Doom 2 In Name Only

I played up to The Crusher and... frankly, it soured the taste in my mouth to the point that I don't want to continue and try all of the maps. 

 

Surprisingly hideous and wonderfully claustrophobic architecture, with monotonic texture usage and gimmicks at every turn of the map. Then of course the Arch-Vile maze because apparently it's a necessity to copy the Casalis at least once in your mapping career. The crushing ceiling was just the cherry on the top. Not a fan.

Pretty long maps and it can get kind of frustrating. But overall, it was a pretty fun playthrough.

Pretty good first 6 maps, map07 is cock and ball torture, but overall the megawad is kinda mediocre.

I was intrigued by the concept, so I decided to try this out. Turns out, the megawad is very mediocre at best & one of the worst Doom 2 style megawads I played in a while.

 

This is a poorly executed mess. Most of the maps are designed in mediocrity & don't play well. Monster placement is bad, maps are unnecessarily long & drag for a long time, switch hunts & dark areas you can't see at all & frustrates you more than challenges you. I stopped at Map 19, couldn't take the limited visibility & samey map design.

 

The whole experience was a snoozefest boring tedium with occasionally a good challenge. Nothing special, though.

Two stars for some good enemy encounters & interesting concept.

 

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NOT Recommended

 

 

Map20 is a bit surrealistic

IMO, great maps = 09, 10, 13, 15, 22, 23, 28 and 34. Good maps = 01, 04, 05, 06, 12, 31, 16, 17, 18 and 26. Bad Maps = 08, 11 and 19. Worse Maps = 20 and 24. In the end worth a download and play.

Infuriating monster placement in many maps.  Prepare to endure revenants, archviles and pain elementals used in the most enraging, dickish ways possible. The wad is proliferated with dickish traps which will get you killed without foreknowledge. Forget pistol starting some of these maps, revenants and pain elementals in your face at when you have nothing more than a shotgun and a few shells. Some maps are decent, e.g. Map 29, but many are shit to mediocre at best, with maps 6 and 7 being a special kind of standout dickballs shit.

Done with these settings:

 

- Crispy Doom 3.5

- Hurt Me Plenty.

- Continuous combined with a pistol start mindset.

- Saves every 10 minutes or so.

 

It wasn't as bad as the popular opinions say. In fact, it has a lot of fun maps faithful to their titles, with nice visuals, good architecture and detailing. Monster placement isn't the most exciting thing but it holds its own. Some of the custom tunes were catchy. In general it gives what it promises.

 

My favourite map is the twentieth, it gives some fun close encounters as well as Nobles vs. Cybers. Other maps like 05, 11, 15, 17, 21, 26 and 31 stood out as totally good, in my point of view. Then maps like 13 and 24 felt like better ideas than the originals in Doom 2, though the first one has a secret homage to the original Downtown, I'm not sure if this is "legal" since the maps are meant to be In Name Only.

Anyway, there were also maps that I didn't enjoy that much. Map 07 would be better if much shorter and less lava floor. Map 14 has a lot of non-secret areas that could have been tagged as secrets perfectly. Map 19 is fine, if somewhat obscure, the dark hallways were really mazy but ok, at least there were no roaming archviles, and as it had a great final arena that can be twisted, I find this map mostly positive. Map 23 provides some fun with barrels but it also has no possible ways to return to previous sections once you get past them, and also archviles that never teleport in anywhere, why? I dunno. Map 27 has a sector problem where imps overlap a wall that is supposed to raise, making the map impossible to beat in vanilla unless cheating; it also has a SMM that has troubles to teleport in the central backyard, and disliked parts like the fake walls section and the path to the blue key, where there's a tiny horribly hidden switch. And finally the bonus one, map 34, which is horrible and impossible, so bad monster placement, so bad ammo placement, soooooooooo bad constructed, and the end is... like kmxexii stated in their review, avoid.

The other maps I didn't specifically recall vary from ok to good. Next mission will be UV-pistol/fist starting, someday in the future.

 

Overall, I'll give this 6.5/10, which means I had fun with the wad, just not all the time.

Some maps are frustrating like The Crusher, and it's just impossible the part you have to face like 10 revenants and you can't hide behind or you will be crushed. Also, annoying ammount of archviles

Doom 2 in Shame Only

The Crusher and Gotcha were hilarious (good). Wolfenstein looked nice. Made me want to see more nazi castle themed maps. The rest is meh. Too huge and sprawling and confusing for my tastes. After Dead Simple I got bored and no-clipped all the rest.

Has a few good maps, but sadly most of them look, feel and play amateurish. Basic map layout is often simple or atoh too overdetailed, and too cramped. Texture use is often too spare and has too many misalignments. Ambiance is often poor. Gameplay misses logic, leitmotivs and is too much of the same, making playing after a while boring. Overall if this was DooM after 20 years, then sorry, but not enough progression was made for keeping it interesting...

These maps are great. I don't get what all the people are complaining about. Most of the levels look great, have nice ideas and play well enough to not be frustrating. Surprising how no-one is complaining on the Whitemare 2 page. Gloominarch's Realm is 200 times more confusing than any level in this wad.

Huge well designed (for the most part at least) maps, but it totally fails at gameplay. When maps need to put arrows on the floor to show you where to go, you know something went horribly wrong. 90% of the maps are a confusing clusterfuck of ideas. After the initial killing spree you start searching for that needle in a haystack that will make you be able to finish the damn map. On top of that there's poor/unfair monster placement.

Pretty good idea of a wad

Xaser's map alone saves this from being a 2/5.

D2INO is a somewhat troubled mapset, plagued by a vague concept and the lack of a cohesive vision. The notable authors produce some fun levels, but there's some iffy, middling maps that pull down the overall experience. It's worth playing as long as you understand that the project won't blow you away.

A mixed bag for sure, but some very interesting designs in here too. I wouldn't say all maps work well, and some can be a bit long winded, but for me, that's a change from the 100mph shoot all the time action you get in most megawads. The only way you will know is to download, and play yourself.

Really enjoying it so far, was going along fine then dead simple came along and wrecked me for so long, found it a little weird that it went from average difficulty, rock hard then average again, but fun none the less even if it was mean, the crusher was disappointing to me but the rest are awesome, so good job really good map pack.

"Map 31 is a must play. It's worth downloading D2INO just for wolfenstein." +1 Xaser's map isn't ONLY good map in this package, but it is by far the best one. Sadly, way things are most players won't even get to it without cheating. Here's hoping for Thunderpeak-style standalone release!

There are a lot of "ok" maps, read "tolerable", and a couple of good ones (31 for instance). A lot of maps are "holy god why is there no quality control whatsoever"-tier and really bring the overall value of this set horribly low.

Played up to map 9, stopped there due to confusion and tedium. Don't see see myself finishing this one any time soon. As far as Dead Simple is concerned, its not exactly as bad as people are making it out to be but it sure is annoying - triangle-based layout makes for an interesting looking map but also results in even less cover and further impedes movement. 3 stars for effort and for trying something different with a vanilla megawad.

I expected another epic community project... I was disappointed, to put it lightly. Couldn't manage to finish even the first episode, but I did manage to get confused, annoyed, bored, angry. Not recommended, not at all.

Over half of it is bad. It's like a Master Levels, You don't know what you get.

Confusing and ugly.