Is Doom 2 Truly As Badly Designed As They Say? (Or The Nonsensical Ramblings of DSC)

I'll be honest, I really shouldn't be taking this shit so seriously enough to make a whole post about it, but I have nothing better to do anyways, and trying to ignore it just takes too much willpower for me. I'm pretty much the "someone was stupid on the internet" guy from that xkcd comic. Still, I'm a giant Doom nerd, and if nerds are good at one thing that is to make giant needless rants about their favorite subject.

I was browsing Doom videos on YT, and this one caught my attention:

I clicked on it and originally I intended to watch it, but I saw it was 40+ minutes long and I wasn't in the mood to watch a long video, so I just did something I'm very frequently guilty of doing thanks to my short attention span, and went to check the comments first. Many of them made fun of the channel for the strange way he pronounced words, and one person even said they found their analysis pretty shallow and underwhelming, which further made me have less and less interest on the video itself. So, I just kept reading the comments, curious about what the average gamer outside the community had to say about Doom 2. And I found some interesting stuff:

Those ones in particular hit close to me because one of my very first posts on DW was me asking if Requiem had aged well and was worth playing nowadays, and Linguica himself came in saying pretty much the same thing.

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/post/2030426

It just goes to show, it's easy to point at something and say "Ah, you're so trash nowadays!" ignoring the entire context of when it was first released. When I see some people nowadays review old wads it frequently comes across as more of a glorified CinemaSins video rather than an attempt to actually make some kind of insightful analysis. Without input from those who experienced it first-hand it just leads to skewed conclusions. Unfortunately, I believe that's what kind of happens with some of the other comments.

Like... What? Doom 2 has more maps than 1, most of them are much bigger and complex, several new enemies, a new weapon... All of this shit in only 10 months! But sure, lets call it a "cash grab" because it didn't have have more textures and they couldn't recreate a full scale alien invasion in the very limited Doom engine. It's unrelated to the subject at hand, but I personally despise this whole "I didn't like thing, therefore it's a cash-grab!" mentality. It's so lazy and devoid of any real meaning. Thankfully, at least some of the critics had actual substance behind their claims:

Still, I can't really say I agree. They talk as if Doom 1 has Sunder level of detailing, when in reality many of the levels from Episode 3 and specially Episode 2 arguably have far more haphazard, incoherent and nonsensical texturing than anything in Doom 2 excluding perhaps Nirvana. And the whole "bloated" and "directionless" thing... It just screams to me "Doom 2 levels have careful exploration of the level and getting familiar with the layout as a central part of its progression, and that is bad because I'm too lazy to do any of it and don't want to use my brain." I really like the sandbox and non-linear nature of a lot of these levels, and to me it is what sets Doom apart as a whole from many other games. If I just wanted to go in a straight line while shooting at bad guys I would just play something like COD. And those complaints do feel like they came from someone familiar mostly with COD-like stuff, who saw the "rip and tear through everything!" attitude from nu-Doom and somehow assumed the old games would also just be a non-stop shooting gallery. Something like that might be more palatable and digestible to the masses, but personally I like levels to take risks and go as wild as they can with their creativity. That's the essence of Doom to me and what sets it apart from everything else. There's a parallel I would like to draw between this and the likes of, say, prog-rock. Prog-rock songs are not concise and straight-forward, and that puts many people off. Listening to those pieces for the first time they might sound unpleasant. But, if you were to think more critically about what you listen to and made an effort to engage with the material, you could soon find yourself loving this stuff and getting far more satisfaction from it than your regular more commercial and conventional songs. I find it players all too often just can't have a little more patience.

I know I'm not the only one who loves this kind of stuff, hell, just look at that new Sandy inspired mapset by GermanPeter. There are others who also love Doom 2, but when I look at the internet as a whole I've found the majority vastly prefers Doom 1, and that has always made me feel an outlier. This disconnect manages to make me feel uncomfortable very frequently. I know I can't be harsh on people who are more unfamiliar to Doom, but again, this all ties with what I talked about taking context into consideration, knowing that for new players at the time the new expanded scope was absolutely mind-blowing. I'm interested in the input from a more Doom-focused place, see what more knowledgeable players than me have to say on the matter. Is there any truth to what I say, or I'm the one who's at fault from expecting so much from the players and that it's the game's job to keep them entertained at all times?

Oh it'll be fine when some big YouTuber says that DOOM II was good actually; then everyone will be saying it.

(Also you make some good points, and in general I agree with them; DOOM II was of its time, and very good for that)

I'm fighting desperately the urge to abuse my old powers and fuse this into the ancient, morbidly obese "Doom 1 or Doom 2?" thread....

Really though, I agree with most of this. E2 and E3 are absolutely no better looking nor more thematically consistent than anything in Doom 2. Tricks and Traps, Barrels O' Fun, IoS etc are all far more challenging than anything offered by Doom 1, and so on and so forth, all the Doom 2 apologia I've posted here countless times before!

Doom 1 has better/moodier music and the low monster count adds an eerieness that Doom 2 largely lacks. (Just had to get my over-stated "but where is Doom 1 better?" remark in to complete the picture!!)

Doom 2's level design quality I think can be kinda compared to that of TNT's

When's good it's really good and when it's bad it's really bad, except Doom 2's levels are not as extreme in quality difference as TNT's levels are 

As someone who actually played Doom 1 second, I prefer it to Doom 2, but this "doom 2 is garbage" thing is a weird youtube meme whose proliferation is a total enigma to me

I used to prefer the first Doom over Doom 2 for a long time, mainly for its atmosphere and the episodic structure of the game (episode 2 being my particular favourite out of the bunch). While that still holds a special place in my heart, Doom 2 has much more to offer, especially in its combat, and there are plenty of decent map designs. Granted, none of them are perfect, and they do seem a little stale in comparison to recent community offerings, but to be fair, they are the inspiration for said projects.

At the end of the day, if standard Doom 2 isn't one's cup of tea, there are thousands of megawads out there to play in its place.

I played both games for the first time in 2014 (I was 24) so I don't have any nostalgia for either. I just remember thinking Doom 2 was a lot harder and more confusing, and they're are both more or less equally ugly

14 minutes ago, Gifty said:

As someone who actually played Doom 1 second, I prefer it to Doom 2, but this "doom 2 is garbage" thing is a weird youtube meme whose proliferation is a total enigma to me

Tbh, "Doom 2 is worse than Doom 1" seemed to be the common take among non-modders even in the days before YT had such a big rollover impact on the Doom community - though it feels like it's become a very exaggerated version of that opinion now.

It's not bad. Dead Simple rules.

Its very difficult for me to say Doom 2 isn't ass. Same with Doom 1 at this point with stuff like Base Ganymede and other good replacements for its campaign. Too be fair its just the fate of 30 plus years of knowledge in a passionate community of creators. If i went back and played only Doom 1/2 when they came out id probably be singing their praises because i didn't know what could be so it is all relative. As for now they just offer almost no bite unless played on nightmare. Rooms feel like they often just threw monsters all over the place outside of a few key fights with no real rhythm or reason to what will synergize with what. There are good set piece like structures/moments still. If i had to pick some Doom 2 maps i enjoy but still wouldn't bring me back to the base game it'd be maps 16/28/29. 

I'm gonna go on a tangent here about how much I hate the terms "aged well" or "didn't age well". The game didn't age, it's the same as it was the day it came out. What aged was you and your expectations of it. It is obvious that Doom and Doom II will not have the best monster placement ever, or be the most spectacular looking thing of all time when it was developed in a time where there was no Ultimate Doom Builder, 3D View mode and 4GB of Ram available for everyone as a baseline. A lot of the people who criticize it or "try to replicate the flaws of the time" do it in a mocking way and don't understand, or worse, pretend not to understand that they are coming from an entirely different place that is miles ahead. It's funny to say "Sandy Petersen's maps are ugly and broken haha" from this perspective while ignoring the circumstances around the time he had to create maps for both games. I think the only people I hate the most than those who do not understand this point of view, are those who are completely aware of it and still choose to mock those levels that we can see as bad now. I guarantee they could never build anything anywhere near in terms of quality under the same circumstances.

33 minutes ago, JeffAri said:

Doom 2's level design quality I think can be kinda compared to that of TNT's

No, it's the other way around

I mean.....from a design standpoint Doom 2 is just weaker than Doom 1. Barring maybe a few maps, the latter doesn't really have anything as bad as Nirvana or The Factory and other such maps. I think that because Sandy Petersen had to create more maps from scratch, it resulted in many with half-formed concepts which are difficult to figure out the original intentions of. 

But of course Doom 2 just plays better when the design doesn't drag things down. It's just that it's easy to say 'Doom 2 sucks' when so many of the maps in Doom 2 either strike of blandness or bear zero sense of reality to any actual cities and such. There's annoyances sure, but none that really validate the idea which Doom 2 sucks

Just now, Maximum Matt said:

No, it's the other way around

well, yeah, obviously, but still my point still stands that when Doom 2 levels are good they're really good and when they're bad they're really bad

It's still incredibly influential, though, that's the main takeaway

36 minutes ago, Gifty said:

As someone who actually played Doom 1 second, I prefer it to Doom 2, but this "doom 2 is garbage" thing is a weird youtube meme whose proliferation is a total enigma to me

Same here ^ ~ and it was years between my first playing Doom 2 and then original Doom!

32 minutes ago, rouge_means_red said:

I played both games for the first time in 2014 (I was 24) so I don't have any nostalgia for either. I just remember thinking Doom 2 was a lot harder and more confusing, and they're are both more or less equally ugly

Agreed! Doom is ug-ly! But then again, that was kindof a design point...

6 minutes ago, DoomGappy said:

a time where there was no Ultimate Doom Builder, 3D View mode and 4GB of Ram available for everyone ...

Thanks for taking me back to my damn AMD 386dx40 with only one megabyte of RAM...

fargin' 30-pin SIMM modules...

As a kid I started with Doom 2 and Duke 3d, and I had a low opinion of Doom 2's levels compared to Duke 3d because of how abstract they were, and mostly only bothered with it for the custom maps and mods. I later played the first episode of Doom 1 and it felt like a huge step up from Doom 2 because the levels kind of looked like places with some kind of purpose, and the intermission graphics helped portray the idea that you were at actual identifiable locations, accomplishing something at them, and traveling between them. Then I played the later episodes of Doom 1 and could not have been more let down as they were much more abstract and more cramped. I remember finding it hilarious to think about how when people bought Doom after playing the shareware release, the first new map they would encounter was E2M1, which I felt so let down by. I remember double-checking I didn't accidentally launch some d-zone map lmao.

54 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

Tbh, "Doom 2 is worse than Doom 1" seemed to be the common take among non-modders even in the days before YT had such a big rollover impact on the Doom community - though it feels like it's become a very exaggerated version of that opinion now.

"Doom 1 has better levels and atmosphere" is definitely not a new take, just seems like there's an almost conspiracy-esque "why is no one TALKING about the fact that Doom 2 is GARBAGE!" wave that's more recent.

I think the "wow" factor of DOOM 1 (regardless of playing shareware or registered version) was so intense that it etched such a vivid and coveted memory into our brains. DOOM 2, while still really cool for its time just wasn't the first DOOM. While it (doom 2) may also have been the first DOOM that many played, there was still just enough folks of at the time who played DOOM 1 prior to where DOOM 2 just felt like pretty obligatory sequel... and aside from new monsters, music items and maps just didn't bring a whole lot new to the table compared to the first. Certainly not the drastic technological leap from Wolf3D to DOOM 1.

But thats kind of how it goes... the first is typically going to be the fondest memory while everything that follows is a nice afterthought (or worse case, forgettable).

It's hard for me to say from a neutral perspective as I was part of the wolf3d-to-DOOM players of that time, but something about DOOM 1 just calls to me more so than DOOM 2 can. I can't really explain it. Another piece of media from that same era would comparatively be the first Jurassic Park. There was so much "wow" as it was a huge leap for cinema history. While it's sequel, The Lost World, brought some new things in, it just never really stuck to me like the first flick. I didn't dislike it... but didn't hold it in the same regard. Could have also been (in both scenarios) that between the time of the first and the seconds release, felt like it set a standard that every other game or film was trying to mimic, and that it maybe started feeling like just another title in the pile.

As someone who came into Doom only recently, while this was definitely due partially to coming in with managed expectations, I believe that while a lot of Doom's levels blend together in my head as a jumble of basic bases, hell, and so on, Doom 2's levels have generally stuck with me a lot more, even the weirder and less well designed ones. Overall, I liked Doom II a lot more due to that I'd say, with levels such as Industrial Zone, Catacombs, Inmost Dens, Dead Simple, and Spirit World being especially memorable

I feel like people compare the original IWADs to newer maps far too often. Compared to masterpieces like what we have now, the main game is complete garbage. Hell, even visually and mechanically compared to TNT and Plutonia, their designs are pretty shit in comparison. People forget that ID software did NOT have access to the same kind of mapping programs we have now like Ultimate Doom Builder. They were creating code and map design on these ancient ass computers, and couldn't even visualize what the level looked like without taking ages to boot up the game. They didn't really have that much freedom to review maps like we do now, especially with the limited time they had before they released the game. But obviously, at the time, the game was absolutely amazing. I remember Markiplier mentioning in his DOOM 2016 gameplay videos (i think) where he said that the skybox in the first episode made the game feel so grounded. He said it felt like he was really IN the world he was playing in, despite how garbage the graphics are compared to what he was playing. If you took someone who never played DOOM, send them a screenshot of DOOM's e1m9 and Sunlust, they would say the Sunlust looks much better. The game is inferior to what we have now (especially the city levels), but they couldn't do too much with their crappy mapbuilding UI. They also didn't have as much feedback as what mappers now have, as people these days can just ask for some randos to playtest their maps and get genuinely valuable feedback that helps them improve as mapmakers, but they had none of that. Overall, I'm not gonna play the base game for fun, but I will never say that they're bad, they're just a bit outdated.

I used to fucking hate DOOM 2's guts but I've grown to like it in recent times, same goes for the original DOOM, which I hated episode 2 and 3 but I like a lot now. The only maps in DOOM/DOOM II that I consider certified stinkers are Downtown and Unholy cathedral but everyone except German Peter hates those maps. Hell other than downtown I love the city maps and exploring them. I used to believe the same things I thought about DOOM 2 with TNT even though I never played the full thing and was just regurgitating opinions from youtubers, but when I actually took the time to play all the way through TNT I loved it, the only maps that I didn't like were 22 and 25. I've definitely grown a more positive outlook on the official IWADS, when maps hit, they hit and when they whiff they whiff real hard, but thankfully these misses are few and far between and if you look past them I think the official IWADS have aged perfectly fine and still hold up own their own today.

As someone born in a year that starts with "two thousand" and who's first attempt with the game was on GZDoom during the 2020~2021 quarantine phase of the pandemic, my experience is simply that I found Doom II's design to be a touch harder to go back to than Doom I. The first was a much fresher experience in my mind when I initially played it, but the second in comparison, while noticeably different, did not feel nearly as distinct or wildly different enough to justify playing through 32 maps for. It was to the point where it started to feel like it dragged a bit on my generally shorter attention span.
 

1 hour ago, DoomGappy said:

I'm gonna go on a tangent here about how much I hate the terms "aged well" or "didn't age well". The game didn't age, it's the same as it was the day it came out. What aged was you and your expectations of it. It is obvious that Doom and Doom II will not have the best monster placement ever, or be the most spectacular looking thing of all time when it was developed in a time where there was no Ultimate Doom Builder, 3D View mode and 4GB of Ram available for everyone as a baseline.

I do think this take by Gappy is important here, "Doom II sucks" is also in part a matter of people's expectations going into it, and a matter of what id was trying to do in that time, by expanding upon the expectations that players had back then of the size, scale, complexity and etc etc of Doom I and likely also the "Doom clones" of the time. Today, this generally tends to be a comparison of Doom II to a vast array of other later and more refined experiences, after playing so many WADs through the years, and expectations changing because of them, that exacerbates the already noticeable disparity between Doom I and Doom II.
 

51 minutes ago, Gifty said:

"Doom 1 has better levels and atmosphere" is definitely not a new take, just seems like there's a hyperbolized "why is no one TALKING about the fact that Doom 2 is GARBAGE!" wave that's more recent.

And this ties into my thoughts on this as well, over time this feeling simply grows more emphasis when compared in a out of time or out of context scenario, like that of the current year instead of the release year or the years following the release.

(Also, tangentially, there will never be a day in my life where I don't quietly but profoundly hate on the fact that Doom II dumped the episode select menu since AFAIK the id fellows wanted to distinguish it from a shareware-model product, the human mind's natural inability of self restrained means a lot of people seem to take focus on the Doom II experience as a whole and also focus on the Doom I more so episodically, meaning that in some people's playthroughs, they do not take the hint the are supposed to take a similar post-episode-ending mental break once MAP11 and MAP20 are finished, giving themselves the time to process what they feel about it. It always takes me back reading up on reviews about WADs like Scythe II and Eviternity I, and certain reactions being that they are revolutionary for emphasizing that episodic aspect of it. All of that is to say it feels to me like a "butterfly effect" moment, where people wouldn't hate on Doom II as much, if only it focused a touch more on separating it's episodes it would most likely been better digested by many today. I guess it goes to show how some subtle design choices can have areal impact on a gaming experience. Hell, I even have a "doom2fix.wad" in my doom wad directory that merges, amongst other minor tweaks, an episodic selection for "The Space Station", "The City", "Hell" and "No Rest For The Living". But then again, hindsight _is_ 20/20.)

3 hours ago, DSC said:

call it a "cash grab" because it didn't have have more textures

 

I'm not a huge fan of the vanilla Doom 2 levels, but even I have to object to the idea that iD didn't add a bunch of new textures; Doom 2 has about 40% more textures and flats than the first game.

Doom 2 didn’t have to be better or break anymore ground than the first game did. It was the retail product, it would be more accessible than the first game was, and for many it was their first full Doom experience. People seem to forget that. Compare the total amount of WADs made for Doom vs Doom 2. I think Doom 2 succeeded in what it was aiming for.

19 minutes ago, wumbo said:

and couldn't even visualize what the level looked like without taking ages to boot up the game

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Reload_hack

(note: not necessarily hating on IWAD maps, just saying they didn't really have to wait for the whole game to reload on a 486 for every little change)

1 hour ago, LadyMistDragon said:

I mean.....from a design standpoint Doom 2 is just weaker than Doom 1. Barring maybe a few maps, the latter doesn't really have anything as bad as Nirvana or The Factory and other such maps.

I'll take Nirvana over anything in Inferno everyday of the week

I was born after doom II came out and didn't play it until probably a year or two ago, so I don't really have nostalgia goggles for either doom games. But I've actually come to a recent conclusion that I prefer doom II to doom I on replays, and come back to II far more often. The level designs are more memorable, difficult and experimental, longer and more fun to pick apart when going for all kills and secrets.

I will also take The Factory over Doom I E3 always.

My unpopular opinion with respect to Doom II, is that I actually kind of like how brown it is. The level design, though... well, I wasn't around to witness it brand new, is all I'll say...