John Romero's Daikatana - Just Bad Games

John Romero's daikatana is a PC game from the year 2000 that was developed by an ion storm you may be thinking who is John Romero and why is this his daikatana well he's only one of the most important video game developers of all time John Romero is one of the founding members of Ede software a company that revolutionized the early video game industry by creating groundbreaking titles over tank 3d Wolfenstein 3d doom 3d quake uh 3d and and more 3d the first-person shooter genre that we know today was essentially built by the talented team at its software with a track record like that you'd better believe they earned the admiration and respect of gamers the world over but eventually the original team broke up an ion storm was formed with mr. Romero and another in software founder Tom Hall with other members of its software jumping to ion storm as well ion storm being founded by such influential members was bound to attract attention when Romero announced that the company would be working on a brand new title called daikatana people who are hungry to know more originally daikatana was going to be developed in just a few months utilizing the quake engine with development knowledge of these two senior members from its software it was easy to believe that they might actually hit that goal but that's not what went down daikatana would get delayed for years from its expected release date in 1997 it went through multiple changes and ran a tone deaf edgy ad campaign in magazine spreads that romero himself has since regretted and apologized for stating that the ad changed his relationship with the gaming community how often were these magazines run quarterly possibly anyway and the new millennium the game was released so how did the game turn out well get ready to sharpen your swords it's time to slice into this game and find out it starts by introducing you to hero Miyamoto a sword sensei he teaches kids how to play with swords one day he's visited by a sick old man named Toshiro ABI Hara who informs Hiro that reality is not as it should be a man by the name of cog a Mishima found a sword that Hiro's ancestor had made several generations earlier the sword known as the Kitana grants impressive abilities to its wielder including time travel great Scot with that power in hand Mishima has warped existence into a dystopian nightmare Toshiro begs hero to save his daughter from the clutches of Mishima and take back the legendary daikatana to fix the disrupted timeline suddenly ninjas they kill Toshiro and knock out Hiro but don't kill him because this game needs a protagonist so Hiro decides to avenge this random guys he just met and hide in his coffin which is being taken to Mishima's giant castle this entire opening is nearly ten minutes it's info heavy and stuffed with unnecessarily lengthy cinematic shots they certainly had a grand vision for the game we want to ensure that we properly experienced exactly what the developers felt confident in giving customers so we're playing the final official release from ion storm no fan patches classic four by three aspect ratio and all right so how does die katana actually play this does not bode well a little bad news this metallic clinking sound you're going to be hearing it at every loading screen and the game loads a lot into the first level of the game and we got ourselves a first-person shooter not exactly out of the comfort zone of a team composed of former in talent it feels a lot like quake 2 not surprising considering it's running on the quake 2 engine it's fast and responsive it feels foreboding and dangerous it's kind of an RPG oh wow role-playing game that's what this is supposed to be according to john romero himself place RPG character building along solid first-person shooting mechanics with towering lightning quick enemies that sounds amazing and it would have been but instead we get frogs robotic frogs mosquitos robotic mosquito crocodiles robotic crocodiles I think we're starting to see a pattern here we're given a mechanized ooh to fight in a swamp enemy types that mostly force you to look down at the ground or look awkwardly up in the air to engage them this would have been fine if it wasn't for your starting weapon the ion blaster likely named after the word ion an ion storm projectiles will decimate foes with an attack that can bounce off walls and hurt you shooting at deflective surfaces and confined spaces will have you poking holes in yourself your first weapon has a learning curve making it a poor choice for your first weapon we muscled on through the stage until we head to a door that hero can't pass and suddenly we get into the next area when we find mishima workers and this happens the AI here is totally broken these workers eventually run into some of the gears and moving objects in the levels that act like a puzzle sequence breaking it they even drown themselves if you watch them long enough oh but don't for a minute think that the NPC AI is the only problem here a serie works his way through the Mishima facility he comes across super fly a prisoner who formerly worked for Mishima Hiro free super fly and he joins the quest now you might think that super fly only shows up in cutscenes not actually joining you throughout each stage but you would be utterly wrong super flies an AI controlled sidekick will play alongside you his AI is about as good as these guys there are three basic rules that govern your sidekick experiences in order to complete a stage the sidekick needs to be with you sidekicks are restricted to the same path of movement that you are if the sidekick dies it's game over let's break down how freaking awful this is in practice hero needs to complete puzzles and level traversal the whole time with a sidekick that easily gets stuck and lost through every minute of play super fly generally operates by himself but once in a while you'll have to intervene with a series of keyboard commands like follow grab or stay which your sidekick has about a 50/50 chance of understanding super fly gets stuck a lot here's how super fly uses a door ah but it's not all doom and gloom sidekicks can use weapons to help you take on that constant rush of enemies super flyer will consistently shoot while you're in front of him since this is a game where your sidekick naturally follows behind you guess what happens he shoots through you and of course the game features friendly fire none of the weapons in this game are well-designed most have wide Splash Damage that can easily hurt you and super fly with every shot the real danger in this game is not the enemies dotted throughout the levels it's your arsenal oh and super fly broken AI is a huge problem in daikatana we would spend a massive amount of time finishing a stage only to realize when we got to the end that super fly was lost somewhere in the level we had to backtrack until we found him and nudge him in the right direction repeating this through each stage practically doubles the gameplay time oh we didn't even mention what happens when hero dies sure it's a game over and you'll need to restart what was super fly at your side you get this goodbye up until this point super flies known hero for I don't know 10 20 minutes he gets attached easily I wonder what it's like when his goldfish dies if his balling wasn't annoying enough other sounds in this game are beyond grading remember how we mentioned that almost everything is robotic when things move you'll know it one robot sounds like this but hearing a bunch of them in a room at once that's not enough well we need more sounds how about we slap a gas-powered engine to the back of hero's hand and constantly blast a recording of a lawnmower [Music] so things are looking good for John Romero's daikatana wait there's more you and Superfly will eventually find Toshiro's daughter remembered the old man from the intro cutscene anyway her name is Michiko and when you rescue her she joins you meaning that you now have two not one two sidekicks they need to babysit at all times all the problems with super fly double them the bulk of the game is reduced to escort missions with two ai-controlled characters that lack the basic ability to use stairs did we mention how strange it looks when anyone wafts on stairs in this game how is this game so janky getting through stages is like trolling through muck if you have the incredible mental endurance to push forward you'll make your way to the room that houses the magical sword that daikatana to grab it you'll need to blow up a bunch of brains in jars feels like we're getting a little symbolism you grab the sword game over right wrong cog a Mishima the sword thief and head of the Mishima corporation appears holding another daikatana hero lines up to attack him but is told these two swords are actually one and the same if they were ever to cross or touch in any way the world as we know it would cease to exist we also saw ghostbusters so hero screams the screen goes white and hero wakes up alone in ancient Greece welcome to another of die katanas big selling points multiple time periods the game has a total of four each time here you travel to will have completely different weapons and items oh and every time you travel you have to rebuild your inventory from scratch know that it matters cuz you still have the daikatana the only weapon that you should be using in this game the more you use it the more powerful it gets it doesn't need ammo refills and with it you can obliterate any enemy unless they're flying above you hero stats also level up as he gains XP if this is an RPG after all but it doesn't matter you won't notice a difference so we're in Greece we find Mikiko she's still impossible to control and this time period were worse than the last every item an interactive object it's like learning a new language need to learn new ways to complete puzzles and open doors that have no connecting logic to anything you played in previous stages for example in this area we cleared out every enemy there are several locked doors we assume that at least one of these doors needs to be open so we look through the whole stage for the better part of an hour trying to find a switch to open them eventually by pure chance Mikiko walked on a tile that opened only one of the many locked doors in the level there was no indication anyone needed to stand anywhere and this is the only time in the whole game that this one switch mechanic was ever used instead of playing a fast and smooth FPS we're crawling along trying to find out how to open a door with no enemies in sight and an AI that keeps getting stuck on railings our sidekicks are more clueless than we are why not [Music] what is it heat'll what's wrong did you see that see what I never mind get to the end of this time period and you fight Medusa yeah Medusa the mythical figure that turns you into stone if you look at her she's here how do you beat her we tried running up and swiping at her furiously with the ever powerful daikatana and when we finally killed her the game crashed apparently you're not supposed to be able to use the daikatana on Medusa despite us literally doing just that you're supposed to use an eyeball on a stick great we find superfly who has turned to stone but got better with the daikatana fully charged with Medusa's life force it's time for our heroes to get to the past and fix the timeline hero uses the daikatana to open the time vortex and Mishima is there waiting here on Mishima Fane fighting with their swords despite Mishima already saying that all existence would end if the two swords touch but never mind Mishima beats hero and sends the group to the medieval time period where are we now is that a village over there well good job Mikiko here's a cookie we've got the daikatana and our two idiotic sidekicks by our side Mikiko was bitten by a rat we've got the daikatana and an idiot carrying an idiot by our side in this time period there's a king who's sick and the citizens have been changed into zombies you'll need to find parts of the sword spread across the kingdom that once combined can make the king better you'll also need to fight wizards each of them have a staff that you can grab after defeating them the first one has a fireball staff we fight him we kill him and superfly Mikiko get crushed to death for no reason game over okay we battle the same wizard again we kill him and superfly Mikiko accidentally fall into a pool of lava game over yeah I could not possibly be any more senseless than this alright nope hey come back here don't you dare leave when you get past the fire wizard you're on to the next witch we're just gonna go ahead and call the glitch wizard because every aspect of this enemy encounter is broken beyond belief it's a boss fight now with most boss fights you may be tempted to save me or this encounter but don't saves near the glitch wizard get corrupted witch wizard also gets stuck on stairs and he can't be killed but let's say you finally corner the glitch wizard and attempt to take him out well here he just loops around a level taunting you he can't be killed time to reload the game let's say you replay this boss battle over 40 times and on your forty first attempt you finally through sure will find a path through all the broken gameplay and manage to deliver a killing blow in the game completely crashes and corrupts your save file how is this so broken we seriously lost count of how many times we were played this section but eventually something accidentally worked and we found our way through found sword pieces assembled cave2 King King healthy King make Mikiko healthy King charge daikatana time travel to final destination not not that one don't get excited San Francisco in 2030 now that makiko's better you once again have to deal with the super stupid twins doing mind bogglingly idiotic platforming and hampering your every move in the end we faced off against Mishima in a submarine dock he throws caution to the wind and decides to clashes daikatana with heroes why isn't the world blowing up in existence not existing we don't know and no one cares what we can tell you though is that eventually after Mishima throws ghosts at you and you knock him down hero sword disappears Mishima's doesn't hero and his two defective paperweights decide to take the sword and recharge its time-traveling abilities by sticking it into a nuclear reactor but wait Mikiko pulls the radioactive sword out of the reactor and kills Superfly because secretly she wanted the sword this whole time and her ancestors actually pack that hero's ancestor who made the original Thai katana so she's evil now cool yeah whatever you fight Mikiko and you kill her hooray everyone is dead hero decides to use the freshly powered daikatana to fix the floor time now everyone is alive and everyone's happy we get one last shot of hero who is sitting peacefully in a secret location that daikatana is hidden under his house and he appears to have stolen the Mona Lisa that was daikatana on PC and all its brutal glory ah but it wasn't the only version of this game there are a total of three completely different and unique versions of daikatana remember how John Romero said he liked to Zelda well arguably the best version of the game looks strikingly like Zelda the gameboy color version isn't an amazing game but it's good for an action-adventure title but the same developers of the gameboy color version also ported daikatana to the Nintendo 64 and that deserves a closer look we've gone back and forth trying to figure out if the n64 version is worse than the PC but this isn't an easy thing to decide we're not saying the console version of the game is good no it's definitely bad in some ways it takes big steps back from what was offered on the PC it's a console based first-person shooter with terrible aiming mechanics everything is floaty and doing basic things like crouching require complicated button combos not taught to you at any point cutscenes tend to go on forever in the n64 release and even if they're the same length they feel way longer there's no voice acting and no sound effects at all just terrible looping music but believe it or not the animations in the cutscenes are sometimes better than the PC version even though the frame rate is way WAY worse story beats and character development that are here are just more fleshed out than what you get on the PC version another improvement every single level plays out is one piece no loading they managed this by making levels much smaller cutting out the fat from the PC version this makes some levels overly simple and seriously boring but hey at least they flow properly something I cannot be said about the PC release whole chunks of daikatana PC are missing in the n64 version even boss levels that are hinted at with cutscenes on PC there's a three-headed Cerberus dog we fought on n64 while we see the gonna cutscene and then that's it he just disappears but we have to commend the developers on the n64 version for one thing they remove Superfly in Mikiko from the gameplay now they're only in the cutscenes really so there's no more that's right it doesn't make the port better but it sure helps psycho Tana on n64 is a weird mess like a bad police sketch of the original game in their desperation to complete the port the devs cut out some aspects simplified others and generally rush the game hey who actually made this game huh nobody special just the same developers who worked on batman dark tomorrow I was using a Thai katana at the end of my game and nobody noticed Thank You Tana was an incredibly ambitious tale from ion storm attempting to bring several game concepts into one and not making anyone work without a doubt it would be years before any development team would marry role playing mechanics story and a first person shooter into anything resembling a good game wait didn't dis ex come out the same year oh right it did who developed it wait what is just bad [Music]

Channel: Rerez

Views: 278,649

Rating: 4.869235 out of 5

Keywords: Rerez, Video, Games, Gaming, Gamers, Video Games, Video Game, Daikatana, PC, PC Game, Ion Storm, John Romero, N64, Nintendo 64, Gameboy Color, Just Bad Games, Nintendo, FPS, John Romero's Daikatana, PC Gaming

Id: _wPQAm_JJfs

Length: 19min 26sec (1166 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 16 2020