Capcom publishing Darkwatch

After months in limbo, High Moon Studios' undead Western shooter Darkwatch has found a publisher in Capcom, it was announced today. The game is scheduled to be released in the third quarter of 2005 on the PlayStation 2 and Xbox.

"We are ecstatic to be working with High Moon Studios on the Darkwatch product," said Todd Thorson, Capcom's director of marketing. "High Moon Studios has crafted a unique and immersive first-person shooter which raises the bar for quality and will take the market by storm with its gripping story and intense fast action gameplay."

The fate of Darkwatch was left up in the air earlier this year when High Moon, then known as Sammy Studios, was purchased from parent company Sammy Corp. by a private investment group headed by the developer's president and CEO, John Rowe.

Darkwatch follows Jericho Cross, a Blade-like vampire hunter who is partly undead himself. While traveling through a sprawling re-creation of a newly spooky Old West, Cross will undertake a series of nonlinear missions in addition to his overarching goal--to track down and destroy the vampire that bit him.

Darkwatch: Curse of the West will also differ from other frontier-set games in that it will include a variety of assault vehicles and souped-up versions of 19th-century weapons.