Interface

Pain Through Touch

Daikatana has a very standard controls setup - WASD keys for movement and mouse for aiming. This is a typical Quaker's setup and thus, all was good - we were happy, at least at first.

Ack! Turret outta nowhere!

Bullet marks on the ground

However, by the end of the first episode, it quickly becomes apparent that the default control system has major drawbacks. Sidekick commands are on the other side of the keyboard and rather difficult to reach. These, combined with the inventory commands, are so numerous it becomes difficult to remap them conveniently and logically around WASD. Doing as best as is possible given the circumstances, it became apparent that at some moments it was still necessary to take one hand and move it over the keyboard away from the primary controls. After a few more minutes of setting up, all non-critical commands moved to the far side of the keyboard, and all was well again in control land. Not the optimal setup and it took a lot of work, but it is possible.

Episode 1 uberweapon: flyswatter

w00t! Armor!

Interacting With the World

Let's get this out in the open: Daikatana isn't SiN, it isn't Duke, it isn't Half-Life and it isn't Soldier of Fortune. You can't destroy or activate 99.9% of the entities in the game. Interactivity is at an all-time low since Quake II. The things you can destroy are either extremely obvious and necessary to go on in the game, or will totally surprise you. After going through all of episode one and not seeing anything that can be really destroyed (aside from certain Mishima company signs which generally give health or ammo), it came as a rather big shock when barrels, chairs and tables suddenly disintegrated under the might of my weapons. There are some items to pop in Greece, but mostly they are like in 2455 A.D. Japan - there to serve as hints on which way to go. Norway is the first place where there are random, scattered items to beat up on for no apparent reason.

Gotta get up there

Prepare to be...

Unfortunately, those same levels confirmed that the purposes of all characters in the game fall into three neat categories: those that mess you up (sidekicks), those that die to you (monsters) or those that lower the framerate (neutrals.) The neutrals don't do anything interesting in Daikatana. They're not like scientists in Half-Life or hostages in SoF. Second, there aren't enough of them to constitute a mass or population. Even "Athens" is devoid of life... there are more skeletons running around in this historical city than living. It boggles the mind.