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SandWhichIsland

People actually liked Plutonia?

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I played final doom for the first time in 5 years and changed my mind about Plutonia. Plutonia was NOT a well designed mod.

It's just a long sequence of Heavy Weapon Dude ambushes.
Every single level has them

Dudes in cages. Dudes behind trap doors. Dudes flanking doors. Dudes surrounding courtyards.
Dudes on ledges.

Everywhere.
The only thing worse than chaingunners were the Revenants in every level except Map 11.

It really takes away from the atmosphere of the game if i'm stopping to killing 20 chaingunners in a yard or have to kill 15 revenants out in the open. Having to circle strafe or hide behind a corner got old really fast.

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Plutonia is excellent, you're probably just not good enough to handle it :^)

Also get your facts right, revenants don't appear in MAP17 as well as MAP11.

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What did you think about it 5 years ago, then?

I probably said this many times before on these forums, I don't approve the way the Casalis handled difficulty levels.

Other than that, it's the only IWAD worth replaying.

MAP20 may be the best IWAD map, but 14,23,26 and others are great, too.

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vdgg said:

What did you think about it 5 years ago, then?

I probably said this many times before on these forums, I don't approve the way the Casalis handled difficulty levels.

Other than that, it's the only IWAD worth replaying.

MAP20 may be the best IWAD map, but 14,23,26 and others are great, too.


i thought it was alright until i played wads like Alien Vendetta. My problem with Plutonia is that the levels are anti fun. It was challenging, but it wasn't fun. Half the time I spent circle strafing or peeking corners to hide from chaingunners and revenants. Plutonia is an even bigger pain in the ass if you're playing on Brutal Doom.

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I find it difficult to understand why you complain about Plutonia's difficulty level, while you don't complain about AV, which is, in my opinion, much harder than Plutonia.

Besides, playing anything with Brutal Doom will make it harder, as it should be obvious to anyone who has played Brutal Doom.

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Zed said:

I find it difficult to understand why you complain about Plutonia's difficulty level, while you don't complain about AV, which is, in my opinion, much harder than Plutonia.


I think the complaint is not that Plutonia is challenging per se, but that how it generates challenge is (a) repetitive, and (b) optimises a tedious, corner camping style of play in a lot of cases.

But maybe I am projecting my own reasons for disliking Casali maps (while liking most of AV) onto the OP :)

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Plutonia is probably much better nowadays than it was when it came out. Back then I guess a lot of people reacted to it just like SandWhichIsland, but with modern skill it can be played quite aggressively, without camping\etc, and it becomes pretty fun when you're able to play it like that. For a good modern player I'd say there is an abundance of health and ammo pickups on pretty much every level, similar to Kama Sutra.

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SandWhichIsland said:

Dudes


Chill out, dude.

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SandWhichIsland said:

Plutonia is an even bigger pain in the ass if you're playing on Brutal Doom.


This is a very important detail that you chose not to reveal to the doctors. Yes, if you eat too many cheeseburgers and get too little exercise, you will get fat.

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SandWhichIsland said:

Plutonia is an even bigger pain in the ass if you're playing on Brutal Doom.

Don't play it with Doodle Broom. Simples. :P

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Plutonia checks all the marks of a quality map set:
- Agitation everywhere ✓
- Heavy dudes everywhere ✓
- Brown monotexturing ✓
- Symmetrical round courtyards ✓

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Job said:

TNT > Plutonia


TNT has shit like Habitat and Mount Pain. That immediately makes it worse than Plutonia which doesn't have any real duds.

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Job said:

TNT > Plutonia

I wanted to reply with a screenshot of DOBWIRE or something of similar excellence, but I'm too lazy to take it.

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I'm with you, SandwhichIsland, I don't like Plutonia either. I don't think I've ever played more more than about 10 minutes before just ragequitting in frustration. I just don't find it fun at all.

There was a thread less than a year ago that touched on this subject and I gave my opinions on Plutonia at the time. That thread did help me to understand why Plutonia holds appeal to some people - it's basically oriented around a completely different style of play to that of Doom 1. Linguica's awareness-based taxonomy of Doom monsters is a really good analysis. I still don't like Plutonia but I at least understand it a bit better.

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I actually just started Plutonia last night. I have played all the other IWADs as well as Doom 64, Master Levels, and No Rest for the Living. The first level of Plutonia was harder than any other individual level in any of those other games :\ I started level 2 but I got trapped or something so I quit

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Just to clarify, Plutonia is like the diet version of a Nuts or Terry wad, sans the whimsy.

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The first time I tried Plutonia I played about halfway through the first map, and then deleted it from my hard drive in disgust. I thought it was absolutely terrible. It looked god awful and appeared to be deliberately trolling the player.

However, after listening to the Doom Radio podcasts I wondered if I had got it wrong, because they seemed to think Plutonia was pretty good.

So I gave it another go, got about halfway through the second map before being killed by a crusher without any warning, and deleted it off my hard drive again in disgust.

But, on my third attempt, a few months later, I made it to 'Caged', at which point Plutonia actually became fun. I think it helped, that I used a software renderer at a relatively low resolution. A lot of the custom textures that had looked ropey as hell previously worked much better, and I realised Plutonia did indeed have it's own aesthetic.

As I played through, it became apparent just how much it had influenced later mappers, and I was impressed by some of the inventiveness of the game design. A lot of little things I thought had invented for myself turned out to have been done decades before by the Casali brothers.

I'm still not keen on the first three maps, and there are any number of encounters that would flow much better with more restrained placement of chain-gunners, but once Plutonia gets into it's stride it delivers some quality game time, even if it's companion Evilution is a lot more accessible.

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SandWhichIsland said:

Plutonia was NOT a well designed mod. It's just a long sequence of Heavy Weapon Dude ambushes.

I think it's possible to be both. Plutonia is actually a well-designed sequence of heavy weapon dude ambushes. ;)

If you fall into the habit of camping and peeking your way through the levels, of course you're not going to enjoy yourself. I never really 'got' Plutonia until I tried playing it more aggressively, like Memfis said. I'm not that skilled, but the game is still pretty manageable, and really entertaining to blaze through if you have half an idea what you're doing.

Plutonia is also the only IWAD with fewer than a third of its maps being half-assed snorefests or one-time-gimmick filler levels, IMO.

Edit: Funny you mention that Urthar, but I also think it might be easier to embrace Plutonia in its original resolution for some reason. When I started to fully appreciate the game, it was during a random playthough, ITYTD, in Chocolate Doom, on a whim. It's been my favorite IWAD ever since. I usually play other wads in high res, but the few times I've tried to play through Plutonia in ZDoom, etc, I always get turned off pretty quickly.

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Why didn't anyone mention yet the arch-viles in the pits right behind the dudes?

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fraggle said:

Linguica's awareness-based taxonomy of Doom monsters is a really good analysis.


wow this post is great. a nice articulation of things that go through my head while mapping/playing.


also plutonia is great. lots of clever setups, impressively sparse yet punishing monster placement, memorably quirky trap designs.

also habitat is a great map :p

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Plutonia is the IWAD that I am the least likely to replay. I just don't enjoy it much at all. Each one of the other IWADs has something that keeps me coming back for more but whenever I try to give Plutonia another go, I just end up reminding myself that I don't really like it.

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Job said:

Just to clarify, Plutonia is like the diet version of a Nuts or Terry wad, sans the whimsy.


Please tell me you're joking. I'd like to be nice but this post is just retarded if it is serious.

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It's quite difficult, but it serves merely as a bottleneck for user megawads such as BTSX and even the recent Valiant. It also had superior eye candy compared to TNT.

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