John Romero's Daikatana

The Good
Intersting storyline. The nod to Nintendo's founder. Weapons are varied in certain levels, the ad campaign ION Storm ran (even though it killed this game), Romero's hair .

The Bad
Graphics, repetitive level design, cliched and rather racist side-kick characters, the insects and frogs, the hype.

The Bottom Line
This game would have been just as bad, that is to say it's par for the shooter course, had it not taken nearly half a decade to produce. Romero may have tried to re-invent the shooter, but came up well short of his mark. It's still the same find key, open door, shoot anything that moves gameplay from other mindless shooters. But not as good as more recent titles.

The hype surrounding this game didn't help either. No game could live up to the "do all end-all of gaming" moniker this game had going for it. Romero should have stayed with id. At least no one hated their lackluster titles (Quake2).

The Good
The first episode weapon models, the enemy creature models and the architecture throughout the game are extremely well done. The textures and miscellanous art leave little to be desired, striking new ground in style and quality.

The duo that you tow along in the game, while annoying when in your line of fire, provide good comic relief, great assistance in a firefight and are generally nice to have around. Kudos for ION's attempt at moving the industry forward.

The Bad
For every episode after the first, the weapon models degrade. By the fourth episode, the weapons have reached an all-time low. Bad animation, foul modeling and even worse coding makes for an arsenal that serves only to smear you, rather than your opponents.

While your partners AI is grand, your opponents are a far cry. Harking the days of Doom, upon catching sight of you an enemy will yell, and attempt to advance on your position, usually getting hung up on the beautiful architecture and generally making a complete fool of itself. If they're not stuck somewhere they will bee-line. Some enemies will attempt to play with you, for example the griffon or the mosquitoes which zip around and actually present a challenge for a marksman, but in the end there is no AI, simply a repetitive and predictable Action/Reaction system; Quantity, but no Quality.

Sound effects and music are sub par but livable, while voice acting leaves me laughing. A japanese swordsman does not have an American accent. Shadow Warrior is more believable.

Of all the details, however, one sticks out; sorest thumb of all, the Daikatana itself. This sword is horrible. No fluidity in the swings, unpredictable hit-scan (meaning you don't know where you're going to be slashing) not to mention the fact that you have no way of controlling which of four slashes you perform.

The RPG element is in sour need of a redesign. An attempt at creating an RPGish system wherein you gain experience and thus 'levels' through the slaying of 'baddies'. It doesn't fly very well simply because if you do not select the correct stats you will find yourself a bloody pulp too many times, and with load times reminiscint of pre-patch SiN you do not want to be reloading.

The level design, while breathtaking in more than one area, is linear to say the least. And if not linear you will find yourself wandering aimlessly trying to figure out where to go next (though this is quite rare). There is no similarity between functions, for example a door that looks like another will not function the same.

The Bottom Line
Download the demo and you will find it enjoyable. Buy the game and you will be throwing your money away on an amateur product that should have stayed in development for another week to create new weapons.

Overall I would not recommend buying this game simply because it is not what it should be, after four years in development. I have seen many user created modifications for many different games that of much higher quality than this (eg: Counter-Strike, or Gunman)

The Good
The gigantic levels are very well designed and there are lots of puzzles to solve in them. The weapons are very creative, and the game can be considered an First-Person RPG, because you can level up your stats, such as Speed, Acro, Power and Attack, and even your Daikatana. The story is so great that the game can be turned into a book (there is a rare comic book by TopCow, released with the game), or even a movie (if Uwe Boll don't direct it). You are a martial arts trainer called Hiro Miyamoto, and you receive a visit from an unknown guy called Toshiro Ebihara, that says you have a mission to save his daughter Mikiko and a mystic sword called Daikatana, forged by the ancestors of Hiro. I really should say it's at least epic and creative!

The Bad
Even if the Sidekicks help you to not being alone while playing the game, they are annoying because of their defective A.I. Seriously, the A.I. is so bad that the sidekicks can get stuck in lots of spots, specially in stairs, they just keep going up-down-up-down, that really pissed me off. There are some slight graphics slowdowns, they happen most frequently when you're exposed into a fog effect or light. Also, if you're playing the game in the Windows Xp or later (I play it on Seven) you have to patch the game to version 1.2, because the game keeps crashing very often.

The Bottom Line
Don't let the critics let you down. Even if there are problems with the game, it is an underrated gem of the PC. It is very fun to play it and soon you feel in the story. One more thing: play the Windows version, not the N64 one, which is bad, ugly and slow.