Darkwatch is a fairly fun shooter but at its core it's nothing more than a retread of other better first person shooters
The gameplay is exactly like every single other first person shooter you've ever played. I don't know about you, but I've played tons and tons of first person shooters and this game doesn't change the formula at all and it tries nothing new. It's a very standard play-it-safe first person shooter. In this game, you can only hold two weapons at a time. I guess that's to add realism because a half-human half-vampire battling skeletons and demons popping out of the ground in the Old West isn't believable enough. The guns consist of pistols, shotguns, sniper rifles, and bazookas. That's about it and none of them are particularly impressive. One thing to mention is that FPS's on the Playstation 2 have never handled well and this game is no different. It's difficult to aim at first, but eventually, you'll get it. But you also have demon powers that you can unlock which consist of striking fear into your enemies, a shield, turning your enemies against each other, and one that makes your bullets stronger for a short period of time, among others. None of these are useful except for the stronger bullets and even then you'll hardly find yourself using it.
In other levels, you are on your horse having battles with demon horsemen. You must shoot them while steering your horse and leaning from side to side to avoid the bullets. It sounds complicated, but surprisingly this handles very well. Although, you are on a set path and are forced to stay on that set path it still holds up better than expected. Every single level consisted of the horse shooting or standard first person shooting except for one. In one level, you must ride a vehicle very similar to Halo's car into a town and kill everybody in it. It handles poorly, the town is too small to move, and the enemies carrying explosive barrels becomes a very cheap tactic after a while. Besides that, the levels were decent enough. One aspect of gameplay that is a great idea, but should have been fleshed out more is the choice to be good or evil. Throughout the game you will be lusting for blood, but you also have your conscience telling you that it's wrong. After all, you aren't all vampire. You will find tortured souls and you can choose whether to release them to paradise or claim their soul for your own. Other times, you will find villagers that have been bitten by vampires. Do you want to purge their soul of the disease or send them to a Hellish end? It's your choice, but the problem is that it really doesn't matter. I love it when games give me a choice whether to be good or bad, but I want it to mean something. When I kill an innocent person, I want to feel bad. I want my conscience eating away at me. When I do something good, I want to feel that way as well. This game fails to evoke emotion in any way because none of the characters mean squat and aren't fleshed out enough for you to care. You'll probably find yourself equally distributing your grace and vengeance. It's more fun to be random anyway. Near the end, you will be able to choose whether you want to be good or bad and depending on what you pick, you will have a slightly different ending. The story is almost absent after the introduction so you'd be hard pressed to find yourself going back and playing through the last few levels again just to see the different ending, which is unimpressive to say the least. However, if you do choose to do so, it should only take about an hour. I finished the game in a little under 4 hours and went back and did the other ending. Basically, the gameplay is decent enough to hold its own all the way to the end, but after you finish the game, there is no reason to ever go back and play it again.
The graphics aren't quite as good as the Playstation 2 can handle, but they still look good nonetheless. And the fact that I never noticed a second of slow down just makes it better. The levels were dark, muggy, and ugly, and that's exactly how they should have looked. The levels were probably the most impressive part of the graphics, but still not astounding. The character models looked about as good as you'd expect too. There were only about 6 enemies throughout the entire game anyway, so you will be seeing them an awful lot and thankfully, they look fine. The cutscenes also looked rather good. The graphics were great for a Playstation 2 game and still can impress even with the Xbox 360 pumping out great graphics, which is a great feat.
The sound was ok. The guns sounded fine, the enemies sounded fine, and the explosions sounded fine. But the thing I really hate in any video game is a mute main character. How am I supposed to care about who I am when I won't even say anything? When the main character doesn't talk, it's impossible to flesh out their personality. Without dialogue for the main character, character chemistry is absent and my interest in my character is gone. Jericho Cross is already an uninteresting concoction in himself (a half-human, half-vampire, cowboy renegade? Come on), and that just made him worse.
Overall, the game is good enough to warrant a purchase if you can find for 15 dollars or less. Any more and you will probably be wasting your money on a game that you will finish in 5 or 6 hours and never play again. The gameplay will not impress you. It will only remind you of other first person shooters that were much better and had enough unique characteristics to stand out. Darkwatch, while still a decent game, will undoubtedly pass through your mind very soon after you reach it's conclusion.