Post horrible videogames/related things

Daikatana, one of the most disappointing games ever.
 
Obligatory mention that LJN was merely a publisher and that several of the games published under the brand were made by popular development houses.

Baby Luigi said:
Daikatana, one of the most disappointing games ever.
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Despites its obvious design flaws, Daikatana actually looks like it could scratch that late 90's FPS itch (for me) if it was possible to mod the AI partners out.




The Halo games become a lot more fun when you pretend this is Master Chief's canon voice and personality.
 
Well, isn't Daikatana made by id, the same people who made Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein, etc.? Then it's not clear to me what happened.
 
Poor advertising, technological inferiority, and an inability of Romero to keep his ego in check.
 
Baby Luigi said:
Well, isn't Daikatana made by id, the same people who made Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein, etc.? Then it's not clear to me what happened.
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Daikatana was developed by Ion Storm and John Romero, a former iD staffer who was a bit of a superstar at the time for his work as a map designer of Doom.

The reasons Daikatana turned out the way it did are extensively documented by this huge Gamestop article (summary available at Grospixel, if you can read French). Long story short...

1:After being kicked out of iD, John Romero stars game developer Ion Storm and decided to hire staff among the Quake/Doom modding scene rather than actual professionals, with poor results. Programmers and designers frequently clash with each other and the content-rich design document is clearly too much for the inexperienced team to handle. Despite this, marketing hype the game to ridiculous levels, with one infamous ad having the tagline "Romero's gonna make you his bitch. Suck him well."

2:The first build of Daiktana end up looking "old" (quite understandably, since the game does not even support 3D acceleration), especially in comparison to the newly-revealed Quake II. In response, Romero decided to port Daikatana from idTech1 to idTech2, a process much more costly and time-consuming than anyone thought and which throws the entire game out of schedule.

3: News of internal turmoils hit as the development team grows frustrated with Romero's inept management and the development of the RTS Dominion: Storm over Gift 3, which is perceived as stealing money and staff and isn't turning out very well. This contributes to the game's negative hype, further fueled by a disastrous showing at E3 99.

4: The game is finally released in 2000, three years late. It gets promptly laughed out for being distinctly unimpressive and clearly broken in several respects, which is not helped by the recent release of several much better FPS (such as Half-Life, Quake III and Ion Storm's own Deus Ex). John Romero career is over.

It's an interesting cautionary tale, if anything. Being a good designer doesn't make you a good manager.

edit: Welp, looks like Mario4Ever's better at this "short story" thing that I am!
 
It's kind of an unfortunate story for a game. :P
 
shaddup and get on the masheen gun gringo