Thus I find myself grasping for a way to begin this review of Daikatana.

Seriously, my mind is whirling, trying to grasp at what went wrong here. The relentless hype? The shoddy graphics? The bugs? The awful acting? The frustrating levels? The story, such as it is, is thus: The Daikatana is a magic sword forged by a man named Miyamoto for a man named Mishima to kill a man named Ebihara. Miyamoto sees Mishima is evil and decides to chuck the sword into a convenient volcano. Centuries later, a man named Mishima regains the sword, uses it to travel in time and steals a viral antidote from a man named Ebihara. This antidote allows for Mishima to become really, really rich.

Unfortunately, Central Casting rules mean Mishima is also as eeeevil as his ancestor. So the plucky female warrior of the Ebihara clan tries to retake the Daikatana and is captured. This prompts her father to seek out the last Miyamoto (named Hiro, a joke Neal Stephenson did better years ago in his novel "Snow Crash"). Hiro could care less, but the Ebihara dad is killed by ninjas, so he decides to risk life and limb on a moment’s notice.

Whatever. We’ve seen bad plot before in computer games. Complete with bad voice-acting, which is in full force during this opening. I mean really, we even get Mishima henchmen who confuse their l’s with their r’s while speaking English. Boy, that never stops being funny. If by "funny" you mean "clichéd and insulting."

Hey! We get to play the game now! Don’t get too excited. This is the ever-popular swamp level, complete with robotic mosquitoes, frogs and alligators. Yes, Mishima in his eeeevilness decided to guard his lair with bionic nuisances. Huh? What flavor of crack induced this bad dream?

Don’t worry. Mishima is also so eeeevil as to inexplicably run a restaurant chain that secretly uses people as the main ingredient. (Why? Didn’t the antidote make him really rich? Oh, right, he’s eeeevil.)

Anyhoo, the player as Hiro gets to run around and shoot bad guys and gather keys to move to the next level. Hey, that sounds an awful lot like Doom, John Romero’s last great success. But where Doom was good blastin’ fun, Daikatana is eeeevil.

First things first: The game uses save gems. Save gems, people. As in, you can’t save the game without collecting a little red blob. Remember how much we hate console concepts in PC games? Here’s the worst of them — and Daikatana isn’t even a port. We’ve heard excuses about it making the game more challenging. Hey, guys, that’s why save games are voluntary. We vets can choose not to save if we want a challenge. Don’t force the issue.

Anyway, most of us would be saving a lot anyway. That’s because the "sidekicks" — Superfly Johnson and Mikiko Ebihara — that so set Daikatana apart from the rest of the crowd are determined to kill poor Hiro. Seriously, they love to stand back and blast at enemies, even when our hero is going toe-to-toe. I can’t say how many times I had to retreat after taking damage from their fire. Or how many times I had to restart when one of the mates killed me. And hey, was their AI programmed by aardvarks or what? I wished for a good Barney or two at times instead of these Keystone Kops.

Oh, right, Daikatana is also supposed to be part role-playing game. Hiro gets experience for kills, which can be funneled into one of several stats that affect hit points or attack damage or whatever. Unless the player uses the Daikatana, in which case it powers up and becomes a lightsaber. Memo to Ion Storm: Please see System Shock 2 for an excellent RPG shooter.

Hiro does eventually regain the Daikatana and must travel through time to undo some nastiness Mishima has created (again — it’s Because Mishima Is Eeeevil). Why not just go back and prevent his birth? Or wipe out his family line? These are the tricky questions that go with time travel, and they don’t usually get answered.

So, will Daikatana make money? I think so. But I blame it on the Battlefield Earth syndrome — people will shell out bucks because everyone keeps talking about how spectacularly bad it is. For those of you who can’t resist, please shop around first. I’ve seen prices as low as $30; if you can do even better, my hat’s off.