Thoughts on No Rest for the Living

[Frangalho]

It rocked! It was my favorite Doom experience so far, and dare I say, it's better than Knee-Deep in the Dead. The maps are pretty to look at, explore and fight in, and the challenges are fair. So glad it got added in the update. 

[vanilla_d00m]

Better then episode 1??  Cmon now.. you can’t be serious??  I will never forget the first time I saw those barons come out those telephone looking booths on the last level.

 

 I thought it was ok.. using custom music made for it was a better experience since it uses DOOM II level music.

[Venom5157]

16 minutes ago, Frangalho said:

It rocked! It was my favorite Doom experience so far, and dare I say, it's better than Knee-Deep in the Dead. The maps are pretty to look at, explore and fight in, and the challenges are fair. So glad it got added in the update. 

NRFTL is one of my favorites and I agree, better than E1 of Doom. My only complaints are that it is very short and there’s no backpack until the final map. 
 

It’s not known for its difficulty, but I think the map design took what Doom 2 had, but added more for clean execution. You know it’s well liked when it has been brought back in many ports. 

[Christopher Brown]

I like it! I don't think it's better than E1. Having played it twice, both times my initial impression has been that it plays a little safe. NRFTL lacks the swaggering ambition of any of Doom 1, 2, or Final, the difference between designers pushing the limits of the engine and experimenting wildly versus an expansion added to a familiar game with a familiar engine. What it lacks in shooting for the moon, though, it makes up by being smartly designed and refining the principles that are already there. Touches like the optional secret areas coupled with more difficult encounters really add up over time, as does the aesthetic variety on display from the different Doom II themes. The Cyberdemon boss level is probably one of my favorites of that template.

 

No Rest for the Living's strength isn't grand innovation, but a grand consolidation of everything that works about the old iwads from the perspective of two and a half decades into one polished package; in fact, I'd say that of the official releases at that point, NRFTL was the most well-rounded since Doom 1 itself.

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

NRFTL is by far my favourite official release. Including Sigil and LoR (I haven't played Sigil 2 yet). I'd even put its MAP01 on the list of best wad openers ever. 

 

It takes strong design cues from the original releases, but it's tighter, and more polished. Taking advantage of modern tools and decades of level design development to bring something that feels very authentic to the doom gameplay experience id aimed for decades earlier. I honestly believe that analysing the design would be massively insightful for most mappers. 

I admit I struggle putting things in their right historical context, and seeing things how they were "at the time" so have that as a disclaimer for me saying: I think NRFTL is running circles around all the other official releases. It's not even close. 

[RHhe82]

I like NRFTL quite a lot, too. Ultimate Doom episodes will always have a special place in my heart, but as far as quality and replayability is concerned, NRFTL along with Plutonia are the best IWADs I've played. (Haven't played LoR). That said, I have played NRFTL only twice. On console and once on a PC, and currently I don't even have the wad file handy :(

[Amaruq Wulfe]

3 hours ago, vanilla_d00m said:

Better then episode 1??

 

Yes.

[⇛Marnetmar⇛]

The first few maps of NRFTL in my opinion represent some of the finest level design ever crafted for Doom and mappers of all stripes would do well to study them. 

[ReaperAA]

E1 is legendary for it's time, but NRFTL is absolutely better than E1 on a technical and design perspective, lets not kid ourselves.

 

I haven't played LoR yet, but among all the other official wads (I am even including the 2 Sigil wads), I think NRFTL is the best. Only the last map is kind of a downer, and it's no more of a downer than E1M8 or E1M9 are.

[bobbie424242]

NRFTL is absolutely excellent and loved it. Played it for the first time like 1 month ago.

[Gez]

4 hours ago, vanilla_d00m said:

Better then episode 1??  Cmon now.. you can’t be serious??

That depends on how much weight you allow nostalgia to have in the evaluation. Obviously NRFTL is not going to travel back in time to become your very first experience with Doom when you were a child.

 

No Rest for the Living came out in 2010. Knee-Deep in the Dead came out in 1993. NRFTL has had the benefit of over 16 years of experiment and development in the Doom mapping field; the developers did talk about how they looked at what the community had made through all these years to try to reach that standard. Also it's for Doom II so it has a much broader roster of monsters than KDITD; and likewise NRFTL is a limit-removing set as the developers could harness much more powerful hardware than what the average PC gamer had in 1993.

[Wavy]

I have yet to play it, though I'd love to play it in coop given it was designed to be played that way

[Canjul]

NFTL rocks faces. If anyone hasn't tried it with the community midi pack yet, that's a great excuse to play it again!

 

 

[Devalaous]

When Xbox 360 Doom II came out, No Rest for the Living was ABSOLUTELY worth the price of admission. I scoffed for weeks at the cheapskates pirating it or ripping it off 360 drives while screaming about a small fee or daring to be on a filthy console like it was the greatest injustice in history. Every single level in it was amazing, even the boss level for what it tries to do. The Midi Pack elevated it even higher and made it the single best episode I have ever played, a perfect package of levels and music.

 

I was quite mad when the Unity port launched without it.

[vanilla_d00m]

5 hours ago, Gez said:

That depends on how much weight you allow nostalgia to have in the evaluation. Obviously NRFTL is not going to travel back in time to become your very first experience with Doom when you were a child.

 

No Rest for the Living came out in 2010. Knee-Deep in the Dead came out in 1993. NRFTL has had the benefit of over 16 years of experiment and development in the Doom mapping field; the developers did talk about how they looked at what the community had made through all these years to try to reach that standard. Also it's for Doom II so it has a much broader roster of monsters than KDITD; and likewise NRFTL is a limit-removing set as the developers could harness much more powerful hardware than what the average PC gamer had in 1993.

 

 

[holaareola]

Undoubtedly the best official episode in my view. I've played this through splitscreen with my little bro so many times.

 

I do agree with posters above about playing it safe. It lacks the Sandy gimmicks and the good weirdness of Doom 1 or the bad bland abstract weirdness of Doom2. @vanilla_d00m mentioned Phobos Anomaly, which is just such an awesome moment. There's nothing quite like that sudden transition from orthogonal techbase to liquid-on-ceiling, spiky weirdness in NRFTL. It also doesn't have the vistas that the modern community can put out.

 

But what does NRFTL have? A modern level of difficulty, absolutely inspired and substantial secrets and a degree of interconnectedness and level flow that is truly in the heritage of the best bits of E1. It's got a decent final map. Gameplay-wise, this episode is all bangers and a masterclass in straightforward Doom level design.

[UserPlayer89]

one of the best "traditional" DOOM II episodes ever created imo

[LadyMistDragon]

No Rest for the Living is fine......it'll never be one of my favorites though, Vivisection and Map 03 aside. Really, it's main strength lies in its masterful, impressive, and somewhat awe-inspiring use of vanilla textures but at best is probably slightly better than average to play.

 

Naturally, the midi pack adds entirely another dimension to it. I'd just wished I'd figured how to run that the same time as I played through it because those maps are pretty big. They definitely have serious speedrunning potential if nothing else though.

[Gifty]

The level design itself is good but I've always been overwhelmingly distracted by how BRIGHT it is, it feels like they totally forgot to do a lighting pass and left everything at 255.

[Lippeth]

I only really like the first map from what I've played, but seeing the little courtyard with trees is what initially inspired me to make my first Doom map. I've tried to play NRFTL all the way through on several occasions but never make it past map 04 for some reason.

Edited August 15 by Lippeth

[xScavengerWolfx]

Besides Doom and Doom 2 i like No Rest for the living when i got doom and doom 2 on the 360 back in the day.

 

I mean sure it will not be everyone's favorite wad but for me when all i had was the 360 port of Doom and Doom 2 at the time, that was my gateway drug into getting into community wads and mapping alone.

 

Again i understand it's not everyone's cup of tea, coffee, imp blood or pinky shake but as someone that played it i do like it but it has it flaws no doubt about it.

[Endless]

Incredible expansion and was a joy to play for the first time. It was one of the first early signs that Doom still had life in it (meaning official support). We have to remember there was a considerable Doom drought between the release of Doom 3 and Doom 2016. Almost a decade of dead silence without any glints of hope in the future. So, having a full new episode being officially released was quite the bombastic experience.

 

It is also a really solid and enjoyable set of maps. MAP01 and MAP04 are my favorites. Particularly enjoy the progression of MAP04, starting in an exterior canyon, making your way inside a marble fortress and fighting hordes of demons in a challenging yet enjoyable way.

[crusty_charlie]

It's one of my favorite episodes from the classic games, mostly because I love how it uses environmental storytelling to organically transition between different level themes. First 2 levels are a techbase, then you step outside for the next two, and the last half of the set is spent in Hell. It's sick.

[Cutman 999]

NRFTL is really good, despite being noticeable the restraints it had to only use iwad resources, for the reason this was minor console exclusive expansion back in the day, the way its designed still holds up surprisingly well.

 

Probably one of these days I will replay it for a third time.

[Lizardcommando]

Out of all of the official add-ons released, NRFTL is the best one to me. It feels closest to Doom and Doom 2's design aesthetics. These levels feel much nicer to play through and aren't super difficult, even on Ultraviolence mode.

[famicommander]

It's the only good thing that ever came out of Doom 3 (having been originally released alongside the BFG Edition).

[JustHeziel]

I remember NRFTL mainly for being overly detailed, and I mean that in the best way. If a map looks like circuitry or a spiderweb on automap, you can estimate how much effort was put into those maps :)

 

Also:

On 8/14/2024 at 6:56 AM, Canjul said:

NFTL rocks faces. If anyone hasn't tried it with the community midi pack yet, that's a great excuse to play it again!

 

 

 

I don't know what went through ducino's mind, but that first track hits hard 👌. At some point, I'll play it again along this midi pack.

 

[prfunky]

Oh hey! Now I remember what this is. I'd done a search over a year ago

and came up with nerve.wad. For some reason, I can never put the two

names together in my head but opening this up, yeah, I like this.

 

Though I don't know if I've ever gotten past the 2nd map yet. Definitely
prefer map01 of nerve to e1m1 of Doom. Map reminds me a bit of VaeVictus II's

map02. They're both crate maps! Best crate map though is Alien Vendetta's

Suicidal Tendencies map13.

 

2 hours ago, JustHeziel said:

👌...

 

 

 

Love this ^ picture!!

Edited August 16 by prfunky : added quote/picture

[DynamiteKaitorn]

NRFTL is, to me at least, the superiour episode 5. Sure it's for DooM 2, not OG DooM but MAN is it really fun to blast through! Kinda curious what a full campaign of NRFTL would look like.

[tomas7777]

Seeing this thread made me want to replay NRFTL. It's a nice li'l episode with a classic 90s feel that certainly fits well as an expansion of Doom 2, and a breath of fresh air after playing modern maps with more spectacular designs and harder difficulty.