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The Daikatana Arrives

by Steve Gibson, May 23, 2000 7:45pm PDT
Related Topics – Daikatana

The Daikatana has been showing up on store shelves in a few places amazingly enough and although I dont plan on linking the reviews, I figure the first one out the door is probably worth some attention. Get this:

Thankfully, the game does get much better the more you progress. The more I played, the more I didn’t notice some of the garish colors. As I took less notice of how much the game's Quake 2 technology lagged UT and Quake 3, I began to better appreciate Daikatana's strengths. And of these there are many: a well-developed and well-executed story; four distinct game episodes (Athens is very cool!), all with different textures, music, weapons, and monsters; and two "sidekicks" you can boss around (or make your bitches, I guess), Mikiko and Superfly.





Comments

72 Threads | 135 Comments






















  • Here are the telling parts from the Incite review:

    While it's nice to have Mikiko and Superfly along for the journey, theyÂ’ll annoy the hell out of you as much as theyÂ’ll help you. TheyÂ’ll do their best to follow your orders. However, theyÂ’ll likely kill you "accidentally" many times in heated battles and have trouble finding their way around obstacles (as do monsters).

    Annoying sidekicks. Sidekicks don't obey. Sidekicks kill you. Sidekicks get lost. Monsters get lost. Sounds familiar -- just like the demo.

    Then there are the other marks of amateurishness:

    ..several clipping problems ... video performance was a bit buggy...For some inane reason your sidekicks canÂ’t use plants or health-regeneration stations...canÂ’t tell them which weapon to use...the inability to save whenever you want...

    Clipping problems, the newbie mapper's mistake! Sidekicks stand around dying instead of replenishing health! Whoops, gotta find me a save game thingamijig! (Design is law.)

    And how stable is Daikatanna after all these years of "tweaking"?

    And finally, there was the occasional unexplained and sudden crash to the desktop — or worse, complete system lock-up.

    Scandisk is now checking your drive for errors. LOL!

  • And so was the Daikatana born. The legend passed through many generations and among many peoples. With each passing, the legend grew more fantastic. Whence came the Daikatana? Naturally, it was thought to have come directly from the loins of John the Goldenhaired; others maintained it was immaculately conceived in the bosom of the goddess under the misty glow of the twin moons. As the Daikatana rends the fabric of fate, so does it rend me, too, for the Daikatana was born to slay me. By this blade, I go to a swift and bitter death...

    What?! I missed myself!

    GODDAMN NET CODE

    Now the dark rider comes for me. Net lag, I smile at thee...


  • Quake 2 has consistantly given me good ping times, and I have played both on a modem and a cable line. Quakeworld has given me good pingtimes, but with different video cards it has varied (voodoo vs. tnt). My Voodoo2/3 seemed to produce better pings than my Riva 128/TNT/TNT2U. I have had all on both Cable/Analog modem as well. Quake 3 ran like shit on my modem, for both Voodoo3 and TNT2U. However, with Cable, I now ping the best I have ever pinged.. ranging from 15-70 ping. This is with a TNT2U. It might have something to do with the size of the packets sent back and fourth, or the amount of memory each frame takes up, and how each video card renders the frame. I have no Idea, I prefer to play Quake3 overall.. due to the fact that I get the best ping/framerate with it.

    FYI My system is: (Old shit.. heh)
    P2 500 *overclocked (4.5 x 112)
    TNT2U *overclocked (195mhz/200memory)
    256 Megs PC100 SDRAM
    WD 7200 ATA/66 HDD
    SB Live!

    I use the optimized DLL's from Shugashack.com

    Dopeman