Joseph Anderson made an excellent video on this game, so for the sake of brevity I'll just refer you to it, while adding some short comments of my own below. Video here

The first 20-30 hours really are magical, and the force of that experience can't be denied. Seeing fantastic new areas and enemies, taking in the massive scope of the world, getting lost somewhere unfamiliar, spotting some distant location on the horizon and realizing you can actually go there, if you can figure out a path. It evokes Dark Souls 1's best moments, and I wouldn't begrudge anyone for loving the game from this alone.

The legacy dungeon design is characteristically impressive but still feels like a regression in some aspects. The sheer size and complexity of many dungeons is breathtaking, the ambition really shines through here. Jumping lets you traverse the environment in lots of creative and organic ways, and interacts well with the aforementioned complexity. Unfortunately however, nothing here really comes close to DS1 classics like Sen's Fortress in terms of considered design. The Stake of Marika is a fantastic addition, but its potential is largely wasted, as instead of leaning into it to make bonfires more scarce and important, bonfires appear at the same or higher frequency than previous games. For some reason fast travel is allowed within legacy dungeons, which kills a lot of the tension of exploration and the risk of losing souls. Shortcuts feel less important and traps feel less deadly.

It's also far too easy to run past everything in the open world with the horse, with only a few exceptions. A hostile landscape with enemies and hazards at every turn should not feel like a walk in the park to traverse. It was only after making a second character that I realized how badly this murders the replayability. Fast travel serves as yet another bandaid fix here, reprising its usual modern FromSoft role.

For all the game's virtues, the feeling I'm left with at the end is bitterness, which is probably why this is still on my mind. I'm bitter that I can sense an awareness of the typical open world pitfalls but somehow the game still falls into them. I'm bitter that I can't trust FromSoft to learn from its mistakes here, especially in the combat. I'm bitter that the enjoyable level design almost feels squandered by the other elements. I'm bitter that the daring spirit of Demon's Souls, the willingness to wildly experiment and defy expectations, has floated away like a soul leaving a corpse. But most of all I'm bitter that the game really does reach the lofty heights of Dark Souls 1 at times. It climbs the mountain, ascending higher than even the old mentor, until, with a confidence bordering on absentmindedness, it loses its grip and plummets down, down, down into the abyss.

"…But even so, one day the flames will fade, and only Dark will remain. And even a legend such as thineself can do nothing to stop that." - Hawkeye Gough

Despite being one of the most popular and influential games of all time, somehow, Doom 2 is still severely underrated.

Someone who agrees is Danbo, fellow Doom lover and developer of the shmup Blue Revolver. In his old article (https://blog.danbo.vg/post/50094276897/the-most-misunderstood-game-of-all-time) he explains:

"While Doom was no doubt the product of a bunch of nerds doing what they love, the game offers a more intelligent gameplay palette than just about any other pure FPS in the world...Doom perfection is achieved where the visceral meets the intelligent."

Everyone knows the obvious: the timeless joy of the Super Shotgun, the surreal demonic aesthetic, the beloved metal MIDIs that rip off Metallica and Slayer, and so on. But there's an iceberg of elements below the surface that oft go overlooked by those uninitiated in deeper Dooming ways. To bring up just a few examples:

The famous BFG is a brilliant, quirky weapon that operates like some bizarre hybrid of a delayed-fire rocket launcher and shotgun. The ball does a good chunk of damage, but the real firepower is in the spread of 40 invisible tracers that shoot out from you a bit after the ball explodes, in the direction you initially fired. You can fire at packs of enemies to spread out the damage for crowd control, or get right up next to something to put all the tracers on it for massive destruction (both incredibly useful and incredibly dangerous against Cyberdemons). You can fire the BFG at long range, do other things (run around, switch weapons), then move into position for the tracers as the ball makes impact. You can hide behind cover, shoot the ball into a wall, then quickly peek outside cover to forgo the ball damage in favor of safety. You can even shoot, realize that you're in a bad position, and retreat, wasting ammo but possibly saving your life.

Switching weapons is both critical to success and surprisingly slow, especially if you compare with Doom's modern entries. But this adds commitment, that deep shard of the action game's soul, in a way that ties into the ever-present ammo system. Say you pump two Super Shotgun blasts into a Revenant, and are confident that it's a hair away from death. You can switch to the Chaingun to fire a quick burst, which is highly ammo-efficient, but takes time and leaves you vulnerable. You can stick with the Super Shotgun, which trades ammo for safety and speed. You can even use the Rocket Launcher to put heavy damage on another foe while killing the first with splash damage, but this opens the door for the classic-yet-catastrophic rocket to your own face. id could have easily made the weapon switch speed near-instant, but whether by intention or happenstance, they didn't, and the game is better for it.

I could go on and on about all the nuances that add to the game, but there are two critical elements that set Doom apart from every other FPS. The first is its emphasis on space control. Take the humble Pinky, for instance: low health and it's bites are easily dodged, so not much threat, right? Well, put Doomguy in a room with fifty of them (Doom 2 MAP08: Tricks and Traps for instance) and the assessment rapidly changes. If you're not careful, you'll be surrounded on all sides, and while killing a few may be easy, others will quickly rush into the gaps to further constrict you. Controlling territory with movement and smart (or copious) use of ammo is critical to survival. Now imagine how much the situation would evolve with just a single Archvile added to the mix!

The other aspect, almost completely unique to Doom as far as I know, is monster infighting and its importance. Baiting one monster type to attack another will cause it to switch aggro and retaliate. Purposefully leaving some monsters alive to tear each other apart can save you tons of ammo, but also presents a huge risk, as the resulting fight is more chaotic and dangerous.

A great example is the slime pit in Alien Vendetta's MAP14: Overwhelming Odds. The whole pit is filled with Pinkies, and the only way to exit the pit is a lift opposite the switch you need to hit. But hitting the switch releases two Cyberdemons, who can easily kill you if you get trapped, but can also easily dispatch the Pinkies and save you lots of ammo. How many Pinkies do you kill to get to the lift safely, vs. how many do you leave alive for the Cyberdemons? A little later, you need to return to the pit to activate another switch, which releases a massive cloud of Cacodemons. Do you kill the Cyberdemons before hitting the switch, while the field is nice and clear, but go it alone against the Cacos? Or do you leave the Cyberdemons to thin out the horde, then risk fighting them with random Cacos floating around? Or maybe you only kill one Cyberdemon to split the difference? I've tried all of these strategies, and each has its own strengths, weaknesses, and gameplay flow.

It's truly astonishing to me how much id managed to get right so early on. The fundamentals here are rock-solid, and the blend of fast paced action, using enemies against each other, heavy resource management, and a thick coating of atmosphere for good measure prefigures Resident Evil 4 by a decade. All the dynamic layers of decision-making I yearn for in action games are here, weaving into each other in wonderful interplay. Split-second decisions and execution are, as always, a matter of life and death, but also affect your health and ammo, which leaks into the next encounters. Making too hasty of a retreat at the wrong time can cost you precious territory and create openings for monsters to stake out unfavorable positions, the consequences of which might not be felt until later in the fight. The overall route you devise for tackling a map can vastly change how the onslaught plays out, both in terms of what gear you have access to and what mix of monsters are active.

It should be an obvious conclusion by now that the map has a massive impact on gameplay, especially if you are pistol starting. (sidenote: you should absolutely pistol start levels, lower the difficulty if you have to) Placement of monsters, weapons, resources, and geometry will make or break the experience. and the true mapping virtuoso has a commanding sense of how to arrange these elements to create gripping scenarios that challenge, terrify, surprise, and delight.

Danbo again:

"It’s not artificial intelligence you fight when you’re locked in a room full of Barons of Hell and Revenants and voicelessly asked to pick a side in the resulting infighting (It’ll take more ammo to finish off the barons, but revenants are more likely to give you a nasty right hook or slap you with a rocket in the process) - it’s human intelligence."

Doom 1 and 2's base maps, given the time and constraints id was working under, are an admirable work and good bit of fun, and have undoubtedly served as a crucial creative jumping-off point for the community. But they weren't able to reveal the true brilliance of the game's design: it would be the Casali brothers' Plutonia Experiment, distributed commercially in Final Doom by id a couple years after Doom 2, that began to show off how careful arrangement could bring out the best (and most deadly) in each monster.

As Doomworld's Not Jabba puts it, in their epic history Roots of Doom Mapping (https://www.doomworld.com/25years/the-roots-of-doom-mapping/):

"The Casali brothers laid so much groundwork that all combat-oriented mapping has been a series of footnotes to Plutonia."

The Doom 2 enemies in particular are some of the best ever made, and in Plutonia we can see that each contribute something unique. Hell Knights are balanced bruisers who eat space, health, and ammo in equal measure. Revenants are fragile, but their fast movespeed and homing missiles demand nimble footwork. Chaingunners fall over to stiff breezes, but call forth lead torrents within their sightlines. Mancubi and Arachnotrons lay down blankets of fire, but can be easily dodged close up and are especially prone to starting infights. Pain Elementals are harmless if you stop their Lost Souls from spawning, but sponge up piles of ammo if you let them roam free for too long. Archviles exert their tyrannical rule through long range, delayed-hitscan fire attacks, and they brutally punish inaction by resurrecting nearby fallen foes.

Since the release of Final Doom, Doom's almost 30-year-old community has been steadily building on this foundation, its continued vitality attributable to a complex mix of historical circumstance, id's openness to fan modifications (a stance I am immensely greatful for, and has been highly influential in PC gaming at large), and love of Doom. I confess that I have only begun to dip my toes into the vast world of custom maps, but the tremendous fun I've had so far, as well as the glowing reception for projects like Scythe 2, Valiant, Ancient Aliens, and Sunlust, has me eager to dive deeper. This is a community that most games would kill for, and the fact that it's gone largely overlooked, even by many fellow lovers of game mechanics, can only be described as utterly criminal.

An all-around great resource for learning more is MtPain27's Dean of Doom Youtube channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/MtPain27), where he reviews both new and old WADs level-by-level. His love of Doom is infectious, and he gives a great sense for the age, breadth, and brilliance of the mapping scene. Skilled players like Decino (https://www.youtube.com/c/decino) can also help show off the deeper aspects of gameplay, as well as engine quirks to add to your knowledge repertoire.

There are certainly some problems with the game (random damage and berserk with the chainsaw come to mind) but these are negligible when juxtaposed with the whole. I am utterly awed and humbled by what has been created here, and I don't see anything comparable emerging again. This is the type of game you could spend your whole life exploring and mastering.

Simply put: One of the greatest games of all time.

Replayed on Cero Miedo (equivalent to Ultra-Violence in Doom), Intruder Mode (aka pistol start from Doom), no mid-level saves. This will be a quick one, not as analytical as my usual fare.

Mechanically, SimonDedalus's review is pretty much on the money. Elements from classic FPS (movement from Quake, infighting from Doom, secrets from Build Engine, prop shenanigans from Half Life) are haphazardly smashed together without any real sense of a cohesive, balanced end product. Movement is fun to hop around with but utterly dominates open-air encounters. Map design is serviceable I guess? Nothing awe-inspiring but I haven't played Quake custom maps so I have no idea what the bar is here.

Enemies are mostly Doom 1 clones, weapons are mostly Quake clones except for the crossbow which is kinda neat. Infighting is a lot more circle-strafy than Doom (which could already get circle-strafy on some maps) and less strategic since enemies of the same type can fight each other. The props are borderline overpowered, but throwing barrels over and over is kinda boring and error-prone so whatever I guess? Ammo is usually everywhere even if you don't find the secrets, but health and armor get gobbled up quick. Enemies do huge damage on Cero Miedo, probably because the dev realized that the only way you can die with this combat and movement system is to get clipped by stray pseudo-hitscan projectiles like 5 times over the course of the whole level. Play a good Doom map and you'll understand what I mean here when I say the balancing and structure is pretty bad for protracted combat encounters.

The atmosphere, sense of pacing, and general presentation save the game. There's a sense of constant forward momentum, going towards something, though you're never quite sure what. Maps alternate between combat-heavy arenas and claustrophobic crawls, which elevates both beyond their standalone level of quality. Low-poly blends great with backwoods and industrial horror, think those PS1-style short horror games. Sound design is generally solid. I love the dual shotguns, satisfying to use. The powerups are fun and stacking them is pretty neat. And the ending is genuinely good, which is bizarrely rare in other classic FPS.

I definitely don't hate this game, it has the good sense to keep its runtime short and it was made when classic FPS design was only just coming back into vogue. If you haven't played the classics you'll probably like this a lot. Moral of the story is go play Doom and Blood.

My previous classic Doom review here.


Meditations on Doom


=== Mechanics ===

Bangai-O Spirits, Treasure's 2008 DS masterpiece, is superficially quite like Doom in structure. All the levels can be created and changed with the included editor, and players can (jankily) share levels online. However, a distinct trait of the game is that Treasure's mastery of mechanics-as-such is remarkably tolerant of sloppy level design. Many of the included levels are borderline shitposts, and fittingly, one of the best is just a pixel-art portrait of the player character with lots of enemies thrown in. Treasure has done most of the work for you: all you need to do is place some stuff in the editor and let it rip.

In contrast, Doom levels need to be constructed with intentionality - certainly the enemies' AI pull some weight on their own but smart placement vastly amplifies their effectiveness. Huy Pham, creator of Deus Vult II, cites Alien Vendetta as a major inspiration and draws explicit comparisons to chess in the included text file:

"Map20 of DVII is a strong example of the Chess influence with the natural, non-teleport monster traps that simply springs from the map's sneaky layout. The Berserk trap on the uppermost level of Map20 is a reflection of a forced combination, with low health, the player is compelled to pick up the stimpack, entering the trap full of imps, grabbing the berserk as a counterattack, and then confronting the counter-counterattacking hell knight. In the yellow key complex, the two barons of hell were placed like two rooks on open files, firing down the corridor and putting pressure on the player's position and inducing him to make a mistake. The final archvile after taking the blue armor was placed in a way that parallels the black fianchettoed bishop in the Sicilian Dragon Yugoslav Attack opening, firing down the most crucial control point in the room."

The concept here is territory control. Chess is an apt comparison, but what's really interesting is to notice the similarities to shmups, that other game genre so focused on real-time territory control. The heavy emphasis on projectiles in Doom's combat means many common shmup techniques/concepts, such as streaming, moving with projectiles, misdirecting, safe spots, dodging within vs. outside of patterns, holding ground closer to enemies to keep control of space behind you, etc. directly translate.

In a structural sense, a tough section in a shmup demands a unity of macro-level routing, micro-level decisionmaking, and instinctual execution. Take Dodonpachi Daioujou's "hive" from stage 5. Clearing this demands the player work out a viable path that kills key enemies quickly while leaving movement paths open, have the requisite ability to precisely control their ship, and be able to quickly adapt to the slight unpredictability of bullet trajectories. Alien Vendetta's Map 32: No Guts No Glory (while being far less intense) uses those same core elements of macro-level routing through the map, micro-level decisionmaking via unpredictability of monster AI, and instinctual execution.

Like most shmups, and many older arcade-style games in general, there's also an intense focus on the fundamentals of movement and positioning. In this dev diary, Matthewmatosis talks about how compared to classic 2D games like Ghosts 'n Goblins, defensive decisionmaking in many 3D action games has been simplified by powerful get-out-of-jail-free cards such as rolls and parries:

"Imagine you were tasked with creating an AI which could complete these games without taking damage. You have access to all the relevant variables like enemy position and status, in other words you know when an attack is one frame away from hitting the player character. Despite being one of the most recent releases on the list, Devil May Cry 5 is one of the easiest to solve, especially if we’re talking about Bloody Palace. Simply attack until you’re in danger, then instantly activate Royalguard to negate damage. Others like Revengeance and Sekiro will require slightly more awareness about which attack type is coming but will ultimately be solved by pressing a certain button in response to the enemy...this isn’t some irrelevant curiosity, these defensive algorithms are running in your brain as you play...think about how clever Arthur’s [GnG player character] AI would need to be by comparison. If a grim reaper is running at him, it’s not enough to jump or throw a dagger on the last possible frame. You need to be able to think ahead and position yourself in the safest way to advance."

Doom is decidedly part of this old-school tradition, where avoiding sticky situations is contingent on many higher-level decisions that can't be easily reversed on a whim. High-level player David Assad has a great video on how survival in many tough fights demands creating space, which demands tactical play. Youtuber SoBad explains how the conventional advice about monster prioritization is in practice highly dependent on enemy positioning and composition (and he doesn't even mention infighting!). And in a nonlinear map, routing can recontextualize all of this.

My favorite map in Alien Vendetta is probably Anders Johnsen's Dark Dome. What's really cool about this map is how nearly the entire level is open to you from the start. This is because the entire level is shooting at you from the start. The opening minutes are a frenzied scramble to carve out a foothold somewhere as you dart around while constantly under fire. Clearing out one area opens up angles to attack new ones, which do the same in turn; this style of mapping has been called "zone-of-influence". And one of the great things that flows from this structure is how many viable ways there are to route the map. I used an invincibility to clear out a Archvile-guarded Revenant bonepile, but you might opt to assault from the window overlook instead and save it for one of the close-range Cyberdemon tangoes.

The "hot starts" in maps like Dark Dome also illuminates a truth: running away is deep! Trying to squeeze past a mob of chittering Revenants can be just as engaging as filling them with buckshot, and meaningfully deciding between the two is a joy rarely afforded in modern games. And those living Revenants won't just disappear: maybe later they'll pop back up at an inopportune time, or join the fray of another brawl. Mancubus battalions meet Cacodemon migrations; Cyberdemons rage at far-flung Revenant missiles; caged Archviles catch quick glimpses of their foe across twisted geometry; the boundaries between encounters, so rigid in most games, loosen, and their contents ooze together.

Certainly the door problem is a foremost cause of this rigidity, and some lock-ins here and there (like the BFG survival-horror blue key room) are far from unwelcome, but we can give up a bit of ground. Let the player play lame if they really want, you're not their babysitter. It's worth it when what's gained is a unique structure and flow that I haven't seen in any other game.

Even in 2022, especially in 2022, Doom has a wealth of ideas to offer. Don't think the iceberg stops at surface-level elements like fast movespeed or no reloading. Dig deeper and you'll find something timeless yet shockingly ahead of its time, a medium for mappers to explore yet grounded by solid and versatile fundamentals. Universally known, widely loved, rarely appreciated, never replicated.


=== History ===


"By the turn of the millennium, many players and mappers had moved on from Doom to Quake and other more modern games. Some of the greatest early mappers, including Iikka Keranen, Matthias Worch, and Dario Casali, had graduated to careers in commercial game design. Many of the major post-Requiem mappers—Anders Johnsen, Anthony Soto, Brad Spencer, Lee Szymanski, Kim Andre Malde, and others—had gotten together to create a team megawad out of Johnsen’s struggling one-man project, after which most of them would drift away from Doom. The twilight of the game’s odd little mapping community had always seemed like it would inevitably arrive sooner or later, and with the coming of the new millennium and the biggest of the “Doom killer” games themselves becoming obsolete, it must have felt more imminent than ever.

In other words, it was about time for somebody to create the most influential PWAD of all time."

- The Roots of Doom Mapping on Alien Vendetta

As you can probably tell if you've read any of my other writings, I'm mostly a "mechanics person". That's not to disparage other aspects of games, it's merely what I enjoy analyzing. But even for someone like myself, when playing Alien Vendetta it's impossible not to get sucked into the sheer history of it all.

Playing Misri Halek, listed as the most memorable map in history by Doomworld, might not have been a particularly great experience for me in an immediate gameplay sense. But imagine someone in 2001 experiencing something with this scale and architecture in a virtual world for the first time: how breathtaking and inspiring it must have been! (Luckily most of the maps have good gameplay too.)

Authorship is a large part of this meta-appreciation. After you beat a level, the stats screen lists the map creator(s) right under the title. Just spent hours banging your head against Dark Dome? You have Anders Johnsen to thank for that. And in a collaborative project, much like the original Doom games, each author has a distinct style. See Brad Spencer's name? Expect a fangs-bared techbase. Kim Andre Malde? Thick atmosphere and striking architecture. Anders Johnsen? Anything from a brisk romp to an all-out siege assault, depending on what the larger progression demands.

This is a pleasure that sadly seems to be limited to small indie teams and modding scenes. Devil May Cry 3's first level is one of the most fun to play in the series, but I have no clue who to credit for it. Itsuno the game director? One of the 10+ programmers listed in the credits? Someone else? Sometimes names emerge from the mist, but it's rare. In this sense, Doom is far more akin to a music genre or art scene: webs of influence can be traced, styles explored.

The larger narrative is equally captivating. It might be easy to forget, but Doom has really been "indie" from the beginning. id Software was just a handful of guys working out of a random building, and the community has always been just a bunch of fans making stuff as a hobby for the game they love. Certainly Doom was massively popular and influential, but there was no guarantee that the scene behind it would last.

Alien Vendetta is a line in the sand. A vindication of the past: 7 years on and the Doom 2 fundamentals aren't even close to being exhausted. A gift to the present: here's our last hurrah. A signpost to the future: mappers, look at what we did, what you can do. Surely you can do better, hmmm?

Playing with the custom MIDI pack feels fitting. Alien Vendetta was a gift to the community; now the community gives back. It's hard not to sense the emotion in Anders Johnsen's reaction to this WAD, 20 years later, still getting love from Doom players new and old.

For that matter, it's hard to imagine anyone at the time foreseeing what the classic Doom scene has become. Alien Vendetta's synthesis of aesthetics and challenge has been driven into new territory, most uniquely with Sunder and its slaughter progeny. Thanks to Doom's engine code being released, sourceports provide a modern experience while preserving all the idiosyncracies of the original, if you so desire. While level design has seemingly stagnated or even regressed in gaming at large, what's on offer in custom Doom maps, through three decades of knowledge, has risen to the best in the medium bar none.

So often, it feels like this medium has a capricious taste and a forgetful memory. Like so many others, Doom should have been confined to the history books, an unmoving artifact, a museum piece that gets gestured to when people talk about the FPS genre, then locked back up in its case. Maybe a few would see the deeper possibilities, feel intrigue and sadness, then get dragged along with the tide like all the others. Everyone moves on.

Not this time.

The fire still burns!