myk
volveré y seré millones
Posts: 14420
Registered: 04-02 |
Arch-viles look and sound wicked, are something that enhances strategic play and greatly helps make DOOM II the awesome game it is. 5/5
I don't think they have to be used sparingly to suit my skill level. I know well that some maps kick my ass and can frustrate me, but that doesn't make me think that better players should be left without something intense to play just because I (relatively) suck at DOOM. If I get consistently pwned by arch-viles or whatever, I lower the difficulty setting, finish the level, and then go watch Anima Zero or another such hero demolish them, instead of whining on a Doomworld thread like a noob.
Creaphis said:
I like 'em. The archvile is notable for having an attack pattern unlike the attack pattern of any other monster in the game, which means the player has to use unique strategies against it. This is a real strength of Doom's monster design overall - most monsters have to be fought in very different ways, which keeps gameplay interesting. What you see too often in other games is enemies that are essentially this other monster, only more so, as in, they have the same behaviour as another monster but have a stronger attack or require more dakka to kill. Encounters with such monsters may be more challenging, but without being more interesting, which is bad.
Well, isn't a hell knight just "a bigger imp"? The DOOM monsters are simple but tend to have a key variation or two that make them different enough, but most importantly, they are used in conjunction as pieces to be combined. The arch-vile is probably the most different, because it has three "special abilities": it's never a target, its attack is unusual and it resurrects monsters. It's really a kind of boss monster, but instead of being huge, like the cyb and the spider, it has various special qualities.
In a general sense, the monsters also tend to counter the player's attacks with similar effects, and the arch-vile seems like a good counterpart to the BFG, with a non-projectile damage effect (think of the BFG tracers) and the ability to bring monsters back to life (to counter the destructiveness of the weapon). The designers must have thought, "we need something meaner than the arachnotron's plasma burst, but it needs to be focused on the player." The revenant can be seen as a counterpart of the rocket launcher, in this sense. Since rockets are too powerful for something less than a boss, they removed the area damage (which creates a lot of infighting and damage to the monsters) and made its projectile follow the player.
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04-07-10 22:51 
