus and retrieve what’s left of his soul.

Sound

The voice acting in Darkwatch is top notch; even characters voiced by those not named Rose McGowan or Jennifer Hale are all superb. I’m not dogging the celebrity voice acting, mind you; they did a great job as well. Unobtrusive and pretty forgettable western-themed music sets the backdrop for the story and managed to fit in nicely and set the mood at key moments, which is really the only time you’ll notice the soundtrack. Darkwatch manages to be a really good time when taken in moderation and just when you really start to get some enjoyment out of it, it’s all over. Thankfully, the gunslinger mode and unlockable extras will keep you coming back for a little while. Sure, the story may be a little thin and there are some shortcomings in the gameplay, but Darkwatch definitely earns the title of "just plain fun" and in the end, that's all that really matters.

Gameplay

The story mode in Darkwatch is a hybrid of linear strings of levels and choose-you-own adventure style mission selections. You’ll find yourself following one story point for a number of levels, such as reaching the Darkwatch citadel, and then have to visit the local scientist to choose between a handful of missions that are all required, but can be done in no particular order. Typical missions are divided into multiple sections by checkpoints which makes things such as dying or turning the game off and coming back at a later time a little less tedious. Some checkpoints require load times, but they’re relatively fast and thankfully don’t get in the way too much. No matter what kind of a mission you’re on you’ll always find yourself gunning down hordes of undead minions while trying to accomplish small goals to get to your overall objective. The gameplay tends to wear thin when playing for long amounts of time since mission objectives are all similar and there isn’t much in terms of enemy variety, so small doses are recommended. There are some missions where you'll be riding on horseback to get on a train or ride to an objective while gunning down deadites on horseback, which helps to break up the action a bit. Boss battles are virtually nonexistent and tend to focus on shooting down seemingly endless waves of foes for a predetermined amount of time or governed by a life bar at the top of the screen. There are a couple of boss battles at the end of the game which may start off as being frustrating, but eventually become enjoyable once you find out how you’re supposed to be doing things. The borderline overuse of checkpoints are in full effect during the boss fights and you’ll be able to restart the battle in mid fight which works since boss battles can run a little long depending on what strategy you use. Jericho doesn’t come to a fight ill equipped since he has a variety of weapons at his disposal such as dual pistols, shotguns, rail rockets, crossbows that fire explosive bolts, and carbines. Though the overall selection is pretty lean, weapons are all pretty satisfying to use especially given the way enemies will lose their limbs and crumple to the ground differently depending on where you shoot them. If you’re in the middle of a reload or out of ammo all together, you can also give your foes a butt in the face – with your gun that is by means of a very powerful and effective melee attack. You can also enforce crowd control with sticks of dynamite and splitter bombs, which explode and release a few smaller bombs to clean up what the initial explosion didn’t take care of. Conventional weapons aren’t the only order of the day thanks in part to Jericho being half blood sucker, he can gain special abilities that will give him increased firepower, mystic armor, more powerful melee attacks, induce fear in enemies, or just blow them all up. Abilities are divided into good and evil and more can be earned based off of actions that come up at certain points of the game where you’ll find a dead body or injured comrade and you can choose to mercifully kill them, save their lives, or fiendishly take their essence for yourself. Each of the actions will give you a certain amount of points towards the good or evil categories. You can charge up your abilities as well as increase your health by collecting blood essence which is left behind by enemies. The good news is that blood essence is all over the place, so you should never have to feel like you should save your special abilities for any really hairy moments. By default, Jericho remains alive with his blood shield which allows him to take more punishment than his more human Darkwatch brethren. The blood shield works just like the shield in Halo where if you manage to stay away from danger for a second, the shield will recharge. There’s also blood vision which will let you see hard to find enemies and items. You can also perform a double jump to get to hard to reach places though Jericho has a tendency to float over certain platforms at times. Take heed since daylight will null out these abilities and some levels require you to strategically hide in the shadows to stay alive. The game doesn’t end when you beat the story mode. You can always revisit earlier levels in Gunslinger mode and try to unlock extras by playing on different difficulties and under certain amounts of time. Given the short story mode, this will at least add a couple hours onto your play time. There’s also a multiplayer mode available, but it’s barely worth mentioning for the PS2 version of the game. While the Xbox version has online play for sixteen players, the PS2 is limited to split screen mode. The usual multiplayer modes are here like deathmatch and capture the flag, but really aren’t that much fun to play.

Summary

I got Darkwatch the other day, and I have played it all the way through on the default difficulty level as a "good" vampire, so I think I am ready to review. I can honestly say that I liked this game so much that I sat in front of it non stop as soon as I brought it home. Darkwatch is not the most original game I've ever played. But I love it. Darkwatch did take and use elements of several other games. It was still a fun game to play. It only took me roughly 11 hours to complete the single player game. I had fun doing so that I'm going back and playing it on the toughest difficulty level as the "evil" character. I do NOT think Darkwatch was overrated. I for one am glad I got it. I liked the game and I don't think it's overrated because it has a awesome plot that not a lot of games have. I really like the "dark mood" and I think that alone it really excels on and it gave me a different gaming experience. It is a spooky game but it is a good type of spooky. Not to be confused with the Russian fantasy film Nightwatch is a new FPS by Capcom blending the old tried and true story elements Cowboys and Vampires. I know at first it sounds a little stupid like a Uwe Boll film, I’ve heard that before from others, but I don't know why someone didn't come up with this before. The whole idea of it is so interesting and exquisite. You play as Jericho Cross an agent of a paranormal fighting vigilante force The Darkwatch. Mr. Cross has been bitten and needs to kill the vampire that tried to turn him into one of the undead before he loses what's left of his humanity. You 've got a great arsenal of weapons and vampire powers to help you clean out the heavily populated old west of undead vermin. I used handguns, shotguns, sniper rifles, a cross bow and even sticks of dynamite all with very satisfying results. Let me tell you, yes it is so much fun using all these different types of weapons! Some of your vampire powers include a Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon type jump, a short increase power up enabling you to deal out double damage, and Blood Vision that allows you to see the undead in a different light spectrum making them more visible. That was also one of my favorite parts of the game and one that did set this game apart from others. Playing the game at home I immediately was impressed by how the game looked and played. The graphics were very superior for my PS2, nice detail, no noticeable slow down and pretty tight controls. What got me the most though was the sound. I like to feel like I am in the game just like at the movies. I've always thought that no matter how good a game can be what gives it that long time memorable land fun is the sound or atmospheric sound it creates for the player. Darkwatch delivers on all aspects at least I think so. I've read some lackluster reviews of Darkwatch recently so although I am recommending the game you may want to rent first. You all know most FPS are usually short on plot and big on action. Darkwatch does give you a good or evil path that you can choose to follow. Will this give the game some depth and make it stand out among the rest? We'll all find out on the 16th. In my opinion it already does. This game may not be AS good as Halo 2 or all those other big titles, but it's easily better than TS: Future Perfect, Doom 3, & Delta Force Black Hawk. I honestly would give it an 8.9. Yeah the single player is kind of short but I'm getting xbox live soon so I can play Darkwatch multiplayer so I'm excited because I heard it was good but now I'm starting to hear otherwise. I personally enjoyed the game even though I am not all the way through it. Almost every game has had some form or other taken from another game, let it be the menus or the game play, mostly every game out there has had something taken from one game or used similarly in another game it doesn’t matter as long as they both succeeded at what they were trying to accomplish it doesn’t matter. Just get off your high horse, and admit, it was a decent game. There are some downfalls to this game that some people will clown on. It uses some stuff from other games. You can either say so what or get mad that they rip off red dead revolver down to the dead eye, and the entire scene's. Darkwatch ripped off rdr, with the train, the blood vision or whatever, the graveyard scene, and also the sunset plains. Second I expect the game to be very short, take a look at the levels there aren’t a lot and only a few listed enemies. IGN did say the devs tried to intentionally make the game a cross between Halo and Silverado, and it shows throughout the entire game. But I don't see it. WOW, it has multiplayer. That's such a rip-off of Halo since Halo was the first multiplayer game. Anyway not only does this game like Red Dead Revolver, as it looks more like a 3rd person Medievil, or a slight rip-off of Odd world Strangers Wrath at most. RDR was nothing more than a Max Payne rip-off set in the West, plus it's made by Rock star. That's what

Summary

Darkwactch is a new kind of game that takes place in the west.The fast place action in the game is good mixed wiht the plot.I like also to play it on xbox live that gave it alot of help one one the best fps out there.

Sound

The sound was good also the sound will kill some one or the train was good.the gun shots sounded almost to real.If you like sound in game this is a good one to get i like it myself just the detail in it was good.

Gameplay

The game play is fast place the game will last about 5 to 10 hours depending on what level your on. The online play is the best for me.The plot has twist and turns to make you want to play more.