Review By

Brad Gallaway

In all honesty, I can't disagree with even one point that Dan brought up in his main review. He nails the game on every aspect that deserves it, and there are a lot. However, even though I find myself in total agreement with his breakdown, I have to admit that I found his score to be lower than the game deserves. Darkwatch clearly isn't going to win any awards, but in my opinion it's an enjoyable, short ride that ends up being better than some of the competition. It's a real shame that the developers managed to drop the ball so many times because like Dan says, games with as much potential as this one don't come along every day. I could easily see Darkwatch launching a franchise if the inevitable sequel fixes the mistakes.

Primarily, I would expect to see a lot more effort put into developing the story and characters. Although I think my opinion and Dan's diverge a little on exactly how bad they are, there's no question that they're bad. For example, there's no time at all devoted to Jericho Cross's emotional reactions to being transformed into a vampire, or its ramifications. Furthermore, Jericho's complete lack of dialogue undercut the impact and charisma he could have potentially had as a star with name recognition.

The story and plot choices are all as unformed as the lead. I remember reading an interview with the developers where they stated that the game's fairly graphic sex scene was included to support the dark, mature tone of the game. This scene comes off as so laughable and amateurish and that it would've been better off being removed. Also, as Dan mentioned, the groundwork was beginning to be laid establishing the Darkwatch organization as a potential nemesis akin to Umbrella from the Resident Evil series, but like just about everything else, it's only hinted at and never fully addressed.

Although the intellectual content left me very unsatisfied, I can say that I enjoyed filling the undead full of lead more than Dan did. I play first-person shooters (FPS) games very rarely, probably no more than two or three a year. I'm certainly no connoisseur when it comes to the finer points of the genre, but I do get the itch once in a while, and Darkwatch did a decent job of scratching it. I think the thing I liked most was that it was very fast-paced, and that things like the art and level design and were reasonably solid. Some of the weapons could have used more work (the melee attacks felt like they had more impact than any of the firearms, rocket launcher included) and the vampire powers are barely a factor, but I was interested and kept going until the end—it's more than I can say for a lot of other FPSs I've tried. Of course, it doesn't hurt that the game can be finished in a day. It was over and done with well before I started getting tired of the repetitious enemies and unimaginative missions.

Being a fan of westerns, I'm sure that my love of tumbleweeds and six-shooters accounts for a little leniency, but there's just something about mixing the supernatural and the old West that never fails to pique my interest. But, although I do like the setting, ideas and the few high notes that happen in between all the slipups, there's no denying that Darkwatch is fairly anemic on all fronts. Hopefully High Moon studios will take action because it would be a shame to let a promising intellectual property like Darkwatch go to waste.

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