StupidBunny
Forum Regular
Posts: 835
Registered: 09-07 |
More or less in order of preference...
Knee Deep in the Dead: I've always been fond of these levels, and the way the space was used so marvelously in them. They now seem lacking in difficulty (especially Phobos Anomaly) but the expert design makes them still fun. Also, by keeping to the 9-level format, the authors were able to develop the signature look and feel of the episode without it wearing too thin by the end.
The Shores of Hell: More of a mixed bag; some of the levels I really enjoy playing, particularly E2M2, but others can be a bit of a slog. For the most part, though, the levels are cool-looking and fun to play, and as with E1 I think they benefit from the neatness of the 9-level format.
Doom II: The style and feel of Doom II has grown on me a lot. I used to be in the "Doom II is boring and ugly and drab and the texturing sucks" camp, but I find now that it has a lot of atmosphere of its own. The levels of course also benefit from the extended bestiary, as well as the opportunities to make the levels nice and large. It's still a mixed bag; a lot of the hell levels are disappointing (MAP21, in particular, is probably the shittiest map in the entire game) and a few others like MAP08 and MAP20 are just too gimmicky, but for any of those there are others which are well-designed, challenging and make great use of space.
Plutonia: This is one I'm always on and off about. I think that in terms of gameplay it's more solid than Doom II, but I find that the levels aesthetically just wear on me after a while. They look cool, but since they never really change their look throughout the game it becomes tiring by the end. That being said, a lot of these levels are really fun to play, and in particular MAP29 is one I can go back to over and over again.
Hexen: Better than Heretic I think; the appearance is no longer so garish and is now dark and atmospheric, and the complex style of gameplay combined with some pretty clever scripting give it a feel of its own. I can get really into Hexen, but it's one of those that's hard to just jump in and blast through like I can with Doom. The puzzles in the game can be interesting, but they can also be really fucking annoying, and I hate when I run through the same 3 maps of the same hub a million times looking for an unturned switch, an unfound artifact before giving up and looking online for some hint as to what the hell I do. Also, the arsenals of each player are too limited, and when playing as the fighter you will basically be forced to spend the first couple of hubs humping up on every enemy to beat them to death.
TNT: An interesting contrast to Plutonia. Where Plutonia suffers from too much stylistic uniformity, TNT suffers from too little stylistic cohesion: even within levels, they are all over the place in terms of appearance and design, and little seems to become fully developed. That isn't to say that the appearance and design are never good, though. There are some very clever ideas put to use in TNT, and in spite of the lack of cohesion many of the levels manage to be quite atmospheric. The new music is pretty neat (MAP04 has one of the best tracks in Doom) but the new textures are mostly weird and sometimes really ugly. The gameplay is interesting and varied.
Inferno: Disappointing, especially compared to the first two episodes of Doom. The texturing in the levels is bizarre, not always in a good way (see E3M6, excessive use of blue-and-red fire texture therein), and some of the layout is pretty sloppy. As always, there are some good levels as well, and E3M3 and E3M5 in particular I find to be fun and interesting levels. Some of the levels I think do a very good job of evoking hell, and in particular a sort of strange, semi-technological vision of hell that I quite like (it's much more convincing than the Doom II hell levels which mostly don't look like anything of the sort until MAP28). If the look had been applied to better levels in a more careful manner, this would have been a really good episode.
Heretic: I enjoyed playing through Heretic, but it's not one I often feel compelled to revisit. Unlike Hexen, I don't feel it added much to the engine (inventory aside), and while some of the levels are fun I find a lot of them to be too wandery or convoluted (in this case much like Hexen). Heretic's biggest weakness I think was in the graphics. The textures and sprites are way too brightly colored and fail to evoke much in the way of atmosphere for me. Hexen and especially Doom benefit a lot from textures which are varied in tone but still subdued, so that they can be used in a variety of settings to create a variety of feel, and Heretic's graphics just can't really do that.
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09-25-10 16:10 
