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Good, bad and often quite ugly

» Pros

» Cons

1. General dated look with blocky models, gaudy textures, ugly particle FX
2. Sidekicks with nil AI, lame bosses with nil AI
3. Obvious lack of necessary polish
4. Daikatana weapon sucks horribly

» Review

Romero's magnum opus came out after a highly publicized troubled history and bears all the marks of it. Its not the worst game ever made, but has sufficient measures of inherent frustration and lack of professional finish to often give that impression.
The game starts out on a totally wrong note with its first Episode (Japan) coming off as a mish-mash of blocky graphics, amateurish level design, spam-happy weapons, god-awful sound...the works. Most gamers are (justifiably) turned off by this to dismiss the game entirely.
Things perk up with the Greek Episode where the game actually begins to look pretty good within its limitations and plays out in a reasonably fun way. The monsters are nice in a campy way (although there's too much of a reliance on rats and spiders) and the weapons are quite cool, except for the Daikatana.
Episode 3 which is my personal fav, is fun as well especially without the sidekicks and some of the setpieces are reminiscent of Romero's work in Quake.
Episode 4 (San Francisco) brings back the ugliness and boredom of the first Episode leading to an unspectacular climax.

The game despite its lengthy development schedule has a distrurbing lack of polish in the retail release and even post-patch is not without its share of problems.The graphics are dated with blocky geometry, jerky animations and soem horribly gaudy colored lighting and particle FX. The level design is rather uneven and often has an amateurish quality to it.
But it does have its fun parts and is certainly not the worst bargain urchase you can make.