Jump to content
Search In
  • More options...
Find results that contain...
Find results in...
Guest Mariner

Doom 1 or 2?

Which one is your favorite?  

426 members have voted

  1. 1. Which one is your favorite?

    • DOOM/The Ultimate DOOM
      202
    • DOOM II: Hell on Earth
      224


Recommended Posts

After a quick search, it seems that chex.wad indeed doesn't and never had the IWAD header, and yet it can be used standalone as an IWAD, without needing any other IWAD to couple it with.

Share this post


Link to post
scifista42 said:

After a quick search, it seems that chex.wad indeed doesn't and never had the IWAD header, and yet it can be used standalone as an IWAD, without needing any other IWAD to couple it with.


so are they all like that, or just the first one?

Share this post


Link to post

Doom 2 not as great as Doom?

I SOLD MY AMIGA A500 TO GET DOOM 2!

True story, sold it to a man as an Xmas pressie to his daughter after I'd gotten my first PC in 1995, got £50 for it, which was exactly what the CD version of Doom 2 cost. Most expensive PC game I ever got, and technically my first.

I much prefer Doom 2 to Doom (including Ultimate) because of the "full" bestiary, the SSG and what I consider to be id pushing the id Tech 1 engine. And of course the textures and skies were darker, they were going for, well, a darker, evil, look.

Of course, I still go back to Doom's first episode every now and again, although I barely remember what the later levels of the other episodes looked like, now.

Share this post


Link to post

The Ultimate Doom holds a special place in my heart. It has nice level design, great music tracks and is easier for the beginner to get the hang of it.

Of course Doom 2 came later, when people got somewhat used to the Doom formula and innovates by adding the SSG, Chaingunners, Arch-viles (encounters become challenging with two or more of them), Pain Elementals (they should have put a Lost Souls limit here), Arachnotrons, Mancubi (or whatever the plural is) and a whole new boss.

These changes altered the dynamic of the game in a great way and now enemy priority is a lot different from the first game and the difficulty has been increased.

Also the first maps in Doom 2 seemed like the typical infested space station to me, which was fine, but the city maps are what added to the experience. Enemies placed tactically, increased verticality and secrets being well hidden.

The only bad thing I did myself is that I played Doom on HMP and proceeded to finish Doom 2 on UV, which was somewhat painful at the time. Since then, I beat Doom on UV (it was a lot easier than I remembered ) and will be playing Doom 2 again in the future.

So is one game better than the other? In my opinion, each game has its own positives and negatives and it's up to the player to decide.

Share this post


Link to post

ShotgunDemolition, you forgot the Revenants, the BEST new enemies in Doom 2 by a massive margin. Who could forget that horrible scream of theirs when they spot you? Especially a GROUP of them!

Share this post


Link to post
ShotgunDemolition said:

The only bad thing I did myself is that I played Doom on HMP and proceeded to finish Doom 2 on UV, which was somewhat painful at the time. Since then, I beat Doom on UV (it was a lot easier than I remembered ) and will be playing Doom 2 again in the future.

As someone who's beaten all of Ultimate Doom on UV, and is now playing Doom II for the very fist time, I can attest to it being somewhat painful even having gone through the first game (including episode 4) on its harder difficulties first.

Levels like "Refueling Base" and "Suburbs" in particular are relentless if you don't know the tricks to them, as you'll quickly find the entire stages flooded with monsters and have too little ammo to deal with them. Unlike the first three episodes of Ultimate Doom, where UV seems to provide fair difficulty for a blind run, here I'm finding the stages are very much set up for you to already be familiar with them by the time they're populated with that many enemies.

On the other hand, outside of those stages, I'm sure HMP would have been too easy, as I'm not dying a ton otherwise. It seems to be coming down to a few drastic difficulty spikes and certain levels requiring familiarity much more than others.

If you save after activating an extra room of monsters on "Refuling Base" and haven't come in with much ammo, good luck.

Share this post


Link to post

Doom 1 is a much better level set/thematic progression, Doom 2 is a much better toolset for community content. It's kind of a tossup.

Share this post


Link to post

The Refueling Base always gave me the creeps when I was playing the game as a kid. I just found it so big and intimidating. And I knew there was a Cyberdemon in there too which genuinely scared me!

Share this post


Link to post
Bauul said:

The Refueling Base always gave me the creeps when I was playing the game as a kid. I just found it so big and intimidating. And I knew there was a Cyberdemon in there too which genuinely scared me!

Ha, it scared me as a twenty-something when I got to it the other day. Doing a blind UV run and had no idea how crowded the map would be. I'd trigger one encounter with fifteen enemies, then try to retreat to a bit of safe ground in the next huge room, only to trigger twenty more there.

It was such a clusterfuck. I'll have to figure out how to pistol start that sometime. It seems way too easy to trigger enemies, given the wide open spaces. Definitely felt like an out-of-place difficulty spike.

In general I'm finding Doom II much harder than anything Ultimate Doom, including Episode 4. I don't know if I like the way it's difficult yet, though. It's almost a little too open, and rather than staging isolated, clever encounters, you just have to figure out how not to trigger half the map early on.

Oh, also, the first few archvile encounters genuinely scared me -- and this isn't a joke -- in a horror-movie way. So unexpected, with their cry and their weird movement, and they just send you into immediate panic mode.

Share this post


Link to post

Yes, Refueling Base, I know it well!

At the start of the map, just before the steps, there is a secret room on the right that might help you. But yes, this map is possibly my most favourite of Doom 2, as it is a good test map for Brutal Doom and other mods.

As for setting off traps, yes, there's those walls in that large open space on the right once you go down the steps, and yes, walking over each of the exits in that area opens each of the walls. Then there's the corridor next to it with a whole BARRACKS of zombie soldiers on one side, and a large empty dark room with Revenants and Arachnotrons. Then two other rooms off the main area, with pinkies and lost souls on one side and revenants and imps on the other. Then there's the other large room filled with Arachnotrons and imps. Then the pitch-black room with imps held in forcefields, and finally, yes, there IS a Cyberdemon.

It's no big deal, however: if you've played Doom, you'll know all about the monster in-fighting that can help you beat them if you're low on ammo, and frankly, the sheer scale of some of these battles can be insane!

Except, do NOT try to play Refueling Base (including typo there!) on Brutal Doom, as you will get pwned quickly! It is very entertaining though, that map and that mod put together.

Share this post


Link to post
Voros said:

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

It definitely had a hell of a break, but there has been a lot of behind-the-scenes work the past couple of days. If progress keeps up something concrete might surface in the next few weeks.

Share this post


Link to post

I feel like Doom I got midway through the process of breaking the sound barrier on 3D level design -- getting to the point of designing locations instead of really awesome mazes/Wolf 3D 2.0 levels. Certain designers got farther (Romero) than others (Hall).

By the time of Doom II, Sandy and co. have made it into the next generation. They're trying to design places, like the Suburbs, O of Destruction, whatever, but it's tough -- fully modern level design sorta requires more flexibility than the Doom engine can provide -- and the work has been squeezed into a short development cycle. The result was pretty uneven.

The interesting thing to me is how the maze-y style was often better than the more modern one (Hall being the poster boy), and how many cool new pwads seem more in the Doom I format with a bajillion different hallways, even though they use the Doom II iwad. And witness the number of doomworld users who are Doom I fanboys.

Share this post


Link to post
Death Egg said:

It definitely had a hell of a break, but there has been a lot of behind-the-scenes work the past couple of days. If progress keeps up something concrete might surface in the next few weeks.

Source? I'm interested. I always find Boingo looking at the COLORMAP generator thread, but that's it.
Can you give a small preview of some kind to show off progress?

Share this post


Link to post

I cannot personally give you any screenshots or releases yet, but I am essentially second to Boingo on the project. A lot of open source resources have been pulled from around the community (Eriance left a hell of a legacy) and I've taken it upon myself to begin working on the levels themselves personally. The palette issues have finally been solved, and all assets are being converted. By April something substantial may be ready to show to the public.

Share this post


Link to post

I finished Doom II this week as a first-time 2017 player. I wound up being much less enamored with its level design overall than I was the first game, or either Final Doom wad so far.

I may have made a mistake jumping straight into UV, as the level design at multiple points is set up such that you can flood the stage with enemies simply by walking around; I didn't really anticipate the different playstyle its wide open areas would require in comparison to the first game. I frequently found myself struggling with low ammo, and a lot of the game blurred together.

Downtown, Monster Condo, Spirit World, and The Living End were probably the highlights for me. Suburbs, The Chasm, Refueling Base, and a handful of bland earlier levels were the lowlights.

I felt like I just had to get lucky against the final boss, eventually getting a run where the random enemy placement wasn't too dangerous. I'll have to figure out a better strategy for that in future playthroughs.

I'm around halfway through Evilution and six or so levels into Plutonia (starting out on HMP on both of them), and having finished The Ultimate Doom and Doom 64 EX beforehand, I think on first impressions Doom II ranks at the bottom of the five official campaigns for me.

Share this post


Link to post

Why don't Doom players like to even the odds by forcing the monsters to fight one another?

I've got a Doom II map I made back in 1996 called "The Cyber Fort" which is a huge single room with a Cyberdemon on a pillar in the middle, guarding the keycard for escape. All around him in the walls are Barons of Hell and Imps, and I made the map so that you have to defeat the Cyberdemon by going up a lift and running on the raised platform all around his pillar, causing a crossfire between him and the walled monsters. Then you simply wait for them to battle it out until he dies, then collect the key and get out, with an option of collecting rockets to use against any remaining monsters.

I showed someone the map, and they came back with "Doom is not a spectator sport".

But I don't care, I'm willing to allow monster in-fighting in my maps, so why don't others?

I can share the map, if you're interested.

Share this post


Link to post

There's a difference between "setting off infighting is a useful strategy" and "infighting is the only viable way to finish the level".

Many Doom players enjoy the former. Relatively few enjoy the latter.

Share this post


Link to post
grommile said:

Many Doom players enjoy the former. Relatively few enjoy the latter.

More like a technique that's rarely, if even, used. Popular things are generally accepted into society, basically making whatever the popular thing is, to become something we can get along with, understand, expect in our daily way of life.

Infighting required to finish levels, that's something I have never seen in any maps. If I have, it didn't make an impact on me (or the execution wasn't good enough to create an impression). But, like every other strange thing in the universe, it can be utilised to be something mindblowing, just that no one has either found out how or even bothered trying, thinking that players will get confused.

If such a technique is to be used, it should done in such a way that the player has to take action also and still be in a risky position. A poor (?) example:

Circular arena (with few obstacles to make things challenging), no ammo or weapons, some stimpacks littered here, two megaspheres next to player spawn. Two (three, four, IDK) Cyberdemons, facing each other, player spawns in the middle. Cyberdemons get instantly alerted and fire rockets at player, player naturally takes a megasphere and runs, rockets hit each Cyberdemon instead, infighting begins meaning an exchange of deadly rockets begin, with the player trapped in the arena.

Having only a pistol with 50 bullets, it's futile to fight them. It's upto the player to dodge the missles and explosions that happen (blast radius is dangerous).

Share this post


Link to post

Some of D2's maps weren't great, but the sheer size and openness of some was something to marvel, even if it wasn't much fun to play. It showed us that there was more than just corridors and enclosed buildings to muk through (I mean, Doom had a few bigger levels too, but nothing quite on D2's scale). So add the monsters and SSG to the expanded size, and Doom 2 comes off as something very fresh and new for when it came out.

Share this post


Link to post
Foebane72 said:

I can share the map, if you're interested.


Do whatever you want. I mean that in an encouraging, positive way.
I'm reviewing this UnAligned megaWAD at the moment, well that thing is full of gimmick stuff. Do you know how is the first map of the WAD called? "Infight Central". Nobody seems to complain.
The same author's "Absolutely Killed" got a Cacoward, and it has nothing but gimmicks.

What I'm getting at: make maps like that for yourself and the two freaks that enjoy that kind of stuff. For the relatively few. Do you know what does Mr Relative Few think right now? "Damn I'm so fed up with this overhyped overdetailed slaughter Ancient Aliens/BTSX/Sunlust/whatever, I want a map where you have to infight!".
Make at least Mr Relative Few happy and you've accomplished your mission. :]

Everyone else can go play their Ancient Aliens, BTSX, Sunlust and Whatever if they don't like it. :]

Share this post


Link to post

UnAligned is fantastic. My own Nex Credo was full of gimmicks and was pretty well-received. Some (myself included) like to keep things fresh, I dare say the "Doom is not a spectator sport" guy could do with a more open mind.

Share this post


Link to post
Foebane72 said:

ShotgunDemolition, you forgot the Revenants, the BEST new enemies in Doom 2 by a massive margin. Who could forget that horrible scream of theirs when they spot you? Especially a GROUP of them!


Although I don't find Revenants being the best enemy addition in Doom 2 (I'm that Arch-vile guy) they are some of the best enemies in Doom games and I seriously don't know how I forgot them previously. And yes, their scream is horrifying. In Epic 2 they are used particularly well, enhancing the overall atmosphere. Also, I will never forget one level in Scythe (I think), where there were like 100 of them (around 800 enemies overall).

roadworx said:

there is, its capped at 21

I didn't know that, so thanks for telling me. :) But still, Pain Elementals are high priority enemies due to being tanky monster spawners.

Share this post


Link to post

DooM II gave us the same yet different experience.
Same core gameplay with same engine but new things were added & a new premise. Earth! Demons evading our home planet. That's something I thought was really cool.

Bigger levels, more challenging ones too. Plus secret levels easter egg bonus with a cameo in map 32.

Share this post


Link to post
grommile said:

There's a difference between "setting off infighting is a useful strategy" and "infighting is the only viable way to finish the level".

Many Doom players enjoy the former. Relatively few enjoy the latter.


Unless you're referring to a pistol start, I can't think of a single Doom II map that would require infighting to get through it, even on UV.

Share this post


Link to post
MetroidJunkie said:

Unless you're referring to a pistol start, I can't think of a single Doom II map that would require infighting to get through it, even on UV.

Where the stock IWADs are concerned, I'm sure you're correct, though even from a tooled-up start beating MAP20 without infighting sounds like an exercise in masochism :)

Share this post


Link to post

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×