{"id":6922,"date":"2022-05-28T17:25:05","date_gmt":"2022-05-29T00:25:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/?p=6922"},"modified":"2022-05-28T17:25:05","modified_gmt":"2022-05-29T00:25:05","slug":"daikatana-superfly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/archives\/6922","title":{"rendered":"Daikatana: Superfly"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Another couple of levels in. I&#8217;ve hit the episode&#8217;s major plot revelation: that the world-dominating Mishima Corporation is using their prisons as a source of meat for their fast-food restaurants, in a process you get to witness over the course of multiple rooms of conveyor belts and automated butchering machines. <span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_6922_1('footnote_plugin_reference_6922_1_1');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_6922_1('footnote_plugin_reference_6922_1_1');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_6922_1_1\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">1<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_6922_1_1\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">There is a real Mishima Foods, Inc. They manufacture various Asian sauces and soup mixes sold in grocery stores. I wonder if they reacted to this?<\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_6922_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_6922_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top right', relative: true, offset: [10, 10], });<\/script> And as juvenile-gross as it is &#8212; or attempts to be, anyway, as there&#8217;s only so much you can do in this engine &#8212; I have to admit that it&#8217;s more integration of plot and gameplay than I was expecting. Heck, it&#8217;s more <em>plot<\/em> than <em>Doom<\/em> or <em>Quake<\/em> ever had.<\/p>\n<p>Probably in part because the in-game models don&#8217;t make it sufficiently clear what the machines are doing, the game provides some running commentary from the player&#8217;s sidekick, a large black man named Superfly Johnson. (He also sometimes spontaneously says things like &#8220;Suck it down!&#8221;, which is a little embarrassing.) I rescued him from the prison&#8217;s torture rooms a couple of levels ago and he&#8217;s been tagging along ever since &#8212; the game doesn&#8217;t let you leave him behind. Mr. Johnson helps you out in fights, and, while he doesn&#8217;t always act in the ways I wish, sometimes getting in the way of my shots or whatever, it&#8217;s well within the range of behavior you&#8217;d expect from a human teammate. I was expecting a lot worse. Back in the day, the NPC behavior was often cited as the worst, jankiest part of the game. He&#8217;s supposed to be always getting stuck on level geometry and firing rockets at my back and so forth. What happened?<\/p>\n<p>What happened is that I installed the latest patch. And to be clear, Patch 1.3 is an unofficial patch, created by fans of the game rather than by its creators or publisher. I installed it mainly because I wanted to play in widescreen, but &#8220;updated and greatly improved AI paths and nodes&#8221; is part of the package. And that raises a question: Should I be playing the best version of this game? If I&#8217;m playing it mainly to see what everyone found so disappointing, shouldn&#8217;t I be experiencing it at its worst?<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t think so. Any flaw that can be fixed in a fan patch is a superficial flaw, not worth commenting on. I&#8217;d be more concerned if it made major changes to content &#8212; but even there, I willingly installed a patch that added some encounters to <a href=\"\/stack\/archives\/tag\/temple-of-elemental-evil\"><em>Temple of Elemental Evil<\/em><\/a>. And anyway, I think for now I&#8217;ll trust the game&#8217;s fans to tell me what is and isn&#8217;t true to the spirit of the thing. They approve of this patch &#8212; they <em>made<\/em> it. I should trust it too.<\/p>\n<div class=\"speaker-mute footnotes_reference_container\"> <div class=\"footnote_container_prepare\"><p><span role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" class=\"footnote_reference_container_label pointer\" onclick=\"footnote_expand_collapse_reference_container_6922_1();\">&#x202F;<\/span><span role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" class=\"footnote_reference_container_collapse_button\" style=\"display: none;\" onclick=\"footnote_expand_collapse_reference_container_6922_1();\">[<a id=\"footnote_reference_container_collapse_button_6922_1\">+<\/a>]<\/span><\/p><\/div> <div id=\"footnote_references_container_6922_1\" style=\"\"><table class=\"footnotes_table footnote-reference-container\"><caption class=\"accessibility\">References<\/caption> <tbody> \r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_6922_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_6922_1_1');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_6922_1_1\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>1<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">There is a real Mishima Foods, Inc. They manufacture various Asian sauces and soup mixes sold in grocery stores. I wonder if they reacted to this?<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n <\/tbody> <\/table> <\/div><\/div><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> function footnote_expand_reference_container_6922_1() { jQuery('#footnote_references_container_6922_1').show(); jQuery('#footnote_reference_container_collapse_button_6922_1').text('\u2212'); } function footnote_collapse_reference_container_6922_1() { jQuery('#footnote_references_container_6922_1').hide(); jQuery('#footnote_reference_container_collapse_button_6922_1').text('+'); } function footnote_expand_collapse_reference_container_6922_1() { if (jQuery('#footnote_references_container_6922_1').is(':hidden')) { footnote_expand_reference_container_6922_1(); } else { footnote_collapse_reference_container_6922_1(); } } function footnote_moveToReference_6922_1(p_str_TargetID) { footnote_expand_reference_container_6922_1(); var l_obj_Target = jQuery('#' + p_str_TargetID); if (l_obj_Target.length) { jQuery( 'html, body' ).delay( 0 ); jQuery('html, body').animate({ scrollTop: l_obj_Target.offset().top - window.innerHeight * 0.2 }, 380); } } function footnote_moveToAnchor_6922_1(p_str_TargetID) { footnote_expand_reference_container_6922_1(); var l_obj_Target = jQuery('#' + p_str_TargetID); if (l_obj_Target.length) { jQuery( 'html, body' ).delay( 0 ); jQuery('html, body').animate({ scrollTop: l_obj_Target.offset().top - window.innerHeight * 0.2 }, 380); } }<\/script>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Another couple of levels in. I&#8217;ve hit the episode&#8217;s major plot revelation: that the world-dominating Mishima Corporation is using their prisons as a source of meat for their fast-food restaurants, in a process you get to witness over the course of multiple rooms of conveyor belts and automated butchering machines. 1There is a real Mishima [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[716],"class_list":["post-6922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-daikatana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6922"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6923,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6922\/revisions\/6923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}