I can't believe Daikatana was actually this bad

S

Spare-Flair

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Apr 4, 2003
Messages
7,471
We've all read about Daikatana and what an enormous failure that game was. Out of morbid curiosity, I went to Youtube to look for HD let's plays of it and I cannot believe how bad this game is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQ0X_n87sF8&feature=channel_video_title

I still remember how it bankrupted Ion Storm and caused Eidos so much financial difficulty that the shockwaves probably ruined franchises like Thief. I remember the scathing reviews about how it was using the Quake 2 engine when Q3 was already out. I remember about reading how terrible the story, gameplay, graphics, etc. were and especially how bad your sidekicks AI was (they'd get stuck and your game would be ruined).

If you dare, try to watch through the whole game. I skipped around and ended up near the end. I can't bear to watch anymore. Daikatana: American nerd with too much money takes Japanese samurai/ninja fetish too far, makes terrible videogame, bankrupts company.
 
Last edited:
Yeah it was bad. It did OK on the console side as I recall as console players weren't nearly as fickle as the PC gamers were. Plus the horrid graphics weren't quite as obvious on the Nintendo 64.
 
What's most shocking is you take a look at that video and you would have guessed that it might be a 1997 era game but Daikatana came out in 2000! This is two years after Half-Life!
 
Best thing about that game was the ad:

Bitchad.jpg
 
I somehow managed to miss all the hype of this game back when it was in dev and first came out.

I found it in a bargain bin maybe a year after release; and having no idea what it was, I picked it up 'cause the box looked pretty cool. To this day I remember it as one of the greatest disappointments of any game I bought in that era, and I was only anticipating it for a couple hours between when I was at the store and when I got home! So I really can't imagine how people felt who were waiting on this for years... :p
 
Spare-Flair said:
What's most shocking is you take a look at that video and you would have guessed that it might be a 1997 era game but Daikatana came out in 2000! This is two years after Half-Life!
Click to expand...

I didn't remember the exact timing on the release but as I recall it looked about two years or more out of date. Back then quantum leaps in graphics came much more frequently than they do today. (Yay consoles! :rolleyes:)
 
One of the very few games that I didn't play all the way through,in fact I played the first level and threw it in the trash.The colors were so garish it hurt my eyes,the gameplay was so repetitive and unbalanced it was boring. Hard to believe one of the creators of Doom could produce something this bad,Romero should have stayed with iD.
 
Daikatana was not "that" bad, it was kinda average. But yeah with all the hype and enormous expectations, delays and stuff everyone was expecting "the worlds best game", not an average shooter. I actually had quite some fun with it. While it's not breaking any records i liked how the level design was quite clever from a strategical point, it was less like "shoot till the barrels glow" that would often just get you killed instantly, it was more of a tactical shooter. But yeah can understand everyone's disappointment, it definitely couldn't keep up with the hype. But oh well i guess some people will also be disappointed with Duke nukem forever.
 
I played much worse games. And while it had rather bad gfx thats not everything about a game. But yeah it's all about taste, so perfectly legit to hate it.
 
kyodai said:
I played much worse games. And while it had rather bad gfx thats not everything about a game. But yeah it's all about taste, so perfectly legit to hate it.
Click to expand...

It's not just the graphics, the game play was just lame. I've seen games that look underwhelming for the times they came out which were still good games. Pretty much any game which came out after Crysis that I enjoyed falls into that category. Graphics aren't everything, but it's part of the overall presentation and it's one of the first things any game will be judged on before anything else.
 
Wow, someone actually finished Daikatana?

kyodai said:
I played much worse games. And while it had rather bad gfx thats not everything about a game. But yeah it's all about taste, so perfectly legit to hate it.
Click to expand...

For a release from a major developer, it really didn't get any worse. If it had been released 5 years earlier, it might have been passable. Daikatana was released after UT and Q3A, yet it was worse than Quake 2 in pretty much every possible way.

And WTF, was the voice acting all recorded in a bathroom stall or a Geo Metro or something?
 
wasn't there a game called battlecruiser something that also had a lot of hype and turned out to be a pos, can't remember the exact title or the publisher
 
it was a piece of shit right, the box art they had up at wiki shows like a 9/10 and a 94% from somewhere, its too small to read.
 
I remember having the demo on a CD from PC gamer or something. I never thought it was that bad of a game ... but it was only a demo.

Anyways, endgame 3 is even worse .. or maybe endgame 4 where there are two dead boss bodies (because one is created for the cut scene.
 
I remember playing a multiplayer demo, or test, or beta or something of Daikatana. It was decent.
 
Oh my god I just remembered...

A while back I helped run a regular LAN party with my buddy Dino and some other guys. He managed to get sponsored with about 20 or so copies of Daikatana to give away. We played Daikatana Pinata on at least one occasion.
 
Parja said:
Wow, someone actually finished Daikatana?



For a release from a major developer, it really didn't get any worse. If it had been released 5 years earlier, it might have been passable. Daikatana was released after UT and Q3A, yet it was worse than Quake 2 in pretty much every possible way.

And WTF, was the voice acting all recorded in a bathroom stall or a Geo Metro or something?
Click to expand...

DNF will be worse. But since the original developer didn't get to release it, it might not count. But it still ruined a dev company.
 
I remember playing the demo after all the hype and thinking wtf.
 
The day Romero started to believe in his own hype was the day the games went south.
 
Dan_D said:
It was that bad.
Click to expand...

It was worse.

If battling mosquitoes and frogs wasn't inspirational enough, you had to face the greatest most indestructible deadliest enemy in any game, doors. Yes, when doors closed they were lethal. Sure you could easily avoid them, but the retarded characters following you around liked to get stuck in them and die, thus ending you glorious quest.
 
BladeVenom said:
It was worse.

If battling mosquitoes and frogs wasn't inspirational enough, you had to face the greatest most indestructible deadliest enemy in any game, doors. Yes, when doors closed they were lethal. Sure you could easily avoid them, but the retarded characters following you around liked to get stuck in them and die, thus ending you glorious quest.
Click to expand...

I didn't play it long enough to experience that.
 
I started watching the let's play, and couldn't stop again.

Holy s... that dude Superfly has to be the most stereotypical black person in the history of gaming, and his voice actor must be some bum they found on the street. It wouldn't surprise me if he gets rescued in a later episode and makes a silly rap about it
 
I never finished this game, ever.
Everytime I install it on an old PC, I play for like 5 minutes and that is it.
Yeah it was bad even for its time and now after all these years, it sucks even more.
 
boxterduke said:
I never finished this game, ever.
Everytime I install it on an old PC, I play for like 5 minutes and that is it.
Yeah it was bad even for its time and now after all these years, it sucks even more.
Click to expand...

I never bought it. We had a copy at the place I was working at the time and I think I played 10 or 15 minutes of it and hated every second of it.
 
Mokkat said:
I started watching the let's play, and couldn't stop again.

Holy s... that dude Superfly has to be the most stereotypical black person in the history of gaming, and his voice actor must be some bum they found on the street. It wouldn't surprise me if he gets rescued in a later episode and makes a silly rap about it
Click to expand...

Superfly Johnson was a racial stereotype? Look at Makiko, the asian sidekick voiced in yellowface accent by some Texan girl named Deb Jolly.
 
I remember all the bad press it got even before release, and how it was delayed a few times.

One day I go into Electronics Boutique and low and behold Daikatana is in the store.

One of the salesgirls gave me a pitch and the first week the game was only like $30, when most new PC releases were $50. I thought how bad could it be. I took it home and found out first hand.

I quit playing around the 4th level.

That voice synthesized narration in that yt video is hilarious.
 
I can't take looking at that game anymore. It was hideous years ago and it still is today.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top