Is Memento Mori 2 any better than the original?

The Memento Mori wads are extremely well remembered.  However the original seemed broken in places.  Map 4 can not be beaten without being omniscient or having someone to hit the other switch in the level.  The rest of the wad feels just as slapdash.  I am interested to know if it's sequel is any better or if it's just as unbalanced for single player.

Map 4 of MM1 can’t be beaten in SP? I’ve beaten the whole of MM in single player at least a few times over the years and never had this problem..

..Ok I just took 10 mins and went and replayed MM map04 and thankfully this isn’t true, the map works just fine. You gave me a moment of existential dread there!

I really like MM and the sequel is more of the same, so if you don’t like the first there’s not much reason to play the second. I don’t recall anything being broken, or at least, all of my solo playthroughs were successful - granted, there were plenty of confusing moments, but that’s just how most long-form wads were back then. If that’s not your thing, no harm done, but don’t call the poor thing broken! It’s confusing, not broken.

Scythe will be a lot more up your alley if you want more straightforward progression. As a kid I didn’t mind spending a long-ass time working out confusing spots in games, MM included, but nowadays nobody has time for that. It’s a product of the sensibilities of the era, coming off the tail-end of dungeon crawlers and such.

MAP04's kind of a pain in the ass and there's a secret you can't get unless you're doing coop, but other than that, it's definitely beatable in SP. Jens Nielsen, who made that map and a few others in MM1 and MM2, goes for a very distinct puzzle-box style of play which vascillates between very rewarding and frustrating as hell. It's a style that largely went out of fashion past the 90s. His MAP28 has an absolute banger of an opening fight right out the gate, though.  Most of the other non-Nielsen maps are much more straightforward and the Moeller brothers' maps, the Casalis' maps, and Henrik Rathje's MAP18 are worth the price of admission.

MM2 is definitely more polished and consistent though missing some of the freewheeling charm of the original, and when the original is good there's a spark of genius that I didn't feel all that often in MM2. It's definitely worth a play though.

The MMs have remained among the most popular megawads in the Doom community, but speaking from the perspective of someone else who wasn't really into them: MM2 is somewhat of a smoother and grander playing experience, but if you weren't into what MM is doing, you probably won't like MM2 that much more. There are hundreds of awesome Doom wads, so you'd probably be better off looking for something that speaks to you more and potentially coming back to the MM series if your tastes expand in the future. Like Doomkid said, Scythe is one good place to start. If you like the spirit of Doom but not the arcane machinations of classic mappers, Eviternity is a 2019 megawad that's extremely popular. Heck, if you tell us what you're looking for, I bet you'll get a ton of recommendations.

12 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

Map 4 of MM1 can’t be beaten in SP? I’ve beaten the whole of MM in single player at least a few times over the years and never had this problem..

 

..Ok I just took 10 mins and went and replayed MM map04 and thankfully this isn’t true, the map works just fine. You gave me a moment of existential dread there!

 

I really like MM and the sequel is more of the same, so if you don’t like the first there’s not much reason to play the second. I don’t recall anything being broken, or at least, all of my solo playthroughs were successful - granted, there were plenty of confusing moments, but that’s just how most long-form wads were back then. If that’s not your thing, no harm done, but don’t call the poor thing broken! It’s confusing, not broken.

Yeah, pretty much this.

So from what I understand, these coop elements are in MM2 too?

54 minutes ago, dmslr said:

So from what I understand, these coop elements are in MM2 too?

Yeah, but not as pronounced as in MM.

14 hours ago, Doomkid said:

I really like MM and the sequel is more of the same, so if you don’t like the first there’s not much reason to play the second. I don’t recall anything being broken, or at least, all of my solo playthroughs were successful - granted, there were plenty of confusing moments, but that’s just how most long-form wads were back then. If that’s not your thing, no harm done, but don’t call the poor thing broken! It’s confusing, not broken.

 

My only problem is it's progression, I beat map 4 after watching a guide and seeing I needed to find a red key hidden behind a random wall.  On my first attempt I thought it was legitimately broken because of the red key section.  After that I honestly can't bring myself to play the rest of MM because of that.  The question was if MM2 has a similar amount of confusing moments.  

14 hours ago, Doomkid said:

Scythe will be a lot more up your alley if you want more straightforward progression. As a kid I didn’t mind spending a long-ass time working out confusing spots in games, MM included, but nowadays nobody has time for that. It’s a product of the sensibilities of the era, coming off the tail-end of dungeon crawlers and such.

Yeah Scythe is one of my favorite wads of all time because I never felt compelled to look up a guide other than for fire and ice, and that was because it was very difficult and had no clue how to complete it.  The only set of doom maps I ever looked up a guide for was Doom 64, and it was so I knew what I was doing when attempting to get the demon keys for the unmaker.  

13 minutes ago, Plank_Guy_89 said:

My only problem is it's progression, I beat map 4 after watching a guide and seeing I needed to find a red key hidden behind a random wall. 

It's not a random wall, there's a subtle arrow on the ground pointing to it.

Just now, Andromeda said:

It's not a random wall, there's a subtle arrow on the ground pointing to it.

Well I guess I missed the arrow,  still not a huge fan of it being that small of a detail but I guess I wasn't being as observant as a thought.    

31 minutes ago, Plank_Guy_89 said:

The question was if MM2 has a similar amount of confusing moments.  

 

Many years ago I watched a Polish youtuber playing through MM2 for the first time and he also got stuck early, on MAP04 (Ratamahatta)... Where I never saw any problem. It always depends. I got stuck on the first map of Alien Vendetta :)

And as for the main question, there was this poll. Again, it depends. I personally wasn't so impressed with MM and fell in love with MM2, which struck all the right chords for me.

It depends on your tastes, both are good

On 8/31/2021 at 9:30 PM, Ragu said:

Jens Nielsen, who made that map and a few others in MM1 and MM2, goes for a very distinct puzzle-box style of play

Jens Nielsen was the JJ Abrams of Doom mappers confirmed.

In all honesty, Map 04 might be a bit of a drag but 07 and 28 were amazing.

Most of the problems in Memento Mori really come from the co-op aspect. I think Map 10 may have had a co-op puzzle as well.

Irony. Map 4 is where I stopped playing MM1 myself, it just wasn't a fun level. Gotta get through it though :p

MM1 is all over the place. It has some fantastic moments, and some horrible ones as well ("Kinetics", "Cesspool"...). Much like the youngest brother of the family, Requiem, it also makes no attempt whatsoever at any sort of thematic progression. MM2, in contrast to both, is noticeably more cohesive, more polished, and more challenging for mostly the right reasons.

'Kinetics' by Mackey McCandlish is light-weight and rather bland from what I remember, but the only maps I personally thought were bad were Stoned, maybe Cesspool, and another late game map. For every "City of the Unavenged" or "High Tech Base", you'd get some crap like Fort Hades or *shudder* one of the ones I just mentioned.

Hot take: Viper from MM1 is the greatest IOS/boss map evaaaaaaaaar

Meh. If any mapset has ever made the boss brain/spawner combo genuinely fun to play through for me, it's Demonfear. Even then, I'll take a dehacked boss like in Valiant, or even a Scythe-type finale over that any day.

3 hours ago, Maximum Matt said:

Hot take: Viper from MM1 is the greatest IOS/boss map evaaaaaaaaar

Nah. Its cool, but far from the best.

In my opinion, the best IOS map is from TNT: Revilution. Although like Budoka, I too would take a proper dehacked boss or a grand finale combat map over it.

Yes, that one was extremely cool.

21 hours ago, LadyMistDragon said:

you'd get some crap like Fort Hades

Fort Hades is a killer map, don't badmouth it like that.

On 9/8/2021 at 5:40 AM, DSC said:

Fort Hades is a killer map, don't badmouth it like that.

It might have just been the music. It's  much too short of a midi loop for a map of that size. I think I did like Scott Lampert's other map better, though Fort Hades might have better fights.