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Games Entertainment

Daikatana Goes Gold! 206

Posted by emmett from the finally dept.
CaptainCarrot writes: "And this time they mean it! Here's the story at Gamespot. There's even a demo you can download. (102.4 MB - not for the faint of heart.)" The demo is over a hundred megs. I'm 23, and I remember saving up money for a 40MB hard drive and a 2400 baud modem. Anyway, congratulations to John and the rest at Ion Storm.
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Daikatana Goes Gold! More

Daikatana Goes Gold!

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  • ...if there were a Linux port. (Anyone know if anyone's working on one?)

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

  • one out of four stars... would have saved the reviewers a lot of time.

    I don't think Babbage's computing engine was as late as this game.
  • Hmmmm, same people who made quake, thats scary, esically since that game wasnt the greatest... and part II, well, it hated my computer, yet, part III was the best!!!! hope they did better on this one...
  • When a game is that delayed I wonder if it went
    gold with too many bugs.
  • umm... this is Romero and his "new" company, Ion Storm. The rest of id (where Romero was when he helped make Quake) made quake 3 without him.

  • My Thoughts On Daikatana (Score:5)

    by idealego ( 32141 ) on Friday April 21, 2000 @07:42PM (#1117626)
    OK I've played Daikatana for a little while now. It's actually not anything like what I was expecting. IT'S WORSE!!!@#$%!#%!

    Oh no! armies of mosquitos are attacking me! shoot the blue stuff at them! oh no I'm out of ammo! hit them with the sparking fist! Damn their hard to hit, oh no more mosquitos. Where's your deep woods when you need it?

    Romero "Ok guys we need something that will scare people shitless in the first moments they spend playing our new masterpiece, any suggestions?"
    Programmer "MOSQUITOS! Armies of Mosquitos!"
    Romero "Holy shit I know that would scare me!"
    Romero "Man with armies of mosquitos in Daikatana how can people not be impressed"
    Programmer "Oh Oh I know! A sparking fist!"
    Romero "Wow! we could make people run around and punch the armies of mosquitos with a sparking fist!"
    Romero "Ok now get to work bitches! With armies of mosquitos and a sparking fist this is gonna be the best game of 1997 umm I mean 2000"

    -idealego

  • This game has been in development for a long time, and its finally released after a LONG time .. Great, but there are some problems:

    Will there be a Linux port?
    Does it use key checking like Q3A, etc.. (very annoying imo)
    How will this stack up against UT, Q3A, etc?

    Speak out if you know any of the answers, im downloading the demo right now..

    -meff
  • One of the guys (Romero) who made Wolf3D, Spear of Destiny, Dooms 1, 2, Ultimate, Final, and a bunch of packs from what I remember, and Quake. Given their history, I don't see much reason to fear as far as the game goes.
  • Gameplay is good :)

    Definately looking like it could be a good game... maybe I'll dish out my money and buy a copy of this. Last game I bought was Quake II and haven't played anything since (after q3 disappointed me...)...

    but anyways. I'd recomend grabbing the demo over here eidos [eidosinteractive.com] ASAP. :) Time to try some multiplayer :)

  • Kind of ironic (Score:3)

    by dragonfly_blue ( 101697 ) on Friday April 21, 2000 @07:45PM (#1117630) Homepage
    Kind of ironic that when they first announced Daikatona, a 40 MB hard drive probably seemed huge!

    lol just kidding of course.

  • I might try this game, but I don't got no Windows or x86 I can play it on. I guess there going for that 90% of the market again.

    Where do they get off calling this "Dai Katana" or "Big sword" in japanese, when it obviously has little to do with it? Are they trying to mooch off of good ideas like Oni?
  • Again, we may very well have a case of too little too late. Every time game companies delay this long, the game is often rotten and outdated (considering the technology that's been aging as the game was being "perfected"). I'll download the *shudder* huge demo at some point and try it out, but I doubt that it's all it was cut out to be. I mean, once a game is delayed for more than a year, what's the point anymore!? oy.
  • Linux Port... Hmmm. I don't know but I doubt it even though a port would be easy since it's based on the Quake 2 engine I don't think sales will be enough for this to happen.

    No key checking.

    This is outdated tech done poorly, it doesn't stack up against the others. If you want a good game(linux port in development) try out Soldier of Fortune.

    -idealego

  • If I recall correctly, they use the Quake 2 engine. And it was such a good one too! *cough*. Who is actually planning on buying this?

    -SaintAlex



    Observe, reason, and experiment.

  • A bit late. . . (Score:4)

    by SMN ( 33356 ) on Friday April 21, 2000 @07:48PM (#1117635)
    April Fools was - by my watch - a full 21 days ago. Besides, that prank's old already - no one will fall for it _again_!

    -----
    Why can't we see others' karma anymore?

  • The Ion Storm Lesson (Score:3)

    by Skyshadow ( 508 ) on Friday April 21, 2000 @07:51PM (#1117636) Homepage
    There is a valuable lesson to be taken from Ion Storm: Hot-shit programmers may think they're always right, but they're not.

    As amusing as it has been to sit around and watch Ion Storm disintigrate while the coders played dueling egos, it does make the point that maybe, just maybe, management isn't quite as useless as Dilbert would have us believe.

    As for Daikatana: Why bother? A game based on an ancient engine featuring "quests" like "find the key" just doesn't push my buttons anymore.

    ----

  • List Of Mirrors (Score:3)

    by idealego ( 32141 ) on Friday April 21, 2000 @07:52PM (#1117637)
    Your results my vary but this is what I got in KB/second, N/A means either the file wasn't there when I checked or I couldn't get on.

    190K http://ftp1.gamespy.com/pub/fileplanet/gamedemos/a ction/dkdemo.exe
    114K ftp://ftp.gameaholic.com/pub/games/action/daikatan a/demo/dkdemo.exe
    36K ftp://209.247.108.212/pub2/daikatana/demopatch/dkd emo.exe
    13K ftp://ftp.zdnet.com/gs/action/daikatan/dkdemo.exe 10K ftp://ftp.avault.com/demos/dkdemo.exe
    7K ftp://ftp2.3dgamers.com/pub/3daction/00archives/da ikatana/releases/dkdemo.exe
    7K ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/3dfiles/games/dkdemo.exe
    N/A ftp://ftp.telepac.pt/pub/3dfiles/games/dkdemo.exe
    N/A ftp://ftp.epix.net/pub/3dfiles/games/dkdemo.exe
    N/A ftp://fileplanet.gil.com.au/gamedemos/action/dkdem o.exe
    N/A ftp://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/3dfiles/games/dkdem o.exe

    -idealego

  • The demo is over a hundred megs. I'm 23, and I remember saving up money for a 40MB hard drive and a 2400 baud modem.

    *lol*, I can't help but recall that my 32MB video card has more RAM than my first system! Darn kids these days and their new fangled graphics.

    --// Hartsock //
  • Hey, this is great that they've finnaly decided to release it.

    But what I would like to ask is why computer games are advertized months, sometimes years, before they are released? In the console market this dosen't really happen at all.

    ---------------------

    If god dropped acid, would he see people? -- George Carlin

  • DaiKatana.. wrong spelling (Score:3)

    by Lycestra ( 16353 ) on Friday April 21, 2000 @07:57PM (#1117640)
    They used the wrong spelling. They should have used "Dai Kata naa" or, "sure are large shoulders, aint they",
    or maybe "Dai Kitanai", which is poor grammer for "very dirty".

    I could go on.

  • Wow.. this is AWFUL (Score:4)

    by Teman Clark-Lindh ( 3587 ) on Friday April 21, 2000 @07:57PM (#1117641) Homepage
    At first I thought, oh, this might be good..
    hehe. boy, was I ever wrong.

    There are 2 kinds of enemies. Ones on the ground, and ones not on the ground. Some of them have different models, but that really isn't important.
    Then you get to a boss.. And run out of ammo.

    The guns are all as lame or lamer than Unreal 1. They went totally overboard with the partical effects, so you get distracted cuz it is raining hard are you are firing the 10 trillion bright green bouncing sparks gun.

    Deathmatch reminds me of doom.. Low detail levels, and LAG! The sword sucks in HTH.

    These guys are gonna get slaughtered. This is the "Blood 2" of the year 2000.

    -Teman

  • Well since there is a big sword in the game (its the main weapon, actually) I think they are justified in calling the game daikatana. Sure, you can read you japanese dictionary, but that doesn't make you worthy of the l33tness true japanese fluency affords.
  • Hey, I have an x86 box with a 32MB video card, and only 30MB of system RAM....

  • A Slap in the Face from Romero (Score:3)

    by Wag ( 102501 ) on Friday April 21, 2000 @08:00PM (#1117644)
    Got the demo, started to play, hit F2 for quicksave and a message stating, "No gems to save game" pops up. WTF?! No gems!? Get outta here!

    Has Romero been living in a cave these last few years? He must have noticed all the uproar about these types of games that don't offer an unlimited save game option.

    This is just more proof that Romero doesn't give two shits about anyone, even the folks he's trying to sell the game to.
  • As long as you actually paid for the game the key checking isn't an issue. Actually, I like it. Helps keep the number of skript kiddies down (who call everyone in the arena "fags" when they die).

  • Problems Installing Demo? (Score:4)

    by Agar ( 105254 ) on Friday April 21, 2000 @08:01PM (#1117646)
    I read on a couple of boards that there may be installation glitches with the 100MB download.

    After running the .EXE file (DKDEMO.EXE?) to install, you may get an error that says "Insert next disk." Installation then aborts.

    If this occurs, rename the file to DKDEMO.ZIP, extract the files to a temp directory using WinZip (or whatever), then run SETUP.EXE from the temp directory.

    Hope this helps...
    ------
  • Forget new fangled graphics, my hard drive has more bytes of cache than the RAM of my first system.
  • I didn't even know Daikatana was out (did it just come out this week or something?), and it's already sold 500,000 copies? I guess this is finally payback for all the people who kept predicting that Daikatana was going to flop... it just goes to show you that you can't judge a book by its cover.

    Kudos to ION Storm for putting out their first great product and proving the critics wrong. It's nice to see a spark of innovation alive in the gaming industry.

    Yu Suzuki

  • My first computer? A Timex Sinclair ZX-81. I think it had 2.4KB of RAM.

    Forget the hard drive cache -- my keyboard buffer is larger than that! ;-)
    ------

  • Vaporwave coalescing is so existential... (Score:4)

    by ruin ( 141833 ) on Friday April 21, 2000 @08:07PM (#1117650) Homepage
    ROS (mournfully): Not Daikatana. I don't believe in it anyway.

    GUIL: What?

    ROS: Daikatana.

    GUIL: Just a conspiracy of gaming magazines, you mean?

    ROS: I mean I don't believe it! (Calmer.) I have no image. I try to picture it arriving in stores, at Babbage's perhaps... or EB... a sales clerk to point it out... its shiny red box... playing it for a day or a fortnight and then uninstalling it... That would be the logical kind of thing. ...But my mind remains a blank. No. It can't be real.

    GUIL: Yes... yes... (Rallying.) But you don't believe anything til it happens. And it has gone gold. Hasn't it?

    ...

    (just another of the wierd things that pop into my brain)

    --

  • ..is that now John Romero can finally move on without losing his face. We all know by his actions that the guy is too stubborn to give up on his Grand Project, and generally everyone agrees that the job of finishing Daikatana can easily be compared to beating a dead horse -- beating a dead horse for years.

    However, we all have also witnessed Romero's undeniable talent as a game designer. Let's just hope that the next project he embarks upon has a separate project leader with some organizational skills.
  • fucker

  • Daikatana has finaly gone gold. Whats next Duke4?
    and in related news the weather forcast for hell shows a cooling trend after the sudden 400degree drop in temperature this evening.

  • Oh yeah? Well, my first programming project was a xerox copier! It didn't have ANY RAM, you had to grab a student and hand them a piece of paper with what buttons to push... then they'd stand there all day poking at the face plate! Now that's coding on the bare metal without a whole heck-uva lotta system resouces!

    --// Hartsock //
  • Is this really Windows only? Grrr.. don't make me wish I had a Windows box.

    Looks real perty... sigh.

  • Maybe, but Daikatana actually _uses_ the QII engine. The HL engine (IMO) is far better.



    Observe, reason, and experiment.
  • Well, I hope just for the sake of everything that it's a really good game, on the level of half life or something. The n64 version is supposed to suck ass, though.

    By the way, does the Kanji letterin in the logo actualy say 'dai katana', In chinese it would say 'da cha', or "Big Knife", I could see the word being 'dai ka' or 'dai kat', Is Kanji in japanese not sylabalic the way chinese is? (one sylable per character)? or does it just not really say "Dai Katana" on the box?
  • If you remember, daikatana _is_ 3-4(?) years old. quite a bit older than oni. the plot (somehow) revolves around this sword that allows you to travel through time or something. the Daikatana.
  • John Carmack still works at iD and worked on Quake II and III; Romero left after Quake I to inflate his ego, I mean, form ION Storm.
  • "A game based on an ancient engine featuring "quests" like "find the key" just doesn't push my buttons anymore."
    I'm sure all those nethack fans out there will appreciate that :P

  • I started with a 286, so I can't make any sweet claims like this. but in 20 years... I will man.

  • *Not* coders at Ion Storm (Score:3)

    by delmoi ( 26744 ) on Friday April 21, 2000 @08:27PM (#1117662) Homepage
    Actually, from what I've heard most of the coders hated it there, so much that they have had mass exoduses of programmers on more then one occasion. In fact Romero disliked the 'coder centric' Attitude of JohnC at id, and that's one of the reasons that he left to start his own company, where design, not code, would rule.

    And look where it's gotten him.

    Meanwhile, Carmak and ID continue to dominate the industry. Along with epic mega games, where Tim Sweeny, one of the head coders, gets a lot of say on what goes on.
  • i agree. its akin to saying "hey i just developed this thing called a toaster, it cooks bread. well not really, it just makes it crispy, it tastes good with jelly..."

    yawn
  • dude this game has zero... nothing to offer... it's based on 3 year old technology ... who th fuck wants to bother with it? i mean cmon, ya think the sp side of it is worth the purchase? get real... this game was dead a year ago ....or an engine ago

  • Re:? (Score:1)

    by tschak ( 90399 )
    ±ÁÌÌèÓÆOE¾½Æ±ë¾ÇÈY
  • Come on guys - there will always be someone around who was in the game earlier than you. Except for the older guy/gal in the business, and I doubt that they could even read the bloody screen before. Hey, but, for my two cents, I'm 19, and I learnt to type before I could speak(you'll notice proper spelling, more-or-less correct grammar, and, yup, you got it, capitalization ;). Anyways, my first computer: An Atari. Yeah, one with the keyboard that came with a great big 'ol 5"1/4' diskette drive(no, no hard drive). The first computer I put together: A 286 with 512k of RAM. Did most of the soldering myself, too.
  • Talking about old days. I had an Atari 65XE. It ran software off of tapes. Games took 30 minutes to load. You could get software by recording FM radio trasmissions. I bet that games like Road Race and Spy vs. Spy, would still be more fun than Daikatana. And imagine how psyched I was when I finally added a floppy drive.

    Biggy
  • I remeber when I was 8 and my Dad would telecommute from our basement with his 300 baud modem. Of course, it was over 5 years before he bought me my first 286...
  • Cool, that fixed my problem. Thanks!

    Now, I have a fully functional wad of crap on my hard drive, if you can call this game functional. I can't believe how bad this game is.
  • puuulease dude, you are talking about THE fps shooters of the last decade. actually you are referring to the people who defined the FPS. The game that just caused the latest tourny winner to be 40k richer. yes thats right... its a lot of money (at least to me). but reagardless this game is gonna be shit.. they released the demo 6 months ago(only playable on one of those newbie gaming sites) it was weak .. yes there was some interesting stuff, but rain "aint" gonna make it the next quake.... this game is lost money ... jr should dump the company and just keep screwing killcreek... he will be better off. he got no skilz without JC pushing him. (period)
  • Japanese is NOT syllabic the way Chinese is. That's why it was a serious misfeature to use the Chinese alphabet into the Japanese language. To compensate the Japanese introduced kana (hiragana and katakana), a kind of phonetic alphabet.

    To make things worse, each kanji character can be read in one of several ways depending on usage and context. But as far as I know (I don't know *that* much Japanese) the symbols on the box may indeed be read as "daikatana".
  • cmon dude? are you f'n kidding me? q3 is the best of q1 and q2 ... it has everything the qw whiners wanted and all the q2 players still wanted ... god dammit if ever carmack buckeled it was making q3. where the real fault of the game is trying to make too many people happy... lets face it.. you have 2 camps: qw is gods gift to mankind, and q2 rules... blah blah blah... play the game or quit bitching..

    i think q3 is a very playable game, i will admit that the maps are shit, and therein lies the games real weakness. the inability for id's designers to make interesting and playable maps. look no further than the difficulty involvded with finding 4 acceptable maps when it came to putting 40k on the line.
  • ftp.cdrom.com is much faster than the ZDNet FTP server.
    I'm getting 25K/sec instead of the 2K/sec from ZDNet.

    ftp.cdrom.com/pub/3dfiles/games/dk demo.exe [cdrom.com]

  • If "Daikatana" was a real, or even a *possible* Japanese word.
  • First of all, it's slow as hell. I get a timedemo of 30FPS in quake3, and yet I couldn't be getting more then 10-15 in this. And compared to quake2 the game looks like shit. I played some of the first level, and you fight giant mosquitoes that come out of eggs, as well as little frogs. And since the enemies are so small you can't even see them half the time when they are attacking you.

    (Although, I have to say the sight of my gibed (but bloodless) body with these two little bullfrogs next to it was pretty funny)

    It's to bad I guess, I figured this game would ether suck a whole lot or be awesome. Considering how much Romero stands to loose if this game blows I would have figured he would have made damn sure the game rocked. If this is the best he can do...

    What's really strange is that the 'multiplayer' demo that came out a while back was actually pretty damn fast, faster then q2 even back on my pentium200. but on my AMD-k6-2-450, the final game is slow as hell and uglier. Strange.

    Of course all the free entertainment I've gotten over these past few years by the drama over there in Dallas makes up for it :P
  • My first system had 4K of memory. Now my system has 262144K of memory. That's 65536 times as much memory. (or, simply shifted 16 bits..)
  • Example:

    你好吗 ==
  • would you says that this game sucks, or that it blows?

    Just curious.

  • 867-5309 (Jenny)
    Yeah.. And floppy disk's were as big as your head!

    Funny.. I don't seem to remember frame lag on PacMan.

    -
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Exactly, why play a rehash of Quake II when you can play something really innovative like Thief II? Well, Thief I was innovative, Thief II just copies Thief I, but it's still good....
  • haha bya biatch .. you lose .. i couldn't give 2 shits bout your lame ass post... your just another asshole seeking revenge through the anonimity of the net... hopefully you at least stopped beating your wife/kid/pet ...

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday April 21, 2000 @09:26PM (#1117684)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • ya fuck ... :) keep refreshing the page
  • Oh, I'm sorry: I thought you were kissing my ass for a minute. My bad. Somebody learned sarcasm in kindergarten today. Keep up the good work Jimmy!

  • Daikatana! (Score:5)

    by drwiii ( 434 ) on Friday April 21, 2000 @09:40PM (#1117692) Homepage
    Wow, I never thought a 3d game could look this good!

    screenshot [min.net]

  • My daikatana logbook (Score:4)

    by kirkb ( 158552 ) on Friday April 21, 2000 @09:53PM (#1117695) Homepage
    1. Spend 8 minutes downloading (cable. woo hoo!)

    2. Spend 3 minutes installing.

    3. Start first game. Find mosquitoes. Kill mosquitoes. Find frogs. Get poisoned by frogs. Die.

    4. Start second game. Kill mosquitoes. Kill frogs. New map loads. Kill more mosquitoes. Get mowed down by pop-up machinegun turret.

    5. deltree c:\games\daikatanademo

    6. Feel pity for the daikatana development team, knowing that the 15 mintues of my life that has been wasted on this game pales in comparison to the combined DECADES that they've squandered.

  • Re: Spolied cutting edge cryin' (Score:3)

    by Cebert ( 69916 ) on Friday April 21, 2000 @09:53PM (#1117696) Homepage
    You're joking right? Engines don't make the game. The content does.
    This "eww it's not cutting edge!" whining crap from modern gamers is getting pretty old.
    Quakeworld Team Fortress, even with the threat of cheating,
    is still more entertaining to, not just myself, but to a GREAT MANY people
    despite having a 4+ year old engine. There are people who,
    god forbid, still enjoy playing Doom on a LAN with their buddies.
    Nevermind the myriad of folks who enjoy a fun game of Super Mario now and then using the NESticle emulator now and then.
    While flashy effects and slick textures make for good show, if you get bored of it quickly
    because the game is no fun, then what's the point? It will ALWAYS be
    the content that matters. Wether Daikatana has this or not...remains to be seen. ;P
  • emmett, you missed April Fool's Day by almost a month. No one's falling for your joke.

    (In case you didn't get that, take a look here [userfriendly.org])
  • the third year of development I knew this game was going to suck, and boy does it. This game is just truely piss poor, I don't have any idea what took Ion Storm so long to develope. Sure everyone else had said it sucked too but why shouldn't we say that, especially where /. is giving them free publicity. What I really don't understand with this game is why they didn't release it a whole lot sooner, I don't see many improvements over the original Q2 engine. Oh look mommy, rain. Please.
    Enough griping, computer game companies really need to look at console gaming for inspiration. There are tons of epic console games that have kicked major ass dispite the limitations imposed by the console. It seems computer gaming companies have become soft around the middle when it comes to development. It just seems like anymore few companies ship quality products anymore (of course not all console games are quality products by they TEND to be a bit better in general than computer games). If it were my I would try to develope the best game I possibly could for the really low end, that way everyone could enjoy it but people with the better systems would get even better performance out of the game. Daikatana ran poorly on my system, a system that runs Q3a beautifully and has never choked on any other game. I just find this strange, why should a game that uses a three year old graphics engine and has spent 3 years in development suck so damn badly. Get the bugs out BEFORE you release the game, pretend you're making a single production run and don't have the ability to offer software patches on the net.

  • Perliminary analysis of DK (Score:3)

    by Temporal ( 96070 ) on Friday April 21, 2000 @10:17PM (#1117705) Journal

    I remember, way back in the day, when John Romero left id Software. He said, (not exact quote) "There comes a point whene it is time to stop worrying about the technology behind a game and start working on the content." When I heard that, I thought "Wow, at least someone in the industry knows what they are doing.

    At the time, I got the impression that he was talking about making a game with a story. Or an least something different. Well, that there demo has a whole two paragraphs of story, and it doesn't even make sense. Also, it is quite clear that you don't need to know the story to play the game.

    Basically, to make your own Daikatana, take Quake 1 or 2 (they are pretty much the same), add some nifty graphics enhancements and a perdy user interface, and make all the monsters *real* small so that they are impossible to hit.

    I actually would rather play Quake 1. The reason being the monsters. In the first few levels of the Daikatana demo, you fight:

    • mosquitoes
    • frogs
    • small but deadly gun turrets that pop out of the ground and shoot you before you realize that they are there.
    All of these things are small. Small is just a pain in the ass. The fact is that they are so small that you can have your crosshairs lined up perfectly and still miss because your gun is offset slightly to the right (because you are holding it in your hand). The fact that you don't get much ammo just makes it worse. Imagine trying to punch a flying mosquito to death.

    Basically, Daikatana looks like the same old thing. Shoot the monsters, get through the map. I admit that I didn't play very far, but any writer knows that you are supposed to do something special at the beginning of any story to get the audience interested. I saw nothing special, except a funny window titled "program error".

    For a well-done FPS, see Half-Life.

    ------

  • Note that my post merely said that just because an engine is old, doesn't mean
    the game written using it will suck. I'm not advocating that we stick with the Q2 engine
    because it's "good enough", I'm merely protesting the "I've got a
    Voodoo 6 in my 1 Ghz Athlon, and if this game doesn't make it crawl then it's
    outdated and therefore sucks" train of thought. This immediate dismissal of
    games because they don't contain the latest and greatest under the hood is
    shallow in the extreme. It's like these rabid techno-freaks who won't even
    go NEAR a VCR anymore and treat it like some sort of diseased animal ever
    since they got their DVD player. The DVD might look a little better and have
    lots of neat toys, but goddamn...now the VCR that was "good enough" for 20+ years suddenly has herpes.

  • Re: Spolied cutting edge cryin' (Score:3)

    by Spiv ( 32991 ) on Friday April 21, 2000 @11:09PM (#1117712)

    Hear Hear!

    Whenever I read a games mag review which says something like:
    * Graphics: 4.5/5
    * Sound: 4/5
    * Gameplay: 2/5
    * Overall: 4/5
    I feel a little saddened. I'd personally be willing to completely discard fancy graphics and sound in my games if it meant better gameplay. I still think Tetris is fun. I still think Wizardry VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant is fun. I still think Doom is fun. I still think Zork, yes Zork is fun. Defender of the Crown on the C64 is fun.

    Yes, some of those had cutting edge graphics. I don't have anything against them - but I just don't consider them essential, or even important, to a game being any good, except perhaps where "atmospherics" matter. But who cares how dark and forboding a level of Bloodthirsty Let's Kill'em All Rampage 3D is, if the playability is shite?

    These days, you'll often find Zangband sitting on tty2 of my box at home.

    If a game is pretty to look at, and sounds cool, then fine... but you may as well be watching TV (or replaying your Matrix DVD for the umpteenth time).

    I know this is a rant, but I just yearn for the good ol' days, y'know? :)

    -Spiv.

  • Well. I just played the WHOLE demo.
    Not bad.. but not great either. The graphics were.. less than stunning. I didn't experience any performance problems.... but I have a geforce 256.

    It was somewhat entertaining. I did sit through the whole thing, after all.. but it wasn't that satisfying. Much like tomb raider, actually.

    I agree.. frogs and mosquitos.
    Considering the graphics horespower available today, they don't give much to look at.

    Oh.. where is this intense action you mentioned? I must have missed that part.

  • Hell yeah, one of those Star Trek games and some Berzerk ripoff were the only games, other than my own inane ones (Yahtzee, anyone? Yeah, me neither.), are the only games that I still can remember from my old Trash-80! I think that Tandy tape recorder drive still stands as the single worst piece of computer hardware that I ever used on a regular basis.

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • Okay, for a good laugh I suggest everyone check out Old Man Murray [oldmanmurray.com]. They've been ripping Romero a new one for a good year now over this game, and I suspect actually having a playable demo will fuel their fire. They'll trash this baby in style. Check out some of the older Daikatana coverage to see what I mean.

    Totally hilarious.

    --

  • I want the past 5 hours of bandwidth back! (Score:3)

    by sigemund ( 122744 ) on Friday April 21, 2000 @11:59PM (#1117723)
    John Romero, you owe me 5 hours of bandwidth and 2 hours of gaming back! This is honestly the worst game I've played since "Scarab" (a lame-ass Egyptian robot-style game from about 3 years ago).

    I really, really wanted to love this game, I really did. I figured that "Hey, Romero's been panned in the media and is considered to be one of the biggest jokes of the gaming world" . . . It would be so fitting, so great if he silenced all critics and released a bad-ass game.

    Back when the multiplayer-only demo came out, I was very excited. The game was mediocre, at best, but there was so much potential. It looked pretty cool . . . nice visuals, powerful weapons, fast-paced action . . . this could be something good.

    Over a year later I can say one thing . . . this isn't something good . . . this must've been designed by "HeadGames" (makers of masterpieces like "Extreme Paintbrawl" and "Swamp Racing"). I've read all the short reviews by other /. ers and said to myself "aw hell, I'm sure it's better than they say it is . . . they're just pilin' on Romero". . . well, after 5 hours of downloading, I wanna jump on that pile too!

    The graphics were, um, interesting, to say the least. The machine I'm using (not mine, that's why it has Windows on it :) is sluggish for gaming, and its graphics card sucks. But, I can still run Quake 3 or UT very well and enjoy those games heartily. When I first started up the "Single Player" game, I was treated to a dense haze of green streaks that I could hardly see through (are we near Cheyrnobyl or something?). I disabled those (something crashed . . . iosomethingorother.exe) and played again . . . it was SOOOOOOOO slow. . . rebooted, turned to lowest settings . . . still SLOOOOW . . . stuff popped out of nowhere . . . I felt so lost.

    I don't suck at FPS . . . I can whoop it up at Quake 3 and I'm especially good at Single Player mode in games like System Shock, Unreal, Quake 2, etc. I got raked in this game . . . like the US Men's soccer team . . . just bitch-slapped hardcore. As I grabbed my weapon (wtf is this thing?) and headed down the green river (how come *EVERYTHING* in this is green . . . I thought I'd get hurt when I jumped in . . . radioactive) I was attacked by some flying creature that looked like it came from Pokemon. As I figured out these giant flying things, I was conftonted by these jumping frogs that pissed me off to no end . . . I'd shoot them, and they'd lunge at me and poison me . . . wtf!?? Die you little bastards! And where the hell did this crocodile come from? What I really want to know is only one thing . . . WHY ARE THEY ATTACKING ME? Why not just live peacefully . . . can't we all just get along? Oh yeah, how come they just kinda appear all the sudden? Just *POOF*, I'm getting hurt . . . still can't see the little prick though!

    After playing single player for about 40 interminable minutes, I decided to fire up MP . . . this is the worst multiplayer I've ever seen . . . I'd rather play C&C: Sole Survivor!!!! I'd just die all the sudden and not have a clue as to who killed me, or from where 'cause I didn't see anyone . . . they just appeared . . . John, can you say it with me . . . LAG . . . L-A-G . . . good boy!

    After a couple games of that horrible torture, I came back to post . . . I saw all the negative reviews and tried to like this game again. . . I saw a few people defending the game . . . I figured, sure, why not give it another go . . . it deserves it . . . I'm sure it's much better after one or two tries . . .

    I assure you folks, it ain't!!!

    If you want to experience bad-game design, pick this up NOW. Although you may wanna just save 30 bucks and get "Extreme Paintbrawl" instead. The BUILD engine gets a better fps anyhow, and I'm sure you'll get more fun from it than this crud.

    I WANT MY BANDWIDTH BACK!!! I COULD'VE BEEN DOWNLOADING MORE PORN - ER . . . I MEAN STOCK ANALYSIS

    Bad games suck
    John Romero, you suck
    War id Software
    I'm OUT!!
  • Not trying to step on anyone's toes here, but the way I see it, at least Id makes a product people can enjoy... I tried DKDemo, and, as goes for many others here, removed it from my system after about the first half hour. Then, I fired up QuakeII for some quick fragging.

    Yes, the gameplay isn't all that imaginative, and it may well be considered a Doom clone, but it's fun dammit. And that's why I paid money out of pocket for it.

    Some people don't like Q3, and I can see their reasons why, but a lot of people do, counting myself, a lot + 1. Anyway, it's not the innovation really. They've proven that the grounds for the game work, and that it's fun. That's why people keep coming back. Not for the superfragi3d rendering, or the turbomonkeyfraggadociousness, but for the gameplay, and the fun.

    Later...
  • I remember when it used to take a month of all-nighters to solve a game...

    not to doubt your anger at current games but....maybe you got smarter as you got older? just a thought ;)

  • Show me one history book that uses the word "daikatana", and I'll happily quit my job at a Japanese publishing company and go back to university for my masters in linguistics.

    Let me repeat: there is no such word as Daikatana in Japanese. There is a word "daitou", written using the same characters, but it's rarely used. As I mentioned in my post above, the most common term for such a weapon would be "ootachi" (or "oodachi" in modern Japanese). It describes a sword approximately 140-160 cm in length that's slung over the shoulder (it's also sometimes called a "nodachi", which transliterates to "field large sword").

    Why don't you actually study something about the subject before opening your mouth?

  • 'sold 500,000' copies means they've gotten commitments from places like Walmart and Software Etc to order that many copies for inventory. We have yet to see how many of those will actually get sold to the gaming public and how many languish on shelves or in bargain pits. And it doesn't predict how many will be returned - and there'll be a few, if the demo reviews above are any indication.

    So don't go pooh-poohing the naysayers just yet. They haven't proved anyone wrong yet. =)

  • You mean, could "daikatana" be used as a proper noun? Not very likely, as the reading "dai" comes from the Chinese reading of the kanji, while "katana" is a Japanese reading. There are some words that are made up of this combination, but as a rule, it's not very common.

    Of course, then there's the fact that he'd be calling his weapon "Bigsword", which would probably seem pretty dorky, even to medieval Japanese warriors. "Fear me, for I shall cut your limbs from your body with my ancient blade Bigsword!" Golly, I know I'd be scared...
  • I remember reading something about this time last year, that the game would have to sell around 2 million copies just to break even. This was a year ago. And now Eidos are reporting financial problems, what is to become of Romero?
    I hope we still get to se Deus Ex. Now that really does look like it has 'content'.
  • With thousands of people downloading the demo today (I'm downloading it even after the reviews just to see how bad it is...) the internet is going to be in sorry shape all day - better forget about online multiplayer today and go do something else.

    In a way, it's Romero's final revenge - not being able to produce a great game, he is content with disrupting all other games for a few days with a huge demo.

  • I'd suggest the G400 if you're a Linux user. Plenty fast enough for games, plus it works great under XF86. Won't cost more than $150. If you're buying $50 games, you can afford a $150 video card. Yeah, the Pentium III is expensive, but you don't get high performance from a $35 CPU.

    Or a Pentium III. Try an Athlon system; a fella gets more for less.

    Anyway, I'm fscking tired of paying $1,000 a year to buy new hardware. If developers keep making games need the CPU and RAM of a major portal [yahoo.com]'s servers and video good enough to render Toy Story 2 in real time, why aren't there games that will run on a lowly 200 MHz Pentium? I'd guess game firms are in bed with hardware manufacturers. But why?

    It doesn't have to be this way. Game firms can gain market share by developing something other than a me-too first person shooter. A good game design will create more fun than a Beowulf cluster of all the Cray and Apple supercomputers in the world. And here are some games to prove it: [rose-hulman.edu]
  • [NEXT GENERATION, DEC '97, P146 - 2 full colour Advert featuring Ion Storm personalities by Eidos]
    ... Rules must be broken. Catagories must be erased. Emprerors must be overthrown. The status quo must be spanked. And contentement must be routinely taken outside and smaked upside the head (sic), It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it. We're all ready to apply for the position.
    We're ION STORM, A bunch of misfit, zelot freaks who tried to rest on our past successes but just didn't find it comfortable. There was a gap out there. A big fat void, and we were hell-bent on filling it. We had all a big fat void. And were (sic) ready to jump off. So here we are. New name. New identity. New games rattling thier cages, waiting to be let out.

    JOHN ROMERO: Long haired smart-ass known for his fast Ferrari and his uncanny ability to sing the theme song to the Spiderman cartoon really, really well. Oh yeah, there was also that DOOM and QUAKE thing. ......

    personally I don't care much for commenting on *personalities* as such, I'm much more interested in the technology side of things but I couldn't help including the text here from an old Next-Gen magazine 2 page Advertisment (full 2 page color spread) as I was reading today about the original playstation specs. There's no humility here folks and this is one reason why it's a good idea to let the games (and the code) speak for themselves - I guess they already have.

    But don't tar all of ION's work with the same brush. I'm looking foward to seeing how Anachronox [anachronox.com] and Dominion [dominion-storm.com] (must already be released - nothing special here) and Doppelganger [deusex.com] (Dues- Ex) turn out, as they get closer to release.

  • So, essentially, you've been griping for a decade now.

    Later
    Erik Z
  • I thought he was talking to his programmers.

    Later
    Erik Z
  • There's quite a bit more to the history of Ion Storm and the 'breakup' of Id, I believe Mike Wilson also quit to form Ion-Storm, but quit after a while.

    One of the biggest problems in that company was the management. Romero didn't want to do it, and Todd Porter, a worthless weasel who was able to con himself into controlling a majority stake in the company sucked at it.

    Romero can design a game, that's for sure. He had no trouble with Quake and Doom and all of that. Sure it wasn't him alone, but he does deserve a lot of the credit. The problem at Ion was that he couldn't manage a company. Edios is basically running the place now, and if they weren't We probably wouldn't have seen DK in a long time. This company has probably burned through a total of 20-40 million dollars, and produced nothing of worth.

    There was a good article, god over a year ago on The Dallas observer [dallasobserver.com] (and this Other one [dallasobserver.com] from july), If you're interested in all the details. It's a pretty entertaining read, and probably worth the time you wasted playing the DK demo, if any :)
  • i dont know where romero got off using those characters for the name...see, theyre actually *chinese* not japanese.

    the first character is pronounced "die" which is chinese for big or large or whatever. the second character is actually pronounced "doh!" (roughly equal to the homer-exclamation) and is chinese for a knife or sword or blade.

    (note: my pronunciation is in cantonese, not mandarin. "dai" is actually "dah" in mandarin, and im not sure how to pronounce sword but i think its still "doh!")

    i guess calling the game "big knife" doesnt sound quite as good as calling it daikatana, but there you have it...maybe it should be pronounced "die doh"?

    unc_

  • Re:My daikatana logbook (Score:3)

    by Uksi ( 68751 ) on Saturday April 22, 2000 @08:40AM (#1117784) Homepage
    Of course, if you actually used a little bit of brain and noticed that all turrets have a control panel next to them that you can blow up from a distance, you wouldn't even see one pop up.

    Smart gamers evaluate Daikatana: top-rated posts on this story.
  • I have to agree with most people here, the first level sucks. Punching flys and frogs is not fun. But if you manage to save enough ammo to get past the first level and beat the uber-fly then the second level is much better.

    The disk weapon is kinda cool and the monsters are actually monsters though there still are annoying ground insects who, evidently, I can't crush under me feet. When you finally meet your "sidekicks" is when the game gets marginally more interesting. The interface with the "sidekick" is difficult to use at first since you have to center objects in the crosshair to get them to "get" or "attack" them. However I don't want them ganking my ammos and powerps either.

    The third stage is ok, but snow is not that much more impressive or necessary than the rain on the first level. Oh and why does it rain UNDERWATER in the first level? Anyway... in the third level controlling two sidekicks was just a pain. Yeah, we wiped up the level but I could have done that by myself while not eliciting such comments such as "Stop pushing me around!" or "You could have just asked me to move." when I bump into the sidekicks. All in all I can't see 1)where Ion Storm's money went and 2) how this demo makes the game seem worth spending money on. It's neat but it was done before in Unreal and Thief and almost everyother first person singleplayer (with the exception of the "sidekicks" of course). I don't think I'll buy it.

  • Re:My Thoughts On Daikatana (Score:5)

    by Uksi ( 68751 ) on Saturday April 22, 2000 @09:18AM (#1117788) Homepage
    Man, armies of crappedy-ass FPS players whining and whining and whining on Slashdot, getting their posts moderated up.

    It's pretty easy to shoot the mosquitos, same goes for the frogs and keep moving while battling the alligator. Turrets can be taken out by simply shooting the control panels at a distance, the turrets won't even touch you.

    There are secrets that can make your life much easier, such as the wraithorb (invisibility) near the bridge where a shitload of mosquitos come out and there's that huge bird/whatever that drops a megashield if you kill it.

    Then you have a something walking/zombie monster, I killed it too fast for me to see what it was. I paused playing the game when I got to the next save gem, so I can't tell you more.

    But, damn, people, PUT SOME SKILL into your playing and beat at least three or four levels before you bitch and moan about Daikatana the worst game released!

    For 3dfx AMD K-6 3dNow! users, go into your config.cfg and daikatana.cfg files and change the line that says 'set gl_driver "opengl"' to 'set gl_driver "amd3dgl"'. You'll get DAMN GOOD performance. The game is running sweet here with a VooDoo 2 and AMD K6-2 450. Users without AMD, but with 3dfx chipsets, might want to use 'set gl_driver "3dfxgl"'.

    I mean, come on, can we see some effort being put into this game instead of "download the demo real quick, get killed and pissed real quick, post to slashdot as soon as possible to get post moderated up."

    Grr.
  • Yeah. Going for 90% of the market. Who woulda thought? That's how you do business man! and it's more like 99% of the market.
    "Oh no! this restaurant doesn't serve pork. Too bad they aren't serving the .1% of the market that only eats pork.'
  • Another game you should look at is Rogue Spear. It has a lot of the features you have stated (very limited ammo, a bit of fatigue modelling), as well as couple others (variable accuracy depending on weapon, movement, level of injury).
  • For 3dfx AMD K-6 3dNow! users, go into your config.cfg and daikatana.cfg files and change the line that says 'set gl_driver "opengl"' to 'set gl_driver "amd3dgl"'. You'll get DAMN GOOD performance. The game is running sweet here with a VooDoo 2 and AMD K6-2 450. Users without AMD, but with 3dfx chipsets, might want to use 'set gl_driver "3dfxgl"'.

    Ion Storm employee? Suspicious I would say, considering that you know so much about the demo the day it's released, and you're the lone voice defending this horrible excuse of 3 year's work.

    I'm not talking about getting killed, I'm talking about the technology. It's horribly pathetic and ugly, especially compared to other Quake2 games like Soldier of Fortune, which has been in development for a much shorter time. The controls in the game are very sluggish, and overall the first few levels are very dark and murky, probably meant to cover up the lack of polygons gone into the levels.

    I guess Eidos would have canned this game, if they haven't already poured in millions in Daikatana. Not that they are going to recoup much from an actual release though.

    R.I.P., Daikatana.

  • I'm not sure you're giving Quake its due. You're right in that the plot was absoultely forgettable, but there were genuine moments of absoulute terror for me in that game: the first time I saw (and heard) those zombies get back up, or when I first found myself toe-to-toe with a shambler.

    It also was the first FPS to be genuinely playable over the internet, Kali notwithstanding. Not to mention the polygonal critters. And truly 3d environments, as opposed to the sort of stacked-2d method that the Dooms used.

    Every game they've released since then seems to have been a case of diminishing returns. Quake was a major step forward for the FPS genre, if only for the polygonal critters and environments. Q2 was Q1 with a plot, better graphics, and lower latency. Q3... urgh. I was really disappointed by Q3.

    I think maybe that Romero could forsee where this was all heading, which is what created his dissatisfaction with id software. It's a pity that Daikatana doesn't look like it's going to come near being the game he thought it would be.

    Actually, what am I saying? Any man with hair like that deserves what he gets.
  • If you want to see pictures of Stevie Case, check out the Stevie Case Web Ring [snap.com].

    BTW, does anyone know for sure that her Playboy pictures won't be published, and if so, why?

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