Review
Aug 20/2000 (?)

by Dave "Marauder" Kratky

This is going to be a short one. Sorry guys, I just couldn't take it anymore. I had to stop playing before I killed someone. This game saddens, angers and frustrates me to no end. Overall it would have been pretty good in 1997. Not today.

Before playing this game, get beer, also buy a better game (ex. Anything other than maybe Deer Hunter or Pee Wee Herman's new interactive self discovery game.) You will need it to recover from this experiance.

Now: let me ask you a question. Do you hate frogs? I mean...... Do you REALLY hate frogs? NO? Trust me, you WILL learn to hate frogs. By the time you play the first few levels of this game, you'll be getting a stick and heading to the swamps for a little good 'ol fashioned frog wackin'. Oh! You'll also hate 'skeeters. And the colors grey, green and brown. And perhaps the man with the hair: John Romero himself. I tried, I really, really did. I tried to give this game a chance. I mean, it's John Romero's epic game right? He made Doom and Quake right? They took 4 years to make it, so it should be good! RIGHT?!?!?!? They had lots of time to work on it, and tons of time to get it perfected! It's gotta be good. IT"S GOTTA BE!!

I was wrong. So very, very tragically wrong. It's shit.

You start by watching an incredibly long, drawn out in game intro movie. 15 Minutes long approximately. The movie is supposed to give you the back story to the game etc. It does. Of course I've heard better dialogue in low budget porn movies. Standard in video games these days. 30 million dollars from Edios and they can't even write a conversation well. I COULD DO BETTER. Hell, Kingpin's 4 month old daughter could do better. Anyhows. You start the game in a swamp. You see a frog. You shoot the stupid mechanical frog. You walk a bit. You see a mechanical 'skeeter. You shoot it dead. Repeat ad infinitum. Occasionally you will see a mechanical alligator, which you will kill. Oh, and a few gun turrets. Shoot their little power supplies to kill them. You will then drink a beer. You will wander in the swamp, killing the aforementioned things. You will drink more beer. You will think that the levels pretty neat. You will then wonder if the next maps are better. (They're not, just so you don't get your hopes up!) You will then come to a fortress. You will kill about 20 'skeeters that come out of the fortress to kill you. You will then stand under an underhang and shoot the big mothership skeeter in the ass, since it's AI is so retarded it doesn't think to go AROUND the overhang to kill you dead. You will drink another beerrr.

You will then enter the shwewers. They are also green and grey and brown. Drink another beer to prepare. You will wander thru the swewers shooting at more moshitqos and frogsh. You will then perhaps shoot at shome giant mechanical men that shoot what looks like hunks of raw meat at you. Drink more beer frantically, trying to drown out the reality that is Daikatana. You will fail. By this time you will be as sober as a nun on sunday, and begging whatever gods happen to favor foolish computer gamers to put you out of your misery, or at least purify your hard drive of this devil spawned creation.

Oh, but wait! More good things await you: More of the same! When you get into the prision, you will see steel walls that are grey, brown and green. Yay. I finally just had to give up at this point. I just couldn't take it anymore.

More features (?) to drive you mad!

You will fall off the same fucking ledge 100x trying to get to a door that closes 5 seconds after you push the damned switch. You will die. You will then have to restart wayyyyy back on the level and do it all again. Apparently being able to save at anytime would detract from your enjoyment of seeing the sheer glory of the colors brown, grey and brown over and over again. You have to find "save gems" on the levels to save your damned game. Then they put a freaking jumping puzzle WITH flowing water to push you around as you attempt to jump from one little beam to another 50' above the floor, to get to the damned gem. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR..........

Oh and the weapons! OHHH the weapons. WoW-E! I'll be attending an NRA convention with these bad boys! So far, in 4 levels of the game I've found 3 guns. Well, 2 guns and your armored fist. The first gun you get is kinda cool. The Ion Blaster has some neat effects, and lays the beatdown on your targets. The second gun is a weird little magnetic trip mine gun. Kinda neat. That's all I managed to find. Oh, other than the "Gas powered fist". This thing looks like some sort of weird alien sex toy. It makes your fist shake, and puts smoke in front your face to block the view. Very handy. I finally ended up using it for a few minutes just to wear it out so I wouldn't have to put up with it again. Stupidest weapon I've ever seen. I'd rather frighten the enemy with photos of Rosanne Barr naked. Would have been less annoying to the user.

And I couldn't believe this one: The box for Daikatana contains this inside the front cover:

"DAIKATANA: Best game of 1999. I stand by it!"

- PC Accelerator

To say the least I was shocked and dismayed when reading this. First off: PCXL spent their entire career making fun of this game. I don't know WHERE they got that comment. Secondly, what kinda of an idiot puts that on their game box when the damned game wasn't even released until Q2 2000??? Sigh. I could go on and on, but it's time to finish up here and post the review. I took a Daikatana so that you wouldn't have to. I hope you appreciate it, I'll be seeing Orange boxes of death waiting around every corner for the next week, waiting to kill me.

At least the game never crashed on me.. So that's good. Just don't buy this game. FOR GOD'S SAKE! DON'T DO IT!

If you MUST play this game, just download the demo HERE.

A few quick rules for game designers:

A) Let me save my bloody game when and where I want. It's not fun to see the same part of the level 50x. Especially when it's boring as Phil Donohue interviewing lawyers about the latest strike by onion pickers in Outter Mongolia.

B) Don't do jumping puzzles. Jumping puzzle SUCK. People don't like them. If you can't make a game without stupid jumping puzzles all over the place, don't make games, you suck.

C) Include AI in the game. Monsters that run at you while shooting are so very.. Oh I dunno.. REMEMBER DOOM JOHN???? An upgraded AI, rather than a rehash of the one from Doom would have been a nice touch.

D) Give me a reason to continue playing!! I got bored with this one very quickly. Seeing the same type of scenery over and over gets frustrating and dull.

E) Make the guns interesting. Boring guns suck. I want big guns that fire big projectiles and blow the living crap out of any poor sap unlucky enough to be on the receiving end of it.

F) Release games when they're supposed to come out. This would have been a good game 2-3 years ago. Not so anymore, with games like Thief, System Shock 2, and Half Life out there.

H) NEVER, EVER, EVER let John Romero get his hands on a computer again for game design. I'm sorry, but a guy who hasn't done any big games since 1996 shouldn't be riding on his name and hair alone. Give me a break.