The old west is on the verge of undead infestation. What better way to break out of a summer slump?

Breaking into the safe of a moving train never seemed so easy. But in the opening scenes of Darkwatch, a first person shooter from Capcom, you'll see how an everyday robbery can turn into a life altering experience.

Jericho Cross is an outlaw and thief until he mistakenly gets in the way of an ancient evil by busting a vampire lord out of his makeshift prison. The encounter leaves him allied with the Darkwatch, a society of undead hunters with a past reaching as far back as history. Cross let the lord out of his cage, so he'll be helping the Darkwatch corral him and keep the wild frontier from being overrun by his legions of slobbering undead.

Capcom's trademark dramatic scenes are all over Darkwatch. The breaks in the action aren't as tiresome when they're illustrated like this. Great use of color, smooth animation and a story that does the job of making some sense of vampires, zombies and leather-clad dominatrixes running about the wild west make the action between the action worth watching. Jericho may be a typical anti-hero - his criminal ways meshing nicely with the huge gray line tread by the Darkwatch killers - but it's not tired. He fits the role of the game well even though he hardly speaks, and as the story progresses it gets darker and darker. It's not a game for children unless they grew up watching the Crypt Keeper.

The action is, in some ways, standard first person shooter, but there's a lot of diversions in the mix. You start with a hefty revolver as your sidekick as you move through a constantly swaying train. It doesn't make aiming so much harder that it becomes an obvious gameplay gimmick. The train bounces and sways just enough to put you in the atmosphere - just like so many other scenes. The race on horseback across a plain is simulated well, too. You and your companion gallop along while you have some control over your position in relation to her. You can turn around and fire at your pursuers and maneuver to avoid the bad guys. Shooting from horseback isn't easy - a lot harder than the train - but it works well. As your enemies drop they offer a visually satisfying tumble in the dust. There's also a frantic race while in control of a wagon, and a few other excellent exercises in challenging the player to do more than simply run and gun.

Moseying through graveyards, crypts and tunnels is equally moody. Darkwatch does a superb job of balancing setting with playability. It's often dark, but not so dark that you can't figure out who to shoot. The weapons sometimes border on the hokey - think more sinister versions of the toys on shows like Wild Wild West - but for the most part they are simply a nod to what might have been if Sam Colt had foreseen the need to fight zombies: Pistols with silver spikes, for example. The explosive crossbow might be a bit over the top, but you won't mind when you see what you'll use it for.

From the beginning, Cross is a little more entangled with the bad guys than he should be, so you'll be making choices throughout the game. You can act a little more honorably than an undead monster or you can relish the role. Darkwatch doesn't offer a full-blown morality play like Knights of the Old Republic or Fable, but you can decide what your reputation will be like and that will affect your abilities. It's not until toward the end that it makes a whole lot of difference, and along the way the story plays out similarly.

The online portion of Darkwatch is without a doubt the biggest mixed bag. The Xbox version offers 16 player matches online and split screen co-op offline. The Playstation 2 version does not offer online play at all, but the multiplayer modes of the game are so much like other first person shooters that PS2 owners aren't missing much in this case.

Clearly, if themes of the undead and wild west hold no special interest to you, Darkwatch won't keep your attention any longer than other first person shooters. But it executes the formula well and manages to mix in a few changes of pace throughout. It's a fun, fast-paced game with enough eye candy to entertain the undead-killing gunslinger that lives deep inside all of us.