Doom 2 Rating

[DooMBoy]

What would you rate Doom2?

[Liam]

I wish there was some reason to post hell this poll but unfortunately there isn't.

Anyway maybe a 5. That sounds good.

[læmænt]

Liam the Bard said:

I wish there was some reason to post hell this poll but unfortunately there isn't.

This post

[Shaviro]

10.

[Sharessa]

7...I would have voted 6, but this is a Doom site and I would have felt funny.

[esayeek]

7:

it inherits much great greatness from doom, has a newly improved balanced set of monsters, but i never liked a lot of the levels.

[GS-1719]

8.

[Livo]

8.

The supershotgun is absolutely great, as are the new enemies IMO. though the level design is pretty disappointing compared to Doom.

[Torn]

9

[Little Faith]

A 7.

The gameplay is superb and have gotten several new facets. The battlegrounds now include huge cityscapes and large hellish caverns, not just series of rooms, halls and tunnels. The more open architechture that the mid and later levels exhibits adds a lot to the frantic combats.

The new monsters also add sizably to the gameplay. While Doom had a good selection of smaller foes as well as some boss monsters that could make you shit in your pants there was a lack of mid-range monsters. Monsters that were powerful, but not boss-like. That shortcoming has been fixed in Doom2 where there are several different mid-range baddies all with their special powers: A weaker sort of baron, a really nasty former human with a chaingun, a big fat ugly mutant with two huge guns as arms, a small spider mastermind with a plasma gun (ugh), a weird annoying cacodemonoid with the ability to spawn lost souls en masse, a big skeleton that launches heat-seeking comets o' death and finally a way cool undead wizard with the ability to resurrect fallen comrades when it's not busy conjuring hellfire up your butt.

There is also a new toy for you to use. A sawed off shotgun that not only looks way cool with it's reloading frames, but also makes handling a lot of the more meatier demons up close very easier.

But the looming atmosphere and the immersive quality of the original is somewhat lacking in this otherwise rock solid followup. While there are plenty of new cool cityscape levels the good old tech base feel of the two first episode is almost gone. Kinda weird since the first third of the game is supposed to happen in a high-tech starport. Also the "hellish" atmosphere of the hell levels only really surfaces in the very last levels.

Finally one of the monsters: The Hell Knight is just a lightly coloured version of the Baron of Hell. Not especially cool. A new "cool" artefact called the "megasphere" is pretty much just an old soul sphere with an ugly brown colour (like there weren't enough brown already) and some armour on top of not. Cool? NOT!

Pros: A major gameplay upgrade, some really cool new monsters and a kick-ass gun.

Cons: In reality just a level pack with some new nifties. Doesn't have the same "charm" and scary atmosphere as it's predecessor.

Overall a 7, but a fondly given one. If you already played Doom and liked it then get this quick. The adventure is not over yet! If you are new to Doom it might be better to get hold of the old Doom first in order to become really immersed in the game.

[nxn]

well, if I'm comparing it by the standards of doom1 I'll give it a 5, and if I'm rating it as a new game all on it's own I'd give it a 7.

[SyntherAugustus]

10

[DooMBoy]

As for me, I like Doom2, don't get me wrong here, it's fun to play-for about an hour or so, then it all seems to go stale.
The first few levels are relatively fun to play through, especially with -nomonsters turned on. About the only level that really strikes me as being a tech base level is map04, The Focus.
The new weapon (and sadly, the ONLY new weapon), the Super Shotgun, or SSG, is a very good weapon, and very powerful. It's also extremely useful in Deathmatch.
But while the new critters to kill are quite cool (and frustrating in certain circumstances) and some of the levels (notice I said some) and some of the levels are really cool to play through and look at, the whole game seems to lack the atmosphere and overall fun factor of its hallowed predecessor. Like I said at the beginning of this, it's fun for a while and then-it all seems to go downhill. A couple levels stand out as not being id software quality-map09, The Pit, map02, Underhalls, map19, The Citadel. These levels in particular are badly designed levels with terrible texture choices, with the exception of map19.
These are but a few of the qualms I have with Doom2. Thank you for listening to me tirade.

[Davidoom]

I disagree.

I see a few exceptions when it comes to bad level design in Doom 2. There are many of the best levels ever tied in Doom 2 which can create a unique atmosphere.
Notably, map 27 is probably one of my favorites, the music helped towards this but the eerie darkness and overall level design was amazing. I think map 13(downtown) could have been designed better, a good concept but it was too wide and big, I think the idea of shootings between buildings through wall windows close up would have been better.

I feel DOOM 2 is better than DOOM, Doom 2 isn't about being DOOM, it's a totally different scenario, if D2 was totally 'original DOOM' then there would be no point in releasing it.
The process of military base > city streets > hell was damn good.