Daikatana

WHERE'S MY MONEY JOHN

We live in a world where the Homeworld series is not on GOG, but Daikatana is. It's as awful today as it was back then. Weapons that kill you at the drop of the hat, A.I. that's beyond laughable, a villain that doesn't carry the kind of weight we expected from Romero and add to that, the fact that the game is clumsy to control and even harder to understand. I remind you... we live in a world where Daikatana is on GOG, but the Homeworld games are not. -_-

There's a lot of word going around that if you separate Daikatana from its sordid history, ignore the disappointment of its massive hype train, and the travesty of its ill thought-out marketing, that you'll find at its heart, it's just average. That, however, is bull to the highest degree. Daikatana is garbage, it was dated on release, visually and in the scope and execution of its level design, its weapon were either utterly unspectacular or were so lethal that they would kill you moron often than the enemies (in some poorly dreamed up idea of skill). The sidekick AI was not only terrible, but the game didn't even seem to be designed around their presence, the levels are so claustrophobic and tight that they would get more in the way than anything, and that's when they weren't getting stuck on things, getting crushed by doors, or being entirely arbitrary about when they actually decided to help shoot things. There's endless more you can go on about, the god awful balancing, rendering the first chapter the hardest of the entire game, with chapter two being piss easy and three being just as harmless, and the fourth being moderately challenging at best. Enemy design is awful, with little to no interesting AI behaviors (unacceptable in a post Unreal, post Half-Life industry) and horrible, annoying, tiny enemies (and tiny, annoying flying enemies). Its story is absolutely awful, boring, and the writing is infantile at best. Levels are obtuse and labyrinthine. Textures are muddy and god awful, and the colored lighting is eye searing, with neon green, far too dark areas, and generally bizarre lighting choices. Its only redeeming features are that the level architecture is semi-impressive (with the Greece chapter having some decent structures and the like) and that it delivers on having a lot of content. Not that any of it is good. Avoid this crap, it would have been bad if it made its original 1997 release date, but for 2000, it's unforgivably moronic.

Geschmäcker sind Verschieden. John Romero hatte damals große Ankündigungen und Showcases auf der E3 mit Daikatana gemacht. Mit Ion Storm als neues Entwickler-Studio machte das Spiel einen sehr vielversprechenden Eindruck. Aber dann wurde das Spiel veröffentlicht und ich sah mir erst mal die Wertungen in den Spiele-Zeitschriften an. Es gab damals keine einheitliche 80er-Wertung bei einem Ego-Action-Blockbuster wie Daikatana, sondern deutlich weniger. Wie kann das sein? fragte ich mich damals. Also ging ich in eine Videothek und leihte mir die N64-Version aus und testete diese erst mal an. Ja, ich muss zugeben; der Eindruck war leider nicht positiv. Das die PC-Version die richtige Version war wusste ich damals nicht. Viele Jahre vergingen und ich holte mir beim Marketplace von einem Online-Versandhandel die physische UK-Version neu in Folie versiegelt für unter 20,- €. Und was soll ich sagen: DIESE Version fühlte sich klasse an!!!! Ich mag genau diese art von Ego-Action und Griechenland und das Anfangs-Gebiet sind meine Lieblings-Level im Spiel. Die Robo-Insekten als Gegner fand ich sehr passend. Und auch das Level-Design ist großartig. Alleine die Greife im Griechenland-Level oder die fetten Riesen-Spinnen, das alles hat seinen eigenen Stil den ich heutzutage sehr vermisse. Geschmäcker sind Verschieden - und das ist auch gut so. Denn sonst gäbe es so tolle Spiele wie Daikatana nicht. Daikatana ist eines meiner Lieblings-Spiele! :-) Aber nur uncut!!! ;-)

Not unless you are really REALLY morbidly curious to see just how badly a gamer can be screwed up. This game was failure of advertising, it was a failure of marketing, it was a failure of design and it was a failure of programming. I doubt age has changed this.