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Phoby

What do you think of the Icon of Sin?

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I get the feeling that most people don't like the Icon of Sin levels, but whatever the general consensus may be, I hate the Icon of Sin.

 

The actual texture is pretty neat, but I can't take it seriously when I'm fighting a wall. The other thing that really grinds my gears is how unfair it is. Having an infinite number of enemies thrown at you is just bad.

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I think it's fine as the end of DOOM II. At the time of the game's release it was different and actually required some semblance of skill to defeat, unlike the Spider Mastermind in the original DOOM. I'm just not personally a huge fan of it being re-used again in some mega wads. It's just tedious in a lot of those cases (AV and HR, I'm looking at you).

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Slaps Icon of Sin wall

This bad boy can fit so many rockets in it. 

 

For the real, I prefer other monsters as last true fight. Like valiant's one. 

Edited by Myst.Haruko

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Good idea, bad execution, fighting a wall is not fun.

 

Perhaps it was a fitting end to Doom 2, but these days I'd rather have something else for boss levels, something like the giant red Arch-Vile from Valiant or maybe a slaughter level.

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Uncool mean asshole, he's a real piece of shit. First stealing a bunch of monsters and making them slaves, then stealing Doomguy's life, and next he'll be taking our lunch money! I'm gonna CRY WAHWAHHWAHWAHWHAHWAWHAWHAWHWAHAWHHAWHAWHAWHHWAHWHAWHAWHAHWHAWHWHAWHAWHWAHWAH

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Not a fan of the gimmick in general, absolutely disliked the original map. I associate "icon of sin" with randomness, the solely idea of having to speedrun to kill a huge wall while on top of a lift where you're supposed to time your rockets so they enter the gap but also being afraid of specific species the boss will spit soon or later, namely archviles, gasbags and spectres, because you have no control over that, or them without sufficient BFG ammo... isn't my thing. Up to this day, "Icon of Sin" remains incomplete for me, and I have no desire to give it another try at the moment. Ironically, I have beaten the ones from Final Doom legit without problems, at least there were no tedious lift-managing in them.

 

I've seen numerous attempts to recreate an IoS map over the past two years and I can count with one hand those that distanced from the typical "ride lift, shoot rocket, drop off, repeat", which were casually more engaging. Speed of Doom hit the right note, there's a timer and all you have to do is survive the wave of dudes until the boss is exposed, no lifts, more than enough cells, doesn't drag on too long, just ideal. Memento Mori could be considered "iconic" since no one was expecting the boss to "counterattack". Bloodstain leads you to a simple key-hunt previous the shooting, but the sinister appealing of the map is what appeals more imo. Hell to Pay last map is designed to be speedrun, ideally you're supposed to leave the planet that's about to self destruct, but barely anything gets in your way (not sure if that means it's a lame end map or not, objectively speaking). I prefer them different but simple and short above all, if it gets too intricate and allows for a lot of random spam then it's a big no no for me, such was the case of D2TWID.

 

Mapsets that end with a brand new concept are very welcomed. A new boss enemy could work as long as it's not too easy to exploit. Valiant is a clear example, the diabolist is the triple skilled of an archvile, presents a great portion of the threat, while the rest is various enemies and the turrets, so you never have a break. Survive in Hell on the other side has it much easier, the vast open area is way more than enough to outsmart the single boss since it isn't that aggressive and fast. Other wads use monster spawners in special setups, like in Revilution, or in Gridlock 64 where the boss has multiple attacks and spawns cubes when in pain state. Long giant maps can also be fun to tackle, where you fight all the bestiary in distinctive situations, and serves as a closure to the environment theme, like in Resurgence, sure if nothing rules hell then I consider the mapper to be the real boss... I beat Joshy (;

 

So anyways, that's how I feel. BTW, if anyone from the BTSX team is reading this, please don't make an IoS in episode 3, pretty please :C

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Cool idea while it lasted. Still cool if I can win within a minute or so. Tedious, otherwise.

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6 minutes ago, Agent6 said:

Good idea, bad execution, fighting a wall is not fun.

 

This sums up my thoughts pretty well. On paper it's a neat as heck idea: a demon embedded in a wall birthing hellspawn from its exposed brain that you have to shoot? I can respect the Id Software guys for giving it a shot and doing their best. In practice, the poor thing just doesn't have enough presence and feels like an obstacle rather than an enemy. The obvious answer to why that was would probably be limitations, but even with that I feel like they could've gotten creative with some animated textures to make it feel less static.

 

The gameplay is another story entirely, unfortunately. This has been talked about before, but I'll say it again: the elements and tactics thrown at you in MAP30 of Doom II: Hell on Earth aren't tutorialized or encouraged in any way in the rest of the game and the overall feeling is that you've been given a gimmick for Christmas as a final boss. Timing your shots? This is Doom, the time you should be firing is all the time! It's unfortunate that that is the final impression of Doom II.

 

On a lighter note, I'm glad that there have been earnest attempts by the Doom community to craft Icon maps closer to the core Doom experience. MAP30 of Community Chest stands out as one of the finer examples, at least to me.

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Everyone else already said what I was gonna say. It's just a really gimmicky boss with cool visuals who becomes EZ as hell once you turn on mouselook.  

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I like it. What i hate is the stupid platform while all the monsters snipe you which manages to get in too many icon of sin maps. Make me zigzag around the monsters it is spawning while dodging the hell cubes! Not stand on the shitty platform while an arachnotron, caco, vile or pain elemental annoy the hell out of me while timing the stupid rockets. 

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I've seen only one map that used the BossEye in a way that I liked and that was Illuminati Revealed from Ancient Aliens. I like the pressure it puts on you while not launching two or three cubes at once while you have to find the three keys and fight many pre-placed monsters.

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its an absolutely awful game mechanic and not fun at all

boss spawner use is fine; I loved sod30 and aaliens18, but dealing with infinite height and trying to hit the rocket in the hole each time is just tedious

I don't really like boss monsters either; most of them are not that fun to fight, as half the fun in doom is knowing how an enemy behaves and/or how dangerous they are. most boss monsters are encountered once where you either die instantly or you circle-strafe spamming and avoiding what it fires at you and then it dies and you never see it again.

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I love the concept, the execution was sloppy. I could imagine an IoS working where you have to maybe fight a couple of Cybies while the IoS provides cannon fodder though

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I've seen it used well in a few maps, I liked its use in Shadows of the Nightmare Realm, where you would have to defeat a few in order to progress to the final boss. Chewy sometimes? Absolutely, but it wouldn't pose much threat otherwise. All you'd have to do is shoot the rockets and be done with it. Maybe it could be made better by adding turret-like projectiles, etc. that could be dodged so that it feels more like a boss than just an obstacle. Doom II's version is frankly just annoying to me, though. Trying to time that platform just right to shoot the rockets (if not using mouselook) is a futile task. 

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I think that the whole icon of sin was a bit lazy of id in execution and in concept too. Just a wall with a monster inside that just spawns monsters. Maybe id didn't had a grand plan for the final boss and they went for the fastest route by just copying one of adrian carmack's drawings and making it the final boss. 

Playing a wad with the icon of sin as the final boss isn't that bad, however they start to feel a bit similar to each other when they just go the classic route and just add a couple more spawners. My favorite IoS in a wad is in Doom 2 The way id did, you have to unlock the place to fire at the icon of sin as you progress and then you have to race your rocket in order to unlock a door to damage it. Also the icon of sin works rather well when it's not used just as a boss but instead just spawns monsters, making things into a bit of a race before you're overwhelmed by monsters, a really old (and unfinished...) example of this was in Ghostbusters Doom, where there was an icon of sin spawning monsters all around and it worked really well in the context of the map and what it was trying to do

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I like the spawn shooters. I don't like the having to shoot into a tiny little window to be able to do any damage at all.

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Eh, Im not really a fan of the IoS. I always thought the face texture looked kind of bad. And for a final fight it was underwhelming IMO. 

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I like the Icon of Sin and his levels too! II was very intriged when I first saw him, it was scary! But I later realized that he was just a ancient demon boss in a ultra vegetative state hardly breathing by a machine and the responsible for opening the Hell gate on Earth! 

I hope we all could see him walking around in Doom Eternal! That'd be great!!!

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A piece of fail on all accounts. The idea was stupid in any case. It was even more stupid to make the entire thing depend on some arbitrary movement limitation of the game and to put the icing on the cake, it was broken and crashed when being used in a savegame.

 

The worst thing about it was that every 'self-respecting' megawad copied the concept.

 

 

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Icon of Sin owns

my advice is to set that thing running in a map that's way too big and complicated for anyone to beat first time so you have to keep restarting and heading to new rooms that aren't yet full of random mancubi

 

oh no it's so non-intuitive I hate learning stuff past level one of a game a bloo bloo bloo

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Speaking of the Icon of Sin, why not create a megawad where each level has an Icon of Sin you have to beat to progress to the next level?

 

That would be funny.  

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3 minutes ago, Master O said:

Speaking of the Icon of Sin, why not create a megawad where each level has an Icon of Sin you have to beat to progress to the next level?

 

That sounds like a community project waiting to happen.

 

Come, see if you can make the Icon of Sin interesting again. Will you be up to challenge?

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5 minutes ago, Pegleg said:

 

That sounds like a community project waiting to happen.

 

Come, see if you can make the Icon of Sin interesting again. Will you be up to challenge?

 

It'd probably end up as 32 levels that look like Kama Sutra's infamous final level. xD

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It sucks because it is supposed to be the king of all demons and he just sits there and lets you kill him.  If someone made an actual monster that would be amazing.  It would be so hard to kill though.

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Just now, Doge Sword said:

It sucks because it is supposed to be the king of all demons and he just sits there and lets you kill him.  If someone made an actual monster that would be amazing.  It would be so hard to kill though.

 

Not exactly. The Icon of Sin spams monsters at you, so you have to be quick about it before their numbers overwhelm you. 

 

If you want a boss in video games that doesn't actually attack you, get to the last level of Konami's "Gradius".  It's a giant brain that just sits there and offers no resistance.   

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