Part 34: Best of the thread: Part Three
LordMune posted:
hahahahahahahahaha fucking SHARKS
I thought of something else that Daikatana lacks; enemy variety. Well, to be fair, this is a pretty widespread problem but developers are certainly getting better at it, and Daikatana is one of the best/worst examples of this issue.
So far we've basically seen two enemies;
guys
critters
with the subgroups
code:
guys ->ranged ->melee ->retarded ->all of the above critters ->cybernetic ->poisonous ->ridiculously small ->all of the above
Angry robots, angry skeletons, angry werewolves, angry convicts. They have different character models, but it's still barely a step above texture palette swaps. It's like they weren't even tryi- wait, nevermind.
Sestze posted:
See, if the weapon is powerful enough, it's creative and not a gimmick.
Gimmicky weapons are ones that have zilch purpose outside of maybe one use that you might use if you were feeling particularly clever.
EX: Laser mines in Half Life.
Useful in Multiplayer, but shit in single player. Oh yes, you can plant a few in specific locations to trap the AI and get them to blow themselves up. Otherwise, it's just a waste.
You can also just shoot them in the head with a shotgun. It works better in the long run.
An example of a gimmick weapon that actually is pretty useful?
SLAMs from Half Life 2 DM
It's the laser mine that you can throw and use as a satchel charge.
Added functionality and the ability to straight up kill someone with it instead of dicking around with being "clever".
However, Daikatana's gimmick weapons stand an equal chance to kill you, so there feels like a gap in your arsenal. You're picking up all this ammunition that's for this phantom weapon that you'll never use. I don't think the C4 Vitterzergo is ever worth using. It either blows you and the target up, or it sits there until you have to go where you fired it and it'll blow you up regardless. That's a gimmick weapon. The AI isn't smart enough to be "Fooled" into walking into it. Even if you do manage to wizard them into walking into the c4 pack, it stands a good chance of killing you too.
Evil Tim posted:
The problem with unconventional weapons being the rule rather than the exception is that weapons in FPS games define the situations you can put the player in: for example, if you don't have something like a shotgun, you can't ever drop melee monsters close to the player [Far Cry's main probelm regarding monkey Trigens was the Jackhammer was too weak to combat their ability to consistantly kill you in two hits], or if you don't have something like a sniper rifle you can't let enemies take long-range shots at the player. Unconventional weapons only allow for unconventional situations.
Now, here in Daikatana we have some very generic enemy design without the right weapons to deal with them; for example, small hitbox, evasive enemies without a rapid-fire spread gun [assault rifle / SMG] or continous beam weapon [say a flamethrower]. John's just taken a standard corridor crawl, fucked over all the weapons and masturbated that he's made the game harder without bothering to figure out that hard games have to be studiously fair to the player or they're just frustrating.
ookuwagata posted:
Good fucking God, I fucking HATE Mikiko's fucking face, and her fucking ching-chong-rhotacism voice. Fuck you John. I hope Stevie Case gave you herpes. For some reason, Mikiko in the Tower of Crime intro, was far more grating and obnoxious than before.
And seriously, why does Hiro speak in perfectly intoned English, whereas Mikiko still speaks Chop-suey?
Felt Tip Hat posted:
It's just Hiiro too, because every other supposedly Japanese character does the same.
Either a marketing decision, or the voice actor couldn't pull it off. Though that would require standards.
Also, I sure hope Superfly is ok! Gosh, he could be dead! I'm sure the ham-handed foreshadowing in his character profile won't come into play!
Sestze posted:
I remember reading about Daikatana when it was in OGR magazine way back when I was a wee lad. I read through the little preview guide it had for the weapons and monsters for each episode, and I felt that they were the coolest thing ever.
I mean, with names like Shockwave Cannon and Novabeam, they're going to be freaking amazing, right? I mean, the shockwave sounds like it fires out an arc of disruptive energy that shakes the level and destroys things through walls. The Novabeam sounds like some sort of energy disruptor cannon that melts through walls and enemies.
When I got into modding Quake 1, I tried to put these idealized weapons into the game, and it was successful to a degree.
Now that I've seen the weapons firsthand, you have a personal handheld nuke that kills you and the target you're aiming at, and the most anemic sounding laser rifle with a really piss-poor effect. Daikatana has destroyed my childhood.
SkellingTon Loc posted:
I don't think I even like gibs anymore because of this game.
jawbroken posted:
Jesus, the Novabeam uses 8 ammo per shot? Is this like John Romero teaches you math or what. It's not like you can fire it and use 1 ammo but it is weak, so you can charge it and use 8 ammo for a more powerful shot, it's just displaying ammo*8 in the HUD.
Edit: Are you really supposed to go "Hmm, I have 116 ammo left, so that is 10 shots to use 80 ammo, 36 left over, 8 goes into 36, err, 4 times with a remainder of 4...so I have 14 shots with 4 remaining for...good luck". If I recall correctly you picked it up with 150 ammo, which doesn't divide by 8 anyway.
Wiz posted:
I like the fact that when you're holding the Railgun, it's shoulder-mounted, but when you're looking at someone else holding it, they're wielding it in the usual gun position.
You said you liked the shoulder-mounted thing, Proteus, but John wouldn't let you have even that.
I think my favorite part in the last video was the total breakdown when you realized that map 3 was exactly the same thing as map 2.
ChuckMaster posted:
Seris posted:
Hey, another ripoff-- anyone else notice the similarity between Mishima's logo and the Empire's logo from Star Wars?
What are you talking about? Those are completely different!
The Mishima symbol on the right looks nothing like the Imperial Logo on the left!
Or wait, was the Mishima symbol on the left...
Felt Tip Hat posted:
To be fair (not that Daikatana deserves it) that's a tribute rather than a ripoff.
The Imperial symbol came directly from Japanese heraldic crests because George Lucas is a great big Samurai movie nerd.
I was told about this a few years ago, so you'll have to bear with a crappy picture source- the original crest is a wheel, and that's exactly the Mishima logo.
Where oh where will we ever find someone who knows enough about Star Wars to confirm?
slowbeef posted:
In all honesty, I think it's a double rip-off. Star Wars rips off a Japanese heraldic symbol, and then Daikatana rips off Star Wars, inadvertantly getting it right.
You might think I'm kidding, but really folks, the focal point of this game is quite literally a "big sword".
RGX posted:
The best bit is the synchronized strut out of the room.
Mince your way to victory!
Karach posted:
Jesus, the longer the cutscene, the more noticeable that idiotic swooping camera is. During that Intro it actually got to the point where some of the characters were obscured because the camera was busy going THIS way, no THAT way! Then you have the wonderful Mikiko "I emote through loudness" Ebihara and her herky-jerky fasian delivery, and the impossibly earnest Hiro ("I know it sounds crazy, but we're from the future, you see, and your lab partner is a powerful man there. What? Oh, a time-traveling sword. Hmm? Why do we change geographical locations whenever we go through time? Well, the answer to that question is a two-parter..."); the only saving grace, perhaps, is that Superfly wasn't there to black it up.
I hope the ending meets the high expectations we've come to have. It can't be anything less than Mishima in some giant walking robot or mobile Ferris wheel that shoots lasers.
ChuckMaster posted:
Why even have an accent at ALL?
Just because you're Asian doesn't mean you're an immigrant. English is a first language for millions of people with Asian descent. Is she supposed to be a whore from Full Metal Jacket?
Syvalion posted:
JOHN ROMERO SIGHTING ALERT:
Romero does occasional commentary for a new mini-series on the Discovery Channel called Rise of the Videogame. I caught it the other day and was surprised to see that he's gone back to his long-haired Daikatana look.
Of course, he's only credited as designing Doom when his name appears onscreen. Somehow I doubt Daikatana will ever get mentioned.
baldurk posted:
Proteus you're a goddamn hero for finishing this game. Suspicious that makes you a double hero for being crazy and/or stupid for playing through this game in advance.
I hope this LP stands for a long time as a warning beacon for people so they realise not to play this shitty game.
For actual content, I was googling around for more stupid Daikatana stories when I found this. You read that right. Daikatana speed-runs. It boggles the mind! Who the hell could have the patience to play through this game so many times to figure out the tricks to get extra speed. Surely at some point they'd find that there were so many bugs to exploit that they'd be fucked. Plus can you imagine trying to speedrun while keeping Tweedle dum and Tweedle dummer following you so you can finish the level?
I don't have a copy of the game (thank god) so I can't watch the demos, but god I don't think I want to. If you're feeling masochistic Proteus you could take a look, but I somehow doubt the game would play them without crashing a million times.
Proteus4994 posted:
By the way, guys, the face of brilliance...
and our artistic touch...
Suck it down.
slowbeef posted:
Well, because I didn't get to be included (jerks!), this is something I made for you.
Dailymotion
Hope you enjoy it.
This was through and through an outstanding VLP. I hurt my throat on this because my voice is nowhere low enough for a Proteus. But I hear I do an OK Suspicious
edit2: Wow, my Proteus gets worse and worse as that goes on. Sorry.
SleepingPills posted:
I don't know if anyone pointed this out, but Romero went apeshit a long time ago (in 1984 to be precise): http://romero.smugmug.com/gallery/7.../35283170/Large
Seriously, that cartoon is wrong on so many levels I'm don't even want to open the others.
Fake edit: if this has been already mentioned in the thread then please flush me down the toilet.
Real Edit: http://romero.smugmug.com/gallery/7.../35290310/Large
Daduzi posted:
I like how in the final "epic" confrontation cut scene Jorge Gonzalzes managed to drop the ball even further by fucking up the "could care less/couldn't care less" difference.
I also like how all the "Superfly is a traitor" foreshadowing went absolutely nowhere. So he wasn't getting separated to go and do nefarious things he was getting separated because... well, I'm stumped to be honest.
Shitty, shitty game, great, great thread.
baldurk posted:
I know a lot of games are guilty of this to an extent, but it's even worse in Daikatana.
That was the normal way to get into the facility
I mean, the guard showed the group in, so obviously people are meant to go through there, but from then on it was a linear sequence through the jumping puzzles and shit. There weren't even any contrived locked doors. Fuck that shit. If I'm trying to get into work in the morning I don't want to have to respawn a dozen times trying to get to my office.
LordMune posted:
Didn't you watch the very real Daikatana video slowbeef posted? I imagine this is how it went down.OG17 posted:
How'd you two decide to do this together?
: Proteus: hey bitch
: Suspicious: Huh?
Proteus4994 posted:
This is astoundingly accurate.
Edit: Actually, I was kinda nice to him at first. Here, I'll post the chat log (since someone asked)
quote:
Suspicious (9:46:23 PM): hello
Proteus4994 (9:46:31 PM): Hey.
Proteus4994 (9:46:35 PM): You ever play Daikatana?
Suspicious (9:46:52 PM): i'm proud to say that i never did
Suspicious (9:47:04 PM): i was afraid john romero would hold true to his promise
Proteus4994 (9:47:20 PM): Me either, but I've got it coming in the mail in the next couple of days for an LP.
Proteus4994 (9:47:44 PM): I wanted to see if you wanted to do it in coop
Suspicious (9:48:05 PM): you should keep a counter for how many times SUPERFLY JOHNSON gets stuck in a random doodad
Proteus4994 (9:48:15 PM): Haha, I might do that.
Proteus4994 (9:48:31 PM): I'm thinking my thread title is going to be "I can't finish this LP without my buddy Superfly"
Proteus4994 (9:53:18 PM): The gimmick is that I'm going to play it unpatched.
Proteus4994 (9:53:29 PM): So everyone can experience the pain of Daikatana as it was out of the box
Suspicious (9:53:48 PM): something tells me it's rife with gamebreaking bugs
Suspicious (9:53:56 PM): also totally calling SUPAFLY
Proteus4994 (9:54:15 PM): Yeah, that's the thing. If I run into something that I can't get past without patching, I'll patch. But otherwise, no
Proteus4994 (9:54:33 PM): That's cool. I'd rather let the AI run one of them so I can show off the great pathfinding
Suspicious (9:55:05 PM): oh then the AI should be superfly because it wouldn't be as funny with the broad
Proteus4994 (9:55:23 PM): Plus you'd never hear "I can't leave without my buddy Superfly"
Suspicious (9:56:51 PM): you'll love it the first time you jump over a pit and hit an invisible wall because you can't leave without your buddy SUPAFLY, and fall to your death
Proteus4994 (9:57:12 PM): Oh god.
Proteus4994 (9:57:16 PM): It's all I could hope for and more
Suspicious (9:57:29 PM): also you'll get to experience KILLCREEK's mapping skills... was that her nickname?
Suspicious (10:13:08 PM): you should do wc4 next because it's too awesome
Proteus4994 (10:13:28 PM): I am, but Daikatana is going to sorta be a "taking a break" LP
(editor's note: yeah, that didn't turn out the way I thought it would)
Proteus4994 (10:13:40 PM): WCP took three months and was a LOT of work
The rest of it was talking about Hexen 2 and Quake and Wing Commander. As you notice, I thought the AI would take over unused spots in coop originally. It's a lot funnier now that you realize how poorly coded this game was and realize that there's no way in hell the Daikatana team could have or would have coded that in.
Sindai posted:
Lethal fucking candles?
Those, my friends, are what we call "expert credits."
I mean seriously, holy shit.
Princeps posted:
I'm pretty impressed that the last moment of the co-op game is a server-crashing death pit. How very appropriate.
BrainWeasel posted:
More shades of "Where In Time Is Carmen Sandiego" I think, except you're rewarded for not knowing accurate historical facts.
Mori! posted:
Just wanted to say that this LP was great, I would like to see a buddy comedy movie with Proteus and Suspicious. However, you did make me play through Daikatana just to see what it is like. From the videos you end up thinking it'll be funny like MST3K or something. It is in a way. But it's like MST3K if they were watching a movie of a starving man eating a kitten.
Also, the game actively screws you over. I got through the pain of episode one, and episode 2 was easy. I was up to level 5 daikatana in no time and I blazed through without dying once. Then I got to one of the loading parts of athens, before you get the hammer thing. It glitched in some weird way and just totally wiped all my daikatana experience and levels. By that point the enemies are all crazy ranged things that kill you fast, so I died a lot. I ended up giving up halfway through episode 2, and restarting the episode but on a coop game. A coop game with myself. That made it more like a crappy version of a quake game, instead of the CIA interrogation technique it was before. Seriously, this game is somehow worse than the LP makes it look.
Tsaedje posted:
Can anyone tell me what qualifications I need to become a "Pixel Beast" ?
LordMune posted:
Well, that was the most magnificently shitty ending to a game I've ever seen. It couldn't have been just "meh", Daikatana's ending had to be insultingly bad. Thanks John
However, the official trailer released two years before the game became infinitely more hilarious when it was concluded in Episode 4 that John Romero was Ion Storm's resident guitarist. I think he provides the vocals too.
The first enemy shown is a cybernetic frog. Everyone involved should just have killed themselves right then and there.
slowbeef posted:
As gay as that sounds, he really was the unsung hero here. I've been lately tossing around ideas for collaborative-effort LPs and these two guys go ahead and prove that it's not only workable; but really much better than your average "Star of the Show" style VLP.
And no Suspicious, Proteus didn't ask me to say that. Bitch. And I'm sure JohnCarmack would agree.
Proteus4994 posted:
I was going to wait for a couple of days to type up something long and glorious about Suspicious, but I'll go ahead and do it now.
This was Suspicious' thread. Period. Yeah, I wrote the updates and hosted the files on Google, but I think people don't realize how much work Suspicious did on this thread. All of the cutscenes were recorded by him, meaning I didn't have to ruin my track record of not playing through the game first, but meaning that Suspicious had to go through the hassle of recording the cutscenes even when he was trying to learn where all of the secrets were.
The amount of effort he had to go through for this is beyond description. He had to play the levels in advance and find all of the secrets, despite the fact that GameFAQs and even PLANET FUCKING DAIKATANA didn't bother to find them all. Beyond being a LP of a really bad game, thanks to Suspicious' effort, this is actually a video walkthrough of a really bad game, and a better one than you're going to find on any subscription site.
You guys saw how many bugs that we went through when trying to play through this game, but I'm going to tell you now, there's at least a half-dozen or so that didn't even make it into the videos. Things where we'd have a hard time connecting or screens would freeze up or we couldn't save after someone else loaded into the map or whatever. You guys can see some of them in the deathmatch videos, but most of them never really were mentioned in the LP except in passing. Suspicious had to deal with this shit, as well as the horrendous single-player mode, which didn't offer the benefit of things like "unlimited deaths" or "not having to babysit extraordinarily stupid henchmen" in order to play through this game for the LP.
And he did all of this with his typical stoic heroism for LPing a game. Yeah, this sounds a little overblown, but if you've ever watched any of Suspicious' LPs, you know what I mean. The guy makes a serious effort to showcase everything, show off all of the secrets, find out about all of the weapons and how to best use them, and find ways to glitch the game to get places you might not supposed to get to. For a game like Hexen or Heretic, which were actually fun, you appreciate things like that, but for a game like Daikatana, which is seriously one of the worst games I have ever played in my life, appreciation isn't even a strong enough word for how thankful I am to have had him along.
I'm actually going to issue a sincere apology to Suspicious here. I already said this to him over AIM, but I'm going to make it public. I'm sorry, dude. I know this sounds like I'm kidding or being sarcastic, but I'm not. I'm truly sorry. I honestly didn't know what I was getting you into. I watched your other threads and saw that you were great at FPS games, and I said to myself "hey, he'd be a good person to help me LP this game." My only excuse is that since I wanted to play this game blind, I had literally no idea what in the hell I was getting into here, and I can't possibly apologize enough to Suspicious for dragging him into this and forcing him to do all of the hard work that I was unwilling to do. If this killed his will to LP games in the future, then all I can say is that I'm eternally grateful that he didn't just tell me to fuck off midway through this thread, and everyone needs to realize that this thread is about 20% me and 80% Suspicious.
Thank you so much, Suspicious. I really really really owe you, and I doubt there's anything I could ever do to repay you for the work you put into this thread. All I know is that if Suspicious ever DOES want to LP another game, you fucking cocksuckers damn well better let him have it, or else you're going to have to deal with me. And I don't think anyone wants that.
Edit: And if this sounds gay or whatever, fuck you. Without Suspicious, this thread wouldn't have even dreamed of seeing the light of day, and it certainly wouldn't be as complete as it was.
Diagnosed posted:
ROMERO FACTS!
-John Romero worked at Origin for almost 2 years before joining iD software! IMAGINE! Daikatana using the Ultima 7 engine! GARRIOTT EAT YOUR HEART OUT!
-After Daikatana, Romero went to work on developing games for cell phones, included the NGAGE! SUCCESSFUL HANDHELD CONSOLE/SIDE TALKING PHONE!
-Romero is currently involved on a MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER FIRST PERSON SHOOTER! ASTONISHMENT!
He's also apparently been married at least twice before his current Romanian jailbait mail-order bride, and has three children! Our father developed Daikatana! SHAME!
That being said, I feel for suspicious in that video of the last stage of episode 4, it was however the most hilarious video in the thread.
"I enjoyed this game, see? that was a lie."
Phantom Llama posted:
I actually rather like the idea of a 'credits level', but since it's only accessible through co-op wierdness they don't get any points for that.
For some reason the thing that irks me most about this game is the nonsensical time-travel mechanics. For example, at the end of episode 1, Mishima arrives from 2030 after sensing the disturbances from Hiro messing with the Daikatana. But if Hiro was doing it in 2455, why did Mishima sense it back in 2030? If the disturbances can be felt across time as well as space, why did he only sense it happening specifically when he was in 2030, rather than all the time through his entire life? Why does touching the Daikatana to its other self do anything unusual at all? What the hell is going on at the end of the game? Argh.
The game is also a total waste of the plot point "And then stab the nuclear reactor."
SickenTide posted:
I get it now.
What we saw here was not the whole ending as it was intended by John's original vision. I assume this is because the publishers of the day and time understood that complex and confusing plots only alienate the players and they need a sense of accomplishment from figuring out the whole plot long before it takes place. They left out one important plot twist (aside from Superfly screaming for a good five seconds after he dies like he does in the deathmatch videos, which is a shame because that was my favourite part of the whole LP):
The Daikatana is powered by human misery.
It all makes sense now. This is why our heroes had to wade through endless wastelands of insufferable map design populated by endless hordes of the same two or three palette and model swapped enemies before they were able to move on to the next time period. This is why the most efficient way to wield the Daikatana is to painfully throw its weight around your wrist while the rest of your arm remains perfectly motionless. This is why someone whose name is a crude dick joke is such a valuable ally to our hero. But that is all beside the point.
The real point of significance behind this revelations is that we can now understand how Mishima first rose to power. Travelling several centuries back after finding the Daikatana, he sought out a young and impressionable artisan of the time. Appearing to him under the guise of Satan, Mishima offered him a deal: The young craftsman would rise to great fame in his profession if he agreed to construct his last and crowning masterpiece in the name and under the guidance of Satan himself. As it was customary back in the day, the contract was signed in blood and a new legend was born, burning brightly and glamourously among even the greatest of its age.
When he felt his career coming to an end, the now famous expert of his trade understood that it was his turn to fulfil his part of the bargain. And so John Romero crafted the ultimate torture device: Daikatana, a simulation in which the player must endure the pained and futile journey of Hiro Miyamoto, only to be forced to give up or bear the shame of cheating. The maps, the enemies, the weapons, even your own allies and the release date itself were expertly crafted to extract the maximum amount of misery, outrage and self-pity from countless players all over the world and funnel it towards the eternal kingdom of Kage Mishima.
Congratulations. By playing Daikatana, you have condemned humanity to an eternity of oppression, useless weapons and green. Suck it down.
Mori! posted:
So, on a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you think John Romero listens to Dragonforce?
spoon0042 posted:
That reminds me. One of the more ridiculous / entertaining ways to kill Superfly (or yourself, of course).
MORE CURLY FRIES posted:
Another trailer, this one seems to be the old Quake 1 engine stuff.
SickenTide posted:
I already had this mental image of cemeteries in the world of Daikatana with rows upon rows of gravestones reading things like "Crushed by a door at age 47", "Underestimated the force of a stationary crusher one time too many" or "The ladders were his downfall". This makes it even better.
code:
__________________ / \ / Here Lies \ | SUPERFLY JOHNSON | | 2417-2455 | | | | He died | | Like he lived: | | | | Sitting on a large | | Piece of meat | | | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tau Wedel posted:
Here's one more piece of absurdity that I believe hasn't been mentioned. Remember the first map of Episode 3, where you played the organ in the church to open the way to the cellar? In the N64 version, that's a puzzle. You're given a choice of seven different notes, and you need to play a particular melody to open the cellar:
quote:
After the conversation, go back into the main church room, and on the right side of the alter is a golden instrument. Hit A on the instrument and music bars will come up. Play the notes in the following order with one being the leftmost gong and 7 being the rightmost: 4-4-5-4-3-2-3. The big block of wood on the alter has moved, and the basement is now accessible.
(from here)
(this post will be updated with any future applicable posts)