In celebration of GOG acquiring Daikatana, I bought it yet again, and decided I would do another playthrough. I recently got a new computer and a widescreen monitor, so I decided to go about learning how to stream and record games like this.

It's been a while since I played, it takes me a while to adjust to the sensitivity, and I die a whole lot. If you want to see what the so-called "worst fps ever made" looks like (Personally, I think that's hogwash. Given, I love Daikatana, I really enjoy it and could never quite grasp why everyone else hated it, but all the same, I've played at least a dozen first-person shooters that are far, far worse), you can check it out. I plan to play some more tomorrow, don't know when, but you might catch me playing live. Otherwise, the videos are saved to my channel.

If you're interested, you can check it out at http://www.twitch.tv/robotnikwinter/videos?kind=past_broadcasts. Hope you enjoy, and thanks for watching.

I watched some of your streams. AI of friends and enemies doesn't look that terrible as many people said, it looks rather standard for that 1998-2000 years. AI in Blood 2 is more limited. Guns are creative and interesting like Shadow Warrior vs Duke Nukem 3D. Enemies? It depends, some are bland, but other are good and made with twisted imagination. Level design and story progression seems ok and to some degree a bit non-linear. In fact it's like 4 games in one. Quake 2 was more boring in colors scheme, design and gameplay than this, especially on PSX. ;-)

Hi, your settings look nice. Which screen resolution did you use for the game? I see your HUD quite compact and small. And no stretched image.

The screen resolution is a hacked 1280x720. I just set the in-game resolution to 1600x1200, used xvi32 on daikatana.exe, searched for the text string "Mode 9" or "1600x1200", changed the nearby characters at B4864 and B4865 (they represent the horizontal resolution in hexadecimal) and B4868 and B4869 (they represent the vertical resolution in hexadecimal). By default, the values should be 40, 06, B0, and 04, respectively.

It sounds complicated, but it's really not. Use a calculator to find the hexadecimal equivalent of the resolution you want. There's a trick, though. Each set of cells are in reverse order. 1600 in hexadecimal is 640. Read that as "0640". The first cell at B4864 is 40, and the cell after that is 06. It reads as "4006". Likewise, the vertical characters for 1200 are written out as B004, since 1200 in hexadecimal is 4B0 (04B0).

If you want to use the same 1280x720, use 00 and 05 at B4864 and B4865, as well as D0 and 02 at B4868 and B4869.

Since we've modified the 1600x1200 resolution (a good choice, since I doubt you have a vertical resolution that can support 1200 anyway), you'll want to set your resolution in-game to 1600x1200. It will then display as whatever resolution you hacked in it's place.

The problem is, it messes up the menus and I don't know of any way to fix it. Everything in-game seems to work just fine though, as you can see. Oh, hey! You're that guy who followed me, I suspected it was a fellow GOG member. :P

Yeah, Daikatana is, more or less, "Quake with a story". I love the weapons. Almost all of them are pretty unconventional and experimental, and most of them turned out quite good. That "most of them" probably wouldn't include Hades Hammer. XD

Every episode except the fourth one feature some manner of "rocket launcher" that behaves like a rocket launcher in Quake. The fourth episode's kineticore functions a lot like the shotcycler, though, so every episode has at least one mobility weapon. Deathmatch in Daikatana is a lot like Quake. The Shotcycler-6 is one of my favorite weapons. It's an awkward shotgun that always shoots six shots in succession, but there's no easier and less painful way to jump, glide, descent, and boost your way around.

The leveling system is kind of tacked on. It adds a tiny bit of replay value. As you can tell, I prefer attack (attack speed) and acro (jump height). The faster attack rate lets you quickly dish out damage as an alternative to straight up power (attack power, though using attack power lets you deal more damage with less hits and ammo), makes it easier to land hits, and also makes the shotcycler more effective. Acro is useful for reaching places, as well as navigating around your lovable idiot teammates. With enough acro, you can effortlessly climb on top of the low resolution meatball that is Superfly's head. ;)

Speed makes you faster, vitality increases your max health. Speed can be fun, though you don't need a lot of speed, especially when you're herding Superfly and Mikiko. Vitality can be helpful if you're having a hard time staying alive, or if you know what you're doing and like to rocket jump a lot. It's functional, but not exactly the funnest attribute. You can also level the Daikatana, making it a better, faster, stronger, (harder? :P) weapon. I can't remember if leveling the Daikatana consumes experience for leveling your character, or if it's shared. I wish I did, though, since I'm playing it at the moment. :/

I love first-person shooters from this era. Cool lighting effects. I love the green glow from shooting the Ion Blaster down a dark corridor. Daikatana has a lot of the things I liked about Doom, Heretic, Hexen, and Quake. Fun level design, atmosphere, and weapons. I don't think they nailed the music, sound, and enemies like those games did, but it's still very enjoyable.

Daikatana is a pretty great game that had the potential to be a huge hit. Unfortunately, it still needed a good deal of work, it came out at a time when most gamers were no longer satisfied with Quake episodes and expected Half-Life and Deus Ex, and nobody could be bothered to have the patience to deal with Superfly and Mikiko. For people like me that are willing to overlook it's flaws, Daikatana has a lot of things to like about it. It's hard to stay mad at Superfly when he has a complete and lengthy emotional breakdown after you die that lasts through the loading screen. "Hiro's been bitchslapped into oblivion" makes me laugh every time.

It certainly helps that you can smack these two around when they're being complete idiots. In one of the videos, I turn Mikiko into a pile of gibs with a single punch after a particularly infuriating game of hide and seek she initiates after trying to get her to follow me so I can heal her. Too many games these days still have idiot partners, but you can't smack some artificial intelligence into them when they start flailing around and doing unforgivably stupid things.

Just finished up Episode 2. I don't die as much as Episode 1, but I act stupid and get lost a lot. Despite how many times I've played through Daikatana, I still forget half of it. Lowering that rock gets me every time. I always forget where that switch is, and I never seem to see it until I've exhausted every other nook and cranny. Sorry about that! Again, this isn't a speedrun. I'm just casually playing through the game. You can see that my sense of direction is horrible, yet I still love playing these sort of games.

I don't know how, even for a guy who loves the game, you couldn't grasp the reasoning behind everyone's hatred of the game. You even acknowledge that this game has flaws, yet you still don't get it?

Because hatred is not a reason, just plain emotion what usually collide when it comes to reasoning. What's more, the quirks, taints and gimmicks, flaws of the game are the ones that adds to nostalgia. Oversized expectations and hype were the ones that increased potential negative reactions in bigger scale than how game in reality is. Now after all these years except hysterical and historical mental trauma (not entirely real if sheep crowd counts) people can judge this with more sense and distance, based on real experience with the game, not these strange over-saturated opinions back from the time being.

Thanks for your walkthrough. It's very helpful to me.

At part 1 around 59 minute mark, i'm not sure it was intentionally or not but to me it rather seems like a badly designed place even for a secret. Right now i'm stuck at that area and not able to jump out. I will try reload my save to earlier checkpoint. Also, i already upgraded my acro to 1 point, maybe it make my character jump bit too high? Considering the area is too cramped, but not sure if it's related or not.

After playing Painkiller Overdose on Trauma and Blood 2 on Suicide this is like relaxing heaven. ;-)

There is more than one way to reach that secret. I don't recall if I got the sidewinder (rocket launcher) on that level, but I could have come in through the way I left (in the prison room with the health pack and shotcycler rounds) without using the acro boost by using the shotcycler to climb my way into that airduct. That's how I reached that secret the first time I played, and I did it in reverse this time.

I don't even know if the secrets of Daikatana were designed with weapon jumping in mind. I have the guide, but it can be a little confusing, so I really only have a few secrets memorized, and it's awesome how there are usually several other unintended ways to reach them, like the early trident in episode 2. I never show off in the episode that I can rocket jump with the trident, but you can. I'm usually watching my health and armor, and there aren't too many places I would want to jump to, considering Mikiko can't very well follow after me.

Speaking of Mikiko, I like how one of the puzzles requires you to keep her on a switch. It's a moment that actually necessitates another party member, and I can't recall there being any more of that for the rest of the game. :/

I'm not that great at level editing. Maybe one day, if I ever do make a Daikatana redux, I could do more with that.


I'm taking a lot more damage than my last few playthroughs. Last time, I had more health than I needed, and I thought my fire rate was too slow. I think I'll put a point in power and vitality soon. There's no wrong way to build your character. A "bad" build just means more challenge. :D

I don't think there's such a thing as jumping too high. It's fun! The only thing I'd have in defense of not boosting your acro is that even one point in acro leaves you with an annoying jump sound effect for the rest of the game. Considering Hiro starts with a point in attack and acro in multiplayer, it's something you should get used to anyway.

Just finished up Episode 3. A good number of crashes this time, unfortunately. It never crashed before in Episode 3 when I last played. Maybe it's Windows 7, something to do with the GOG version, or just plain bad luck. Other than that, things go pretty smoothly, and a little quicker than the last two episodes. There's a lot more babysitting my companions this time, but it's okay, because this time I get some serious firepower to kill hordes of undead, werewolves, wizards, and more! Gotta love that ballista, sending enemies hurtling away with great force. It's a great episode, so I hope you enjoy.

Some of you might be thinking "Hey, this doesn't look nearly as bad as I was expecting. I think I actually want to try it now!". Others might be thinking "My god. It's worse than I thought. This Skunk fellow must be some kind of insane masochist with no taste in games.".

Well, I can't think of too many things to say to the latter, since it's the former that prompted me to start writing this post, so I'll just go ahead and continue with what I intended to say here.

You might have noticed I have a console, and if you're not familiar with enabling the console, you probably don't. In the beginning, I tweak my sensitivity until I find something that fits me just right. You can go into the options, or the external configuration file, but there is absolutely no better way to adjust sensitivty than through a console. That and keybinds. Quickly checking what a button does, unbinding it, and binding a key to command on the fly is brilliant. In some first-person shooters, the standard "sensitivity #" command doesn't work. If you are an aspiring game developer, swear to me now that you won't make this same mistake! Even Serious Sam makes this mistake. Seriously! I don't care what genre, I want my tilde key to open a console, and my sensitivty command to accept whole numbers and decimals. Quick keybinding is also really awesome!

Anyway, you can enable your console with the command line option +set console 1. You can also enable cheats with +set cheats 1. I don't use cheats in my playthrough, but beating the game with cheats beats not beating it at all. There are a few other non-cheat commands that require cheats to be on, I believe, and if you find yourself stuck, nobody will think less of you for noclipping your way out. The list of cheats should be easy to find, but that all goes beyond the scope of this post.

If you don't know how to do command line options, it's pretty simple. I'm assuming you're using a desktop shortcut. Just edit the shortcut properties, and make it so it reads something like "C:\Whatever\Daikatana.exe" +set console 1 +set cheats 1, and you should be good to go. If you're launching from a command line, you add those commands at the end just like that. If you're using Steam to launch the game, go to the game properties and you can add the commands there.

Next, you might be wondering what control scheme I have. The defaults aren't ideal, and everybody has their own preference, but if you're looking for ideas, take a look at what I've got. For controlling my party members, I use the numpad. 8 tells them to follow me, 5 tells them to stay put, and 2 attempts to tell them to fall back. They might prefer the thrill of combat, talk back to you and your short-sighted orders, and stand there while something tears away at their skulls. 4 tells them to attack something. This is best used in episode 1 to have them kill harmless workers, because it's funny. I think you also get experience for it, so why not? ;)

6 is used to order them to grab something. When giving them specific commands like 4 and 6, they'll target whatever you're pointing at. You can do it while wielding any weapon, but some weapons like the Daikatana lack crosshairs. You can see in my stream that I often switch weapons for the express purpose of ordering them around. Lastly, + on the numpad is used to switch who I'm giving orders to. If you forget who you're ordering, you can just press the button to show their portrait on the right side of the screen again.

As for my weapons, if you're using wsad, you might find pressing 1-7 is a pain in the ass, as it moves your fingers away from where they should be. A nice tight control scheme I use is that Q is 1, E is 2, R is 3, F is 4, C is 5, X is 6, and Z is 7, the Daikatana. I'm able to quickly and comfortably switch to any given weapon, which is a thing of beauty compared to fumbling with the mouse wheel or moving across the keyboard.

In episode 3, you might be curious why I become so gib happy, and why my companions suddenly seem so eager to gib enemies instead of leaving their corpses lying there like they usually do. I like to gib corpses because it's cool, and sometimes they can get in the way of attacks, but it bears more significance in episode 3. I show off what happens if I don't kill a buboid at one part. They'll just get right back up again. The lycanthir (werewolf) doesn't normally gib. There might be other unintended ways of dispatching them that I don't know about, but you're supposed to finish them with the silverclaw, or they'll just get up again. It might seem obvious, but I can imagine at least one person has found themselves frustrated and confused by enemies that refuse to stay dead.

You might have also noticed those neat red gems that I come across fairly often. Those are save gems. You can hold three of them at a time, and you can consume one at any time to save your game. It will also make an autosave when the game loads a new map. When the game was originally released, this was required, but the GOG release is patched to the latest version, adding an option to disable this system, allowing you to save as much as you like. I'm oldschool, though. I crave trial and error, I've played Daikatana more than once, I'm well-acquainted with save points, check points, limited lives, continues, credits, one-hit deaths, even outright game over and restart, and I never had an issue with Ink Ribbons in Resident Evil, so I've always played with them on. Of course, gamers like options, and if you're the sort that simply can't stand putting up with that, you absolutely don't have to.

Those of you willing to rise to the challenge of leaving save gems on, don't be afraid of using them. They're frequent enough that you shouldn't have to worry about being able to save unless you decide to play when you're planning on leaving in twenty minutes, they're especially frequent during the first two episodes, and there's always one very close to the start of an episode and usually before a particularly tricky part. The first time you play, you might not know what lies ahead, so you'll die and have to return to your last save. Well, now you know what lies ahead, and you can either pass it with your new knowledge, or if it's something a little more precarious, you'll know to save right before you enter that area.

It can be tempting to use a save gem immediately. It's not a bad idea, since they're often placed at parts where it'd be ideal to save, but if you can hold out, you can hoard up to three of them, and then when you find another save gem, you can save there and continue on with three more save gems in your reserve, that you can save until the next save gem, when you get to a tricky part, at the beginning of a new level, or when you just have to save. Hoarding save gems can also be tempting, but be sure to use them when you need to. Know that they won't carry on with you to the next episode, so it doesn't pay to be stingy near the end there. Same goes with your weapons and ammo, save for the Daikatana of course. You won't be using that Sidewinder in Ancient Greece, so no sense letting that spare ammo go to waste.

That's all I had to say about this. I intend to play more Daikatana soon, probably tomorrow. You might have a hard time justifying this game right now, but if it's a GOG gem promo, a weekend deal, or a holiday sale, and you're reading this post, I say consider giving it a shot. For $3 or less, you could do a lot worse.

I bought the game. Like it so far. I think without considering all the hype train, it wasn't bad at all. Maybe pale in comparison with several FPS from same era, but that's no longer relevant for me. I buy and play video game just for the pure entertainment not to compare it and justify the price with some other game.

Well, that's a wrap. I just finished the final episode, Episode 4, and it was a lot of fun. A fantastic set of weapons and some of the best levels in the game help make the finale one hell of a ride. I hope you've all enjoyed. Thank you very much for watching!

The sidekicks can be real handful when they're not getting in your way. Saved my skin couple of time during intense firefight.