John Romero’s Daikatana was supposed to be the next biggest thing in video games. A new, much more cinematic, first person shooter from the creator of DOOM and Quake, without any higher ups getting in the way of his creative vision. This was more story-focused, with other characters fighting alongside you. Then it came out and it just fizzled away, with many claims of it being one of the “worst games ever”.

The N64 version of the game is very different, including different level design. Music was cut back, and the voice acting removed. The characters that were supposed to fight alongside you just vanish when you have control of the game, only popping back up in cutscenes. Interestingly, the last change is seen as favourable – on PC they had very low health and were very dumb, meaning they would constantly die, and result in a game over.

I played Daikatana on N64 when I was younger – I think my cousin had it. We got around two minutes into the game, and couldn’t work out how to get past a door that looked like you needed to crouch under it, but there’s no crouch in the button config – which is rather robust, and includes multiple aim options (such as turning off inverted aiming, and disabling the camera snapping back to facing forward). I encountered the same issue playing now, and when I looked it up, it turned out that pressing A and R makes you crouch.

The most baffling thing about the game not explaining this, is that a few moments later you’re presented with a locked door and a button. As you approach, the game pauses to explain that the door is locked, and the button next to it can be used to open it. There’s a few other moments where you get an overly long cutscene explaining the obvious.

As the main big ideas for Daikatana were mainly in the cinematics and presentation, the N64 is left with just a really, really boring Quake clone. The levels’ design is all over the place, with some over before you know it, and others that are maze-like with buttons that do things elsewhere. Even though this is a time-travelling adventure, the enemies are boring to fight, and the weapons – although very varied – are rather dull to use.

You see, the weapons include sci-fi guns, crossbows, regular guns, and magic staffs. It’s really cool having weapons from different time periods, it’s just a shame they all lack a punch. How they managed to make an explosive ballista you carry around boring, I have no idea.

One interesting note with the weapons, is that the PC version has one particular weapon that can be used throughout most of the game, yet on N64 you can only use it for a very brief period at the end of the game: the magical sword Daikatana. You still have it on you for most of the game, and will use it in cutscenes (which have some of the worst animations I’ve ever seen in a game), but for some reason you can’t use it in gameplay.

Is Daikatana one of the worst games ever? It’s not even close. It’s just a game that was hyped up, and turned out to be painfully average.

Fine

Daikatana tries to combine RPG-style character skill-building with traditional first-person shooter thrills, but it looks like this conversion is just a heavily simplified port of the PC orignal. And that’s probably why Kemco’s game has beaten its parent to the shops. The levels are small, textures bland, colours muted and muddy, and you’ll only ever encounter one or two enemis at a time. Compared to Activisions fine port of Quake II – and forgetting for a minute the all-out brilliance of GoldenEye or Perfect Dark – Daikatana ends up looking more like Hexen. And yes, for all its basic faults – which, bafflingly, include the inability to surface out of water unless you find a ramp leading to dry land – Daikatana can be curiously enjoyable.

Jes Bickham, N64 Magazine #41. Review Score: 67%

Remake or remaster?

There are some interesting ideas in Daikatana. It would need a complete remake, but I think it could be turned into something very enjoyable.

Official ways to get the game.

There’s no official way to get the N64 version of Daikatana, but the PC version is available on GoG – be sure to get the unofficial 1.3 update as well.