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

[wumbo]

2 hours ago, xttl said:

 

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)

 

man i get corrected on everything :(

 

thank you though

[Mr. Freeze]

no

[Buckshot]

DOOM 2 always felt more commercial/retail/continuation, while DOOM 1 felt more underground/in-the-know/revolutionary.

 

Don't ask me to explain that... I can't really pinpoint why it feels like that. Maybe because it wasnt substantially different and was more publically available on shelves? Something quickly slapped together to hold over and focus on the next big thing (Quake)?

 

Not saying DOOM 2 isn't great.. because it is. But as groundbreaking, polished and inspiring as DOOM 1? Maybe not quite that.

 

Edited August 29 by Buckshot

[Milkeno]

15 minutes ago, Buckshot said:

slapped together

slapped together *and* milked

[Buckshot]

1 minute ago, Milkeno said:

slapped together *and* milked

 

 

Oh, there it is... D!Zone but with official endorsement.

[Buckshot]

I guess if I had to list in order of personal preference on which I'm most likely to play on a given day, as far as classic official releases go:

 

1. DOOM/ULTIMATE Doom

2. DOOM 64

3. Final DOOM (specifically TNT)

4. DOOM 2

 

Edited August 29 by Buckshot

[AdministrationCenter21]

24 minutes ago, Buckshot said:

 

 

Oh, there it is... D!Zone but with official endorsement.

Excuse me what?

[AdministrationCenter21]

16 minutes ago, Buckshot said:

I guess if I had to list in order of personal preference on which I'm most likely to play on a given day, as far as classic official releases go:

 

1. DOOM/ULTIMATE Doom

2. DOOM 64

3. Final DOOM (specifically TNT)

4. DOOM 2

 

Ever played PSX Doom?

[Gunner Doom]

I have a lot more nostalgia for Doom II than Doom 1 so my opinion is pretty biased, but I think a lot of people here are forgetting how much of an impact there was with the new monsters in D2. Sure I'd mostly agree with people saying the maps and atmosphere overall are better in D1 than 2, but the gameplay was expanded a lot with the super shotgun (a good mid-high power addition to the arsenal) and most of the new monsters.

 

Not counting the HK and arguably the arachnotron, the new monsters didn't feel like palette swaps or simple melee/ranged enemies, they added twists, along with their unique designs, made them classic/memorable: Mancubus is the slow tanky mob w/ missile spam, Pain Elemental has you focusing either on itself or the lost souls, Revenant's homing makes you think twice about just sidestepping missiles, Archvile's resurrect and LOS attack etc. I feel like the new elements were utilized decently in the IWAD.

 

Edit: I should've probably read the damn thread title

Edited August 29 by Gunner Doom : reading comprehension

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

My blessing/curse is having played duke3d first in the late 90s. That just made Doom feel like it belongs to a museum. And now, trying to take the historical context into account, I have a very hard time with the two/three years' gap. 

My deep appreciation for Doom grew only relatively recently when I started mapping for it. That made me see the depth and mechanical beauty of the monsters, and weapons. Even the smallest things like pushback on enemies if you hit them hard or pain chance. That's something developers today forget about/ignore, to a great detriment, imo. The whole bestiary is great. Well telegraphed attacks, you clearly see who's who even with low resolution and in darkness. You hear a sound and you know who it is. It's incredible how many of these things they just nailed. 

Doom has massive strengths, and doom 2 strengthens them further. All the new things in doom 2 are amazing improvements. 

It aged like fine wine. The level design is the only exception, I would say. The sandbox is incredibly solid, even compared to so many games made today. I know this will ruffle feathers but if I wanted to share the joy of Doom with somebody, I wouldn't let them play the iwads. I appreciate the hard work that went into making them but levels are the one thing I don't mind leaving behind in favour of what the community made to let the sandbox really shine. 

[Milkeno]

1 hour ago, Buckshot said:

Oh, there it is... D!Zone but with official endorsement.

Early Id had a weird history of throwing commissioned community maps together and just shipping them to milk doom as much as possible, like in thy flesh consumed and final doom, Those are higher quality than the master levels which are also community made but it seems sorta exploitative for a company to collaborate with community members since the power dynamic is skewed in the creative relationship, it allows them to get away with making tnt paid when it was promised to be free, but that's enough id bashing for now I suppose... .. .

[Amaruq Wulfe]

6 hours ago, Macil said:

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.

 

I like how Romero's absolute abstraction came off as "real places" while Tom Hall's actual attempts at real places looked like abstractions.

[yakfak]

i loved doom 2 then i love doom 2 now

when people act like its weirdness in architecture, progression, combat is some sort of antiquated thing to be moved past i find it slightly depressing? i personally need games to retain some measure of uncanniness and jank and don't want it all streamlined away. and i guess my taste in doom maps now extends from that

[Deadwing]

Dunno, I greatly enjoyed the city levels when I played it in the 90's, so it's hard to judge them "imparcially".

I do definetely get the criticism of them being hard to navigate, but I don't have any problem with this (again my pov is biased though).

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

8 hours ago, Bridgeburner56 said:

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

Keep lying to yourself, e3m1 is the most epic entrance to Hell imaginable. You start out looking at a swollen infected anus, it's insane. You touch it, and you're in this... this landscape after an elevator takes you up. It's so detailed, it's nuts. It's really insane the amount of detail these guys used to put into video games back then, wow. It's like, wow, they put an elevator in Hell? That's fucking crazy. It's like totally flat and the floor is a brain. There are even some trees all around the place, it's crazy. You get to fight this red round monster thing and you can see it also has two anuses. Nasty stuff, but hey it's a piece of art, and it's showing you something nasty. They don't make games like that anymore, it's fucking insane. Nirvana is just shit. Now Kurt never beat his wife or anything but to me he's just as overrated as John Lennon.

[CravenCoyote]

Doom 1 had better atmosphere, music and (mostly) better maps plus the intermission screen which was just so neat to see where you'd been and where you're going.

Doom 2 had the better bestiary and weapon selection.

 

I like both of them and it's clear that Doom 2 would make a better base for modding, but Doom 2 felt just like an expansion pack for Doom 1. And I guess that's kind of what it was. Doom 1 gave a better first impression than Doom 2.

[Rykzeon]

38 minutes ago, CravenCoyote said:

I like both of them and it's clear that Doom 2 would make a better base for modding, but Doom 2 felt just like an expansion pack for Doom 1. And I guess that's kind of what it was. Doom 1 gave a better first impression than Doom 2.

Agreed. Doom 2 is more like add-on for Doom 1 with intention to satisfy demand of more FPS action game while waiting Quake finished.

[jazzmaster9]

1 hour ago, TheMagicMushroomMan said:

e3m1 is the most epic entrance to Hell imaginable. 

I could never take that Flat facade seriously even when i first played it and even more now as a mapper.

It may arguably be better than Nirvana, considering its short so you don't have to expose yourself to it for that long, but man late E2 and Early E3 is just the weakest point of Doom 1 IMO. I would take the Chasm over the Warrens or Pandemonium.
Mt. Erebus and Limbo saves it a bit tho.

 

1 hour ago, TheMagicMushroomMan said:

Keep lying to yourself

imagine having different opinions on the internet in 2024

Edited August 29 by jazzmaster9

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

1 hour ago, jazzmaster9 said:

I could never take that Flat facade seriously

Well yeah. That would almost be as bad as taking shitposts seriously or something.

[My Celium]

I always flip flop on whether or not Doom 2 was deliberately designed to be so good or was it lightning-in-a-bottle luck. The enemies and weapons make me think the former is true, but whenever I play the original levels for 2 it makes me really think it was the latter.

[aRottenKomquat]

Doom 2's level design and visual themes weren't nearly as coherent as Doom 1's, and personally I find quite a few of Doom 2's maps to be simply boring. Maybe I overplayed them as a kid.

 

Moreso, I think the perceived reduction in quality moving from Doom 1 to Doom 2 was due to John Romero's absence. He was heavily involved with managing Doom 1's development, but during Doom 2 he was mostly busy helping id partners like Raven and working on business stuff instead of game development, and the Doom 2 team members were a lot more independent with much less oversight as a result.

[Buckshot]

6 hours ago, Milkeno said:

Early Id had a weird history of throwing commissioned community maps together and just shipping them to milk doom as much as possible, like in thy flesh consumed and final doom, Those are higher quality than the master levels which are also community made but it seems sorta exploitative for a company to collaborate with community members since the power dynamic is skewed in the creative relationship, it allows them to get away with making tnt paid when it was promised to be free, but that's enough id bashing for now I suppose... .. .

 

I'm pretty sure that Episode 4, Thy Flesh Consumed, was developed in-house at id software. I think it was Romero, Willits, and the McGee primarily. I know that at that point, Willits had recently joined as his work with community maps that were included in Master Levels landed him a job there full-time. I don't think Thy Flesh Consumed had any community maps itself.

[magicsofa]

59 minutes ago, My Celium said:

was it lightning-in-a-bottle luck.

 

You're combining euphemisms. Lightning in a bottle means "so awesome it can't be contained." Luck means something like "its bad but they made money anyway." Or "they were crap developers but managed to make a great product."

So, lightning in a bottle? Definitely. Luck? I don't think so at all.

[Amaruq Wulfe]

2 hours ago, jazzmaster9 said:

I could never take that Flat facade seriously even when i first played it and even more now as a mapper.

It may arguably be better than Nirvana, considering its short so you don't have to expose yourself to it for that long, but man late E2 and Early E3 is just the weakest point of Doom 1 IMO. I would take the Chasm over the Warrens or Pandemonium.
Mt. Erebus and Limbo saves it a bit tho.

 

imagine having different opinions on the internet in 2024

 

[Amaruq Wulfe]

13 minutes ago, Buckshot said:

I don't think Thy Flesh Consumed had any community maps itself.

 

The Hell Followed is literally just a rehash of Dr. Sleep's Chiron. 

[Agent Strange]

I do not care for DOOM II's middle third. That's all I'll say.

[MistycSpider]

I like to describe doom 2 as an irregular game, in a simple explanation, Doom 1 is rounded experience, every aspect is great overall A/B tier, Doom 2 otoh has some fucking amazing designs/levels that hit S tier, but also has some others that aren't as good having a C/D tier, I don't know if I explained it, but I am kind of on a rush, lmao

[Buckshot]

43 minutes ago, Amaruq Wulfe said:

 

The Hell Followed is literally just a rehash of Dr. Sleep's Chiron. 

 

Believe they contracted him specifically for the redesigned Chiron map. Also think they extended a full-time offer of employment (as they had done with Willits) but unsure what the outcome was.

 

Can clearly see the rest of the id folks followed the Dante / Acheron theme with their respective Flesh Consumed maps. 

Edited August 29 by Buckshot

[jmac]

53 minutes ago, magicsofa said:

 

You're combining euphemisms. Lightning in a bottle means "so awesome it can't be contained."

That is not what "lightning in a bottle" means. 2 seconds on google will show you that it was being used correctly.

[Gifty]

"Lightning in a bottle" is an extraordinarily difficult task achieved near miraculously, in a way unlikely to occur again--as in, it is difficult to bottle lightning twice. The first Doom DEFINITELY qualifies as a lighting in a bottle achievement, but that doesn't mean Id's subsequent releases weren't extraordinary in their own right, or that the team was "just lucky".