Darkwatch casts shadowy new screens

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[b]Darkwatch casts shadowy new screens[/b]

The moon slides silently behind a cloud and the faint light weakens further. We\'re getting nervous. A parchment fixed to the door with a bone-handled knife really should\'ve rung more alarm bells than it did, but the message said to wait in this graveyard after dark to find out about the new vampire shooter from Sega. We pride ourselves on risking our necks to bring you the latest exclusives, although we never thought we\'d be doing it so literally. Perched on top of a coffin, we\'re ready to give up when a faint voice drifts through the air. Straining our ears, we hear a low, ghostly moan: \"You\'re sitting on the lid, you idiot.\" Thrusting a disc into our hands, the man from Sega climbs out of the box and storms off.

Back at the office, we make a stern call to the folks at Sega and ask them to use a courier next time. Then we nuke some garlic bread, flick on the PS2 and look at the game. Darkwatch takes the familiar world of first-person shooters into frontier territory rarely touched outside of the Wild West levels of TimeSplitters. Jericho Cross is an outlaw with a lot more to do than smoke cheroots and say \"Ma\'am\" as he tips his hat. A vampire has bitten him, and if he wants to salvage his tarnished soul he must track the undead across America to find the garlic intolerant, claret-lapping fiend that bit him. But what starts off as a one-man vendetta on cowboy corpses soon takes Jericho far beyond his original intentions, just to save his own neck.

This is a game that definitely plays up the action rather than the scares - the first level we try sees Jericho prowling a graveyard with his six-shooter at his side. As the graves open to reveal scythe-wielding skeletal nasties we test out our Gothic peacemaker. A few shots despatch the first cadaver, but not without taking his arm off first. Body-specific damage means you can take the enemy apart piece by piece if you\'re feeling evil - which by definition you are. Our next shot is even luckier, taking a head clean off, the cadaverous remains collapsing into a pile of bones at our feet. By now it\'s getting a bit crowded, so we decide to try out our other toy - a crossbow with exploding arrows. A few rounds show off the Havok physics engine (as seen in Psi Ops) nicely, as we send satanic cannon fodder cartwheeling through the air with each bone-shattering blast.

Throughout his evil-slaying crusade, The Darkwatch, an ancient group of vampire vigilantes, help Jericho - he gains much of his information and weaponry from them. Also joining the shadowy underworld is Tala, a native American who has entered the world of the not quite undead thanks to Jericho. One final four-legged friend we were introduced to was the rotting steed, Shadow. He makes his appearance on a level as we battle other ghastly horseback riders, fighting to board a seriously over-populated ghost train.

Darkwatch doesn\'t bring anything new to the shootery scene, as pistols, shotguns and sniper rifles are all where you\'d expect them to be. There\'s even the odd machine-gun placement, but the action\'s fluid and the weapons convincing, especially when Jericho starts to fan the hammer on his gun like a professional \'slinger. The effects - glowing eyes in the dark and bodies bursting into flames - are very moody indeed, and it\'s impossible not to feel like the vampire hunter with no name as you stalk the shadows of a US of A corrupted by evil. As it stands, Darkwatch is very much a by-the-book FPS, but as that book is the Necronomicon, it looks like it could be a real page-turner.

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