Plutonia: really well done

[baronofheck82]

Am I the only one who thinks that, especially given their age at this point (eighteen years) that the levels of The Plutonia Experiment were really well done? Yeah, they're not easy, especially on UV (for me at least) but they definitely have their own look and style and for levels nearly two decades old they still hold their own really well, I always thought.

[Memfis]

Mostly agreed, however Map11 aged terribly in my opinion: nowadays it's a completely uninteresting and extremely basic concept level, and I won't play it ever again I think.

[TendaMonsta]

I believe Plutonia was the most influential iWAD for mappers. It was hands down the best iWAD.

[Cacowad]

the most influential maybe not (doom1 episode 1 anybody?), but i agree plutonia is actually a really good wad.

[Guest Unregistered account]

I love it (I'm 13 BTW) and I think its designs are fantastic. The jungle theme is pretty unique and while the jungles aren't really recognizable, the tombs/Aztec buildings are pretty cool.

I think most peole prefer Evilution over Plutonia because Evilution feels more like a "proper" Doom game - progressive enemy/weapon system, etc. However, Final Doom WAS meant to be a level pack; meant to test the skills of players who wanted more Doom. So Plutonia nails that aspect. What's more, it's a challenge even for nowadays' experts.

As for Level 11: Hunted being redundant, etc. I personally think it's aged well. It's a unique concept and it feels very different to the rest of the official Doom levels. Also, there really aren't as many HuntedClone.wads as you think. Each to their own, I guess. :/

[joe-ilya]

Good for its time, but if it was made nowadays people would complain about wierd stuff like why the fuck are the chaingunners at CAGED can't see you when you can, why the fuck is there a floating arrow, MAP29 is too wide, and about MAP11, the key trap on impossible mission with spawning in a big horde sucks, MAP13 having an annoying nukage start and other bullshit.

[scifista42]

Plutonia is indeed well done; but it didn't grow to me well and I tend to dislike it. Kinda like, what the recent BTSX E2 "unexplainable" complaints were about, this applies to Plutonia for me. But maybe I actually can identify the problem. Plutonia used to disgust me with high difficulty (and many tough monsters) thrown early on, and I wasn't impressed by the textures. Even when I actually can handle the difficulty (nowadays more than before), I prefer the other IWADs and mods for them. Honestly and strongly.

[Janus3003]

joe-ilya said:

Good for its time, but if it was made nowadays people would complain about wierd stuff like why the fuck are the chaingunners at CAGED can't see you when you can, why the fuck is there a floating arrow, MAP29 is too wide, and about MAP11, the key trap on impossible mission with spawning in a big horde sucks, MAP13 having an annoying nukage start and other bullshit.

I'd add Map10 starting off with an alert chaingunner right behind you.

[Xegethra]

I never thought much of Plutonia either...the difficulty did feel cheap sometimes but it was doable...

For me it was the way it looked...I'm not sure why but I always got that queezy feeling whenever I tried to play it. I've completed it a couple of times, once on PS1 and once on PC but still...it makes me feel a bit sick for some reason.

[purist]

Yeah, I thought the Casallis did an amazing job considering the time contraints. I know they recycled a lot of the original games but they were smart enough to vary the gameplay to such an extent that it feels even more dislocated from Doom and Doom II than Evilution does.

Plus, Milo and Dario had no time for mappers block. I wonder what it would be like if 2 experienced mappers stepped up to take the Plutonia Challenge and make an accomished megawad between them in such a tight timeframe. I suppose Speed of Doom and Scythe (except with one guy) are close examples?

[scifista42]

purist said:

Plus, Milo and Dario had no time for mappers block. I wonder what it would be like if 2 experienced mappers stepped up to take the Plutonia Challenge and make an accomished megawad between them in such a tight timeframe.

Obsidian and General Rainbow Bacon are both good at that, and they recently managed to join their efforts together. :)

[Zed]

I've always wondered why people praise so much the "Aztec" levels of Plutonia. I mean, they are good, really, but they don't resemble anything Aztec from my point of view.

[Xaser]

Plut is great, and I still feel bad for taking so long to realize it. It took PL2 to convince me to play it for real. :P

[Doominator2]

I enjoyed it, but tbh i'd rather play Evilution because for some reason it felt more of a sequel to Doom 2 than Plutonia imo.

[Obsidian]

All things considered Plutonia is indeed pretty darn excellent. The textures are well done, the tricks used are brilliant for their time(did anyone else use self referencing sectors before Plutonia?) and while some maps can be annoying, they usually deliver.

Also thanks for the plug Scifista. :D

[Dragonsbrethren]

Doomsday of UAC pioneered self referencing sectors.

[Obsidian]

Dragonsbrethren said:

Doomsday of UAC pioneered self referencing sectors.

Oh cool, didn't know about that. Thanks.

[Doomkid]

Visually, Plutonia is great. In this respect it and E1 have aged the best. The gameplay can get pretty grindy, but never "not fun". I think the easier, but still difficult nature of Doom2 will always be my favorite, even if some texturing is ass.

[Avoozl]

I dunno, Plutonia actually looks quite bland to me and an over use of the same texture theme in most maps, some of the new brick textures also look moreso bland than most of Doom 2's stock textures.

[BaronOfStuff]

I don't think it's aged particularly well as far as gameplay goes; I'm replaying it currently via Chocolate Doom for nostalgia's sake and a lot of what I found tough as a kid in the DOS days is largely just grindy and tedious now.

Take "MAP05: Ghost Town" as an example. Used to love this map back in the day, and while I still like the general layout you can see just how strained for ideas things were becoming; the section preceding the Spider Mastermind's den features a sudden ambush of Chaingunners overlooking the courtyard. Okay, cool. Kill them, go in to grab the key, and what happens? Doors open and each position is then filled with a replacement Chaingunner. This isn't even a case of backtracking a fair bit later on and having to clean up, this is literally only seconds after dealing with the first mob and you already have to do it again. It just feels so lazy to see shit like this before we even hit the first text intermission.

Visually it's all so very brown to look at too, but one thing the maps do have going for them at least is the geometry and a sense of exploration. Even the longer maps (such as MAP29) manage to go by without outstaying their welcome, unlike a few of Evilution's offerings.

[Varis Alpha]

Plutonia is better overall than the Evilution part of Final Doom, IMO. it doesn't have any new music, sure, and it does have some questionable gameplay-choices, but it also doesn't have any absolute brickwalls-of-noise-track slamming into you, it doesn't have any bad maps like Administration Center and Habitat, and none of the custom-textures looks garishly out-of-place. i definitely prefer Plutonia over Evilution and can see why there's more projects done with levels based around its theme. that's not to say Evilution is BAD, but it's not as GOOD as Plutonia is, IMO.

[Shadow Hog]

Well, I don't think anyone would call it medium-rare...

I recently played through the whole thing. I thought it was okay. A little too assholish in spots. Really liked MAP29 for some reason, though.

[Avoozl]

But wouldn't it be a good idea to fix the problems with TNT by making projects for that also?

[T-Rex]

Avoozl said:

But wouldn't bit be a good idea to fix the problems with TNT by making projects for that also?

That would be a good suggestion. Thing is that there's nothing really special about TNT, even though I like the mapset very much. TNT was more of a community project similar to Memento Mori, Requiem, and the Community Chest series; a collection of new levels by a group of mappers. Plutonia, on the other hand, is very unique since it follows an original, consistent theme and revolutionary style of gameplay, the latter of which mods like Hell Revealed, Alien Vendetta, and Scythe stemmed from. In other words, Plutonia was the most memorable of the Final Doom duology. Keep in mind that TNT was originally going to be a standalone downloadable wad before John Romero issued the deal with Team TNT to make it part of Final Doom.

[Velvetic]

I don't think that Plutonia was well done, i know that its visually appealing, but for me its just another one of those pretentious "hard" frustrating map set that really get on my nerves.

[Guest Unregistered account]

For God's sake already, it was meant to be an extra level pack for those who wanted more Doom, alright? :D

[Memfis]

I don't know why this turned into TNT vs Plutonia but okay.

I find TNT a lot more memorable. Plutonia is just short tricky maps in like two or three styles max. Not much to remember. On the other hand, TNT is full of impressive grand locations, which often can be identified as real world objects, it's very imaginative, varied and full of unique quirky concepts. All that really impressed me in childhood, Evilution seemed such a big world.

[joe-ilya]

You got a point that I do too.

[Snakes]

Plutonia rocks my socks. There's a lot of really clever layout concepts they snuck in there, and some of the maps hold up well even today (Map04, Map12, Map27 etc.). For the period they were made in, they were truly at the top of the mapping community. I'd easily call it the IWAD that most influenced the modern mapping community (you can't argue against Map32's influence, and the PL knockaround style of play is standard at this point).

[Janus3003]

For what it's worth, I'm finding that Plutonia's a lot of fun with Russian Overkill.