Do you like Final Doom?

[Marcaek]

I really liked the steel mill level.

The map with the massive fenced outdoor section? Fuck that was tedious.

I suppose my main problem with the Dead zone was spending 45 mins trying to find that fucking secret exit. It's okay if you like open levels I suppose but something about it rubs me the wrong way. Maybe it's because how crammed in everything is. And what does the switch near the outdoor staircase do besides open a small part of the wall near the exit?

[Katamori]

Lol, I found the super secret level under 3-4 minutes, when I played on ZDoom :Đ previously on DOS it was more harder.

[Marcaek]

Well yeah it's no trouble if you know where it is beforehand.

[elic]

You mean the one in Pharaoh? That one's really easy to find, probably the easiest secret exit I've seen.

[Marcaek]

No, the one LEADING to Pharoah.

[Pirx]

Marcaek said:

I really liked the steel mill level.

The map with the massive fenced outdoor section? Fuck that was tedious.

I suppose my main problem with the Dead zone was spending 45 mins trying to find that fucking secret exit. It's okay if you like open levels I suppose but something about it rubs me the wrong way. Maybe it's because how crammed in everything is. And what does the switch near the outdoor staircase do besides open a small part of the wall near the exit?

it's an open level and it's crammed inside ;)

my main gripe with TNT are the huge outdoor maps, with some easy to miss imps or zombies here and there. if you don't know them already you're looking for the end for quite some time. when i played TNT for the first time i got the message "time sucks" on map 20 (the one with the outdoor fence) or map 21.

[printz]

I loved MAP20. It had everything I wanted. Now I never manage to go too far, because the monsters keep besting me. I usually play that map (and TNT.WAD in general) under -fast settings. It's much more fitting with the music and unfriendly outer-space atmosphere in general.

[Alphawolf]

Map 28 on Plutonia, nearly there. I have to say Plutonia's maps are EXCELLENT.

[Cthulhunicron]

Yeah, Plutonia's pretty solid.

[JadedLexi]

I Like Plutonia but I've never played Evilution.

[Sergeant_Mark_IV]

I would take TNT over Doom 2 any day.
There are lots of unalignated textures and overuse of the "TNT" simbol, that's true, but it features better detail, more realistic architetures (including some places with real stuff like chairs and tables).

Now let's make a comparisson with TNT Awesome Levels and Doom 2 Awesome Levels:


Doom 2:
Dead Simple
Tricks and Traps
Downtown

TNT:
Dead Zone
Stronghold
Deepest Reaches
Habitat
Lunar Minning Project
Human BBQ
Hanger
Mill

So, TNT wins.

About Plutonia, I don't discord about the review. I don't like it too.

[Phobus]

You seem to have forgotten The Abandoned Mines, The Spirit World and The Living End as maps which are generally accepted as Doom 2s awesome levels. Likewise Downtown would usually be swapped for The Inmost Dens.

Definitely a case of opinion here.

[Varis Alpha]

One thing I've wondered, why are there so many homages to The Inmost Dens?

Also, some of TNT's levels are strange, but some of the levels are completely awesome. It isn't really comparable with Doom 2, because it has a different kind of atmosphere not found in Doom 2.

[dannebubinga]

I got Final doom as a x-mas present from my dad in 97. I've played through both TNT and plutonia so many times. TNT remains my favourite wad with stronghold as favourite map. I think TNT has some really sweet secret areas that really makes you think "I'm not supposed to be here", wich I like alot.

[iHaveToPee]

In my opinion Plutonia is much better than Doom2.
Doom2 isn't hard at all, there aren't big fights in doom2, the biggest fights there are with 2-3 cacodemons&pain elementals, the arachnotrons&mancubi in map 7 or the arachnotrons&2 spiderdemons in map 28.
In doom 2 I didn't like the 3rd episode, it was quite boring.
Except for map 29, map 26 and map 28 I didn't like anything else in episode 3.

Plutonia was more challenging than Doom2, I loved the fact that I don't fight weak monsters all the time and after several times that I completed plutonia I understood how fun are the arch viles and the chaingunners fights.

Tnt is less successful than plutonia in my opinion.
The music and the maps design was great, episode 3's sky is my favorite sky in doom and I enjoyed playing episode 2.
Tnt was easier than Plutonia and thats why I like plutonia more.

[Megamur]

Although I haven't played it as much as DOOM and DOOM II, I'm honestly very fond of Final DOOM. I admit that I have a much stronger attachment to TNT than Plutonia, though. TNT just seemed more "ambitious" and more like an actual DOOM sequel, with how it tried to create a cohesive theme with the new textures and level themes and music. Plutonia seemed more like a random collection of maps in some random, nondescript location, with random DOOM 1 music added.

Of course, that's not to say I dislike Plutonia. There's still some tense, sprawling mazes of death and destruction that really emphasize what DOOM is all about, and while I'm not really sure where the game is supposed to take place (I know the manual says it's a UAC base on Earth, but does Plutonia look anything like a UAC base on Earth to you?), it's still well-detailed, and has an attractive, unique, outdoorsy style.

But I'll always be most in love with TNT. I was really fond of how it was sort of "in the middle," being more detailed than the original DOOM and having flashes of being like a real place (Shipping/Respawning being a great example), yet it still had that design that emphasized gameplay over strict realism, like the original DOOM sported. A wonderful blend that I always wish to emulate in my own maps.

[darkreaver]

Megamur said:

I'm not really sure where the game is supposed to take place (I know the manual says it's a UAC base on Earth, but does Plutonia look anything like a UAC base on Earth to you

Thats the beauty of it! And the manual should have said nothing at all about where it takes place, that would have been the best IMO.

That truck in "Shipping/Respawning" is, to say it mildly, very lol inducing, and should have been left out (IMO, again, as usual).

Anyway, I used to hate (or...dislike) Plutonia and love Evilution, but now I think Plutonia is the better part. I still love them both though. MUCH more than Doom 2.

[elic]

Megamur said:

Although I haven't played it as much as DOOM and DOOM II, I'm honestly very fond of Final DOOM. I admit that I have a much stronger attachment to TNT than Plutonia, though. TNT just seemed more "ambitious" and more like an actual DOOM sequel, with how it tried to create a cohesive theme with the new textures and level themes and music. Plutonia seemed more like a random collection of maps in some random, nondescript location, with random DOOM 1 music added

Well, I think the levels in TNT feel a lot more random than the Plutionia ones. In Plutionia, each level seems like it takes place in the same environment as the previous one, and it seems like one well connected project. Even though TNT has mostly techbase levels, there are many that feel out of place. Both MAP02 and MAP16 are hellish, but are in between tech base levels, which really isn't cohesive. Once you get to MAP21, all cohesiveness goes down the shitter, cuz MAP21 is a wood fortress, MAP22 is some sort of techbasey water system, MAP23 is called "Lunar Mining Project," when the game takes place on one of Jupiter's moons, which means that the whole story is fucken gone. Finally, MAP24-26 all take place in some subterranean hell, but MAP27-30 all go back to the same random map style formula. Actually, TNT is really more like a community project than a cohesive megawad (which isn't really bad, but dosn't seem right to commercially publish.)

I think the worst thing in Plutiona isn't the difficulty, cohesiveness, etc..., but some map cliches which really bug me. Plutionia has a bunch of inescapable pits, points of no return, secrets that only open once, and a bunch of other shit that I hate. Also, the maps are littered with unreachable weapon pickups, which always piss me off for some reason (I'm not sure if anyone else gets annoyed at this.) Nothings wrong with sadistic difficulty, but some fights require more luck than skill.

I agree that TNT is better, but Plutiona is also good.

[Enjay]

I'm not a huge fan of Final Doom. I have a few copies littered around that I picked up over the years but I hardly ever play the games. I have never found either one much fun. Of the two, I probably prefer TNT. It has some levels that I quite like. Plutonia has never really appealed to me much at all and I find it quite tedious at times.

[maulosiarch]

The problem I find with Final Doom is (for either TNT or Plutonia) that while the levels are overall better designed and are more challenging, the level progression just sucks.

For example, I think Habitat (level 22) in TNT is really great, with the great big winding river connecting all the separate areas throughout. However, the level itself just not fit in with it's episode/hub because all (or most) of the other levels are designed around a different thematic.

Same goes for "The Sewers" which was level 28 in Plutonia. You are well and truly in hell by then, but all of a sudden it's like you are back in a human waste processing centre. I loved the level, but it's completely out of place.

Doom 2 at least has logical level progression, where all the maps in a certain "episode" leads on from one another in a way that makes perect sense, so you do feel like you are leading towards something and not being thrown around from random location to random location by an erratic level designer.

Which is why, for me, Ultimate Doom still is the best. It has the best level design AND logical progression from level to level. However, the fourth episode could have had some levels rearranged so it went back from easiest to hardest in the levels themselves.

[Megamur]

maulosiarch said:

Same goes for "The Sewers" which was level 28 in Plutonia. You are well and truly in hell by then, but all of a sudden it's like you are back in a human waste processing centre. I loved the level, but it's completely out of place.

That is a great level. However, I still find it debatable that the final "episode" of Plutonia takes place in Hell at all. The text screen at the end of Level 20 simply mentions that you've fought your way into the "heart of the devil-hive." There's no suggestions of you entering/returning to Hell like in the Level 20 texts for DOOM II and TNT. The ending text of the game also says:

The Gatekeeper's evil face is splattered all over the place. As its tattered corpse collapses, an inverted Gate forms and sucks down the shards of the last prototype Accelerator, not to mention the few remaining demons.

And it would stand to reason that a gate that absorbed the rest of the demons would lead back to Hell, wouldn't it? Furthermore, the final level of Plutonia is called "The Gateway of Hell," which makes it sounds like you're at Hell's entrance instead of being inside it.

Of course, this is all just speculation.