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DoomLord

Best Doom level [in an iwad]?

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I don't hate it either but I often found it as a filler along with E4M4. Levels 1, 2 and 3 were beastly but 4 toned it down hugely and 5 wasn't particularly difficult, a few more monsters in the room usually placed decently, no traps or gantlets.

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Fear and They will repent were the first levels Tim Willits made. According to the wiki e4m5 was designed together with his sister Theresa Chasar. I found "they will repent" dull looking, perhaps a candidate for the worst level ever made in an iwad.

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Coldfusio said:

I found "they will repent" dull looking, perhaps a candidate for the worst level ever made in an iwad.

Weird. I found Unruly Evil even worse, buggier, shorter, easier, unchallenging, more of a candidate to worst level in all Dooms.

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printz said:

more of a candidate to worst level in all Dooms.


Those would be TNT's map20 and map21. Huge, boring, pointless.

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printz said:

Weird. I found Unruly Evil even worse, buggier, shorter, easier, unchallenging, more of a candidate to worst level in all Dooms.

For me it looks better and it's layout isn't that bad. But agree it's buggier and easier and as you said a filler.
I disagree with "go for it" map32 plutonia. I don't mind the references and it's (was) a blast to play. Looks overwhelmingly difficult but it isn't once you explore a little.

I remember having a rather good time in administration center, map21.It doesn't look that good but I liked the exploration and the combat was entertaining.
My least favorites tnt level would be map 25 baron's den.

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Coldfusio, I agree about both E4M4 and Plutonia Map32. Though, what bugs are you guys referring to? I've been playing some E4 Coop lately and I didn't find anything particularly worng with the level. The closest thing to a bug would be that certain partly hidden (and hard to reach) items in the lava room aren't in a secret sector. Even though it's pretty easy, E4M4 can be a bit of fun due to its layout (and it divides nicely in 2 player Coop)

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Coldfusio said:

I remember having a rather good time in administration center, map21.It doesn't look that good but I liked the exploration and the combat was entertaining.

Map 21 was somewhat repetitive at times, but it had a unique layout and went from big to huge.

Map 20 on the other hand is a legendary map and a pioneering entry into the epic map genre.

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Coldfusio said:

I found "they will repent" dull looking, perhaps a candidate for the worst level ever made in an iwad.


That's why these threads run in circles, people's tastes are so varied, for instance, They Will Repent is one of my favorite Doom levels.

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myk said:

Though, what bugs are you guys referring to {in E4M4}? I've been playing some E4 Coop lately and I didn't find anything particularly worng with the level. The closest thing to a bug would be that certain partly hidden (and hard to reach) items in the lava room aren't in a secret sector.

There are also the overlapped Cacodemons in Ultra-Violence. Cacodemons are significant monsters, and that mistake merely cancels them.

Use3D said:

That's why these threads run in circles, people's tastes are so varied, for instance

Yeah, but this one ain't supposed to do the same, because it's about the best Doom level, not the favourite. A level can be good whether you like it or not -- it needs length, gameplay architecture and challenge on par with its place. I probably goofed myself with levels like MAP18 "Suburbs" or E2M7 "Vats", but I hope I'm right with some like E4M6 "Wickedly" (or not).

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*activates the doom launcher and begins reviewing levels*

I find quite a bit of levels well made. Like E1M1 for instance, it's just such an awesome introductory level, seeing the dead marine in front of you, your long dead comrade...and finding the rest all spread out across the episode. There's another level in E1 I really enjoy, when the demons make their apperance...the maze part around the end is insane in UV with the chainsaw. Also E1M8 is an amazing level in terms of design and difficulty (and the fact only Demons and Barons make an apperance) it's a specially challenging level in UV (due to the swarm of Spectres)

E2 was fun in general, great ending level (Tower of Babel)

As for E3:Inferno...well...the only thing I'm against is the fact the Spider Mastermind was the last boss, apart from that...jesus...so many great levels. Mt Erebus has to be my favorite....the Cacodemon flood towards the end is especially exilerating when you're almost out of ammo and are forced to resort to the chainsaw...the archquitecture is also amazing...great mission, great levels.

E4's M1 and M2 make me drool....they're horribly hard JUST in HMP, I haven't even started them in UV. If any levels have ever dissapointed me, they'd have to be from E4M4 til E4M7, I just, found them unwittingly easy compared to E4M2.

Doom II

The Crusher, Tricks and Traps and Gotcha! Imaginative battles disguised as Boss fights.

Dead simple...is dead simple...and whole lotta entertaining AND challenging

All suburban levels are greatly designed, they're -bastardly- open and interactive (doors opening all over the place, windows to "snipe" from and where you're snipped from. Great open-zone battles (Lv. 16 Suburbs is
horribly fun, with the Archviles and the revenants and the wave of Cacos/Mancs/Imps towards the end...just amazing).

Almost all levels with the Arch vile showing up are fun to play.

The Spirit World is...utterly breathtaking...the rough, cavernous archquitecture combined with the carnage-based constructs make it a very different level.

The Living End is, well...the living end as it says. the height differences, the risks of falling, the cacos and elementals dominating the playing field...

The Icon of Sin is...also...a dastard level. Though the concept is simple, I've never seen such a FUN boss battle, having to defend yourself from the ever-spawing demons behind you while hoping to take a good shot at Romero. Great Level and great design too.

Grosse, I have to add, is one of the best, IMO, secret levels there ever were. The premise is simple, a one on one duel against the Cyberdemon...do it the easy way with the BFG or have some fun and smack him down with the SSG. One of my FAVORITE levels, hands down.

I haven't played nor Final nor TNT Doom -yet-...hope to do so some time soon...

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E1M8 - When I was a kid, playing on SNES (no computer) my brother and I could not defeat those bastards. When I got older, I found the monster list somewhere on the internet and couldn't remember exactly what they looked like, but figured they must've been Cyberdemons because I found them so hard. Real shocker when I got to them when I got the PC version and beat them first time through cause I was smart enough to strafe... and use rockets.

E2M8 - I love boss fights that aren't overly hard, believable that if you were in that situation you might have a snowballs chance in hell. It sucks when you're firing rockets at that massive SOB and a flying skull flies up 2 feet in front of you. Great level design to introduce the mighty cyberdemon.

E3M9 - Like I said I love boss fights but M8 is very anti-climactic if you ask me. At this point you have the BFG and the Mastermind you can actually charge and unload at close range, killing it in seconds. You could do this with the Cyberdemon too, but it requires a bit more skill to dodge his rockets then circle-strafe. I also never got the point of the Baron and Caco in M8, it'd have been better if there was like an intro chamber with some Barons as like bodyguards for the Mastermind.
M9 was wild. I actually never found this level until after I read the Doom novels, so when I saw where I was it wasn't a total shock. I just never realized that part of the book was taken straight from the game (whose idea was it to make them aliens? talk about ruining a franchise). The Cyberdemon fight there was alot of fun.

E4M8 - I thought this would've made a better E3 ending. At least you had to work through some monsters to get to the Mastermind. I love to drop out of one of those windows and valiently go head to head with the Mastermind with the plasma gun, see who kills who first.

D2 Map 29 - I thought this was a great intro to the Icon of Sin. The whole level is pretty neat design, the damned environment was threatening. And I didn't see that Cyberdemon comin.

TNT Map 21 - This IS the Admin Center right? Huge level, pretty good layout lots of monsters. What makes it memorable for me though is when you get outside. The first time I played through it, I unleashd all the monsters together, including the Arch-Vile and the Cyberdemon. It was a god damned war zone out there. And even though this was pure coincidence, the Cyber kept getting hit by other monsters, so the Cyber and I took out all the other monsters together. It was almost like playing coop with him. Then of course I had to murder him afterwards.

Plutonia Map 32 - This was what got me back into Doom when I got older. I hadn't played or even seen it in probly 7 or 8 years, and my buddy had Doom 95 on his computer. This was the first level I saw him play and I remember him looking out that window to where all the spiders were up on the ledge, the Cyber was down in the field and there were fucking PEs EVERYWHERE. It was the wildest shit I'd seen at the time. I remember the first time I beat the 2nd cyberdemon in that corridor, after you open the yellow door and then you kill it and you get the red key. I walked around a bit not sure what to do, and then I looked up on the ledge and saw those Archies resurrecting everything. AAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH! I give up! It took us forever to learn to beat it. Now it's a piece of cake, but man when you first play through it every time you kill a horde of monsters and get a key or something there's another fucking horde. I tend to help the Cyber kill all the spiders here too, that's alot of fun.

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Use3D said:

That's why these threads run in circles, people's tastes are so varied, for instance, They Will Repent is one of my favorite Doom levels.


Thank you! Someone finally agrees with me!

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printz said:
Yeah, but this one ain't supposed to do the same, because it's about the best Doom level, not the favourite.

You are quite wrong. There is no clear distinction between "good" and "favored". Read the initial post.

A level can be good whether you like it or not

A level can be good even if it has flaws, but if you don't like it, it's not good. At best its design shows some skill in some departments, but the overall design is just not worthwhile, hence it's bad.

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OK. You killed my speech with that correction (no sarcasm).

But I prefered the nice part of the cake, BEST Doom level (ie best quality, best source of inspiration, most memorable), not FAVOURITE, because favourite threads are frowned upon because there are already many others and as another one said, move in circles and never manage to reach a consensus.

I blindly tried to break the flower pot on the high shelf with that post of mine. Missed.

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printz said:

But I prefered the nice part of the cake, BEST Doom level (ie best quality, best source of inspiration, most memorable), not FAVOURITE

If a thread is supposed to go that way, there certainly is no way around clearly stating so in the opening post. But since it wasn't no one can be expected to share that definition.

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Another bug in Unruly Evil is this one:
"
In the same room, on Hey, Not Too Rough difficulty or lower, the Spectres in each of the northern compartments occupy both the inner and door sectors, preventing the compartments from opening when the switches are flipped unless the player shoots at the doors with the rocket launcher. The rockets will punch through the doors and kill the Spectres with enough blasts. Upon killing them, the doors will open as normal when the switches are flipped"
Source wiki, the same room is the final room.

When checking tnt and plutonia I had the vague idea that those had some influence (the scale) on maps dating 97 and later.
And in my case also the other way round, when replaying heck (tnt 28) I was constantly expecting very brutal gameplay. Till I realizid that it wasn't heck that was so brutal but a map inspired by heck.

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Coldfusio said:

Another bug in Unruly Evil is this one:
"
In the same room, on Hey, Not Too Rough difficulty or lower, the Spectres in each of the northern compartments occupy both the inner and door sectors, preventing the compartments from opening when the switches are flipped unless the player shoots at the doors with the rocket launcher. The rockets will punch through the doors and kill the Spectres with enough blasts. Upon killing them, the doors will open as normal when the switches are flipped"
Source wiki, the same room is the final room.


YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYikes
[filler to keep this from being a one word post]

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out of ultimate doom id have to say that e4m6 was my favorite level.

doom 2 i havent played so much but i always liked circle of death (w/e its called) and the chasm a lot.

as for tnt, i havent played so much but i liked steel works and pharaoh.

plutonia is my favorite iwad. i liked all maps on it, but my favorite is probably go 2 it.

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My other favourites. All with UV skill, sure:

From Doom Ultimate:

E1M3 LOTS of monsters for suck little level.
E2M8 Tower of Babel is classic.
E3M9 Nice surprise at first time.
E4M1&2 Those are really hard for first levels. Has anyone ever completed E4's first map with UV with all monsters killed and still having ammo?
Or, all killed but alive?

From Doom 2:

Level 7 Great fun for smallest level of the game
Level 9 Good music and large, nice level
Level 11 (circle of death)? Good map, or was it lvl 12?
Level 14 City rock's!
Level 20 My favourite level in Doom 2. Large, quiet and impressive design- experience, and duel of the big ones at start is nice surprise when you don't remember it.
Level 21 Small, but good design.
Level 29 I always remembered this as hard level when I was quite loco with Doom's.
Level 30 Classic

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My opinions on the episodes:

Knee-deep in the Dead: I'm partial to techbases, so I liked this episode a lot. My favorite is probably M5.

Shores of Hell: My favorite episode, great way to mix techbase and hell themes. Favorites were M1 and M4.

Inferno: This episode wasn't as good as the others, but it still had great maps. Nothing that makes my favorites, though.

Thy Flesh Consumed: I never got past the second level because of all the monsters and some switch I missed or something.

Doom 2: Map 7 (simple and deadly), Map 10 (good music), Map 23 (It's barrels of fun!)

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Doom:E1M3 the music and level,E1M4,E2M1 and the whole fourth episode.
Doom II:Monster Condo great music neat level.
Plutonia:Odyssey of noises and ghost town.
TNT:caribbean,pharoah,shipping and respawning.

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DOOM:
e2m1
e2m2
e2m8 (i agree, tower of Babel was the most amazing level ever! it rocked the first time i got there and i still remember hearing that yell, looking around then getting hit in the face with a rocket...classic)
e3m9 love the secret level, all the fun of e1m1(which was fun on uv but too quick) but tons more secrets and traps!
e4m1

...and i dont remember doom2, tnt and plutonia all too well so i'll edit this after i've run through them quick to refresh my memory...

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Arch-Valentine said:

E2M2 - Always liked maze-like levels. Very tense atmosphere.



that was the first level i managed to finish tyson style. even the first level where i dared using this strange black medical box,i thought its effect lasted only as long as i was seeing red... :p

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Been Playing through SHores of Hell again.
BLOODY HELL, that episode is so underated.

I've also remembered, I enjoyed E4M3 (E3? I think It was that, I'll have to check. You spawn in a corridor with stairs both sides and and soulsphere down the set to the right, past an imp trap or two)

It had that Gothic Castle-Grandeur about it, as well as the odd crusher trap, and many the Imp trap.
That, combined with the final, outdoor part of it made for a fun time for all.

E4M4 was also quite Cool.
and E4M2, because you can Telefrag a Cyberdemon. Best Secret Evar.

The wierd thing is, on the whole, I didn't really enjoy E4...

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I like plutonia map 01. It looks good and it's tough and fun.

I also like the secret caribbean map with the boat.

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