Daikatana

You are Hiro Miyamoto, humble Sword Master and teacher in the futuristic world of Japan. Things are not what they seem, as a visit from a mysterious man soon unveils. Back in Feudal Japan, a tyrannical Shogun known as Osaka Mishima fought a desperate battle against his nemesis, Inshiro Ebihara. Desperate to defeat his enemy, Osaka called upon world-renowned sword smith Usagi Miyamoto to create the ultimate weapon to defeat the Ebiharas. What resulted was the powerful and magical Daikatana. Through the powers of the Daikatana, Usagi was able to foresee the horror that would result if Osaka ever wielded the sword. To avoid this, he gave the Daikatana to Osaka's nemesis. After a violent battle atop a volcano, Ebihara triumphed over the evil Mishima. Still fearing the power of the Daikatana, Usagi cast it down into the volcano.
Flash forward to the future.
A now wealthy man, Toshiro Ebihara funds an expedition to recover the Daikatana. As soon as the artifact is found, Osaka’s descendant Kage Mishima learns of the discovery and steals the sword. With the sword’s time-altering powers, Kage goes back to the year 2030 to take the cure for a virus that has been killing the world, and claims it as his own creation. With the wealth from this cure, and absolute control over who receives it, Kage becomes a rich and powerful man and, once again, the Mishimas reign over Japan.
Back to the future again -- Toshiro Ebihara is the only one aware of the time change, and begins training his daughter, Mikiko Ebihara, on how to wield the Daikatana. While on a mission to recover the Daikatana from Kage, Mikiko is kidnapped. Desperate to find his daughter and reclaim the Daikatana, Toshiro calls upon you, descendant of the Daikatana's creator, to save his daughter, and the world.

It's a lot more background than most games have, especially for an FPS. Its only recent rival would have to be the intricate background of Homeworld. Unfortunately, it's a somewhat strained story, and contains just enough cheese factor to become somewhat unbelievable. Do not fear, however, because the story begins to mean almost nothing as the game goes along. The only thing that remains from the history of the Daikatana is that Kage controls it, and you and your soon-found companions don't. The story has a lot of questionable time-hopping that Quantum Leap fans may have some problems believing; however, if you're a fan of the show Sliders, it should all make sense.

Daikatana introduces an RPG-ish feature to FPS games with its character skill system. After killing a certain number of enemies, you are given the option to increase your skill in one of five abilities: Power (the damage your weapons deliver), Attack (your rate of fire), Speed, Acro (the height of your jump), and Vitality (your maximum health limit). While character abilities are modified in games like System Shock, this is a new feature for pure action FPS’s. Just as with any RPG, your ability levels can affect how easily you kill your opponents, and how long you live.

The game itself runs just like any other FPS. You get weapons, solve physical puzzles, and you beat levels...Daikatana offers nothing new in this area. It's classic Quake gameplay, where you have to flip switches, or combinations of switches, to get doors to open so you can advance. Along the way, you meet lots of bad guys, who are intent on stopping you from advancing. If you combine all the time periods that you go through together, there's a wide variety of enemies to face; however, when looking at a single time period, the variety of enemies is very slim and disappointing. To make it worse, each time period has at least one type of enemy that heavily populates the levels and is completely annoying, yet really poses little threat. In the "present", you face mechanical frogs and dragon flies, while in ancient Greece you must deal with baby spiders, and in the Dark Ages you have to deal with bats and rats...rats seem to be somewhat timeless, as you face them again in 2030 San Francisco. These enemies look and sound annoying, along the lines of a yipping Chihuahua.

With multiple time levels, there are also a large variety of weapons. Unfortunately, just as with enemies, the variety is slim and, for the most part, unoriginal. Each time period has a small projectile weapon such as a GLOC or crossbow, as well as some very powerful projectile weapons such as the Novabeam, Ballista, or Eye of Zeus. Ancient Greece and the Dark Ages are the only time periods that show some originality in the weapons. In Greece you can use a razor-sharp frisbee known as the Discus of Daedalus. You can throw these discs an extremely long distance, and they will try to return to you even if you are moving around. Try? Yes, the discs can get stuck bouncing on obstacles that are between you and the disc. If you have maxed out your Attack ability and you manage to pick up 10 discs (10 is the most discs you can carry), you can toss out 10 discs in a few seconds, and shower an open area with boomeranging discs, killing just about anything in no time. The Dark Ages has a few of the most memorable weapons. As you go through the Dark Ages, you must fight three powerful wizards. Once each wizard is defeated, you get their magical staff. One is a fire staff, which fires large meteorites that break into smaller pieces on impact. Another is a staff that shoots balls of arcing electricity called wisps. The final is a very different weapon -- upon firing it, you put a hex on your victim (indicated by the black pentagram that appears boldly on the enemy's screen) and a demon bursts from the ground and kills the enemy. The downside is that although I have seen it fired without the person dying, I have yet to kill anyone with it and not have the demon turn on me afterwards -- this is mostly a last resort weapon. In 2030 and the "present", most weapons are pretty standard for FPS’s. The one that stands out, although I didn't really use it much, was the Keneticore, a gun that shoots Kinespheres. These look like little ice cubes, and freeze people on contact. Unfortunately, the ice cubes are very bouncy, and I quite often shot myself. While I didn't instantly die, I did suffer from hypothermia, losing a bit of health.

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Genre: Shooter Release Date: Available Developer: Ion Storm Publisher: Eidos Interactive ESRB: Mature System Requirements : P233 / 300 Mhz rec 32 MB RAM / 64 rec DX7 3D card / 16 MB rec DX7 compatible sound EAX or A3D rec 4x CD-ROM min / 8x rec 200 MB HD / 400 rec