doom II is more doom. it's fast and dirty, you're either gonna leave piles of red mush or become one. the level design in doom II compared to the first doom is hit or miss. some levels banged, others made me want to rip my face off. i love that they increased the enemy count, making for much more intense combat encounters. the downside to this increased number of shooting targets is that some encounters are straight-up too mean. i actually used idfka once because i didn't have enough ammo or health in one level. aside from that, some levels feel big for the sake of being big. i would find myself looking at the map too often rather than the actual game world.

the super shotgun and new enemies are mostly great additions to the sandbox though. while pain elementals are the embodiment of pain with their lost souls, the mancubi, archvile, revenant, and arachnatrons are great enemies to fight when used appropriately.

doom II is like eating a mostly great steak. you take a bite, it's nicely tender and juicy. then you take another bite and it's juicy, but it's also a bit too chewy like the cook didn't trim off all the fat. at the end of the day, it's still an enjoyable steak, but it maybe could have been incredible if the cook looked over it a bit more.

3 STARS: RECOMMENDED

I didn't grow up with Doom. I enjoyed them for what they were, but my FPS darlings will always be the Half-Life 2 and Modern Warfare 2 campaigns.
Playing this on my switch, I've been slowly ticking away at the wads that were added, and for me that's where the real fun has been. For a game like this, fan levels are more interesting to poke around in than what was in the original, credit to those originals of course, if it weren't for those we wouldn't have so many geniuses making their own Dooms today.

Both DOOM and DOOM II occupy a shared space in my head, so my thoughts on the original - a watershed release that unbelievably still kicks ass and occupies a valid and unique space in the modern FPS landscape - remain true for DOOM II. Honestly, I tend to rank the two games in a shared spot whenever I'm putting together a list of favorite games, so complete do the two games feel together. A bit like Sonic 3 & Knuckles, just without lock-on.

But let's go ahead and talk up DOOM II specifically. The game runs on the same engine as its predecessor - why mess with perfection, honestly - but a few things have been added to shake up gameplay. On your side, you have the Super Shotgun, which basically outpaces every other weapon in the game. And they know what you're here for, so the game doesn't waste time before chucking it your way. On the bad guy side, you have a lot of new demons to round out the legions of the damned - honestly a welcome addition, given how prevalent Imps and Pinkies were throughout the entirety of the original game. Most of them are instant favorites, and "Mancubus" and "Arch-Vile" join "Cacodemon" and "Cyberdemon" in the pantheon of Greatest Video Game Enemy Names (bonus points if you imagine "MANCUBUS!!!" as being shouted by Laura Bailey every time the name comes up - thank you, Critical Role).

The other major change after the weapon/enemy shake ups is the design ethos behind the levels themselves. If I had to put a word to it, DOOM's levels are designed around "place", while DOOM II's levels are more "high-concept". This isn't to say that one precludes the other, and in DOOM II's case, there's a clear progression through an Earth city to another citadel of the Underworld - but the specifics of where you are tend to be informed by the type of high-concept design that comes from being there. Progress through settings is broken up with levels like 'Dead Simple', 'Tricks and Traps', and "Barrels o' Fun". All fun levels, but different from the first DOOM, which had little in the way of gimmick levels.

As I said before, I tend to think of DOOM and DOOM II as parts of a whole experience, so I tend to rank them together. As for which one is better - man, I dunno. Probably DOOM II, since it's just DOOM with more stuff. Certainly, I'd expect most fan-made level packs to pull from DOOM II's toolkit for that reason. But I also cherish how unique and groundbreaking the original DOOM was, too. Besides, there's no moment in DOOM II as effective a challenge as 'Tower of Babel'. Yeah, it's fun seeing the Cyberdemon and Spider Mastermind duke it out in 'Gotcha!', and yeah, the Icon of Sin is a funny clusterbomb of a fight, but there's just no comparison. Usually I give the first game the edge, but I could hear an argument for the second just as easily. Both are very much worth playing, either way.

I don't have a whoooole lot to say, but while the gameplay is the same as DOOM, the level design is completely different. Where DOOM was labrynthine, DOOM II is all puzzles. Pretty much every level has an easily identifiable design idea, though loads of them are kinda just jokes? It definitely feels like it takes itself even less seriously than the first. Personally, I found the levels much less frustrating than DOOM at it's worst, though it never quite reaches the highs of DOOM EP1. In general? Good fun.

Hell on Earth is more additive expansion than it is revolutionary sequel - Additional weapons and demons bring Doom II to something that feels more complete and rounded out, but doesn't offer much in the way of feeling like a proper sequel to the original Doom.

In broad strokes, the first 20 levels of Hell on Earth's campaign offer a nice upgrade in the intricacy department while maintaining a mostly tight flow throughout that feels like a proper evolution of Doom's level design. The game's final 10 levels, however, sometimes feel like they're trying their very hardest to extinguish any positives of the first two act's offerings, often relying on annoying gimmicks, bloat, and purposeful obtuseness. Extensive gameplay additions like vertical mouselook aiming weren't necessary in the original Doom, but is something that would have been more than welcome given Hell on Earth's insistence on levels with an extreme emphasis on verticality.

Doom II reinforces the idea that though the base game is undoubtedly solid, it's only as good as its levels. Doom II's sandbox is definitive, and was ultimately a venue for commercializing Doom rather than aiming to be a radical follow-up - The sum of those parts: You're probably better off playing through countless user made .WADs using a modern source port.

It's hard for me to decide which one of the first two original Dooms i like the most. The first one has almost no flaws for the first two episodes, and it's just in Inferno when it kinda gets a little unpleasant. Doom II instead has more variety: You can be in a fascinating map, then the next is absolutely awful, then the next is kinda forgettable, and then the next has both good and band moments. And the funny thing is that there is no consensus about the quality of the maps, and a lot of them are very polarizing.

When it comes to level-design, there's no doubt that the star here is Sandy Petersen. Since he made 18 of the 32 levels, you can say that he reaches everything from terrible maps to some of the best, and many mediocre ones in between. Downtown, for example, has a lot of problems, but you can't deny how influential it was for other games like, let’s say, Duke Nukem 3D. Some of his maps were pretty much based around a single gimmick, but i don’t see that as a problem, since this is pretty much about having fun but it also showcases how Sandy was the most experimental when it came about map designing. And even some maps with a really ugly desing were fantastic in it’s gameplaying, like Suburbs. I would rank Tricks and Traps, Suburbs, The Citadel, and Barrels O’Fun as some of his best.

American McGee: Not a single bad map on Doom 2. Some of those might not be really memorable, but still i think he made a very good job. And The Inmost Dense is definitely on my personal top 3 of Doom II maps.

And then, there is the John Romero’s maps. I know his maps are overall recognized as being more polished and better-looking than Sandy ones, something i can agree with. But when it comes to gameplay, i think his maps are mediocre at best. The main responsible for the whole first episode of Doom I (probably the best set of levels ever designed) puts a very disapointing work this time. I think his levels are acceptable at best. And while everybody seems to agree on Sandy’s The Chasm as being the worst level in Doom II (a level where i didn’t had that much of a trouble myself), the map i hate the most is definitely Industrial Zone.

Oh and there is also Bloodfalls by Shaun Green, a map i don’t really care about. I enjoyed his maps for Thy Flesh Consumed a lot more.

The cast of new enemies is a great adition, except for that flying meatball who looks like Cacodemon’s unpopular cousin. And the Super Shotgun: Isn’t that enough of a reason to give this game a try? Actually i think the SSG is the reason why i see myself mostly replaying Doom 2 instead of Doom 1. I don’t see myself dealing with the Inferno maps without the SSG.

In conclusion: Doom with more monsters, a new weapon, bigger and more complex maps, and probably twice as long as the first game.

Unless you've hated the first Doom, this is a must play.

I think the upped enemy variety is amazing even today and the fast paced almost John Wick sometimes feeling combat is still stupid slick after all these years.

Where it shows the most cracks these days is maybe it's level design and boss encounters. The Icon of Sin fucking sucks and there's an almost (albeit really charming and personality driven) amateurish level design that can sometimes make you feel stupid for not seeing the tiny crack in the wall that lets you progress.

Other than that, it's still Doom 2 and it still fucking rules. The mod scene for this game will never not be amazing too.

After having a blast ripping and tearing my way through the atmospheric moonbases and metal-album-cover hellscapes of Doom 93 I was excited to keep the pain train rolling with Doom II.

Unfortunately most of the design choices that made the original work so well were lost in the wash when designing a sequel.

The tight 3 acts of the first doom are replaced with one long string of 32 levels, which doesn't work as well pacing wise imo, instead of letting the stakes build and wiping the slate clean you get stuck in this long slog of levels where a death means you are fucked because you should have the BFG by this point (and dying strips you of all of your weapons, something that was the case in Doom 1 but mattered less as the 9 level scenarios meant you accumulated supplies from scratch every few levels anyways)

Essentially, it just makes it so you have to rely on the quicksave feature a lot more, and save scum your way through the many (MANY) ambushes that WILL kill you unexpectedly, and also the many death pits that await (notably more than in the first game).

Also, prepare to have a walkthrough open if you want to get through this with your sanity in tact. In Doom 93, the level design made sense: if you needed a key, most of the time you could see where it was through a window or from some vantage point, signaling the direction to go. There is some gimmicky bs, but in Doom 2 I would get lost every level and just roam endlessly until giving in and looking up where to go, only to find the most esoteric solution to the puzzle. The worst offender is in the tenement level, where you get stuck roaming only to find out you need to bump into a specific skull decoration to open a door, a decoration that is not unique to this level and has never had this function in the past. Some real atrocious "level design 101" stuff not to do level gimmicks.

The story is about as deep as I expected, but switching up the setting and making a chunk of the action take place in a city was a cool call (even if the limitations of the time really just make the city levels a bunch of kind of boring blocks)

Despite these gripes, its not all bad: super shotgun truly rocks, so do the new monster designs, despite being very annoying. The revenant is scary as hell even in 2d, and the icon of sin is the definition of metal album cover inspired doom design. very sick. When you boil it down, blasting through demons with you shotgun is still as fun as ever, but some bad pacing and level design choices make this game notably less enjoyable than it's predecessor.

Doom 2 is just more doom, but never hits the peak of the first. Sure there is a bit more enemy variety but the new enemies don't feel particularly great and end up leading you to hide. more often than not. The maps also seem like a step down. Jumping into hell in the first game still had an impact on adult me with no sort of nostalgia, while here half the time I ended up walking around a puzzle map trying to progress. That added onto the fact that this game either felt like a drag or was not properly set out, made the last few areas a slog. You would think that a level that starts you out by fighting two of the previous game's bosses at the same time would be a penultimate stage but really sits 2/3'rds of the way through. Realistically If I was to play some more doom, between the two I think I would pick Doom 1 99% of the time.

Percebi que nunca tinha escrito nada sobre esse que é um dos meus games favoritos. Tudo que deu certo no primeiro dá certo aqui e a Shotgun de cano duplo é uma adição muito bem vinda.

Meu maior problema com ele é que o game, além da tal shotgun, não traz nada de novo. A iD resolveu permanecer em terreno seguro porque muita gente sabe que não se mexe em time que tá ganhando, e até aí tudo bem. Mas podia trazer algumas coisinhas a mais além de uma arma e uns reskins de monstro.

Os mapas também chegam num ponto que se tornam tão labirínticos que cê fica até meio zonzo com a função do leva e traz de chaves e da exploração atrás não de segredos, mas de painéis interativos pra prosseguir os níveis.

Fora isso, continua MUITO divertido e é um jogo que eu adoro revisitar sempre que possível. Tanto no PC quanto no PS4. O PC ainda tem a vantagem de ter uma comunidade muito dedicada e ativa que vem dando uma sobrevida absurda pro game, sempre surgindo com vários mods tão incríveis quanto o jogo original. Seja em mods simples como o Brutal Doom ou então uns megawads com mapas extremamente complexos onde não só o game ganha uma cara nova pela melhoria de gráficos, mas por coisas que dão uma renovada na própria jogabilidade.

Seja o game original ou os diversos mods que tu acha pela internet, Doom II continua sendo diversão garantida mesmo nos dias de hoje.

Doom 1 was great, sure. But did it have the super shotgun? I don't think so. To be fair, it also didn't have Pain Elementals, Arch-viles, and one of the lamest final boss battles of all time. This game can also be kinda ugly at times, with some pretty yucky exterior areas compared to the first game's more focused theming. The "Downtown" level in particular is pretty disappointing.

But Doom 2 is still great, largely consisting of expanded good old fashioned Doom fun. I have to bump the rating up half a star for the incredibly vast amount of mods for this games, which include new levels, new graphics, new music, sometimes entire new games altogether--such as a 3D Sonic game which competes with the best of Sega's attempts. Doom 2 is not just a great game but a vessel of creativity for modders everywhere.