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PRE-ORDER because this game will be a HIT!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 16
Date: October 06, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Darkwatch is going to have some awesome graphics and a kick ass storyline. There will also be a Darkwatch movie too, so if I were you I'd pre-order this game so you can have it before your friends can.

Another FPS with some insights but yet still lacking

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 10
Date: August 18, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Darkwatch takes then genres of the Vampire RPG and the FPS and combines them into a game that breaks ground as the first Vampire Western! The team at Capcom obviously put a lot of time and thought into this games production, they came up with somthing unique and definitley worth taking a look at. The story of Darkwatch, puts you in the shoes of Jericho Cross, outlaw extraordinare, on the night of his final heist, the robbery of a treasure train. However things are not all that they seem, when you blow up the vault you unleash a powerful vampire lord named Lazurus who promptly turns you into a vampire out of gratitude or possibly simple malice. In order to fight off Lazarus's curse you join up with a woman named Cassidy who leads you to the Organization known as the Darkwatch, which is front line in battling vampires and their minions throughout history. While this is a very promising begining to a game, the story later gets bogged down, things aren't explained and dialogue degenerates to quips and quant remarks that don't move the story along at any pace whatsoever. The developers at Capcom, really put their heads together in coming up with a unique look for the game, however appearences can be deceiving, Capcom boasted that the Enemy AI was top of the line and cooperated with eachother, not true, the AI simply uses rush tactics, the easiest way to kill them is to simply back into a corner and shoot at anything that moves. Capcom also threw in two extra modes of play Horse Back Slinger in which you ride across the desert on your demon steed killing undead riders, and the Steam Tank levels(an obvious rip off of the warthog from Halo), while these are fun, they are also extremely short and far between. Another area the game is lacking, is in the weapons system, Darkwatch gives you the standard Halo option of carrying Two weapons at a time, however, I found that many of the weapons were poorly designed, for instance the most powerful and the most useful weapon in the game turns out to be the simple pistol known as the Redeemer, other weapons like the carbine and snipe rifle are slow reloading and for some players difficult to aim. There is also a gernade and dynamite system that isn't really incorporated into the gameplay very well, the biggest flaw being its really hard to gauge where the dynamite or the gernade will fall, you eventually end up simply throwing it at the ground in front of you while retreating hoping an enemy will rush you and get blown away. Apart from weapons Darkwatch also employs a set of Vampiric abilities that Jericho can gain through judgement decisions, clearly outlined as Good or Evil. For example, Killing a woman for pleasure, EVIL!, Saving the woman and removing a curse from her, GOOD!, However there is no interaction involved with these choices, players simply select wether or not they want to make good or evil choices, somthing more along the lines of KOTOR II might have been more appropriate, also being good or evil in no way effects the story line, so there is no point in replaying the game just to see what happens, NOTHING. The abilities are of a Good set(chain lighting, silver bullets, invincibilty etc) and an evil set (soul stealing, enemy recruiting etc), however a player is forced to choose good or evil he cannot be a tandem player, the game doesn't reward players who can't make up their minds Graphically speaking, Darkwatch doesn't exactly measure up to what the PS2 can handle, I have played this game on both Xbox and PS2 and I have found that Xbox will beat PS2 graphically on any given day, so this is expected, despite that the game is not as good looking as other recent capcom releases for instance Devil May Cry 3. Another downside to the PS2 version is the lack of multiplayer value, there is a Halo Style Co-op mode but there is little or online play. If you are a gamer looking for an online shooter go with the Xbox version, it looks better and it sports better gameplay.
Overall I give this item a 3, my advice is rent it before you buy it, if you are a die hard fan of say anything involving vampires then feel free to waste your money. If you are a parent looking to get this for a kid, I highly suggest you reconsider, there is nudity and a scene of sexuality, on top of violence involving decapitation, maiming and overall gore and bloodshed involving undead frightening creatures

AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 5
Date: August 19, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game is awesome! Great graphics, awesome story line, also a challenge! I love this game. Its the shoot em` up bang em` up game I like. But it very very very very mature. Lots of blood and gore, alot of crazy (and somtimes creepy) guns.So like I said with house of the dead 3, DO NOT LET A 5 YEAR OLD PLAY IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They may want to, but do not let them. I mean Im 10 years old and my mom still will not let me play most of it. So what ever you do, do not let a 5 year old play it.

Darkwatch is the best first person shooter on the PS2

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: August 20, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I have been waiting for a PS2 shooter to come out that would top the experience I've had on my PC for years. This is it. The weapons are well balanced in their shooting ability, but also in their melee attacks. The combination of melee with the vampire powers (especially the vampire jump) create a freedom of movement and attack that I have never experienced. The single player story is entertaining and after finishing the game in about 12 hours on the easiest setting, I'm playing through again on the second hardest. It's very challenging and difficult to put down.
The AI characters are very creative and challenging. The flying Banshee character will fly through windows and they gang up and work together to flush you out. The physics, explosions, effects and sound are all top notch. You gotta throw this game on a stereo system to hear it in all its glory!

I don't play online games, but I'm going to try the cooperative mode. That looks like fun.

Does Darkwatch Deliver?

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: August 25, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Darkwatch : Curse Of The West combines both the horror
and western genre with a first person shooter aspect
to gives players some very intense gaming action. The
gameplay offered in Darkwatch is a fresh and crisp
appeal, quickly bringing the player into the feel of
a true western enviroment.

You take on the role of Jericho Cross, an outlaw who
makes the mistake of trying to rob the wrong train.
His actions release all havok as he blows open the
safe releasing Satan's son, Lazarus. Lazarus in turn
curse Jericho as a vampire and unleashes an army of
the undead. You now must journey into the west trying
to win back your soul in a battle against yourself and
the diminions of hell along with the spirit of the
former regulator Cassidy by your side guiding you thru
the different western terrains as you venture to the
Darkwatch headquarters. Darkwatch is a secret
mysterious society that has been protecting all of
civilization from the evil's of hell since the dawn of
time. Clay Cartwright rushes you in as you endure some
physical battles to prove yourself worthy in order to
become the newest Darkwatch agent.

You will come across such enemies as; scythe- and
gun-wielding skeletons, floating banshees,
blood-spitting oozers and many more evil monsters that
will try to stop you in your path. However you will
have a variety of weapons available for your access.
he weapons provided
for your disposle are ; 'The Redeemer' a modified
revolver, 'The Carbine' a rapid firing musket, 'The
Argus' a four barreled shotgun with plenty of stopping
power, 'The Range Rifle' a sniper rifle, 'The Rail
Rocket' a mortar hand canon, 'Dynamite' gret for
clearing out a hoard of the undead. At some point in
time you will need to use everyone of these weapons to
clear out your enemies & pass a mission. Each gun also
offers you the opportunity to use it as a melee
attack, allowing you to take down many of your enemies
with a few butts from your weapon, saving you your
ammo for situations in which you may need it more. You
will also find yourself capable of taking up position
in stablalized turrets and tearing down your enemies
with a rain of bullets. You cannot carry all of the
weapons so be sure to make your tactical decision upon
which weapon to drop & which to pick up.

Guns are not the only thing that Jericho will have to
rely on in order to take out the undead, but there is
an impressive array of vampiric powers that can be
earned & used to take out the undead. These powers are
earned by releasing tormented souls & sucking the
blood of those you come across. There are two sets of
powers, good powers & evil powers, both have a set of
4 powers, however you can earn more than just four
powers during your journey as you fill up your power
meter. Your good powers are; Silver Bullet, Fear,
Mystic Armor & Vindicator; the evil powers are; Blood
Frenzy, Turn, Black Shroud and Soul Stealer.

The missions are varied, with some allowing you to
ride on your trusty steed shadow, trying to take down
skeletons on horseback or trying to get close enough
to jump on a train. You also ride a steam wagon & can
mow down a line of the undead as you go on your way.

Overall the gameplay is fun and can be slightly
challenging depending on what difficulty level you
play it on. My complaint is that the game play is
short, i have played and beateb it on greenhorn,
cowboy & shootist level, taking me just 315 minutes to
be it on the scond hardest level, to me it should take
more than five hours to beat a game and when i sit
down to play a game i want it to take days completely
pull me in. With the shortness of gameplay, there is a
bit of loss of the story, it just isnt very indepth
and to me just leaves a bit of a gap.

Darkwatch is a fun game to play

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: August 26, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Darkwatch is a good game with easy controls ,fun to play and the best western genre game out there Jerich Cross an outlaw bitten by a demon vampire .ot to get the darklord and kill the minions and also to save the town people for these evil creatures send them to the pergutory in his brain and free himself from the demonic curse .with Jericho he has a cool horse Shadow ,the games fantastic Ibelieve it,s one of the best games i,ve seen .

fun game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 3
Date: September 01, 2005
Author: Amazon User

his game is awsome.One awsome thing about it is you are constintly killing zombies and wat ever they are.There is never a boring moment.

"Good - Bad - I'm the guy with the gun !"

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: September 09, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Hey, Hey! Here's The Reverend again bringing you the ultimate review of Darkwatch.

Let's face it, there's nothing more honorable than kicking some dusty undead butt! What are these guys doing outside their graves anyway? What do they want from the world of the living? Especially with sky-high gas-prices these days? And why can't they eat French fries and Burgers like everybody else? Why does it have to be brains? And who has brains anyway in times of our failing education system?
The good news is that we won't need any brains to play this game! :-) And that's just what we need after a long day at work, isn't it? So, Darkwatch should be right up our alley, right? Well, yes and no... Let's do the cons first and then get to the pros:

The game puts you straight into the shoes of Jericho Cross, a train robber in the Old Wild West with a long and brutal criminal past. Whatever happened to the GOOD hero in computer games - we may wonder - but I guess morally positive game-heroes have inevitably died with the early 90s. Now, bad old Jericho robs the wrong train one day. Apparently THIS train belongs to a secret society called the DARKWATCH (hence the title) who hunt down vampires in an "unholy war" as the intro movie bluntly suggests. Despite the horrific gothic look of the train with all kinds of Christian and pagan symbols and tons of bloody remains of its former human freight (and what with the coffin-shaped doors and weird pointy spikes everywhere) Jericho still believes to have found a train transporting money, gold and other valuables and does not seem the least bit distracted by the occasional zombie that gets in his way (yup, the train is the first interactive level already). As you can see, Jericho is not the sharpest tool in the shed and neither is the storyline behind Darkwatch. Once infected by the vampiric-undead curse, Jericho gets used to his new state of body and mind quicker than a hippie to pot - there is just no drama involved in his becoming a vampire - neither is there much drama later on. The story is presented in extremely short, matter-of-fact cut-scenes (which might have been better and more seamlessly integrated had they used the in-game engine).
It's a shame that we don't get more information about Jericho Cross, the Darkwatch and some of the situations we encounter throughout the game. The meager story leaves you longing for more, much more - and DARKWATCH II won't be enough of an excuse to make up for it.

Another part where the game falls flat is in terms of its level design. First of, levels are much too short. It's almost like the game screams RIP-OFF! in this regard. You just feel like the level designers were under-staffed, under-paid, under-aged or simply under-excited to come up with more, much more. You get the feeling that you're not exploring whole areas or levels, but arenas in which you get to fight a gazillion undead until the next tiny area opens. What a great game this could have been if the action part had been more balanced with exploring and searching and maybe just the occasional tiny little puzzle or two? There are just too many levels where you're just getting into the fun a certain environment provides, just to find out that it's over after just 1-2 minutes. For example: +500 points for designing a super-cool level where a train has to be boarded (from horseback) and then cleared of enemies moving from one wagon to the next - with the foggy, moonlit landscape rushing by outside! -2000 points for letting us inspect only 4-5 tiny wagons, throwing a cut scene in our face and abruptly ending the level if it could have been so much fun exploring the whole darn thing just 10-15 more minutes!!! It's like ordering a fancy schmanzy pizza with 10 toppings and actually getting it - only catch: the pizza is just 1 inch wide!!! NUTS!!!
Another downside of DARKWATCH is the fact that the levels were apparently designed by some claustrophobics from western Nebraska. 90% of them take place in the great wide open: canyon after canyon, valley after valley, burning cityscape after cityscape. Yes, there are major buildings in the game like a church, a cathedral and an old ghost town. But do you actually get to go INSIDE these buildings and explore them? Not a whole lot! It's just plain sad when a cool level leads you down a slope across a cemetery to a big old abandoned church just to tell you in another cut scene that you will now be entering the crypts underneath (which will take you about 3 minutes to complete consisting of one catacomb-like room, a fighting arena and the same catacomb-room from before (as a mirror-imaged clone) to finish the level off!!!). Great! And after the crypt it's the obligatory canyons again... Here you thought you'd actually get to see and explore the church from the inside but the designers were too bored to actually bother with it. This happens a lot in the game!

And it's a shame because the actual atmosphere created by graphics and sounds is outstanding!
Yup, you heard me right. Here's the PRAISE part of the review. In terms visuals, audio and ACTION Darkwatch REALLY TOTALLY delivers like no other game out there. Think of it as being able to PLAY a movie like "From Dusk Till Dawn" or "Blade" and you get a good idea what the gameplay is like. You have a good range of weapons (guns, shotguns, rifles (sniper too)) which include wacky stuff like dynamite and a crossbow that actually shoots dynamite at enemies. And, boy, do they fly when you blow them to bits. The damage response it ultra-realistic thanks to the HAVOC ENGINE. Limbs come off one by one, heads roll around, bodies topple from buildings or over railings and go spinning through the air before landing on the floor in the exact position the topographic surroundings allow (if there's a bump or a wall they'll come to rest neatly against it in a realistic fashion).
Also nice is the fact that you can use every weapon as a melee weapon. So you can shoot, smack, shoot, smack as you please, dealing great damage to enemies close by.
Last but not least: you will gain a bunch of different powers, which are unfortunately not exactly vampiric (how about faster reflexes, partial invisibility etc.???) such as: Mystic Shield and chain-lightning. Bummer... they are o.k., but generally not too much fun to use.

Darkwatch sure delivers non-stop action and is great fun the first or second time around (probably on the very same day you buy it), but in the long run this vampire won't have the teeth to keep you satisfied. Hey, if you get a good deal on it - you should definitely get it! Darkwatch may come in handy for those times after horror movies when you feel like it's time to take the action into your own hands and blow off steam!

It's not that Darkwatch is a bad game, at all. It just saddens you that despite slick graphics, awesome sound and action the whole thing seems cut short like a top-notch music video as compared to the full length concert you really wanted to see.
The Reverend

Fun but short

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: September 24, 2005
Author: Amazon User

After seeing the TV commercials and the cover of the game I just had to get it. Not playing any demos or seeing anybody else play it I decided to purchase this on what I saw alone. Now the real question is was it worth the $50?.... NO not quite. The graphics and controls are good I admit but my only main flaws was the storyline could have been more in dept. Some of the characters (like the Darkwatch Gang)voiceovers were kind of cheezy, the levels were too short and I beat the game in 2 days (not even playing the game for long periods of time). This game is worth buying and worth keeping for replay value if you can find it at a cheap price. I wish I waited till this dropped to $20 - $30 or better yet just rented it. Save yourself some cash and rent this for a weekend, you'll have no trouble beating the game by then.

Darkwatch......Satiate your bloodlust with this lil gem....

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: September 26, 2005
Author: Amazon User

If you've read enough of my reviews to know, two things I have a strong fascination with is Vampires and First-Person Shooters. So, it's no surprise that I got more than a little excited when I heard that High Moon Studios was creating a game with both those things in mind...hence, Darkwatch. Upon first playing the game, the one thing that amazed me most about it was the graphics. It's dark, gothic, western motif is fully realized in the game and, for the most part, was what got me so into playing the game. The second thing was the control. Out of all the FPS games that I've played on the PS2, this one has them all beat controlwise, hands down. Targeting your enemies is accurate and easy in the game and that is a must for FPS. Voiceovers and Enemy AI is also top notch, which is another plus. One thing, worth mentioning, is the red hot love scene in the game...that one will leave 'em talking(that's for sure). At any rate, it's a rock solid FPS that does the genre justice. FPS Shooter fans will love playing this game.

Yet, Darkwatch, like any other game..isn't without its' shortcomings. First and foremost is the storyline. Although there are alot of cutscenes that pushes the story along, the conclusion isn't so rewarding. There's no sense of closure by the end of the game. Course, if you've played games like Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver(like me)..that shouldn't be a problem. Yet, it's not quite in the same sense of the aformentioned game. Second, Single-player seems a tad uninspired. I can't quite put my finger on how,exactly...but it feels that way. Third and lastly, while the vampiric powers are cool and all, they aren't used to thier full potential in the game. While playing it, I came up with several gameplay ideas that they could've used to improve their potential.

It's lasting appeal, overall, lies within its' unlockables and the multiplayer aspect of the game. The vampiric powers in the multiplayer section of the game is used to its' fullest potential here. It basically gives you an innovative new way to play Deathmatches and the like.

In closing, Darkwatch is more than just a decent FPS. It's a solid first effort to what might be a lucrative franchise for High Moon Studios. Although certain elements tarnish its' presentation, it's not quite enough to just classify it as another decent cookie cutter FPS. There's alot more to the game than that. Darkwatch, at the very least, is the first game out there that actually pulls off the feeling like you're in the old west....even though the Undead are after you. I look forward to seeing what High Moon Studios pulls off with the second installment in the series.

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