Where to Start?

Developer: Ion Storm
Publisher: Eidos
Daikatana official page: http://www.daikatana.com

How to Even Begin Describing This?

First, let's get the early good things out of the way. John Romero, we at FiringSquad would like to give you our kudos on being the bravest man in the industry. After all the bad press, anti-hype and general 'vicious tiger sharks circling a wounded baby seal' feeling, it takes guts to release a game into this atmosphere. No matter how good it might have been, there would be detractors who would rip on it just because it's Daikatana. After 4 years in development, the "John Romero wants to make you his bitch/Suck it down!" disaster and enough release dates to cover the shipment of 4 or 5 games, people got bitter and remembered that. The feeling spread to those who didn't even have computers when Daikatana was announced, and they began to hate it too. Entire generations of internet newbies have been weaned on Daikatana jokes. Daikatana has served as the game that demonstrates to the newblers how vicious the internet hardcore community can be. Despite that, here is the game, sitting on my desk in all its red, gold and black glory.

Greenmarine!

Greenbullet!

So were the detractors (to put things lightly) right? Does Daikatana suck harder than Robert Downey Jr. going at a crack pipe? In short... it's not so simple. Let us summarize.

Daikatana has lots of "4s" in it. There are 4 chapters, 4 kinds of characters and 4 multiplayer modes. Conveniently enough, the English language contains a term called 'quartered', which means "to dismember (a human body) into four parts" according to dictionary.com's, third meaning of the second definition. What an amazing coincidence, that just about describes how pleasant a Daikatana experience can be.

Greenmonster!

Mosquito? Dragonfly?

So Were They Right?

No detractor was even close to describing Daikatana in detail. Either they totally underestimated its ability to suck in certain areas, or they were too harsh. The whole package might come close to initial expectations, but Daikatana is a very mixed bag of good and bad.

How so? Well, let us start with the controls...