Daikatana

Diakatana was originally released back in early 2000 for PC and with the maketing stating that "John Romero was to make you his bitch", gamers cryed afowl and stated it was "the worst game ever". In the industry that we (the cusomers) have been acustom to for the last 20 years, the term "Worst Game EVER" is a complete joke, even in the eyes of bigtime/indie developers & publishers. Is it the woest game ever or even THAT BAD as most people say? No, Diakatana while having a great concept & ideas on paper, is a game that is enjoyable yet a higly flawed shooter due to the development timeline the game had. The story while poinless & all over the place, has a certain B-level charm that it's keep the game moving forward and overall a fun experiance. The soundtrack is a underrated one and bring to mind soundtracks from shooters like Quake 2. In the end. Diakatana is not the worst nor even a horrible game like most gamers/YouTube content creators state. This title shows while it is a highly flawed shooter, it also shows why John Romero was not only a crutal part to id Software, as co-creator of Wolfenstien 3d, Doom, Doom II & Quake but a crutal part to the behemoth that is the (first-person) Shooter genre.

That is paradoxal that a game talking about time travel get so bad with the ages ! I remembered it as a not so bad game but replaying it was painful, especially bugs and savegames system make it so annoying. Apart from that , Daikatana is not so bad !

Despite the general opinion I always remember myself enjoying Daikatana. 16 years after my first playthrough I still find it quite enjoyable. Pros: - Great level design. Most levels are quite memorable and they are packed with tons of secrets. - Great variety of enemies, settings and weapons because of the 4 chapters. - Interesting story. - Great soundtrack. Cons: - Sidekick AI sucked. Fortunately with the unofficial 1.3 patch you can play without them. - Some annoying enemy types. Anyone remember trying to kill these annoying bats in the 3rd chapter? - Most weapons from the first 3 chapters are quite uninteresting and luck impact.

Daikatana could have been ahead of its time. Its has group members, RPG elements, creative weapons, interesting scenarios and a storyline that was about people. However, most of these elements have been wasted. When Daikatana finally came out, shooters had already left the dark caves and brown grey environments and it was some years since unreal had shown that shooters can not only be technically impressive but also be beautiful. Other games like Half-Life had shown that shooters could have a better plot than "kill evil things cause evil and collect keycards". And of course it was still buggy. I could not finish it in single player. Act 1 had gamebreaking script errors, and from there on my KI buddies killed themselves too often to bear it. I played it in multiplayer-coop-mode, alone. With no story, no cutscenes and no Superfly and Mikiko. And who thought jump & run sequences are what people like in a shooter? Bugfree and roughly at its intended release 1996-1997, it would have been one of the defining games of its genre. Sad story. The game has some historical value, because we can learn from failure and missed chances.

This game is the weird not so polished brother of the original Deus Ex. that's basically all you need to know to decide if you like the style or not, but i'll try to expand on it, and go into more detail below. At first, i'd like to state i tried this game way back in its day, and i put it away very quickly. but, it has been almost 18 years since it's launch, and i got this again on GOG, and due to a graphics card failure decided to give this game a shot sine my current graphics card could handle it. Let's start by stating the fact, i did not play the vanilla version of GOG, and nor should you. there's a great modding community that is still modding and patching this game daily. i got at least 3 or 4 updates during my playthrough. Now, onto the game, to anyone who played Deus Ex and loved it, this would be like playing it for the first time, or getting new content. the feel of the game, some of the sound effects, animations, graphics and other things are identical and will hit that nostalgic spot enough to get you to play this. Unlike Deus Ex, it's a linear game, very reminiscent of 90's FPS like Doom and Quake. no RPG elements or choices in dialog, but it does allow you the same freedoms that Deus Ex does in choosing how to complete a level. you can power up acrobatic and jump to higher places or away from enemies, or power up things like attack and go in guns blazing. overall it's a good game with good level design and story, but it has its flaws. for one you get 2 sidekicks along the story, and their A.I. is let's say less than stellar. though this is an issue being patched by the modding community, it is a bit annoying. there are ways to get around that, like the feature to play without them that was added by the modders, or using codes to teleport them to your location if they get stuck. to sum things up, it's not the most polished game or the best it can be, but if you enjoy Ion Storm's games and design give this one a chance!