It's a proof John Romero never had any good ideas.

[diesoon]

You just know that this game was under his complete control.
It was his company.
So what did he envision?
The first few levels of this game.
I played probably 99% of old fps games. And you can force through most of them, if you're skilled. Speedrun through them, and it's kind of enjoyable. But this is impossible.

[MasterGame™]

Failure happens, and it makes us growth. Romero failed and he became more mature. That's it.

[diesoon]

Originally posted by MasterGame™:

Failure happens, and it makes us growth. Romero failed and he became more mature. That's it.

He didn't do ♥♥♥♥ after this game. He's been sniffing his own farts for the last 20 years. Doing lectures on what a legend he is.

[ChubbiChibbai]

Read Masters of Doom for more insight. Its a great book.
But also look at a game like Turok 2.

That game has so many similarities with Romero's vision for Daikatana. He wanted multiple worlds that all felt different each with different monsters and weapons but it was just too much to handle all with a last minute engine change.

The idea was solid. The foundations of this game are good and with the patch better. You can see that the idea is here but back in the day they had very little undertsanding about how to project manage big games with big teams and the engine was more advanced than what anyone was used to.

He reached for the stars many times before and never failed so had no idea it cold go wrong. Developers still make similar mistakes today. It happens.

[diesoon]

Originally posted by dirtyCAT:

Read Masters of Doom for more insight. Its a great book.
But also look at a game like Turok 2.

That game has so many similarities with Romero's vision for Daikatana. He wanted multiple worlds that all felt different each with different monsters and weapons but it was just too much to handle all with a last minute engine change.

The idea was solid. The foundations of this game are good and with the patch better. You can see that the idea is here but back in the day they had very little undertsanding about how to project manage big games with big teams and the engine was more advanced than what anyone was used to.

He reached for the stars many times before and never failed so had no idea it cold go wrong. Developers still make similar mistakes today. It happens.

It's not a mistake. He funded(only funded) two other monumental projects. Deus Ex and Anachronox. I would say, way more ambitious and bigger in scope than Daikatana in every way. And also made on primitive tech. In ID Software he was just another team member. I know the history of ID and ION Storm well. He never had good ideas. First hour of Daikatana is near unplayable, and you know it was his idea.

[yamazaki]

I wouldn't worry about it.

[ChubbiChibbai]

In that single statement alone you have shown how ignorant of both companies history you are and how little of what you say is worth anyone reading.

[diesoon]

Originally posted by dirtyCAT:

In that single statement alone you have shown how ignorant of both companies history you are and how little of what you say is worth anyone reading.

No, you are ignorant, and you don't understand that people are glorified in history just because they were part of something big. When John Romero finally could do something on his own, he did this. And it's horrible. Way worse than all fps of that time, despite having way more budget and total creative control. And then he did nothing. He's been sniffing his own farts and doing lectures for the last 25 years. You need to evaluate something based on facts, not because someone wrote something or something was popular. The whole ID software was glorified to no end. Just because they sold the most. The games weren't even that amazing. What did John Romero did that was good besides ID? He did nothing.

[MasterGame™]

Originally posted by diesoon:

Originally posted by MasterGame™:

Failure happens, and it makes us growth. Romero failed and he became more mature. That's it.

He didn't do ♥♥♥♥ after this game. He's been sniffing his own farts for the last 20 years. Doing lectures on what a legend he is.

and you are here complain about an old game... yikes

[Jedimindtrickonyou]

Those Doom WADs (Sigil/Sigil 2) he released recently are pretty good, they’re free and also included in the Nerve Software ports of Doom I and Doom II from 2019. It’s true though, he hasn’t done anything as ambitious as his iD days since leaving Ion Storm before their closure. He’s supposed to be working on a FPS shooter though, it’d be nice to see him drop a banger in the next few years.

And like him or not, whether you think Daikatana is good or bad… Romero is a legend. He was there at the birth of FPS/3D gaming and played a part in it, he deserves respect for his contributions (no matter what he did or didn’t do afterwards). What contributions have you made to PC gaming in your lifetime?

[Dreamless]

Originally posted by diesoon:

Originally posted by dirtyCAT:

In that single statement alone you have shown how ignorant of both companies history you are and how little of what you say is worth anyone reading.

No, you are ignorant, and you don't understand that people are glorified in history just because they were part of something big. When John Romero finally could do something on his own, he did this. And it's horrible. Way worse than all fps of that time, despite having way more budget and total creative control. And then he did nothing. He's been sniffing his own farts and doing lectures for the last 25 years. You need to evaluate something based on facts, not because someone wrote something or something was popular. The whole ID software was glorified to no end. Just because they sold the most. The games weren't even that amazing. What did John Romero did that was good besides ID? He did nothing.

Chill bro

[Norbody]

I've beaten Daikatana on GBC, N64 and the PC version here on Steam. And I will say, that yes, this game is evil, and it's punishing, but if you adhere to the rules at play and stay mindful of them then it's as fluid as any other shooter like Doom or Halo. The reason the first episode is so hard is that all of the weapons deal splash damage and other horrific idiosyncrasies (You hurt yourself shooting the ion cannon underwater, for example) but this just requires you to be mindful of the rules at all times and adapt to them. The thing is that the game puts health all over the place, so you just need to accept that you WILL take damage and avoid being a perfectionist and do what you need to win that specific combat situation.

I think the negative reviews from critics when it came out all stem from that first episode of the game being overly punishing, but it's not a run and gun action game like Doom, it's a game where you are supposed to procedurally work through each section and be mindful of how you are playing as you progress. In Doom on the easier levels you can just run around and fire your gun at the enemies and that's it- this game is way more hardcore in that regard because there are rules you must learn to proceed. Further, I really like the idea of "save gems" because FPS games where you can save after every two steps eliminates the challenge altogether. Honestly I think most of the negative reviews come from the fact that the game was too hard for reviewers to finish. Just imagine the first time you ever played an FPS game and didn't even know how strafing mechanics work. Now add in all the crazy half-second dodges and weapon rules with a save restriction on top of that. Even though the combat gets easier after the first episode, I suspect they never even got that far. With that said I still can't excuse the ally AI in this game. I play without the patch, I leave them at the entrance and come back for them after the map is clear.

[Jedimindtrickonyou]

Originally posted by Norbody:

I've beaten Daikatana on GBC, N64 and the PC version here on Steam. And I will say, that yes, this game is evil, and it's punishing, but if you adhere to the rules at play and stay mindful of them then it's as fluid as any other shooter like Doom or Halo. The reason the first episode is so hard is that all of the weapons deal splash damage and other horrific idiosyncrasies (You hurt yourself shooting the ion cannon underwater, for example) but this just requires you to be mindful of the rules at all times and adapt to them. The thing is that the game puts health all over the place, so you just need to accept that you WILL take damage and avoid being a perfectionist and do what you need to win that specific combat situation.

I think the negative reviews from critics when it came out all stem from that first episode of the game being overly punishing, but it's not a run and gun action game like Doom, it's a game where you are supposed to procedurally work through each section and be mindful of how you are playing as you progress. In Doom on the easier levels you can just run around and fire your gun at the enemies and that's it- this game is way more hardcore in that regard because there are rules you must learn to proceed. Further, I really like the idea of "save gems" because FPS games where you can save after every two steps eliminates the challenge altogether. Honestly I think most of the negative reviews come from the fact that the game was too hard for reviewers to finish. Just imagine the first time you ever played an FPS game and didn't even know how strafing mechanics work. Now add in all the crazy half-second dodges and weapon rules with a save restriction on top of that. Even though the combat gets easier after the first episode, I suspect they never even got that far. With that said I still can't excuse the ally AI in this game. I play without the patch, I leave them at the entrance and come back for them after the map is clear.

This was actually really helpful for me, I’ve never finished the game before (only played it for the first time last year, but didn’t get very far. It just seemed a lot different than other retro FPS games so I just moved on to other games). But what you wrote gave me a new perspective, thank you.

[Mystical Spork]

I don't wan't to disrespect the guy, but all the fame and notoriety he got from Doom made him kind of complacent when it came to developing standalone games like Daikatana. And ever since then, he hasn't made anything else. I've only seen him mentioned making expansion maps for the original Doom and he has never attempted to make another FPS game after Daikatana's failure.

[Jedimindtrickonyou]

Originally posted by Mystical Spork:

I don't wan't to disrespect the guy, but all the fame and notoriety he got from Doom made him kind of complacent when it came to developing standalone games like Daikatana. And ever since then, he hasn't made anything else. I've only seen him mentioned making expansion maps for the original Doom and he has never attempted to make another FPS game after Daikatana's failure.

He has done the programming in a number of other games but hasn’t led development or directed anything since Daikatana, apart from his Sigil 1/2 Doom episodes. I still think he deserves the respect of everyone who plays games for his contributions. Rumor is that he gave Valve a copy of the Quake Engine that they used to make their first half life game with although they altered the source code a bit.

Just like Ken Silverman (who completely left the industry entirely) who coded the Build Engine used by 3D realms, John Romero was influential in the 90s to PC gaming and that led to the gaming world we have now. Hopefully he will make another game one day (and he is supposed to be working on one and has a small studio) but even if he never does, I will personally always be grateful for what he helped to create and the subsequent games that early id software titles helped to inspire. Lots of people that were directly making games back in the 90s ended up taking less creative, more lucrative positions in the industry after their initial wave of success, you can’t really blame them for cashing out or moving up in the world. Obviously I hope he would make something else in the future on a larger scale than Sigil but we don’t know what all has happened behind the scenes. I know there was at least one big project he was a part of that got canceled and didn’t make it to market.

[CLG]

The development of this game has been well documented and it's not even an oddity in the game industry. Romero simply got too ambitious and sat on his laurels while the industry passed him by. If this game somehow managed to come out before half life 1 it would have had a different legacy I'd imagine. I still like Daikatana more than most of these new modern boomer shooters though.