Doom 1 or 2?

AlexMax said:

Nah, I remember getting stuck on that map as a kid, as I found myself looped around to an earlier area without explanation.

Heh, 7 or 8 year old me could figure it out pretty fast. The room was way too suspicious even back then, and the other door was opened the same way anyways.

I actually agree that The Spirit World is the best hell level in Doom 2

My opinion is quite the opposite because of the imbalance between power-ups and monsters. Great music and atmosphere, sounds and looks like are you approaching the core of the hell or something, but in reality you can complete the map blindfolded under nightmare (not gonna try).

Doom II is id software's biggest joke: "Hey John, let's see if we can push the same exact product out of the window, by cobbling our early reject levels with some unfinished monsters and textures we had laying around. Oh, and a new weapon so we don't get called lazy. Maybe they'll buy it!"

I think both Doom and Doom II are on the same level of quality. The first one has better level design, while the second one has better gameplay. Some levels of Doom II are really good, but others not much, especially the more gimmicky ones. (Nirvana, The Chasm, Barrels O'fun) Still, there's some top quality stuff, IMO (Spirit World, Living End, Gotcha, Tenements, etc)

personally, i prefer doom 1 over doom 2. i just like the levels and music a lot more. i mean, in doom 2, i can't stand the urban levels - to me, they're just not very fun. while i do think that doom 1 had a lot of crappy levels, such as mt. erebus, i felt that the majority of the levels were higher in quality than the ones in doom 2.

now, if we're talking about modding and custom maps, doom 2 is ultimately the superior choice. the ssg and the new monsters add quite a bit to the game, that i think a lot of custom maps take advantage of far better than doom 2 did.

Doom 1 is better.
The only Doom 2 level that could be called an E1-ish techbase, with badass high tech computers and stuff, is The Focus. MAYBE Underhalls and Refueling Base. Doom 1 had an episode of nothing but those, which is great.

Corrupted techbase (UDoom E2) vs. city (Doom 2 E2) is a tough comparison. Both are really brilliantly executed, but Ultimate Doom's E2 is just kinda better. When I just wanna kill demons, I'm much more likely to load up E2M6/7 than MAP13/15. Can't say why though, maybe because of the variety?

Doom 2's hell levels, on the other hand, are way better than Doom 1's. Spirit World and Monster Condo are way better than the entire E3, which was just plain... bad. E3M8: Dis is the biggest LET-DOWN, obviously "not even trying". Come on Sandy! You made that awesome E2M8! Why couldn't you throw out one more decent arena?

I can actually forgive E3M1: Hell Keep for being plain horrible because of... you know. Warrens. That's how a true secret level should look like IMO.

Also Ultimate Doom has the wooden-marble E4, which is interesting because of being so different from id maps. Haven't played Doom 2's Master Levels though... if you can count that.

So in the end both have their pros and cons of course (talking about levels, not the monsters and SSG, which can be used in UDoom thru DEH h4x0ring), but Doom 1 is the better one.

p.s.
I <3 shootable switches, I overuse them in my own maps, but despite that it still takes me a minute to figure out that you should shoot the damn thing

Well, to be fair, Refueling Base was originally intended to BE a Doom 1 map, designed by Tom Hall. Which Sandy Peterson then proceeded to take full credit for.

Y'all episode 3 haters be trippin'. Unless you're a fellow devotee at the Church of Petersen, in which case you're okay by me.

On-topic: Doom II is way more a sequel than the original Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2 -- as for whether it's a spinoff or mission pack or whatever, why the fascination with mere nomenclature? It is what it is; a marathon of brown with some neat as fuck additional monsters and a new BOOMstick to make short work of 'em.

But alas, Doom II also has The Chasm. Because even Sandy slips sometimes. ;)

The Chasm would be better if it wasn't for that last segment at the exit room with an inescapable pit, trickier segments to get through than even the rest of the level, and Lost Souls to try to knock you off the edge. Saving beforehand is strictly mandatory.

Sallan said:

Why so much people love DOOM II?

I will give this Question to my good friend John Romero :-)

I think what we need to do is make people that prefer Doom I wear specially designed pieces of cloth shaped like 5 1/4" floppy disks, so everyone can see their shame.

#Doom1Privilege

#Doom1Microaggressions

#Doom2SafeSpace

How about those people who prefer Final Doom? Should they be recognized for having the stones to actually prefer the more brutally challenging level sets? :P

Plutonia is more Doom II than Doom II ever was.

Piper Maru said:

Plutonia is more Doom II than Doom II ever was.

Like half of it is literally copied from Doom II lol

esselfortium said:

Like half of it is literally copied from Doom II lol

You mean to tell me Slayer is a copy of O of Destruction? Gadzooks.

MetroidJunkie said:

How about those people who prefer Final Doom? Should they be recognized for having the stones to actually prefer the more brutally challenging level sets? :P

no, those heathens are heretics and must be jailed at once

chex quest is the best iwad

Marcaek said:

chex quest is the best iwad

the adventures of square is obviously the superior iwad

You all fail it.

Hacx is the only IWAD that matters.

Sallan said:

Why so much people love DOOM II? it's 99,99% equal to DOOM, few new things and worse level design that doesn't look like earth.

I would attribute it to the addition of the Super shotgun, and that most mods use Doom 2.

As for level design I would disagree. I've never played through Doom 2 in it's entirety, even though I have played the 1st one several times through. I think it's more to do with the absence of episodes, then the quality of the levels themselves. IMO Doom 2 has some really playful level design in places, like the map where you make the Spiderdemon and Cyberdemon fight, or the one where you need to traverse rooms full of explosive barrels.

Because it was a huge extra helping of Doom, just a year later, and who would say no to that?

32 new levels, with a large amount of varied, interesting, and powerful new monsters, which made high-level fights much more fun (instead of just shooting annoyingly-tanky Barons of Hell and the odd Cacodemons).

And the Super Shotgun, which was utter joy to use at the time. Satisfying power, sound effects, animations. It blew the normal Shotgun out of the water.

Sallan said:

level design that doesn't look like earth

So first Doom levels looks like Phobos, huh? Man, I can't imagine Doom without such a great levels like Living End, Spirit World, Industrial Zone, Suburbs, Chasm, Monster Condo, Dead Simple. And all the new bestiary: Arch-viles, Revenants, Chaingunners, Arachnotrons... Man, back in the mid-nineties that was a huuuuge thing.

Voros said:

Hacx is the only IWAD that matters.

Nope, this one is.

Freedoom is best Doom

Marcaek said:

chex quest is the best iwad

It's not an IWAD. :]

Given what they had to work with, levels like Downtown do a pretty good job imitating Earthly Environments.



Clearly, Duke 3D has the edge with that because of its texture selection and coming out at a later date when technology is more there but Doom II made a valiant effort.

Also, Gardevoir showed that you could make very impressive environments with the right amount of detail (Which Doom II would have been incapable of with limitations at the time) and a few extra textures.

bzzrak said:

It's not an IWAD. :]

It is.

Given that it was a major company utilizing not only the engine itself but essentially making an exact clone of Doom (Before the source code was released, unless I'm mistaken), they damn well had better gotten id's permission for it unless they wanted their asses sued.

Sayok6 said:

Nope, this one is.

Freedoom is the way to go, The People's Doom has been on vacation for over 15 years.

scifista42 said:

It is.

??

edit: my chex.wad matches all the checksums from the DoomWiki page

something's wrong with your chex.wad then