Thank God you can’t see yourself cause you ugly.

I’ve been playing Darkwatch an Xbox FPS that melds vampires and westerns. So far the story is pretty generic and the fighting can get monotonous, but it’s fun enough and keeps me wanting more. There is a smidgeon of RPG as you choose to be good or evil to collect points and gain powers. The hilt of your guns are spiky and can be used as melee weapons which sometimes is the best way to kill things. The best part of the game is how the enemies’ bodies react when you hit them. They flail and flop around in a very satisfying way.  Where you hit them matters and head shots drop all but the strongest enemies in one shot. Between that and the extra strong melee attack, your strategy is often different than in other FPS. Here, I find myself waiting for the enemy to get closer so I can take it out with one shot to the head or a melee hit rather than keeping them at a distance.

Some small complaints so far would be A) the top button is used to jump which seems completely wrong to me. B) the 3D rendering is sort of fish-eyed making things seem too close and it gets hard to look at after a while, C) the missions are too long.

Sidenote: this is one of a handful of games that makes legitimate use of the double jump. I am not a fan of the double jump. It is a travesty of the laws of physics and usually takes me out of the game. Darkwatch however considers it a vampiric skill which I find acceptable. You can’t use it when in the sunlight also. Other games that manage to rationalize double jumping are Psychonauts (you get an extra boost using psionic energy) and any game where you are a Jedi.

More on this game later…