For my third entry in my Old Humble Playthrough blog series I am taking a short break from Hitman to discuss one of the absolute worst games I have ever played. I first played Daikatana around 2000 or so. It was relatively new at the time, but still could be found in bargain bins for under $5. I didn't make it past the first level. It was that bad. So with its inclusion in the Humble Square Enix Bundle I thought I would give it a second chance. I really tried to get through that first level. But every aspect of the game was just so downright unenjoyable that once more I simply gave up.

Before you even get to play you are subjected to a lengthy cutscene that sets up the story. It involves some sort of time travel mumbo jumbo that makes about as little sense as you would expect from a late 90's shooter. Except it takes itself far too seriously. Having a cutscene that seemed to last at least five minutes if not longer and contained no action whatsoever as the opening to your game is just poor design. Once you finally get to play the damn game you find that it might have been better if they stuck with the cutscenes. For one the actual mouse movement just seems off. Maybe this has to do with the game having been tuned for mice made 15 years ago. But no matter how I tuned the speed or sensitivity I just couldn't get it to feel right. I turned off mouse smoothing. I turned on mouse smoothing. Nothing seemed to work. It just felt off. But as I said, that could have less to do with the game and more to do with it being designed for obsolete mouse hardware. But the problems didn't stop there. You start out using some pea shooter ion gun that neither looks nor feels especially powerful. You use it to shoot dragon flies and frogs. It's some of the most mundane combat I can imagine. Soon you are being killed by what seem to be invincible turrets. The game meanwhile has given you no objectives nor any clue what your are supposed to be doing beyond the grand scope of killing some dude who has a really powerful sword.

I might have been able to at least reach the second level if the save system didn't require you to collect crystals for each time you want to save. Sorry, this isn't a survival horror game. This is a first person shooter. Let me save whenever I want or at the very least put checkpoints after every battle. So after having to restart at the beginning of the level for the dozenth time after being randomly killed by something I didn't even see (I honestly don't know what killed me. The game simply said "You failed at life - Game Over" while I was just walking forward) I called it quits. Suffice to say that Daikatana absolutely deserves its place on the various worst games of all time lists. It's not fun. It insults you when you fail to avoid its unavoidable traps. The starting weapon is a weak single shot laster that you use to kill bugs. I really tried my best to at least make it to the second level of this game. But without the prospect of a substantially better experience to drive me forward I decided it just wasn't worth it. If I were you I would avoid this turd of a game at any cost.