Bad Habits - Yippie-kay-yay, bloodsucker - August 17 2005

It’s rare when a videogame comes along like Darkwatch that gives me the chance to talk out loud in response to silly stuff characters say, as if this were The Rocky Horror Picture Show but not as funny. It’s a vampire-cowboy game, which means I’ve got a 10-gallon hat, and I shoot and hack my way through gallons of evil-dead blood.

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Everyone’s got something ridiculous to tell me.

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First, there’s this cowgirl ghost. She’s a good guy, so to speak. She guides me to a supposed safe place called Darkwatch. She thinks it’ll help me get my soul back after I get bitten by a vamp. But when we get to Darkwatch, a whole mess of sickle-wielding skeletons and screaming banshees try to kill me.

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“It’s almost like the Darkwatch was breeding monsters!” Cassidy says.

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“No, really?” I say aloud at the game. “Are you saying that because we’re surrounded by monsters being bred?”

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I run into another good gal, Tala, who fights by my side. She asks, “You want to live forever?” I kind of think I do. She wears black leather pants. She can run and shoot in those tight things.

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“We’re both after the same thing,” she purrs. I look at her curves as she walks slowly away. “I don’t think we are,” I say.

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I have no choice but to kill as she wishes. That’s OK with me. Apparently, it’s a lot of fun trampling across the Old West’s cracked, desert earth and through huge caves, while firing shotguns, scope rifles and rocket guns.

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Wait, there were rocket guns in Arizona in 1876? Who knew?

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Darkwatch is a good-looking game. It’s good, too, and worth at least a rental, maybe even a purchase for those gamers who enjoy shoot-‘em-ups and going head-to-head against other gamers. It comes with multiplayer death matches and “capture the flag” options.

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You heard it here: Cowboy vampires enjoy playing capture the flag. Kooky.

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As if all I’ve mentioned so far isn’t unusual enough, the game has this other strangeness. At times, I have to blow up glowing white trees to make the screaming banshees stop throwing electric currents at me.

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My mission is to eventually destroy a party-pooper named Lazarus, who has been wreaking havoc for a long time. The booklet that comes with Darkwatch claims that 2,000 years ago, his wicked mentorship was “the real reason Rome fell: vampires.” Interesting. I did not know that.

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The banshees are dolled-up in petticoats. I shoot at one. She screams, “Nooo!” I blast her and reply at my TV: “Yesss.” Her head blows up.

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That goes on for quite a while until, finally, after many hours of shooting pistols at see-through skeletons swinging hatchets at me, I recall the promise the game presented to me at the beginning: “All is not as it seems.” I don’t know, it all seems exactly as it is — wacky, yet a good old time.

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thegamedork@creativeloafing.com

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Doug Elfman is an award-winning columnist who lives and writes in Chicago.

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New To You — Used Game Of The Week

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Right before the 2004 presidential election, several Vietnam games came out, suspiciously timed to capitalize on one of the presidential candidate’s background being a Vietnam vet. The best of the bunch was Shellshock ‘Nam ‘67 for Xbox and PS2.

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The game just dropped to about $15 in used stores. It’s not perfect, but it is gritty and kind of addictive, and it’s tough to creep through the jungles and win. The feel of it is unlike other games in that it’s not a total glorification of war, to say the least. It’s rated M.