I really shouldn’t get Doom II

I really should be bothered, stressed, and highly frustrated by it.

It has some levels that should drive to pure rage, stuff that in any other context I should theoretically complain about.

And yet

I get it

I’ve spoken many times of the importance of Doom both as a space for community and player expression and the pivotal impact it had on the PC scene, and it still feel like I’ve only said understatements. A game that holds up so amazingly well decades later, with some of the most fascinating and fun levels ever put together, and with three episodes that each try to tackle not only different visuals and themes, but also each focuses on a completely different gameplay idea. All this to say that, yeah, I really like the funny killing demon game.

I think suffices to say that Doom II had some mad big shoes to fill, both now for new players like me and especially back then, and I gotta be completely serious here and say: I really didn’t think it could ever do it. Doom was and, in a way, still is an incredibly unique way so tightly designed, so puzzle-like like on its maze-like lay-outs, so calculated with how it decides when to throw curve-balls at you and pull-off novel enemy positioning; Episode 3,Inferno, felt like the final frontier in that regard, the ultimate exploration of the whack-ass and unexpected ideas you could pull off with Doom’s base, at least back then. And if ‘95’s E4 introduced in The Ultimate Doom is anything to go by, perhaps it’s a better idea to leave things as they are to not repeat a formula until it gets stale or expand it to extremes where it just breaks apart.

Thing is, Doom II didn’t even came out in 95, hell, it didn’t release after Ultimate Doom. 1994, more specifically September of 1994, not even a full year after the original’s release, so little time that with the tools at their disposal and without as much as a Q&A department, the team had to test the maps manually, something which they didn’t even could really do properly; so little time that basically the entirety of the original’s base was reused, which led to some funky stuff like only one new weapon being added and one of the newly introduced enemies clearly being a recolored Hell Baron; so little time that the mere idea of wanting to make even more maps that those of the previous release should have spelled absolute disaster. Because, how in the living fuck do you pull it together? How could you expect to produce something that doesn’t feel more that a cobbled together expansion with such a time constraint? How do you make more Doom?

Doom II’s answer to that question is straightforward: you don’t

This not to say the game doesn’t pick up from where it left off, both in that it continues just after the rather disturbing ending of the original, and that everything you can do is lifted straight up from that original adventure; the game’s gonna look at you funny if you play this as your first rodeo, ‘cause it’s not gonna pull any punches, but if you did play the original, the buckle up my friend, hell is loose and it has brought a surprise or two with it.

Things already feel different from the very start, even in the small room of Entryway and the cramped passage-ways of Underhalls, something clearly has changed; you face the same enemies, your arsenal is formed by the same arms you got to meet in your first go around, and yet, the design feels tighter, everything feels faster; you dart around enemies, evading zombies and demons at every turn, they surprise you in unexpected ways, it demands speed of you. The original Doom was never a slower game by any stretch of the imagination, but it was more patience focused, more strategy based, and many of the situations that it created revolved around waiting and taking you’re your best shot or calmly thinking where to go after grabbing a key. In Hell of Earth I can count with the fingers of only one of my hands the moments I let go of the run button, and I say this as the highest form of compliment possible.

And it only keeps going: the super shotgun finally gets introduced, a weapon so good that the only complain I have with it is that it kind of makes the original shotgun obsolete; a fantastic closed range powerhouse that it feels like the developers where whispering ‘’now you gotta go IN’’ as they hand it to you; you also get your arsenal at a much steady and faster pace that in Doom, which is surprising considering that this time the Episode format is completely ditched: the levels go after one another, and unless you die or decide to reset, pistol-starting is now an option rather an obligation, and even then, if you do decide to do it, you can potentially regain most of your weapons even before being half-way done with a level; I myself accidentally pistol-started at Barrels of fun and I’ve never been so glad about a miss click in my life, it was so incredibly fun and exciting and tense even more that it would have been otherwise. Doom II also feels far less stingy with its ammo, in the past you may have switch an arm into another because you just couldn’t use it anymore, now it’s more a matter of ‘’ok, how do I deal with this bunch of fuckers?’’; battles start through ambushes, traps or encounters, and you need to quickly analyze the situation if you want to get through alive in less than a second… and that’s more than enough. Doom II may be cheecky with its enemy placement, but its never unfair, it always gives you enough time to either take cover or to think about what’s the better tool for a certain enemy or group: the rocket launcher may be the best option to geal with that group of Imps, but that Chain-gunner can eat through health in a matter of seconds, why not use the super shot gun on him first and on tap him while you dart around the fire-balls? That’s only a taste of the type of situations of Doom II puts you through, combats that should feel stressful and frustrating, but instead feel exciting and in occasions made me feel an adrenaline like no other; I swear I audibly gasped when I say that amount of enemies at the Suburbs, and I smiled and celebrated as I emerged victorious after dealing with them in a way not even I thought I could.

Levels only get more creative and expansive as they go, The Crusher (aptly named after its main attraction) shows how the rest of the game will play around verticality to create more interesting battles and explorations, as well as introduce unconventional ideas that you might not have expected to see in the previous entry, and that changes your mindset in a way you may not notice at first, but that will certainly will make you be on the look-out. Things that once would have been secrets now are required to be found to progress, it asks of you to be creative, to think outside the box and do what you never would have even conceived of doing. In one of the levels I was trapped, not knowing what to do, but then I noticed a wall with a texture that was extremely different from the rest. I thought that ‘’There’s no fucking way’’. I shoot it. The path opens. Time at time again, places like The Citadelor The Spirit World expect you a level of attention and imagination that the game lends itself to receive, an imagination you have and use to beat even the most seemingly confusing puzzles and mazes; you’ll need to check the map, you’ll need to run, you’ll need to brave, it’s through that that game will reward you, maybe with a Megacharge, maybe with the BFG, maybe with a secret level, who knows! I certainly can’t say for sure ‘cause I feel like I’ve left a ton to even be discovered!

And yeah, I didn’t meant to not use the world ‘’paces’’, more than ever in any of the Doom Episodes, the Hell on Earth maps feel like real parts of a world: expansive and open world urban locations overrun by demons, cultist temples created to stop your advances, old bastions taken and repurposes by the legions of hell to fight against you; even the more ‘’gamey’’ of levels, like Tricks and Traps! or Gotcha!, are excusable because they so fun and even funny that I cannot be mad at them, and as for the rest, they really sell you the idea that you are traversing and meeting your objectives little by little; the narrative has as much presence as the original game, but it has a much greater impact ‘cause not only the stakes are even higher, it also feels like you are progressing through a real story, and that this is a true war against the enemies that face you, new and old.

The game also realized the full potential of its older cast, like how both the Cyberdemon and Spider-Mastermind act much better as level obstacles to evade than actual bosses, and the new faces that arrive are simply incredible; I’ve genuinely never loved and hated an enemy in a videogame equally as I do the Arch-vile, seeing him generated dread in my body, but also made me smile at the opportunity to face such an interesting and unique enemy. The Pain Elementals, Hell Knights an Revenants are all incredible new comer that pile up on the ‘’NEVER STOP MOVING FOR THE LOVE OF GOD’’ mentality, and they are all incredibly memorable, especially the Mancubi, I already loved them in the new games, but hearing them scream their own name as they shoot double projectiles was so fucking memorable. And that final boss.. GOD, finally a Doom boss that requires EVERYTHING you learnt; ammo management, dealing with individual threads, resource usage and even aim, such a fantastic send off that isn’t just a ‘’spam BFG to win fest’’, this is simply outstanding, so fun, so imperfect in the best way imaginable.

If Doom was already a passion project, then Doom II is that even more deranged, more reckless, more… itself. Sandy, Romero and the team knew they could do a true glory fest, and they went even beyond that. Doom II is so experimental, so unique, so unquestionably goofy that I can’t stop gushing about it. It’s more than a blast to beginning to end, it’s a challenge that wants to have as much as fun as you do playing it, and tries out new stuff at each turn, and even those times it doesn’t stick, it keeps being memorable in the best way imaginable.

It's OG Doom at its most savage, at its most free and wild, and its most fun and creative, and I for one have fallen in love with it, and now I can totally see why so many others did too, why so many others keep its memory and spirit alive through .wads and crazy ideas through this one moreso than any other. It’s a game in a way made for itself, but also for everyone that loves Doom, for everyone that loves shooters, for everyone that loves untamed creativeness.

What a fucking magnificent way to start the year, an experience that goes beyond the sum of its parts, and adventure that builds something that evolves and subverts what it once was, the opposite of Hell on Earth.

Rebuilding Earth ought to be a lot more fun than ruining it was

ENTRYWAY
thirty second par
but how could anybody
want to leave so soon

initially my plan was to write a series of 32 haikus, one for each level, with the intention of succinctly boiling things down into a heartfelt gesture. the problem there's that doom II's anything but succinct; it's a towering, monolithic game that bears down on you at all times. breathless formatting, increased enemy numbers, more byzantine, avant garde mapping, chaotic texturing, new enemies, and a one-of-a-kind fan community that's opened up an endless limitless world of More Doom and turned it into something you could spend a lifetime emerged in without seeing everything worthwhile or learning all its finest details. to try to sum things up poetically is a fool's errand; doom II can't be boiled down into 544 syllables, least of all by me

REFUELING BASE
this from the man who
put 95 spawns into
quake episode 4

a narrative has developed that suggests doom II's second half is something irredeemable — not just underwhelming, but outright bad — and it's a load of shit. if you don't like TENEMENTS or COURTYARD that's an indictment of your taste, not the quality of the mapping present here. the way sandy in particular maps with such expressive, inventive, and experimental brushstrokes is something we should relish and appreciate; doom and quake wouldn't be what they are without his contributions, and he's one of the genre's most important level designers hands down

that the game feels like a fever dream is largely a result of his 17(!!!!) maps and their wild refusal to adhere to conventional logic or standard. people out here begging and crying for euclidian techbases when my man barfed textures in a pile and turned it into something as good as TRICKS AND TRAPS. "SUBURBS ISNT REALISTIC" you scream into your pillow while I smile big with my cute dimples showing cos I'm enjoying a really fun map. "CHASM IS BAD" you shriek so loud you get evicted while I enjoy some first person platforming and reminisce about turok dinosaur hunter being the best game on the N64. no one, and I mean No One advanced the space for creation here more substantially. fuck verisimilitude, let's dance

SUBURBS
welcome all neighbors
to our annual cookout
bring your own bodies

they could've called it perfect doom: an evolutionary step that marked its final form and near-complete status as a standardized toolset. they could've dropped the number and signaled it as just being a big ass messy sloppy cuhrazy megawad and called it a day and 99% of the shit talk would be stopped in its erroneous tracks. really, I don't even think there's a good argument that doom's better unless you're looking at it as some hermetically pure retail project rather than a couplet of frameworks or stepping stones to greater ideas. hindsight is 50/50, but we're graced with enough distance now to know that any assessment of the material should be done while understanding what it wrought; that none of this exists in that Big Box Vacuum and never really did — shareware being the first and last exposure many, many people had in the first place, and doom always being a game that's chopped n screwed in as many ways as possible. doom is ragged and raw; it's tendrils, it's wild kudzu and overgrowth and every idea every middle schooler ever jotted in a notebook. to appraise this in a sanitized quarantine is geek shit I simply can't abide by. this is an immaculate vessel that had the good grace to show up with 32 mostly sick maps

THE FACTORY
fifty indie games
that look exactly like this
steam early access

if any game exists as some kind of broad communal accomplishment, it's probably doom. opening with an open source branch to the community, and closing long after we're buried. ads for lotions interrupt our epitaphs while someone named grizzlyguzzler releases the cacoward winning "scronky bonky II" and sets neo doomworld ablaze with passionate discussion. Did You See The Part Where. I Can't Believe That. How Did They Even...

billionaires pump sicko dollars into metaverses and games-within-games-within-games; some eternal platform-slash-cenotaph is conjured by the world's most killable humans; disfigured 3D models waggle and wave in cyberspace trying desperately to create something as remotely meaningful, intravenously sucking on your wallet to please money perverts before being sent to the scrap heap

good luck

DEAD SIMPLE
perfect little map
the homages will go on
past our life and death

The Sequel to DOOM, and more so just an awesome DLC expansion pack with more enemies, music, of course the beautiful super shotgun and tons of memorable levels. I really just consider Ultimate DOOM and this to be one whole experience.

I don't want to act like there aren't any goofy design choices in the game, BUT I really do not see the huge deal about the level design in this game. Sure MAP 13 is a bit rough but honestly this is PEAK classic DOOM. It has all of the loveable and iconic monsters and the only monsters who are unbearable to deal with are a lot of Chaingunners and Pain Elementals.

10/10 would play again

Doom II: Hell on Earth came out not too long after the original Doom. It took only 10 months, in fact. When you play the game, it's easy to see how the game was developed so quickly. It's basically the same game with larger levels, more enemy types and an additional weapon, among some other minor changes.

If you loved the original Doom, that's great. As someone who liked it, I didn't see that much reason to go through the entirety of Doom II though, since story is, understandably, irrelevant for the game (though not "not important" in general, John Carmack!).

From the couple hours I put into the game, what I realized was that the setting 'Earth' felt somewhat off-putting compared to the first game, that many of the tracks sounded way too tame for a game like Doom and that I've otherwise already played this game, as it plays exactly the same way, just with more levels now.

Don't get me wrong, if you enjoy boomer shooters and Doom in particular, you won't be looking for much else. Additionally, from what I was told, the modding scene is what makes the game so popular still, and having checked some of the user-made levels out, yeah, I can see why. Custom enemies, custom weapons, custom maps, custom music... You can probably spend the next few years solely playing this game and not run out of content.

I've got thousands of other games I would like to play, so I'm not gonna get into that rabbit hole, but you're invited to do so if that sounds interesting to you. Me personally, I'll gladly return to the series for the next game, but I'm hoping to see a little bit more innovation, if the story itself is irrelevant in these games.

(This is the 105th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)

"Dude, the player will hit a button, then 100 enemies will spawn behind them. Also we're gonna include an enemy with a minigun that can hitscan you to death across the entire map. It's gonna be sick!"

I do actually kind of like this game a bit more than the first, but man it does have some really bullshit moments. Icon of Sin sucks. Higher highs and lower lows from the OG, but let's be real, a lot of the iconic Doom things people remember really are from this. Super shotgun is still one of the most satisfying shotguns in any FPS game.

DOOM 2: O INFERNO CHEGOU A TERRA E ELE VEIO TE ASSOMBRAR COM O PIOR LEVEL DESIGN DA FRANQUIA

Por mais agressivo que essa review possa parecer, Doom II NÃO É um jogo ruim, mas chega a ser assombroso o quanto ele consegue falhar como sequência. Eu não consigo pensar em nenhum ponto que Doom II executa melhor que seu predecessor, os novos inimigos são chaaaatos (o Arch-Vile da um medinho até); a super shotgun é ok, mas pouco útil contra hordas muito grandes (90% do jogo); a música é fraquíssima, nenhuma trilha é memorável, e eu preferi jogar com uma playlist de heavy metal tocando no spotify de fundo, do que com a OST original (System of a Down funciona bem)... Mas nenhum ponto é negativo o suficiente pra se equiparar ao level design desse jogo; a ausência de John Romero na produção realmente é sentida, com fases que mais parecem um labirinto do que com as profundezas do inferno; todos os ambientes são muito parecidos, os keycards são espalhados de forma porca, e é tudo simplesmente confuso, ás vezes eu só preferia olhar um guia na internet, do que ficar quebrando a cabeça (isso quando eu não skipava a fase com um cheat); não chega nem aos pés da intuitividade e criatividade dos levels do primeiro Doom.
Eu sempre considerei Doom II o patinho feio da trilogia original, mas apesar de tudo, ele ainda é divertido, quando você releva todos esses problemas, continua sendo a carnificina de demônios que todos amamos, e se você ficar muito frustrado, é só ativar o god mode que ninguém vai te julgar. Apesar dos pesares, Doom é infalível.

After playing through and having an absolute blast with the original Doom back in September, I became a lot more excited to catch up on playing more of the boomer shooters that came after it during the 1990s, with its direct sequel being first up for me. Even with the amount of time that it took for me to test out different official and unofficial ports of Doom before settling on the DOS version, I still beat the game within a week, but it took me over two months to beat Doom II, and that's because this game is way, way less fun than its predecessor. Although it looks and feels like that 1993 landmark title, Doom II makes enough wrong decisions for me to consider it a direct downgrade from the original game, as it felt like a chore to get through very early on and only got worse from there.

Putting the fantastic gameplay, charming 2.5D visuals, and blood-pumping music aside, one of the main elements of Doom that makes it such a consistent and engaging experience is its carefully constructed levels and enemy placements, and I'm of the opinion that the design philosophy of Doom II completely misunderstands this. Rather than putting just enough enemies to make encounters tense while also giving you enough space to maneuver around them and strategize your approach, Doom II instead opts for filling every single room with as many enemies as humanly possible and pretending that this counts as "challenge" (a design choice that you'd be very familiar with if you've played one of those awful Super Mario Maker levels that do the exact same thing), and this choice alone turns Doom II into a repetitive, annoying shadow of the game that preceded it. The levels either consist of confusing mazes, cryptic puzzles, unnecessary gimmicks, awful platforming in a game that doesn't even have a jump button, or a combination of the four, and while I pretty much never got lost in the original Doom due to how the different paths in each level were designed to loop back to a central room or overlap with each other, these levels literally have arrows pointing to where I should go, and that's rarely ever a good sign. A lot of the game's new enemies were straight-up unfun to fight, with their high damage, frequent spawns, and finicky ways of actually fighting them making me groan whenever I came across one, especially if it was an Arch-vile or a Pain Elemental. Even the music in Doom II was lamer this time around, as the metal and ambient tracks were swapped out for boring loops that I got sick of very quickly.

Visually, Doom II has the exact same look and feel of the first game, and while I still find the blend of 2D sprites and 3D environments endearing, it doesn't work as well here as it did before. Since the original Doom starts out in Mars before you rip and tear your way through Hell, it made sense for the environments to go from mechanical and futuristic to fleshy and pulsating, but because the theme for Doom II is that the armies of Hell have invaded Earth, the game just ended up looking like a mishmash of entirely reused assets with nothing all that visually distinct when compared to the first game. The only new addition to Doom II that I genuinely liked was that of the iconic super shotgun, as it was immensely satisfying to use with every shot and ended up being my weapon of choice for almost my entire playthrough. Despite this, Doom II was a very disappointing and tedious boomer shooter that fundamentally misses the mark on what made Doom fun in the first place, and while I am still looking forward to playing Doom 64, I'm going to be a bit more cautious after being burned by this game.