Musashi Wins! said:
Um. I'd like more impressions. I'm vaguely interested in this game.
ok
Here's impressions I wrote at another forum:
So I received my OPM in the mail yesterday, and the demo was really weak - it only had two playable titles, the rest videos.
So anyhoo, one of the games that was playable was called Darkwatch. I have near heard about this game until this point, but apparently it's made by SAMMY.
If you don't want to read this shit, skip down to "IN CONCLUSION"...
So what is it? Well, it's a FPS. But it seems really badass and has a great dark atmosphere. The main character is like some fucking psycho vampire cowboy, and I mean that literally he looks like a cowboy and has a crazy cowboy hat and revolvers that shoot silver bullets.
Anyway, comments on the artistic value aside, the visuals look really very good imho and the level we're allowed to play takes place in this dark cemetary with all sorts of skeleton poppin' out of the ground.
The gameplay is actually pretty good as well, surprisingly, because I've never heard of this game. The jumping mechanics are super solid and I like the "floating" mechanic (floating, like, in sort of ghostly "glide" way) that you get when you press triangle twice. Although not quite as brilliant as the jumping mechanic found in Metroid Prime, I still found it to be really awesome in its own unique way.
Like Halo, you have a "shield" that regenerates if you're not getting hit. A "blood shield" or something. And beneath that is your regular health, which you can replenish by sucking "red souls" (or blood... but skeletons don't have blood...) from your fallen enemies. Framerate seemed tight from my play time, and movement was incredibly solid and accurate - I had no problem knockin' back my foes and feelin' like a total badass doin' it. I also like the extra "cowboy touch", where if you hold R1 it'll "fan the revolver" for rapid fire.
Also like Halo, you can only hold two weapons at any time (not including "extra" accessories like Dynamite). In the demo I got a "exploding" Crossbow and my trusty silver bullet revolver. The crossbow is pretty awesome, and when you shoot an enemy with it they'll run around frantically before they explode.
So I get to this dark tree, and I get a message that "I sense innocent blood." So I approach it and there's a cutscene where it says this bitch is dying of some infection. The interesting thing about it is you can decide to save this girl for the GREAT GOOD or to suck this bitches blood for the DARK EVIL. I know Crandle would bitch about not having some extra "morally grey" option, but this actually has a gameplay affect. Depending on which option you choose, you get a different "blood move". Think Jedi Knight II:Jedi Outcast, but you're a fucking vampire cowboy. I chose good, so I got a super revolver attack where I totally killed everything with one hit for a set amount of time. The way I understand it these moral decisions will actually have an affect on the story as well, but obviously I couldn't establish that from the short playtime.
One other gameplay detail was the "blood vision", which you can use by pressing R3. This makes a sort of cool "heat vision" effect almost, where all your enemies (and innocents as well, actually) are glowing.
ANYWAY, the demo ended by fighting this pretty cool fatass boss who had sucked way too much blood because he kept spitting at me. That shit ass took away my life like a bitch, so I used my special move and disposed of it quickly.
IN CONCLUSION, this seems like a game with some rock solid gameplay that obviously learned a thing or two from Halo among other FPS. It's fast, sort of has a... Serious Sam 2 vibe in terms of the flow, which is to be expected. Some might call the artistic direction "angsty" or whatever, but I fucking love the world that I've seen so far. The flash of scenes we saw on the video aspect of the demo show some awesome levels, one of which has you riding a undead horse chasing after a fucking haunted train. I love how the skeletons are jumping all around at you, giving you that sense of fear where you gotta pull the trigger before they reach you with their flailing weapons.
