Which half of Final Doom is better?

Plutonia without a doubt.
TNT got it's qualities. But it just doesn't stack up at all compared to Plutonia that is all quality.

Vile said:

I don't know the full history of the wads, but I wonder if Evilution simply was the victim of being rushed to completion after the offer came in (one example being that map31's yellow key is missing in single player, suggesting some slack in the testing).

Actually no. Ty said in an interview once (5years of Doom) that the project ended up getting delayed a lot because of Id. John Romero actually approached him on the same night the WAD was slated for online release. (A mere 4 and a half hour before)

There were decisions made by id about what they wanted done, including several levels that were replaced as well as some major hacking to some. That was driven to a large extent by a preference for smaller enclosed levels, specifically Shawn Green's preference but no doubt shared by others at it. There was a lot of work involved, and it dragged out for months, unfortunately.

kristus said:

Plutonia without a doubt.
TNT got it's qualities. But it just doesn't stack up at all compared to Plutonia that is all quality.

As I stated in my last post, that pretty much sums up how I feel myself. Good to know I've got some who agree. The run of "Evilution."'s at the beginning of this thread made me reconsider for a moment.

I don't know, maybe everyone knew that most like Plutonia better so those who preferred Evilution rushed right in when they saw this thread so that they'd get their name in before the "Plutonia." train took off. Just a thought, obviously it's much more likely just a conincidence.

I just completed Evilution again today, and I consider it my favourite of the four classic Dooms that ive played (Have yet to play Master Levels, and Doom64 is Doom64). Far too many levels stick out to me. Mount Pain in particular is mindblowing, with a great music track to fuel it. Was anyone else impressed with the titular Mount Pain near the end? Its flickering with lights as a visual effect, utilising lost souls trying to fly off that get teleported back :p

A lot of other maps that stand out to me are Wormhole (The most atmospheric map in the entire wad, with the optional "other world" and the amazing music track that fits that atmosphere so DAMN well; Stronghold (Up till that point the LARGEST concentration of zombies and imps, and I tend to find myself swamped by hordes coming from nowhere at several points); Storage Facility (Crate Maze = <3. Needed more to the outdoor area though, and no stupid Archvile jumps to get an item); Crater (The first level with the space sky, and it also has this one nukagefall that looke really impressive back in the day, especially in the PSX version; Nukage Processing (Mainly because if the Wormhole track, and also because it has a Cyberdemon battle where HE is inside and YOU are outside in the open for once, haha); Steel Works (for forcing you out of your usual comfort zones and forcing lots of ballsy damage floor crossing and crushing ceilings too. I'm sure everyone groaned after corssing all those hazards, waking up the Spider Mastermind and having to go back the way you came....through hazards that looked like they were one-way)

Dead Zone (I love maps like this, where you storm the outer perimeter taking out the defenders one by one, then charge into the building. This one in particular feels like a seige on a space marine outpost); Pharoah (Its a goddamn egyptian level! Only AV has one-upped this in my books. Too bad its buggy, a missing key, and a Cyberdemon that floats in the air above messed up techbase door textures); Carribean (I dont get what the theme is supposed to be, but I really liked the design for this level); Deepest Reaches (I dont get why this is in this part of the wad instead of near the end, but its a very atmospheric "evil deep in the earth" level. Also contains the only square room ive seen thats ON AN ANGLE :D); Mill (I both love and hate this level for reasons I dont quite get. The end arena is great for getting thosands of Hell Knights slaughtered by a Cyberdemon!); Shipping/Respawning (Of the maps that threw in some surrealism, this is the best. THERES A DAMN TRUCK TRAILER. AND A CONVEYOR BELT! Absolutely amazing back then); Central Processing (This level DEFINES TNT for me somehow. It just has everything I love about the episode in it, and is the most memorable level of all of them. As the last space level (Can you tell I like this portion?) its great to finish it off with an outdoor hillclimb.

Administration Centre (I didnt get why this was the first level of Hell until this recent playthrough: THe intermission text is actually played out in this level, as the first part of the level seems to still be on whatever moon/planet you were on, then you teleport into Hell and "see that familiar horizon" or whatever the intermission text stated. Cant beleive I never got that the other times); Habitat (Dreadful gameplay, looks amazing in places); Ballistyx (When you teleport nito the cage with what appears to be a HELL of a lot of monsters, I instincivly RUN THE HELL OUT, and for good reason, I always take a max-damage Revenant homer before I can. Then I go back and kill them once I do everything else. Only this level in this one spot has this effect, I dont know why); Mount Pain (The hardest map in TNT in my opinion, and the aforementioned touches in the viuls make this memorable. And bloody hell is the exit room evil.); River Styx (Wormhole track again, plus an amazing final full-fledged level thats amazingly well designed. The multiple crushers at one point made me lose my nerve completely the first time) and finally Last Call (This is the best Map30 ever, its half normal level, half boss-level, it feels like a heartfelt send-off to the players to me. Half the fights are optional, you have a cool puzzle, a short sweet final boss, although most people take forever to find out you have to shoot from a certain step, myself included, and you get the most energetic music in the game)

I know thats a longer post than it needs to be, but after beating it again, its been freshly reinforced as my favourite for things like the stuff mentioned above. Plutonia has not grabbed me much, die to a lot of things people have stated; the difficulty, lots of levels look and feel too similar. Also, Map11. GODDAMN MAP11. I cant even beat this level in serious play yet. At the moment, only a few things stand out in Plutonia in my memory; Green; Chaingunners; Go 2 It; and that level with the chaingunners who could not die, because of hidden Archviles (This made my eyes pop out of my head, seeing a chainguner fall part then rewind, come backtogether, and blast me to death in one fluid motion)

Maybe a replay of Plutonia is in order. Too bad I already moved on to my next game: Heretic, thanks to that damned mapping project for it. Why must it excite me so, and long before it'll be out?

Short answer : Evilution because of map04.

Longer answer : Evilution feels more like an actual addon to Doom 2 than Plutonia is. Granted, the gameplay and general level design may be more consistent in Plutonia than Evilution.

I don't think they should be compared. Plutonia was a sort of a prequel to HR, Evilution a prequel to Icarus, two different takes on Doom mapping that may have crossed in the form of AV.

The reason you may associate AV with TNT is because AV was made by a relatively large team, and it may show some of the effects of that, but in essentials AV is quite indebted to Plutonia and forms part of its legacy. That's even noted in the text file.

Wow, I start discussing why all the "Evilution."'s came at the beginning and now everyone's throwing "Evilution." in my face again. Granted I see that wad's positives too but I'm starting to wonder if what I'm saying is secretively having an impact on what the overall response is being. Probably just a coincidence, but wanted to mention.

How many people show up to say which they like is rather incidental. Rather, in a thread like this, you can start to view or compare why people may be choosing one thing or the other.

myk said:

How many people show up to say which they like is rather incidental. Rather, in a thread like this, you can start to view or compare why people may be choosing one thing or the other.

Yes, I kind of agree there. People who like Evilution are using more varied style and some maps in it they really like a lot, as well as new music tracks, to their advantage. People who say Plutonia are using that wad's more consistent quality, and possibly also for being more original.

Personally, as you see, I go for the consistent quality and hint of originality. But some may not like Plutonia's style that much, which would bring the whole thing down for them, since it's all a similar style. And as I noted toward in the previous paragraph, others may pick Evilution because they care more than I do about varying styles, some good new music, and some very good/memorable individual maps or even ideas (i.e. part of a map) that stand out above the rest.

One thing I do know: I do disagree with anyone who sais Map04 of Evilution is really cool (let alone use it as their reason for liking the wad better than Plutonia). Sure the idea is fantastic, but I thought the map itself could just be so much better. Oh well, others may not mind the style and think it's a really cool map. Personally, much of what I don't like about that map is that you don't need to visit most of it; you can acutally finish it without catching the innovation at all. I just think that if you come up with an idea like that for a map, you ought to make the player actually experience it, unless maybe you want the part of the map showing off the cool idea to be a special "secret" level, just one included within a hidden part of a normal level. On that hand, I have no way of knowing that wasn't the intent of the authors, so maybe I'm being too harsh on that map as far as execution is concerned.

I still think the actual design and architecture of that map could be improved, though. But I guess some might be really impressed by the idea.

It took me my third playthrough to even realise that the alternate dimension was optional :p

Well, second, excluding the PSX version I first experienced the level in, and I thought I had encountered a bug that let me finish early.

Another thing I like about TNT that I didnt list, was it's difficulty. On Ultra-Violence I feel it has the perfect level of difficulty, above Doom 2, hard enough to die countless times, but 99% fair. In my eyes anyway, some way disagree.

I pick Evilution. I just love the tech-base theme with all the boxes and computers and such. My favorite map is Shipping/Respawning.

As for Plutonia: it's fun, but the levels feel like the same thing over and over again: a repeating brown and tan style with lots of brown slime and vines. I do enjoy some of the levels, especially the nigh-impossible Go 2 It, which I have yet to conquer, but, rather than feeling like a new wad, Plutonia seems like a tougher version of DOOM 2, which I admittedly do not enjoy very much.

Evilution also has a better-looking titlecard.

Plutonia is better, even nowdays the maps are still quite impressive.

I never fully enjoyed Evilution, godawful map designs and ass loads of texture misalignments were annoying me too much. The few good maps inbetween the crappy ones coulnd't save the day.

Map08 of Evilution is almost always where I quit playing it. The ending is just awful, nothing frustrates me more than groups of hitscanners on high ledges all the way across a large, open room with almost no cover.

Its hard to say... I really enjoyed both TNT and Plutonia...

Since I played both games at a young age I remember being amazed by something that wasn't DOOM 2. Levels like River Styx and Mount Pain completely blew me out of the water. On the other hand at that time I found Plutonia to be impossible, the level Abattoire was where I got stuck when first playing... only beat it years later.

Chex Warrior said:

Its hard to say... I really enjoyed both TNT and Plutonia...

Since I played both games at a young age I remember being amazed by something that wasn't DOOM 2. Levels like River Styx and Mount Pain completely blew me out of the water. On the other hand at that time I found Plutonia to be impossible, the level Abattoire was where I got stuck when first playing... only beat it years later.

Kind of contradictory...how could you have enjoyed Plutonia (to the point where you have trouble deciding if it beats Evilution or not despite mentioning a few Evilution maps that blew your away) if you got stuck somewhere around like the ninth or tenth map (I think)?

Anyway, I'm in the process of playing Plutonia (the Final Doom one, of course) on a higher difficulty level. Back in the day I played everything on ITYTD, now I'm up to HMP and the difficulty seems roughly the same to me - pretty good progress in my skills, I think. :) I'm on Map16 and have enjoyed almot every map of it so far.

Map32 was pretty intense even now IMO (although I survived it). I don't think that the intermission leading up to it was kidding, especially at the time Plutonia was new and people's definition of a truely brutal map was much different from what it is now. I wouldn't be surprised if that was the hardest map for Doom around back in the mid-90's, pre-Hell Revealed days - the only competition I can think of out of my head is the map that inspired it, oddly by the same author - Punisher. Either way, I'm sure that map would rank as at least one of the most brutal maps around until Hell Revealed came out.

I still think that Plutonia is overall, a pretty good set of maps, even today. I plan on playing Plutonia 2 immediately after - hope I'm not dissapointed, but a 4.5 score on /idgames is certainly encouraging. And I can't wait to see how Map32 of that wad fairs, because it sure looked insane when I took a look at the monsters in contains!

BTW, I might also play Evilution again. I haven't played Evilution in a while (and played in on ITYTD when I did), but I doubt playing it again will have any effect on my opinion of Plutonia being the superior wad, particularily because I quite remember some maps being quite meh, as many have said here. And Plutonia has been as good so far as I remember it (or even better with my better skill, which allows me to enjoy it more).

And on a final note, I have actually already played the first 7 maps or so of Plutonia 2 - I played it before deciding to play Plutonia (1) as well (and before finishing PL2). The interesting thing is that, while the originla Plutonia certainly has mostly smaller, less intense, and more basic maps, I've actually found myself enjoying it almost as much, maybe even as much, as I've enjoyed PL2 so far (and I've certainly had a lot of fun with PL2 as well thus far). I don't really think there was that much in Plutonia that needed a facelift as far as playability is concerned - as I said, I think so far that both PL1 and PL2 actually rank quite close to each other (and both high IMO) in the gameplay department. And for the mid '90s, the look and design of Plutonia is pretty high quality, just like PL2 is for today's times.

I just know I'll be starting up Plutonia again soom because of this thread }=0

There gos my freetime. As for Plutonia 2, what style gameplay is it? If it goes into HR style gameplay, I dont want to go near it.

Evilution gets my vote. No, nothing to do with style (the OP will be pleased to hear) but simply because I find it far more playable and enjoyable.

Firstly, it has a far superior 'learning curve'. It doesn't throw everything at you from the first map onwards. Take the first map of TNT and Plutonia: TNT's pits you against zombies, shotgun guys, imps and a few chaingunners, Plutonia's has practically the whole shooting match - a couple of archviles, mancubuses, revenants, cacodemons, lost souls, and all this in the introductory map.

I think TNT put far more thought into the design of their maps, they're more fun to explore than Plutonia's. Sure, Plutonia is more of a challenge but throw enough monsters in and any map is a challenge.

BTW Evilution also came out on top in this old thread on the same topic.

http://www.doomworld.com/vb/doom-general/1053-which-do-you-like-better-plutonia-or-tnt/

TNT had some amazing parts, I found the first levels in TNT harder than Plutonia, even though technically Plutonia is more of a bitch.

Things I liked about TNT
Certain maps had a cool feel. I forget the map's name (its map27 I think), where you need to run through two pillars at the end? I love the atmosphere of descending into the earth itself. So fun!

Map32 didn't feel like an accurate bonus level, but the design was amazing.

Map31 was awesome, though as someone said... AV map20 beats it.

Map18 (Mill) was my favorite map bar none in the wad. The detail was great.

Map20 has really ambient music, very fun to listen to.

Things I disliked about TNT
Map 20 ended up becoming a "run along this 60000 long linedef, and then backtrack again for the hell of it to make this level longer", and certain underground parts felt rushed.

Mount Doom had two annoying things with it.
1) Detail, especially the boxy underground poison hallways, and the fact it lead to a keycard in a bland room.
2) The part before you can look out to the (amazingly crafted) mountain, its all running along an edge, and draws your focus away from the mountain... which is not great.

Whichever map was "Hell" was amazing until the end, was hoping for something better than some lost souls.

Map 30 pisses me OFF HUGE. I spent forever trying to kill the icon of sin and needed a guide later on in my life to figure out how to beat it. WTF.

Map 08 (should be "Metal")'s end pissed me off so much. Hitscanners that made it so if you didn't have 70%+ health going in you had to restart from the beginning or even all over again if you were careless in saving. That was just terrible.

Map 14 was actually done well in my opinion, but the crushers were a bad idea, you can make it accidentally impossible for yourself.

The Habitat could have been so much better, but the hallways are neat.

Map25 (Baron's den) felt a bit try to me, or rather re-hashing what we've already seen. To me it brought nothing new to the table... there weren't too many barons of hell. This level should be one of them that inspires fear. I feel as if I'm actually near a baron's den but it doesn't reach a climax (rather goes for an anti-climax).

====================================

Things I liked about Plutonia
The levels had the classic doom feel...

Map 03 or 04 (the aztec one) felt as if you were actually in a jungle.

Hunted (11) sucked but I love the concept!

The Sewers (28) felt like actual sewers, very atmospheric. I love when all the monsters come rushing through in the huge area-- I feel the adrenaline just thinking about it.

Cyberden/Go 2 it (3[1/2]) are amazing all around. I just enjoy the gameplay, and the difficulty. This was the perfect difficulty, Pl2's level 32 is just too much of a "paste your trigger down forever", but this one required more planning and not being a slug.

Oddessy Of Noises is my favorite level. It's designed so well, and plays better than a real city that the "Doom people who try to make as real as possible maps" seem to lack.

Map 30 had the perfect soundtrack to end that wad, literally. 10/5 stars.

Tombstone is HARD AS HELL. It's constructed to cause pain with minimal monsters, well done!

Things I disliked about Plutonia

Map02's circular running, despite its awe-inducing features.

The twilight level (map15) felt wrong and rushed. Secret is both, well... hard to find, yet obvious.

Maps like Neurosphere and NME felt like re-hashes from other games, but were fun regardless of being placed here.

Speed was a good idea but I feel it was executed wrong.

Caughtyard and Abattoire were a bit hard, meaning saving in the wrong spot would make you wish you were never born.

Caged was one of those maps you run and hide, and let one monster at a time come and kill you. I guess it works a bit, but I always dread playing it because when you descend at the start, if you don't move you're ass-- you're grilled cheese.

Temple of Darkness felt as if it never ended, the design was well but the part after the first teleport (with the green room and tons of barons) felt pointless and almost require a BFG shot if you get stuck.

The Final Frontier feels like it tries to be MAP29 in Doom II but fails to.
Anti-Christ follows the same above.




OVERALL! I enjoy parts of both, one is not better than the other and I couldn't pick one wad to part with and one to keep because each brings something beautiful to the table.

Up to Map26 in Plutonia. Map18, 21, and 24 look like style ripoffs of other maps (Doom II Map14, 11, and 29 respectively) but each level continues to have enough in it to keep in fresh and enjoyable. And the start of Map20 is HARD!

Looks like Plutonia has a few more preferences compared to Evilution so far, as I thought it probably would. I'll probably play the good maps of Evilution later on but see little reason to anticipate a change of opinion, since I'd rather have almost every map be good and in a style I like compared to some gems, but also some very meh maps as well.

Ultimately I think the best way to handle Evilution is to play the good maps and skip the bad ones. I don't think I would play Evilution as a full megawad, I'd skip maps that looked poorly designed to me, while I haven't really found much anything in Plutonia that I wish I'd skipped.

Do0minat0r said:

Up to Map26 in Plutonia.

Same with me, though, for some reason, many people here like "Odyssey of Noises" (the only thing I liked in it were the hellish pits).

Map18, 21, and 24 look like style ripoffs of other maps (Doom II Map14, 11, and 29 respectively) but each level continues to have enough in it to keep in fresh and enjoyable. [/B]

Also, Map04 - like Doom II Map26.
I used to say "ripoffs" at first, too (when I was a bad player and "Plutonia" was a synonym to "Frustration" :-) But these are rather the maps inspired by its Doom II counterparts. The gameplay is very, very different. And Map24 just proves it was very popular to create "The Living End-style" maps back then (later came Map24 of Memento Mori, Map12 of Memento Mori II..., and each is different).

vdgg said:
later came Map24 of Memento Mori, Map12 of Memento Mori II

Memento Mori came first; the date stamp (or the top 100 listing) might be misleading but it was updated from an original release in early '95. Memento Mori II should be newer than Plutonia because Plutonia was submitted to id Software in January '96,* while MM2 was released in July '96 and reputably took 7 months to make.

* This interview says "January 1995" but that must be a typo, according to the context, as Evilution was more or less started in that month of '95 and Plutonia was begun after id Software took Evilution into examination, once it more or less had enough levels for a release.

I see a lot of complaints about Evilution's inconsistency... And I'm just trying to figure out how in the world can Plutonia be considered any more consistent - or coherent, at that?


Anyway, Plutonia was more fun so that gets my vote.

khartael said:
And I'm just trying to figure out how in the world can Plutonia be considered any more consistent - or coherent, at that?

I'd say that the only thing that's more consistent than Plutonia, among the sets released by id, is Knee Deep in the Dead. You can tell the levels in Evilution were made by different people with differing design conceptions. While one may be able to get inspiration from maps from either Final DOOM game, it's easier to make a Plutonia styled level than a TNT styled one.

Consistency isn't necessarily achieved through rendering "clearly defined places" or a logical consistency between such places (neither of which is a focus in Plutonia) and can be managed through layout and texture usage to generate a distinctive (aesthetic and playing) style.

Been a loong time since I've played through either in their entirety, but I really enjoyed TNT. I just liked a lot of levels and general feel of it. Plutonia was more punishing back in the day for me.

Finsihed Plutonia. I thought the final levels were good and the pickup in length in some maps of the last third (22, 23, 28, and 29 certainly come to mind, potentially 26) seemed fitting. 26 was a good "two-option" level, and with Living End being my favorite Doom II map, 24 and 27 were obviously highlights for me. Map29 seemed like a fine climax to the normal levels, a large city map with lots of resistance.

I was let down a bit by the ending; Map30 was typical save some big monsters already in place prior to/during the Baphomet fight. At least that made it a bit harder than the original Map30 though. But I thought Evilution's last map was better, despite me liking Plutonia better overall.

Overall, I enjoyed Plutonia quite a lot, and I'm glad I replayed it. With my skills better, it is easier to fully appreciate the style of the wad, which I thought was a good style and therefore had few problems with it's consistency. The date on the file is in 1996, and I think that if commercial wads were allowed as top 10's, I'd certainly rank Plutonia as one of the top projects released in '96, right alongside the Memento Mori's and other smaller projects (I think the Doomworld /10years picks were pretty well chosen). I'm not even sure I could say that for Evilution, but I really need to take another look at it when I have a chance, since I do remember some maps in it that I thought were quite nice, and some mediocre/poor maps in a big project might be worth forgiving in those olden days. I doubt it would be as clear a pick for me as Plutonia though, and I doubt even upon replaying it that I will find reason to like it better in comparison.

In the mean time, I will be playing Plutonia 2 next (before a possible replay of Evilution). I want to play the two wads side by side so I can fully detect the differences between the two. I was quite happy with the first 7 maps of PL2, even if the style has some differences, and a quick look through the rest and also at reviews of the wad shows more quality work, so I'm quite sure I'll probably like PL2 as much as the original - if not more (due to the better architecture and bigger maps).

I first played final doom when I was real young, so TNT caught my attention right away. I'm pretty sure that if I were older and knew how to run the many PWADs that were available (and that they existed and that I was not the only one in the world who cared about doom at the time) TNT would be less than interesting and Plutonia would have been my favored episode.

When I look back at TNT, there were a ton of clashing textures, lame layouts, and many empty rooms. But because I was young at the time, my favorite things to shoot were zombies and imps and TNT had A LOT of that. I was really attracted to computers and flashing lights and techbases. Because Doom 2 went directly into dirt, rocks, grass, and rusty metal I was pretty turned off. I was really more attracted to shiny clean tech bases. At the time, if I had played a map that had COMPSTAx textures and SHAWN2 everywhere I would have been in heaven. TNT also featured a lot of things that looked like the things they were supposed to look like. I forget what map exactly, but there was one map that had cubicles and desks with chairs and computers with animated screens on them, and there were imps and zombiemen standing on the chairs when you walked in. I was so intrigued by that. Also MAP11 had the guard tower and the fences surrounding the warehouse. This was the first time I was playing a game that emulated realistic environments, and doom 1 and 2 lacked a lot of the realism that I was attracted to.

Now that I am older, I've played tons of PWADs and megawads, and grown to be more impressed with aligned textures and borders and consistent texture themes with good gameplay, as opposed to finding to coolest tech texture you can find and plastering it all over your map. I'd rather maps be built around how the player is going to experience the area in mind, than emulating realistic things.

This is something Plutonia manages to pull off very well, and in which case makes it the better half. Though when I was young I got sick of Plutonia too fast. I got pretty far in it, and the only map that really pleased me was Odyssey of Noises, because it was like a real city being overrun by monsters. The rest of the maps were just dirt and bricks and rocks everywhere with an insurmountable number of monsters and hard mapping tricks and puzzles that were too complicated to my infant mind. If you were asking me back in 1994, I would definitely had picked TNT. But since you are asking me now, I pick Plutonia.

40oz said:

I first played final doom when I was real young, so TNT caught my attention right away. I'm pretty sure that if I were older and knew how to run the many PWADs that were available (and that they existed and that I was not the only one in the world who cared about doom at the time) TNT would be less than interesting and Plutonia would have been my favored episode.

When I look back at TNT, there were a ton of clashing textures, lame layouts, and many empty rooms. But because I was young at the time, my favorite things to shoot were zombies and imps and TNT had A LOT of that. I was really attracted to computers and flashing lights and techbases. Because Doom 2 went directly into dirt, rocks, grass, and rusty metal I was pretty turned off. I was really more attracted to shiny clean tech bases. At the time, if I had played a map that had COMPSTAx textures and SHAWN2 everywhere I would have been in heaven. TNT also featured a lot of things that looked like the things they were supposed to look like. I forget what map exactly, but there was one map that had cubicles and desks with chairs and computers with animated screens on them, and there were imps and zombiemen standing on the chairs when you walked in. I was so intrigued by that. Also MAP11 had the guard tower and the fences surrounding the warehouse. This was the first time I was playing a game that emulated realistic environments, and doom 1 and 2 lacked a lot of the realism that I was attracted to.

Now that I am older, I've played tons of PWADs and megawads, and grown to be more impressed with aligned textures and borders and consistent texture themes with good gameplay, as opposed to finding to coolest tech texture you can find and plastering it all over your map. I'd rather maps be built around how the player is going to experience the area in mind, than emulating realistic things.

This is something Plutonia manages to pull off very well, and in which case makes it the better half. Though when I was young I got sick of Plutonia too fast. I got pretty far in it, and the only map that really pleased me was Odyssey of Noises, because it was like a real city being overrun by monsters. The rest of the maps were just dirt and bricks and rocks everywhere with an insurmountable number of monsters and hard mapping tricks and puzzles that were too complicated to my infant mind. If you were asking me back in 1994, I would definitely had picked TNT. But since you are asking me now, I pick Plutonia.

I get what you mean, as Evilution had a down-and-dirty style at the time and Plutonia probably took time to catch on. Therefore, your last two sentences make the point well IMO. I actually think that if I'd played both wads as soon as Final Doom came out, I may well have liked Evilution better, because it would have at that time largely been the Doom I was used to, while Plutonia would have felt like something totally different (and not to mention it's difficulty would have probably devastated me based on my skill back then), which makes me unsure if I would have really liked it all that much back in the day or not. However, I never played Plutonia or Evilution at all until around 2000 or so, and I'd played other wads by then, so the "early ages" charm of Evilution never really struck me.

P.S. Both Final Doom episodes were likely released in '95 or '96, not in '94.

40oz said:

I first played final doom when I was real young, so TNT caught my attention right away. I'm pretty sure that if I were older and knew how to run the many PWADs that were available (and that they existed and that I was not the only one in the world who cared about doom at the time) TNT would be less than interesting and Plutonia would have been my favored episode......

This is a fair synopsis of where I'm at. I can agree that Plutonia was ahead of it's time. Just my memories were still with TNT, and there are some real enjoyable levels, yet Plutonia heralded the future. Overall Final Doom wasn't such a bad buy.

Interesting discussion...
I'd say that each half is good in its own right, but I actually prefer Plutonia: first of all, it's a challenge (at least it was back then), then it's great level design and consistent theme, and finally - it's more "hellish", and I like the feeling. :) Evilution is more of a techbase style, which I don't like much. Besides, I agree with people who say about different quality of maps in this megawad while Plutonia is QUALITY from the beginning to the end - even now it looks and plays awesome IMO.

And yes, PL2 is good, no wait - it's VERY good, but the first one is still better for me.

I'm going against to the grain and saying I liked Evilution better. The map design was iffy, but I enjoyed the gameplay. Plutonia looked a lot better, but was too much of a ragefest for me, with its cheap traps and chaingunner rape. There's difficult, then there's downright unfair.

Cue "you suck at Doom" comments...now.

I can understand that. Evilution isn't exactly easy, but its difficulty is much more progressive than Plutonia, and I can see why someone would prefer that. In fact, I generally don't like my maps to be an exercise in frustration, Plutonia and its sequel are really the only exceptions to that because they're so well made.