Were Perdition's Gate and Hell to Pay actually good games?

I did not know that those games existed:

http://doomwiki.org/wiki/Hell_to_Pay

http://doomwiki.org/wiki/Perdition%27s_Gate

I thought that only Doom, Doom 2 and Final Doom were the commercial Doom games.

Well, are these any good?

Grab the limited editions (portions of the wads that were made freely available) and judge for yourself. See the "demo version" links on the pages you linked to.

I'd say they're both pretty good.

hardcore_gamer said:

http://doomwiki.org/wiki/Hell_to_Pay

http://doomwiki.org/wiki/Perdition%27s_Gate

I thought that only Doom, Doom 2 and Final Doom were the commercial Doom games.

Well, those are commercial PWADs (as in, not full games) not distributed by id, so I doubt you can really call them official in any way.

I didn't care much for Hell to Pay. The new graphics simply aren't up to par with the standards id had set. It all looks very amateurish, which makes it hard to enjoy.

Perdition's Gate is great. It's relatively challenging - I'd put it on par or slightly below Plutonia, but in a different way that isn't frustrating at all (IMHO). There's an actual storyline, and you actually get the feel you're playing through a game rather than a series of disconnected levels. Sort of the same issue as HtP with graphics, but it's limited to textures and the themes are more interesting anyway.

They weren't produced by ID but from what I understand they were definitely licensed (and Perdition's Gate was in the running for a third Final Doom megaWAD). I like them both a great deal, and their authors were quite talented.

Phml said:

I didn't care much for Hell to Pay. The new graphics simply aren't up to par with the standards id had set. It all looks very amateurish, which makes it hard to enjoy.

Perdition's Gate is great. It's relatively challenging - I'd put it on par or slightly below Plutonia, but in a different way that isn't frustrating at all (IMHO). There's an actual storyline, and you actually get the feel you're playing through a game rather than a series of disconnected levels. Sort of the same issue as HtP with graphics, but it's limited to textures and the themes are more interesting anyway.

exactly what i thought about them. PG had a lot of base maps reminiscent of TNT. HtP on the other hand, it was the graphics which ruined it for me. iirc cacos were replaced with some oddly colored flying eyes or something that made ugly sounds. should have stayed with the originals.

Is it legal to distribute both of them?

Haven't tried PG yet, but last year I played through about 1/2 the HTP maps (mostly solo, on a co-op odamex server). It was a lot of fun, and I even liked the new sprites. Mind you, I also liked this a lot, so YMMV:
http://www.doomwadstation.com/main/d2super.html

Sodaholic said:

Is it legal to distribute both of them?

IIRC, Mustaine didn't put it for download on his site, but stated that some other site had it for download and said "hey, I guess they obtained the rights to do it", which was probably a white lie.

The truth of the matter is that the corporation that has the rights now (Atari, when it bought WizardWorks) probably doesn't even know they own it, will never care about it if it's warezed, but on principle will say "no" to any request for official freewarization.

The level design in both games are really inspiring. Perdition's Gate is one of my favorite wads ever because the maps are effective as single player, cooperative, and deathmatch maps. Hell to Pay is a little harder to digest because of the new monsters, weapons, and annoying soundfx. The level design is especially awesome though. There's a mission where you have to destroy a series of vital chambers to deactivate a self-destruct sequence in the building. The map utilizes voodoo dolls stuck under a really tall crushing ceiling, and the map also features "timers" built in the walls that tell you how many minutes you have before the building detonates. The timers are surprisingly accurate and use a weird combination of middle textures and moving floors/ceilings in a way I still have yet to fully understand.

There's also another map where you have to abort a bunch of missile launches, with a purposely bad ending where one of the missiles blasts off before you can stop it.

The plot in Hell To Pay is more interesting than in Perdition's Gate, but I think Perdition's Gate is more fun to play. It's especially fun in Nightmare Mode too, because of the non-linear deathmatch oriented level design.

Like Doom, the shareware maps are easily the best in the set. Not to say that the rest of the wad is bad, but you see most of the really cool stuff in the first 10 levels or so.

I'm actually suprised they made the demo versions for each of them 15 levels long.

I enjoyed Perditions gate immensely, never really played hell to pay. I demoed all the maps Monakhov Vladimir or Memfis didn't do.

Perdition's Gate felt like Plutonia's cousin, Hell To Pay felt like TNT's younger, more immature brother. I enjoyed Perdition's Gate, but I had trouble getting through the later parts of Hell To Pay due to lack of interest.

I do love the soundtrack for Perdition's Gate, I think Hell To Pay had pretty much the same soundtrack mostly...I may have to give it another run-through.

[EDIT] Oh yeah, and I did not dig the new sprites/sounds AT ALL. I deleted them when playing Hell To Pay.

As far as level music goes, there is one PG-exclusive track, one HTP-exclusive track, and the rest is shared.

The title music is different, and I think the intermission tracks are different too.

Oh yeah, HTP's intermission music is awesome.

Gez said:

The truth of the matter is that the corporation that has the rights now (Atari, when it bought WizardWorks) probably doesn't even know they own it, will never care about it if it's warezed, but on principle will say "no" to any request for official freewarization.

Possibly, though Doomworld's "absolutely no warez at all" policy means that links should not be posted here. (Just to avoid any misunderstanding.)

Perdition's Gate is sweet, I never played it before. Love the music also.

Both wads have a strong amount of quality behind them, but Perdition's Gate is a step above HTP in most regards. The map design is superior, for one. I've yet to finish either of these, unfortunately, but from the 20 or so maps I played from each, they're worth finding.