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Clusterone

In Honor of Doom's 20th

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I know, i'm 2 days late, internet has been buggy, as I was going back playing through Doom 1 again trying to beat nightmare. I started to realize I love Ultimate Doom a lot more than Doom 2. Especially Thy Flesh Consumed, and Shores of Hell episodes.
Which Doom out of all 3 do you all like best, and favorite maps/episodes/sections, and why?
No wads, just pure ol' Vanilla Doom.

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I love Thy Flesh Consumed and Shores of Hell the most too, however as my main favorite Doom I would pick Doom 64 with Ultimate Doom as second and Doom 2 as third because I find only megawads make it enjoyable and not so much the base game anymore.

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Oh, Doom/The Ultimate Doom all the way. I have to be cliched and say that the Knee-Deep in the Dead episode is my favourite because it really is the best of the official id maps. Doom II has quite a few very dated maps, particularly late in the game, which stop me from ever wanting to play it from start to finish (I did clock Doom II just once back in 1994 though). The Thy Flesh Consumed episode is better than many of the Doom II maps even.

I do, however, prefer WADs for Doom II mainly because of the greater variety of enemies and the super shotgun (which I would probably use exclusively if there was enough ammo. haha). I am a big fan of Final Doom, especially The Plutonia Experiment. Some of the Master Levels are great too.

As for Doom 3... it was good enough for me to want to clock it and its mission pack but it's not even in the same league as the classic Doom series, so I wasn't even tempted to try the BFG edition.


So in order of preference...

  1. Doom: Knee-Deep in the Dead
  2. Final Doom: The Plutonia Experiment
  3. Final Doom: TNT: Evilution
  4. Doom: Thy Flesh Consumed
  5. Doom: The Shores of Hell
  6. Doom II: Hell on Earth
  7. Doom: Inferno
  8. Doom 64
  9. Doom II: Master Levels
  10. Doom II: No Rest for the Living
  11. Doom 3

I haven't played any of the console ports of the games (except for Doom 64) so I can't rate any of the differing levels featured in some of them.

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My order, ranking only the official "Classic Doom" episodes.

1. Doom 2: Hell on Earth
2. Ultimate Doom: Thy Flesh Consumed
3. Final Doom: TNT Evilution
4. Doom 2: No Rest for the Living
5. Ultimate Doom: Knee Deep in the Dead
6. Ultimate Doom: Shores of Hell
7. Ultimate Doom: Inferno
8. Final Doom: Plutonia*
9. Doom 64*

* = Both Plutonia and Doom 64 would probably have gotten higher ratings had I played them more. I've only played through Plutonia once or twice and Doom 64 I haven't played through since the days of N64. 1 - 7 on the list I've all replayed within the last year and have fresh in my mind.

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Since we are doing top 10 I will throw in my top 10
1. Ultimate Doom: Thy Flesh Consume
2. Ultimate Doom: The Shores of Hell
3. Ultimate Doom: Inferno
4. Doom 2: TNT
5. Doom 2: Plutonia
6. Ultimate Doom: Knee Deep in the Dead
7. Doom 2
8. Doom 64
9. Doom 3
10. All Doom Wads
Which actually, some Doom WADS are more fun than the Vanilla game itself honestly, more so the older ones.
By far, favorite wad is H2H-Xmas for me, and than I love the older wads and some Beginning Zdoom wads. :)

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Wow, I'm impressed about so many people considering Thy Flesh Consumed as one of their favorite episodes. In my case, it's definitely my least favorite episode of all classic Doom releases, including Plutonia and TNT.

Just out of curiosity, can you guys tell me why you like TFC so much?

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I really like what we've come to call E4 style. And apart from E4M4, I think pretty much all of the maps hold a really high class. They're all pretty difficult, they're all very fun to explore.

I think that most of the mapping done by Tom Hall / Sandy Petersen is pretty sub-par, whereas most maps done for E4 are of real high quality.

You could say that E4 is for me what E3 should have been.

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I still have yet to play Final Doom, so I'll wait until them before declaring my favorites. I will say the problem I had with a few of the Doom 2 levels were how the city maps often looked like someone scattered a bunch of dollhouses in a sandbox and then shrunk Doomguy and the demons really really tiny and played with their new dolls.

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I also think the appeal of TFC is the higher difficulty, just like with Plutonia (as opposed to Evilution). I always play WADs on UV unless I'm constantly getting my arse handed to me, which is when I might take it down a notch to HMP. I refuse to cheat when it gets tough, though, I do use the automap cheat sometimes, but only *after* I've killed all the monsters in a map. I'm a 100% completion kinda guy. Must be a form of OCD. haha

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EvilNed said:

I really like what we've come to call E4 style. And apart from E4M4, I think pretty much all of the maps hold a really high class. They're all pretty difficult, they're all very fun to explore.

I think that most of the mapping done by Tom Hall / Sandy Petersen is pretty sub-par, whereas most maps done for E4 are of real high quality.

You could say that E4 is for me what E3 should have been.


I feel like the levels that both Hall and Petersen had a strong hand in turned out pretty well, especially in Doom 1 since it had stronger episode themes to it than Doom 2.

E4 had good levels on its own but despite the heavy wood-texturing it really doesn't feel like a cohesive episode to me, but instead just a tacked-on collection of new levels, which is kind of disappointing.

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Doom 2
Original Doom 1
Doom 3
Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil
Final Doom
Doom 1: Thy Flesh Consumed
Doom 3: The Lost Missions

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plums said:

I feel like the levels that both Hall and Petersen had a strong hand in turned out pretty well, especially in Doom 1 since it had stronger episode themes to it than Doom 2.

E4 had good levels on its own but despite the heavy wood-texturing it really doesn't feel like a cohesive episode to me, but instead just a tacked-on collection of new levels, which is kind of disappointing.


Well, can't say much more other than I disagree with pretty much everything you said. :p

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plums said:

E4 had good levels on its own but despite the heavy wood-texturing it really doesn't feel like a cohesive episode to me, but instead just a tacked-on collection of new levels, which is kind of disappointing.

It's not cohesive because it wasn't built to be. The marketing point for them was that it was a new episode that was super hardcore and stuff. They didn't care about giving it a sort of story. That's also why the levels do not have place names but random King James Bible quotes, why they didn't ask Adrian Carmack or Kevin Cloud to create a new intermission map, and why the endgame text is so goofy -- even compared to the other three. (Tom Hall, after all, was just a distant memory at this point. He's the only one at Id who cared about stories.)

The only thread connecting these levels together is that they're official levels that are much harder than the rest of the levels in the game.

The wood and green marble theming is just a coincidence, really.

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Gez said:

The wood and green marble theming is just a coincidence, really.


While I can agree that there's little story of sense of continuity in E4, I'd argue that there's very little of that in E3 as well.

I don't think that the visual Wood and Green marble visuals were a coincidence, however. To me, it's quite obvious that it was a planned move. I know Romero's gone on record to state the contrary, but I just think that's to much of a stretch. 8 levels all turned out to follow the exact same visual theme? Nope, not buying it.

As for the story, Doom's story is so paper-thin to begin with that 90% of it's always been in my head anyway. e4 is no difference. I'll take superior maps over some 100 word story any day of the week.

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Fernito said:

Wow, I'm impressed about so many people considering Thy Flesh Consumed as one of their favorite episodes. In my case, it's definitely my least favorite episode of all classic Doom releases, including Plutonia and TNT.

Just out of curiosity, can you guys tell me why you like TFC so much?

For me, it was because as a kid, that episode alone stood out to me the most, it seemed the most advanced level design for the game, and the difficulty just made it that much better. I have always loved games that hand me my guts on a plate over and over again, and as a kid, I loved the hell out of that map. :)
Also I REALLY liked the design of the maps.
But mainly the Nostalgia.
Damn I still remember my first Ultimate Doom experience I borrowed it from my grandparents neighbor, loaded it up on my grandpa's computer and played every time I was over there.

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as i said in that doom1 vs doom2 thread, UD has generally more consistent themes than doom2, which is rather abstract, especially the "warped reality" part around map 20-24. doom2 makes up for this with better monsters and the mighty ssg.

i can't really rank the iwad episodes because all have their highs and lows.

plutonia is my overall favorite because of its challenging gameplay. its consistent theme is its weakness at the same time, as one gets tired of wood and clay full of gunners and revs.

TFC follows in its steps, it manages to be difficult despite lacking the doom2 enemies. that combo of marble and wood against a yellow sky is beautiful. the end is a letdown, another mastermind, great.

e1 has the most polished maps of UD. however, i like e3's hellish theme, i found this imagery of lava and brimstone, skulls, pentagrams and mangled bodies interesting, although the maps themselves are less good gameplay-wise. e2: i like that one because there's a berserk pack in almost every map.

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