Lets talk about Episode 3: Inferno

[bones58]

So what's everyones thoughts on this episode? Did you feel it done hell justice or do you feel is didn't quite match the vision of being in the deepest reaches of inferno?

I ask this because I was playing it today for the first time in a long while. Mount Erebus stands out as probably the most epic and open map of Doom 1. Hell keep is a little shakey, but the 'organic' floor, the eye switch, dead trees and red mountains for me, convey 'hell'. The best thing I can say about Slough of despair is that it's at least a challenge with Doom guy constantly scrounging for ammo but really apart from that, meh. As for Limbo, cool name, difficult map. I could NEVER get passed it when I was younger, it's perhaps a bit too much on the mazy side but at least there's a sense of anticipation of facing the final boss; pity that boss was so easy to kill. House of pain, well appearance wise this is one of my favorite Doom levels, the marble hallway with all the bodies pinned up on display like some sort of sick gallery really does justice to the name 'House of Pain'. Unholy cathedral has some very interesting architecture, pity the gameplay is a chore, I've never been fond of teleporter puzzles. Pandemonium is a fun map to play but suffers from lazy design, too much use of episode one textures imo.

So what are your thoughts on inferno ?

[arrrgh]

E3M8 is a complete joke. If you have the BFG, it's ridiculously easy. If you have the plasmagun, it's still stupidly easy because it fires fast enough that spidey can only get a few shots in, even at point blank. Even with just the rocket launcher, you can just sit on the other side of the map and pump out rockets while you get hit about twice because the spread sucks and you don't have to worry about missing because it's so goddamn big. /rant

Anyway, Slough of Despair has to be my favourite E3 map. E3M7 is probably my least favourite.

[David_Dweedle]

My fav Doom song is the Pandemonium one.

[scwiba]

Well, it's my least favorite of the three. That said, I love just about everything about it. Hell Keep feels like the perfect introduction for me. Whenever I think Hell, I think red bricks and that fiery sky -- and you get both of those right from the beginning. Years ago, I would have said I hated Slough of Despair, and it's certainly still not my favorite, but it's grown on me a lot.

bones58 said:

Pandemonium is a fun map to play but suffers from lazy design, too much use of episode one textures imo.

Pandemonium and House of Pain come to mind as having a number of tech elements in them. I always thought of it as a sign that Hell was integrating elements of human technology into itself the same way it was subverting the Deimos base, making it more hellish.

My most beloved map, without a doubt, is Limbo. It's got puzzles, great fights, mazes, one of the best midis, and a dark, brooding atmosphere leading into the final battle. Unfortunately I will agree that final battle is probably the weakest part of the episode.

[Kyka]

Back in the day, E3 was terrifying to play through. Must admit I haven't played through it in several years now. I almost don't want my memories ruined by looking at it from a mapping perspective and thinking 'yeah, a lot of this is pretty ordinary.'

[Snarboo]

E3 is my favorite episode and has my favorite map in the game, which is Mt. Erebus. While a lot of the maps are ugly, the gameplay is as sharp as ever. Plus I just love the hellish visuals.

[printz]

I'll say that normally all Doom 1 is too easy for today, excepting a couple of E4 maps. Here we go with episode 3:

- E3M1: nice start, in a pit with the lip-eye switch up in face, then having to pistol 3 imps and 2(!) cacodemons, then a crumbling bridge with a shotgun, and afterwards some weird architecture. Not a bad level, even if short.
- E3M2: when I was first playing Doom, I couldn't dare play this one, because of fear of being cornered at every moment. Surprisingly for a standard-sized map, this has no imps! Those pests were the most annoying things under lower skill levels, because I wasn't strafing, and they always took awhile to die, with 2 shells each.
- E3M3: the part I liked about this level was the roof little maze of skin coated walls. I liked the light level.
- E3M4: indeed, this level has some painful looks and machinery. First, the two rooms at the start. The one to the right has some weird looking pillars, because the texture on them is actually a pipewall with an unusual offset. The one to the left has that walkway seem very thin, because its brick against the red lava looks actually like thin posts. Afterwards, going ahead, there are those half-malfunction crushers from the sky, that blue-red open-close pool, and those mixed open-close switches. Basically a level with a shabby theme.
- E3M5: always liked the theme of this one, it has a Hereticky feel to it, even though it predates it. I can always imagine the imps being replaced with golems, cacos with ophidians and barons with iron liches...
- E3M6: this level is burning, but frankly when I first went to it, it looked like a fun park with lots of lights. Still not bad, because it's fun, as I said.
- E3M9: I was glad to see a cyberdemon here, which meant that episode 3 had guts to include bosses in it, just like episode 4 had. The rest was similarly surreal as E3M1.
- E3M7: here the things start looking grim. No more flashing lights, fantasy architecture, shabby machinery, subverted techbase or wide despairing outdoors. You're in a real dungeon now, with no more imps to fool around with, rather straight-up demons and cacos. This level felt like a nightmare when the first time around, due to that slime maze and foreboding rounded rooms.
- E3M8: the disturbingly large arena made this one a bit edgy, but the spiderdemon looked somewhat out of place. I wish they fired a BFG9000, not a Wolfenstein chaingun, and that they had a BFG protection themselves. Doable by ZDoom, anyway.

All this said, I'd really like to see levels very similar to E3M2 and E3M7. I even had dreams about places similar to E3M7, with very wide rounded red brick rooms, large red lava pits, and bridges that raise, with few but big monsters in them (no imps!).

[Doom Marine]

Inferno is my third favorite episode of the four (1st is E1, 2nd is E4), most of the level's layout is not that great, but has great art direction (except E3M8), making them thematicaly powerful. E3M1 is a good example: good art direction, weak architectural layout. E3M2 is a gem that was terrifying to play at the time (I was 10 then). Chaotic, dark, and lost souls appearing out of nowhere, it is hell. E3M3 had a strong beginning, but the clashes of tech and hell didn't resonate with me. E3M5 was the funnest to play, and I was surprised to found out later that it was Sandy Petersen's map. E3M6 is a great attempt for the time to mimic the environment of a supposed Mt. Erebus. E3M7 is thematically strong, and had a layout that kept the player guessing where the enemy is coming from. E3M8 is weak sauce, especially compared to the awesomeness that was E3M7.

E3 was an episode that I saw could've easily been the most memorable and blowout experience in Doom had it been more thoroughly thought out. When I evaluate an E3 map, it is relative and within the context of that episode alone, heaven forbid it has to be pitted against Romero's mastery of mapping. For one, the architectural layout of most of E1's map, especially E1M5 and E1M7, trumps layouts of E3M3 or E3M7; the dynamism and connectivity from Romero's maps is clearly missing in the later episodes.

Hell is a powerful theme that is my favorite. Because of the good, but unsatisfactory nature of the third Episode in hell, I've always had a plan to create something that would ultimately satisfied the hell theme that I expected to see after episode 2.

[Super Jamie]

I think Episode 3 (and for that matter all of Sandy's mapping) cops alot of bashing it doesn't really deserve to tell the truth.

I haven't sat down and played the whole lot from a pistol start for a few years now, but when someone mentions E3Mx on the forums I'll usually -warp to it and give it a spin, and I'm never disappointed.

Sure, the detailing is poor compared to modern maps and even compared to E1 in places - you can tell it definitely suffers from "Sandy hurry up and finish the registered maps" syndrome - but there's no denying that all its' intestine spinners, flesh mazes, decrepit machines and torture-laden scenery make for some of the most atmospheric and memorable locations in the whole game.

Some secrets are cleverly laid out, designed so you'll ordinarily walk past them, then see the secret again from another area and want to go and seek it out, though some are just plain walk-ins you'll naturally find anyway. Copying the start of M1 for the secret level was a stroke of genius, and is done nowhere else in the IWAD. And who doesn't remember the first time they figured out the Slough of Despair is a huge hand?

Alot of the maps are non-linear and bring to mind the phrase "where the fuck do I go now?", but to me that's just all part of it being hell. It's designed by some crazed monster who is controlling barbaric creatures so twisted and on-the-edge they'll just as soon kill each other as kill you. You can hardly expect them to build a passage straight and skull-free, never mind sensibly construct an entire complex.

I love all the DOOM.WAD levels. Doom 2 lags in the middle, and Ultimate Doom's E4 is mostly lame, but E3 is a definite winner in my books.

[Enjay]

I think that, possibly, it has the weakest architecture of the 3 episodes but then it has a different style anyway - the other two are based around detailed tech bases whilst Ep 3, where it has buildings, they are often more traditional block-built structures.

On the whole, its a fun episode and definitely has a different feel to the other two. Some of the levels are great fun and really make you feel like you are in an entirely different world where the rules have changed. It is often a strange and alien place - it's complete and "believable" but it is not your dimension and so it is unfamiliar.

Personally, I always found E3M5 a combination of good looks but confusing/not fun gameplay. E3M6 is definitely wide open and interesting but all that FIREBLUE is fugly. E3M7 is definitely a hot and unpleasant place but... I dunno, it just doesn't quite work from a gameplay perspective IMO. E3M1 is a great introduction to the episode and, despite my love of tech bases and "real world" places, E3M9 is one of my favourite levels in the original Doom. I just love the way it plays and the way that so many of the enemies from the game are included and used in an intelligent way.

[BilboHicks]

Been a while since I played through E3. I do remember quite liking E3M9 as a cool secret level. The style and look of the levels did make me feel that I was fighting the hell spawn on their turf, so in that case, it was a success.
Didnt realise until recently about the BFG 'bug' and the spiderdemon.

[Reevys]

It's a good episode, I like all the levels. But I think E3M3, E3M4 and E3M7 are by far the best of the bunch.

[Hellbent]

Dis was a great disappointment and let down. I was expecting something like Hell Keep which opened the episode in proper hellish theme. House of Pain is my fave level from da episode. I disagree that Pandemonium was poorly designed--I like all the themes in it and they fit together nicely.

[bimlanders]

Just by coincidence, I just this morning finished my first play-through of E3 is many, many years. The first three levels are interesting because you constantly run dangerously low on ammo. But once you have your ammo set in later levels, it's pretty easy. The level "Limbo" stood out to me as the most boring, yet pretty challenging. I disliked the sameness that the level's look sported, and the endless lava pit slogging (note: far too many medic kits are provided to offer a real challenge.) The Cyber Demon should have been the final boss, not the Spider. I've NEVER played through E4, so that will be next. I also haven't even finished TNT or Plutonia. Overall, Inferno is the least fun of the original three, but still classic Doom, of course.

[TheeXile]

I initially thought the secret level was punishment for choosing the wrong exit or something. :P

[Jodwin]

Slough of Despair is probably my favorite E3 map, both thematically and gameplay-wise. The song is great too.

Pandemonium is almost E1-like in that it's a non-linear "base." It actually does look like it could be a warped UAC techbase...

[Vader]

I really like E3M1-E3M3, with Pandemonium being my favorite of those. Mount Erebus is also a nice map, but for me it is also the incarnation of a major problem I have with all the E3 maps;
Layout and gameplay-wise they are nice (Except E3M8 wich would be quite lame if it wouldn't introduce the new monster) and although the overall design is quite creepy and surreal, the textures and their combinations mostly don't work well and end up looking like a random mish-mash of colors for me... again, E3M6 is propably the best example for this.

[40oz]

I love Hell Keep and Slough of Despair. Mt. Erebus should be as epic as the map name permits. It really sucks for such a memorable name.

[Reevys]

I love Limbo, and think it sets up Dis really well, it just so happens Dis is shit. I really love it in PSX Doom where Dis is nowhere to be seen, replaced by Tower Of Babel instead.

[geekmarine]

Dis gets a lot of crap, but I look at it this way - it was the last time in a Doom game (not counting Doom 64) where we had a proper boss fight. Doom 2 had the Icon of Sin, which I always thought was a letdown (and which was repeated twice in Final Doom), and then Ultimate Doom had another Spiderdemon. That made the first three episodes really stand out for me - each one ended with an epic boss battle against some new monster we had never seen before. After that, it was like they just stopped caring about boss battles.

[bimlanders]

I'm going to go off topic just a tad and make a bold statement that E1M4 is the best Doom level from the original three. Back when I was thirteen years old and only had the shareware version, it was the level I always kept a save game reserved right at the beginning. I love the music, especially, and how you right away have to blast those baddies that are higher up, and often they'd fall all the way down. It's just such a fun and fast paced level, with a decent amount of secrets. Here's a bit of trivia, it was the level to feature a swastika, before it was taken out of later versions. I knew what a swastika was back then, but I wasn't offended because Doom's levels were SUPPOSED to represent great evil. Plus it was only fitting as a homage to Wolfenstein 3D. I hate how they had to puss out and remove it from later versions.

[bimlanders]

geekmarine said:

Dis gets a lot of crap, but I look at it this way - it was the last time in a Doom game (not counting Doom 64) where we had a proper boss fight. Doom 2 had the Icon of Sin, which I always thought was a letdown (and which was repeated twice in Final Doom), and then Ultimate Doom had another Spiderdemon. That made the first three episodes really stand out for me - each one ended with an epic boss battle against some new monster we had never seen before. After that, it was like they just stopped caring about boss battles.

I really lament the lack of bosses in DOOM 2. If they had three proper bosses to bookend the episodes, I would be in heaven (or is it hell?)

[myk]

Generally agreeing with what others have said, it may be the sloppiest episode, but it has some nice unique touches. E3M6 and E3M7 in particular do help give the episode a more epic touch by unleashing larger numbers of bigger monsters on the player in relatively open areas. It's weakened a bit due to the added invulnerability powerup and BFG without really having that much of a respective increase in the opposition.

I don't think the boss fight is as bad as others are saying. I don't even have that much against the simple level, which looks like a final extension of E3M7. Sure, now it's easy to finish, but while it's easier than the cyberdemon fight when playing the whole episode, it can be trickier from scratch. And DOOM is about both things, level-set play and single-level play. Petersen (and whoever helped during testing) bothered to give the level tactical relevance in relation to the boss. It has little cover, and the ammo is spread out around the level on the ledges, forcing the player to expose himself to the huge chaingun and possibly get intercepted by a cacodemon if he wants to be sure he has enough ammo to destroy the spiderdemon. Infighting is also a tactic for the smart player, yet the monsters are spread out apart so that this will take some work.

Back in the day the spiderdemon was as scary as the cyberdemon because while it doesn't have those rockets that kill you in one hit, its hitscan attack in the open is nasty against a slow player that exposes himself a lot when running for cover. And even with the BFG, now we kill it with like two shots, but back then I was too scared to approach it and generally needed more shots from a greater distance.

bimlanders said:
If they had three proper bosses to bookend the episodes,

They have some nice "boss touches," though. Level 7 has the fatties and spiders, level 11 has the first arch-vile, level 20 has the two DOOM bosses, and level 30 has the biggest boss of all. In any case, I think the best boss in the DOOM games is the one in DOOM II. Fighting it is more intense, with its ever increasing amount of minions.

[Antroid]

Like many people here, i liked slough of despair and limbo quite a lot. They both were THE scary levels for me (that is when i was playing my first ever doom version, and to this day the favourite one, the snes port). Hell Keep also has the best "introduction to inferno" music ever.

I didn't notice much of the textures clashing and/or general theme of the episode when i was playing the snes version though, because i was far too little for that. I was just generally scared. Since i tried out the original i began noting stuff like texture misalignments and other errors in all the levels i saw... (that was long before i had internet access and before i even dreamt of a level editor for any game)

[bimlanders]

They have some nice "boss touches," though. Level 7 has the fatties and spiders, level 11 has the first arch-vile, level 20 has the two DOOM bosses, and level 30 has the biggest boss of all. In any case, I think the best boss in the DOOM games is the one in DOOM II. Fighting it is more intense, with its ever increasing amount of minions. [/B]

This is true, and overall I feel that most of the levels in DOOM 2 are better designed than DOOM I, and offer far greater challenges while still being do-able. However, I really wished that ID could challenge themselves to come up with the most disgusting, vile, demonic beast they could dream up to act as proper bosses. A boss battle is always more memorable than simply a very difficult one. For instance, the Arch Vile's first appearance takes on the form of a boss-like encounter, but once you start seeing more of them later on, it lessens their visceral impact. It would have been really nice if Final Doom had sported a couple of new enemies and even some bosses as well.

[Lantern Jaw]

Ep 3 Map 9 is perhaps my favourite doom level of all time, mostly perhaps for nostalgia, the clever trick of making you think that you have somehow gone back to a previous level only to have a cyberdemon change events significantly...a nice idea. The level has a nice flow to it, no stopping and starting, no slow creeping around corners, just run and shoot, it's about having fun. Best part of it all is the great pumping music track.

It would be sweet if there was a wad that took you back there and expanded upon it further.

[Vermil]

One thing I have wondered about Doom2, is why ID didn't make more use of the 666 tag or similar like they did on Map07 and E4M6 of Ultimate Doom.

I guess they wanted to allow the player the option of getting around everything instead of killing it.

[Hellbent]

bimlanders said:

I'm going to go off topic just a tad and make a bold statement that E1M4 is the best Doom level from the original three. Back when I was thirteen years old and only had the shareware version, it was the level I always kept a save game reserved right at the beginning. I love the music, especially, and how you right away have to blast those baddies that are higher up, and often they'd fall all the way down. It's just such a fun and fast paced level, with a decent amount of secrets. Here's a bit of trivia, it was the level to feature a swastika, before it was taken out of later versions. I knew what a swastika was back then, but I wasn't offended because Doom's levels were SUPPOSED to represent great evil. Plus it was only fitting as a homage to Wolfenstein 3D. I hate how they had to puss out and remove it from later versions.

You should make a thread asking people to state what they think is the best Doom 1 level and why. (I would but I make too many of those kinds of posts:p). It's interesting you pick e1m4. For me I think it is e1m7 cause of the secrets, or e2m4 cause of the über atmosphere.

myk said:

It's weakened a bit due to the added invulnerability powerup and BFG without really having that much of a respective increase in the opposition.

[/b]
I never noticed that. E2M7 is the first level where an invuln sphere appears in Doom (and there's two of them), so it's really an episode 3 powerup. What else is exclusive to episode 3? any textures or other things?

Lantern Jaw said:

Ep 3 Map 9 is perhaps my favourite doom level of all time, mostly perhaps for nostalgia, the clever trick of making you think that you have somehow gone back to a previous level only to have a cyberdemon change events significantly...a nice idea. The level has a nice flow to it, no stopping and starting, no slow creeping around corners, just run and shoot, it's about having fun. Best part of it all is the great pumping music track.

It would be sweet if there was a wad that took you back there and expanded upon it further.

I expanded on it a little bit a little while ago. I may go back and do more. It'd be a fun mapping community project for people to expand upon it. Go make a new thread!

[Lantern Jaw]

I expanded on it a little bit a little while ago. I may go back and do more. It'd be a fun mapping community project for people to expand upon it. Go make a new thread!

I would but seeing as I only have one map out there at the moment, http://planetdoom.gamespy.com/View.php?view=DoomMaps.Detail&id=16 which is not exactly without it's flaws, I wouldn't wanna try contributing only to balls it up.

[DuckReconMajor]

E3M7 is most helly in my opinion. Rivers of blood in stone structures really reinforces the "organized evil" theme, which contrasts with the mishmash of the other levels.

The only other thing which really adds to the atmosphere is the sky. You can't get a better snapshot of hopeless desperation than running from demons toward that seemingly endless landscape of burning red mountains.