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Daikatana Sucks: It's Official
quakedaddy writes: "There's a pretty comical look at 'John Romero's Suck it down I will make you my bitch Daikatana.' Guess it's official -- Ion Storm's cash cow to be never will be. The first person shooter that took four years to make is just poo. There's also some info on Paul Steed's sacking from id Software here." Anyone else played it?
Unfortunately, it doesn't matter if DK is good or not anymore for romero - It's already at #5 for sales last week:
;p)
GameWEEK Sales charts for 5/21/00
My theory is that people are buying it to see how bad it is - with that much hype, people are going to be curious.
Whether it makes its money back or not, I don't know...I think Ion Storms other titles (Deus Ex, Anacronox) will start bringing revenue in for Ion, as well as being *shock* suprisingly good games (especially when compared to DK and Dominon
I wish that I could have a multi million dollar lesson...
huh?
This type of attitude bothers me a lot. Romero poured his heart and soul into this game, and even though it was totally over-hyped and underachieving in the end, Daikatana made it to store shelves.
Yeah, your type of attitude bothers me a great deal as well. Reasoning like that is lowering standards everywhere and has screwed up our educational system with ludicrous concepts like social promotion (why bother doing well if you go on to the next class anyway? therefore there are no repercussions for failure). So what do you suggest that after spending four years shooting of his mouth and drowning us with his ego we should congratulate John Romero for shipping software even if it is shitty?!? Hell, no.
As for the so-called Daikatana Process "big, frigging deal". Every sufficiently large software project has interesting stories of design, personality clashes and innovation hiding away somewhere...why should we celebrate the story of the creation of a horrible piece of software when there are more deserving projects to laud both as games and as feats of engineering and design (Half-Life, System Shock 2, Baldur's Gate, Quake 3, Theif I and II, anything from Blizzard, etc). Next thing you'll be suggesting that we cheer MSFT on for being brave enough to release Windows 95/98 even though they knew they'd get laughed at...
PS: I especially dislike Ion Storm because after Eidos wasted money supporting them there was nothing left over to stop Looking Glass Studios from going under.
analogy:
Frankly if I shot my mouth of about how much I could code to a bunch of developers and how l33t I was only to turn out not to be able to write a BubbleSort or create a Hash Function I'd expect to be laughed out of town and I would deserve it.
The worst part about the whole Daikatana mess doesn't even have to do with Ion Storm at all, but Looking Glass. Looking Glass closed because their deal with Eidos fell through, because Eidos didn't have enough money to pay. Meanwhile, Eidos had sunk multiple millions in to a game that predictably sucked and will never ever recoup the losses. Meanwhile, the folks at Looking Glass made Thief 2, which is selling well and getting great reviews all around. This game was made under a lot of preassure, as the company had been having financial problems, but they still produced an amazing product. Their engine isn't that fantastic graphically either (the sound is awesome though) but unlike Daikatana, the gameplay itself is great. It's truly sad that something like this happened, that a piece of overbudget crap put a group of creative and well respected game designers out of a job. I hope Romero is ashamed at himself for making such garbage and for denying the folks of Looking Glass a chance to make more great games.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Wow, who would have thought this thing would suck after spending so much money and time on it.
Everyone should read the story on Ion Storm that ran in the Dallas Observer (here is a link to it) for a picture of too much ego + too much money.
On the plus side, instead of saying "Oh, that's the Heaven's Gate of Computer Games", we can say "Oh, how Daikatana"
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Lowtax at Something Awful has an even funnier look at Daikatana and the release. it's utterly hilarious. you thought the sharky extreme review was mean, i don't know how Romero can look at his face in the morning after this review. ouch...but for some real comedy, read Lowtax's reviews of The War In Heaven or Thundra.
It takes chunks of dialog from the Daikatana characters and sets it to a cheesy porn soundtrack to provide a whole new meaning to the "big sword" moniker. This link came from Old Man Murray.
Much funnier than ASCII text could ever be.
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Rare Window - free your photos
The thing that pisses me off when I read about half ass games that get published is I wonder what was sacraficed to breathe life into this turd.
.plan files.
I wanted to see Babylon 5:Into the Fire. It was a game that was high on my "to buy" list. I had been to Sierra's site several times to check out the screenshots, mpg movies, and occasionally read the developer's
As many of you know, Sierra fired a bunch of it's developers. The development staff of B5 (as well as the developers for Middle Earth) was given 30 days notice and the software was cancelled.
OH, but Thank God Sierra spared 3d Virtual Bullrider!! It was bad enough to see B5 axed, and the LOTR game killed with a major motion picture on the way - but I really would have gone fscking nuts if they had cancelled the Bullrider game!!!
So Daikatana sucks. It will soon be forgotten. At least John Romero could afford to buy nice tits for his girlfriend.
I spen more time thinking about great games that died than half ass ones heading for the closeout bin at Best Buy.
Remember, Daikatana was a high visibility project started by (at the time) one of the most influential people in PC gaming. Can you recall the "Romero is going to make you his bitch!" advertising campaign? With all the hype generated by ION Storm for this game, I'm not surprised to see reviews that don't pull any punches in reporting on the weak points of this game. "Suck it down??" You got that right.
The big question that I have is wondering if EIDOS is going to recover *any* of their investment in ION with this game. Is the negative pub from this game going to affect ION's other upcoming releases? Is someone who actually buys the game going to be so turned off that he'll never buy another ION game?
At some point within the past year they had to realize that the game simply wasn't going to work - someone should have pulled the plug on this thing over a year ago.
I've only played the demo (right through, though, unlike some people) and I was somewhat underwhelmed. I always compare FPS games with Half-Life, admittedly my favourite game ever (have a look here for what I'm doing with it), so be warned...
:-)
The game looks alright, although the coloured lighting is overused at points. The enemies look fairly good, although they don't seem to have many triangles compared with other games. They do look reasonably solid, unlike some. Graphically, not bad - but that's not the problem.
It's the enemy AI. The enemies in Doom are more intelligent than these ones. They get stuck around corners. At one point, I stood just round a pillar while a load of robotic mosquitoes piled up, unable to navigate eight world units to their right in order to fly around. They're stupid compared with Doom's enemies, and utterly brain-dead compared with Half-Life's.
When an enemy in a computer game attacks, I don't want it to advance straight towards me where I can gun it down before it reaches me, I want it to show at least some hint of realistic behaviour. I love fights where I have to plan what to do beforehand, and probably take cover and retreat if necessary. Daikatana did not require any such strategy - just mindless standing and shooting. Occasionally I would move to the left or right while shooting, just to add a bit of variation, but it was rarely necessary to do so.
Daikatana's first, swamp-based episode specialises in ultra-annoying enemies that sneak up and nibble on you. Incredibly annoying to kill - they move reasonably quickly and are difficult to see. Contrast this with Half-Life's headcrabs, which move very slowly, then pounce at your face - you can actually see when they're attacking.
The sidekicks aren't quite as bad as some people keep making out - although I imagine they could get pretty stuck in places, and get in the way in others. It's a nice idea, but by no means original. Half-Life had scientists and security guards, while its Opposing Force mission pack put you alongside soldiers which would fight with you. The sidekick AI in Daikatana seemed similar to the Half-Life security guards, which was fine for short periods, but would be pretty annoying for an entire game...
In a way, it's intriguing to compare Half-Life and Daikatana. Both are first games, both were dramatically behind schedule, both attempt to tell a story, and change the way we think about FPS-style games. Unfortunately, while Half-Life succeeds in a spectacular manner, Daikatana fails miserably...
Oh well. Time to wait for the release of Half-Life 1.1 and Worldcraft 3.3...
Ford Prefect
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
They're all pretty similar, really...
:-)
Doom: Experiments involving dimensional portals go wrong, creating a rift between our world and Hell. Generic gun-toting, solitary marine goes on a rampage, killing lots of nasties, and travels into the other dimension to kill more nasties before killing the big evil overlord monster (a great big wobbly brain).
Quake: Experiments involving dimensional portals go wrong, creating a rift between our world and various undefined dimensions. Generic gun-toting, solitary marine goes on a rampage, killing lots of nasties, and travels into the other dimensions to kill more nasties before killing the big evil overlord monster (a great big wobbly jelly).
Half-Life: Experiments involving dimensional portals go wrong, creating a rift between our world and a mysterious alien world called Xen. Generic gun-toting, solitary theoretical physicist goes on a rampage, killing lots of nasties, and travels into Xen to kill yet more nasties before killing the big evil overlord monster (a great big wobbly foetus thing).
Admittedly, Half-Life has a few more plot details which are pretty cool, but it's still remarkably familiar...
Ford Prefect
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
The actual quote goes: "The first 90% of the job takes the first 90% of the time. The last 10% of the work takes the other 90% of the time." When said that way, it better points out how the picky nature of the final details is usually the problem, not the misjudgment of how much work there was to do.
Given either interpretation of the quote, though, Romero gets no sympathy from me. In a competitive marketplace, there's no "gold star for trying."
Romero and Ion Storm had AMPLE opportunity to realize that they were making a bad game. They had more time than any other computer game in history to take a couple steps back and give a long look to their product with an eye to improving or replacing it. They didn't. They dropped the ball in an incredibly competitive market, a market they chose to compete in, regardless of the risks involved.
This isn't the Special Olympics, the gaming market doesn't run on the "everyone's a winner on the inside" philosophy. More the "can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen" philosophy.
(*shrug) It's the ugly facts of life, but calling out that a game is just poo, when in fact it is, is not a bad attitude, it's the free market in action.
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Although Daikatana is indeed #5 on the Top Sales chart currently, this only measures the amount of product SHIPPED to stores, not sold. So, from the sales chart, we known Eidos has shipped lots of copies of Daikatana out to stores. What remains to be seen is how many of these copies actually are sold. Any and all product that the retailer does not want anymore (e.g - if it's not selling well) are returned to the publisher at their expense. Translation: Eidos has to buy back all unsold copies at cost. However, I do agree that there are probably large numbers of Daikatana being sold to members of the press. This is the result of Eidos capping off the number of press copies to 500.
Eidos would be fools to spend $20 Million on Daikatana and Romero alone. However, if you look at the products soon to come out of Ion Storm (Deus Ex, Anachronox), their future doesn't look so bleak.
What John Romero did during the past 4 years was not only Daikatana, he also had to lay the foundation to develop 3 games at the same time. It's unfortunate Looking Glass had to go under because of Ion Storm (not John Romero personally) but it looks like some equally as impressive games will come out of Ion in the future.
Everybody loves Daikatana! Look at all these great reviews:
If you're at all curious about how the hell this happened, GameSpot has a great article called "Knee Deep in a Dream: The Story of Daikatana" that gives all the gorey details. They also have a complete walk-through, though the concept kinda makes me shudder...
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Anonymous cowards are looking forward to the DVD letterboxed release of Ishtar
Start a company with Derek Smart of "Battlecruiser 3000" fame!
It's simple, really: if you want to make a single-player game, you should, cursorily at least, check and make sure it's well written.
Half-life was a half-baked retread by movie standards, but it was still so much better than anything anyone else had bothered to do in terms of a story and/or gameplay that everyone (including me) was entranced.
Daikatana's creative team comes off like rank amatuers, and it's obvious from every aspect of the materials in the game. The fact that their management skills/kung fu weren't the best is just sad and/or ironic. But, we had fair warning. This is the guy, after all, who founded his company on the whiny, middle-school notion (I paraphrase) "My vision comes first. Those little technology/logistics problems are secondary."
Daikatana is just another creative embarrassment in a long line of such writing/designing disasters that are basically making the American video game industry a lot like the Japanese movie industry of days gone by. Except that Godzilla didn't look so blocky.
There's nothing remarkable about it, either. It will stay that way until the industry's fusion with the rest of the entertainment industry moves farther along, at which point we will go from the Godzilla phase to... er... the Independence Day phase? Ouch.
We're on the road to Tycho.
This type of attitude bothers me a lot. Romero poured his heart and soul into this game, and even though it was totally over-hyped and underachieving in the end, Daikatana made it to store shelves. I think this was an incredible learning experience for John Romero and I hate to see people criticize him non-constructively. Obviously the game did not turn out the way it should have ideally, but the least people could do for his time would be polite...
I read an interesting quote once, "Once you finish the first 90% of a project, then you have to finish the other 90%." A lot of people think John Romero is an immature partygoer that never does a full days work. I disagree. It would have been so easy to give up at the end after being delayed so many times, but he bit the bullet and saw it to the end. Congratulations to him!
Take a look at this article to take a good look at the "Daikatana Process". It's quite long (took me an hour to read) but very in depth and thorough.
http://www.gamespot.com/fea tures/btg-daikatana/index.html
I'm pretty far into Daikatana right now. Is it the greatest game of all time? No. Is it the most innovative and newest of technology demos on the market? No. Is there any redeeming value to the game? Yep.
Daikatana is a lot of fun. There is enough variety in it that one rarely grows bored. All the complaints about shooting robotic mosquitos and frogs show that the people citing this as the game's downfall have not played past the first few levels. The mosquitos are gone after a level or two, as are the frogs. Never to be seen again. All enemies are like that in this game. Sooner or later, you wave goodbye to a critter, knowing that it will never grace the screen again in this game. The same goes for the weapons. As soon as you start to grow comfortable with one weapon's powers, you are thrust into a new world with all new weapons to learn.
The game features cooperative play, as well. You and 3 of your friends can run about shooting each other "by accident."
Level design goes from wonderful to mediocre at times. Creature design does the same. The skins on the creatures can be amazing, though. Lots of Doom-y skulls, faces, demony things on the textures.
It's great fun. It's $29.99 at most stores. It's eaten up the past few weeks of my time, as well as the time of my friends, who rarely read forums or go to gaming websites, who have no idea who John Romero is, and have no idea how long it should/shouldn't take to make a game.
Not only have I reccomended it to close friends, I will continue to reccomend this game to others. Nobody I have encouraged to buy this game has come back upset...but they have come back with only 3 hours of sleep due to trying to get out of Greece for hours on end, battling Ray Harryhausen style skeletons and nekkid chicks.
Your mileage may vary.
Doom, DoomII, Final Doom (in both PC, Mac,Playstation, and N64 versions) Quake (PC, Sega, N64 + the two expansions packs) QuakeII (plus Juggernaut, Ground Zero, and Zaero expansions), Quake3Arena, Unreal and all expansions, Half-Life (aae), Duke Nukem (PC, Mac, PSX, and N64 +expansions), Goldeneye, Star Wars (the 2 PC ones and the N64 one, Blood, Blood 2, System Shock 1+2, Soldier of Fortune, Nam,Powerslave (PSX), Spec Ops, Shadow Warrior,Sin, Thief, Thief II, Shogo M.A.D, Brahma Force: Assault on Beltlogger 9 (PSX), Klingon Honor Guard, Alien Trilogy, Alien Vs. Predator (plus bonus levels), Redneck Rampage (and all expansions), Requiem, Kingpin, Mortyr, and an old PSX one that involved the use of "psionics."
And now, Daikatana. It really is a very bad game. Ugly, monotonous, frustrating (in the bad sense of the word). And the worst voice-over acting since "Shadow Warrior," which featured the famous potentially-offensive stereotypical "inscrutable Chinaman."
The closest I've seen to a game this bad was "Nam," a Doom-engine piece of crap with an intriguing box.
Some people have said the problem with Daikatana was that it was too ambitious. Nonsense. Shadows of the Empire, for the N64, was too ambitious, with too many different types of gameplay. And I still enjoyed it.
It's too bad someone with a fresh pair of eyes didn't look at Daikatana before it was too late and suggest that they alter it so that your "helpers" -- Superfly Johnson and Mikiko -- would instead be hostages that you have to escort to safety. Because that's what you end up doing.
The AI for helpers is doable. Kingpin did it well. So did Half-life.
And it's not a matter of Daikatana just not being able to live up to the hype. Because I'm very easily satisfied with an FPS of any kind. I even liked Klingon Honor Guard. And Mortyr!
So if you want something resembling what Daikatana was supposed to be, track down a copy of the old PSX game "Powerslave," an FPS set in ancient Egypt. Or "Requiem," another excellent game with a good story that didn't get much attention.
And if you bothered to read the list of FPS's I've played, and there's one missing: Trust me -- I've played it. On second thought, let me know: the thought that there's an FPS I haven't played yet excites me in a way Daikatana never will.