The Great Debate: Hell to Pay vs Perdition's Gate

[Alfonso]

Which one is the superior Wraith Corporation megawad in your opinion?

[Gez]

Perd's Gate has a very strong beginning but then peters out. Hell to Pay has goofy sprite replacements but the levels are more consistently good. I think on the whole I prefer HTP, but really both are worth playing through and there's no denying the first few levels of PG are excellent.

[FEDEX]

Perdition's Gate , no doubt (for my taste). I really don't like the HTP replacement stuff

[Master O]

For what it's worth:

 

https://www.myabandonware.com/game/perdition-s-gate-amq

 

Drag and drop PG-RAW-X.WAD onto the GZDoom executable and select Doom 2, or use -iwad doom2.wad and -file PG-RAW-X.WAD for your source port of choice.

 

The link for Tom Mustaine's site is dead, so the link above works as well.  Hell 2 Pay can also be found at the above site, too.

[Devalaous]

Hell to Pay is the superior product. Both run out of steam in the last third, for a weaker 'episode 3' than TNT thats largely filled with filler maps, but it was far more noticeable in Perdition's Gate. Both of these wads made my jaw drop with lots of creativity to offset that though, but HTP really hit the marks more often.

 

I wish someone would remaster the Hell to Pay monsters and some of the worse textures, but I don't think anyone is willing to put that much time into a wad that's hard to come by 'legitimately'

[Thelokk]

Perdition by far. Hell to Pay's sprites... no. Just no.

[Book Lord]

I just played both in June, I finally found the time. I agree that the partial conversion aspect of Hell to Pay, with low quality robotic sprites replacing some of our beloved hellspawn, was not great. The story-driven gameplay and design is very interesting and something you do not see often in PWADs, especially the messages appearing on the intermission screen. MAP15 might be the most memorable moment (the simulated space walk section), with MAP22 being the most difficult.

 

Perdition's Gate wins the comparison for me, hands down. Not only the levels look consistently better and are more detailed, have nicer custom textures and tend to avoid pointless killing of massive enemy numbers, but the atmosphere and sense of place are top notch. MAP11 was a great UAC experimental lab (terminating Imps, that was neat) and the teleporting central of MAP15 was fascinating. I have fond memories of MAP27 as well. Surely having the Mustaines and Jimmy Sieben as main authors improved the quality, but I do appreciate even the crazy stuff done by Avatar (much better than his Memento Mori "Kinetics"), especially in the secret levels. 

 

The soundtrack is more or less shared between the two, but Perdition's Gate has better track selection, in my opinion. Both megawads tend to have short maps, especially in the third episode, but I think the storylines are pretty good and their take on MAP30 was definitely an innovation if compared to what was around at the time. 

 

Good that they exist, too bad they are not official freeware after 25 years.  Instead of Hell to pay, you have to pay for Hell.

Edited July 7, 2022 by Book Lord

[Egg Boy]

Gotta go with Perdition’s Gate. Despite what I read above, I’d say it has far more good maps than Hell to Pay. The new textures are also a nice treat that differentiates it from other 90s wads. If it were a 3rd Final Doom wad, like was originally intended iirc, it would have definitely been worth paying for.

[kalensar]

Because of how H2P is written in the wad, you can use something like brutal Doom or beautiful doom to get more or less accurate replacements for the classic demons. I'm pretty sure the textures are also written in the same way, but I haven't tested that yet to know. If so then you can use a upscale texture pack to get the Doom textures back in it with GZDoom or LZDOOM

 

On topic, I was really surprised at how good the h2p maps were and also the fact that it has liquids with depth to them. It's the earliest known Doom wad to me that has liquids with depth to stand in.

 

 

[Andromeda]

15 hours ago, kalensar said:

On topic, I was really surprised at how good the h2p maps were and also the fact that it has liquids with depth to them. It's the earliest known Doom wad to me that has liquids with depth to stand in.

Memento Mori MAP25 also has deep water. There might be even earlier examples out there though.

[Book Lord]

8 hours ago, Andromeda said:

Memento Mori MAP25 also has deep water. There might be even earlier examples out there though.

For example TNT Map2, even though it is not crucial for the gameplay as in The Cesspool. 

 

There are also earlier MM maps that use deep water, for example MAP09, but the use in both H2P and PG is more deliberate, well integrated with the encounters and setting.

[Devalaous]

Hell to Pay has so many small things in its levels that build up its own world, even without the story between every level hackery going on.

 

The second map for example, I'll always remember

 

 

Your the only one that has the willpower to fight the new enemies enslaving humanity, look at these other Doomguys, all listless and lying there, even as I murder the everloving shit out of everyone else in the room.

 

 

Later in the slave quarters, you encounter this room that the bad guys don't want the slaves entering; not only is it behind a heavily guarded forcefield, it has these big 'no humans' doors. Whats inside?

 

 

Well. Seems this is what happens to the slaves. Taken away, never to be seen again; killed with the chainsaw I just picked up, skinned and carved up and processed.

 

 

The nearby room has a whole scrolling wall of these corpses, as some evil bastard sat in this office with the key to other areas. These two rooms actually make me pretty uncomfortable, and the midi that accompanies this level is burned into my brain as a result.

 

Later on in the wad, you board a space ship by stowing away in a crate full of these skinned corpses of your friends and comrades. *shudder*

 

Perdition's Gate has a similar journey, but Hell to Pay put that extra oomph into all its levels. You can really tell they were basically trying to make a new game in the Doom gameplay, as opposed to something like TNT and Plutonia, which is not trying to be anything but a Doom level set.

[Caco Bell]

Played a couple of levels from Perdition's Gate. The levels were fairly fun and not bad looking, but boy were they symmetrical to the point of parody.

[Pirx]

On 7/6/2022 at 11:03 PM, Book Lord said:

 

 

Good that they exist, too bad they are not official freeware after 25 years.  Instead of Hell to pay, you have to pay for Hell.

 

lol. as has been said, htp's maps are ok, but the sprites were a waste of time.

[Master O]

On 7/4/2022 at 4:56 PM, Alfonso said:

Which one is the superior Wraith Corporation megawad in your opinion?

 

[Firedust]

Perdition's gate all day, any day.

[Devalaous]

On 7/19/2022 at 5:56 AM, Caco Bell said:

Played a couple of levels from Perdition's Gate. The levels were fairly fun and not bad looking, but boy were they symmetrical to the point of parody.

 

To be fair, Tom Mustaine was a Deathmatch fanatic, almost everything he ever made is small, short and DM oriented.

[NaZa]

To me, Hell 2 Pay felt more complete and consistent, somewhat staying true to what the first episode set forth in the latter two (which were, admittedly, hubs, but at least they were consistently hubs). While Perdition's Gate kinda failed at that in episode 3 because of the weird hell maps, it was generally more fun to play and the first 15 maps were really decent. They were both good and shared an incredible soundtrack, but I'd rather replay Perdition's Gate because it has no weird sprites and sounds and at least the hell maps are short.

[Kyka]

I've just discovered I've never played Hell to Pay. I had always assumed I had. I know I have finished Perdition's Gate, way back in the 90's. Even by 90's standards. I remember thinking Perdition's gate's latter levels were rushed and bland, but the early maps blew me away with how unique they were.

[Devalaous]

6 hours ago, Kyka said:

I've just discovered I've never played Hell to Pay. I had always assumed I had. I know I have finished Perdition's Gate, way back in the 90's. Even by 90's standards. I remember thinking Perdition's gate's latter levels were rushed and bland, but the early maps blew me away with how unique they were.

 

Best get on that so you can be amazed and totally spearhead a Hell to Pay 2

 

Its one of the few megawads I had the energy to play all the way through, it captivated me similarly to how ALT did.  The recent Wadazine had a good article on Hell to Pay and Perdition's Gate, although it IS a bit spoilery with level tricks used