Instead of gold or treasure, it’s filled with Lazaraus - a supernatural creature that has minions all over. Jericho Cross is a badass gunslinger (is there any other kind in fiction?) and he’s got one more train to rob, but this one is just a wee bit cursed. Some of that has to do with its premise, but a lot of it is how the shooting gallery-esque gameplay hasn’t been replicated and its mix of gameplay and cinematics blending into one another logically was far ahead of its time. It’s impressive with so many years of hindsight to see just how well Darkwatch holds up to the test of time – especially in a crowded genre like first-person shooters. And with so much time having passed since Hardcore Gamer originally debuted with a robust Darkwatch cover story - and a game undeniably similar being announced for next year in the form of Evil West - we thought it’d be a perfect time to both celebrate fifteen years of Hardcore Gamer and look back to see if a decade-and-a-half of a publication’s existence would be enough time to change our perception of the haunted western title. In the fifteen years since the game graced our debut magazine cover we’ve seen a lot of FPS games on the market, but nothing has quite managed to come close to Darkwatch. Hardcore Gamer’s first cover story was on this game in 2005, and while the franchise may have fallen shy of its lofty expectations, the core experience remains a lot of fun. High Moon Studios, befitting their name, had high hopes for Darkwatch to become something big - but dame fortune wasn’t smiling upon them.
You had ideas like Bloodrayne that were B-tier games but wound up crossing over to horror movie audiences thanks to the films - so a game in the franchise now had two potential fanbases to draw from. A lot of early-aughts franchises were getting turned into movies, albeit largely bad ones, but movies nonetheless.
Darkwatch came about at an interesting time in gaming history.