I can't finish Doom 2, it's boring

[Deleted_Account]

rileymartin said:

Just play Icarus then. Basically the same thing!

Now that's something I haven't played in a long time. Nearly forgotten about it!

[Marcaek]

rileymartin said:

Just play Icarus then. Basically the same thing!

I always thought that if you split Icarus and TNT in half you could make a pretty good megawad out of the remainder. I can't knock TeamTNT considering they were pioneers but their various projects don't really age well.

[jazzmaster9]

MinerOfWorlds said:

TNT's better because i can play it without getting bored on every level.

I didnt get bored with TNT. I straight up gave up in sheer frustration. Mt. Pain Was the last straw. Atleast with Doom 2, the maps were short and the Chasm and Spirit World roped my back in.

[Doomkid]

Marcaek said:

https://38.media.tumblr.com/487321f5b3c6b3ad88aeb982e1fc2f1f/tumblr_mg5y15KyPb1qa3bzoo1_400.gif

I always thought that if you split Icarus and TNT in half you could make a pretty good megawad out of the remainder. I can't knock TeamTNT considering they were pioneers but their various projects don't really age well.

Its funny because the same is true for their DM stuff, between the lot you can compile about 20 super solid maps.

[Marcaek]

20 is a generous estimate. Regardless, half would come from tntblood half from grievance maybe one or 2 from pursuit and literally nothing in reclaimation is playable in any way.

TNTBlood 01 is pretty fun tho

[Doomkid]

Well yeah but I think 50 out of the ~350 Dwango maps are good so take my opinion with a grain of salt :o)

[kmxexii]

mom i cant finish doom 2 the doge ate it

[savagegrant]

Marcaek said:

I can't knock TeamTNT considering they were pioneers but their various projects don't really age well.

*tsk* Eternal Doom is still amazeballs. :P

[Graf Zahl]

Marcaek said:

TNT would like to have a word

MinerOfWorlds said:

In my opinion TNT was better then doom 2 in every way.

Viscra Maelstrom said:

it's a flawed megawad, just like how Doom 2 is a flawed megawad. they both have good maps, and bad maps. i guess TNT is slightly more interesting to play through though, if only because of the new music.

The difference in my opinion is, TNT was very uneven, it had lots of great maps, but also its fair share of real crap maps.

Doom2 was more consistent, but it was consistent on the weaker side of things.
And it isn't so much the levels themselves that bother me, aside from a few exceptions. My main gripe is that id grabbed some stock graphics for the texture set that completely failed to represent the intended theme of the game.

Just imagine a map like "Downtown" with some textures that actually look like a city - it would have made a large difference. Instead we get something that plays ok but looks like a random hodgepodge of structures with no real meaning.

[HavoX]

At least some of the music in TNT (Death's Bells, Into the Beast's Belly) is good!

[CARRiON]

I agree.

Played through it again and only really enjoyed 3 of Romero's maps, 11, 17 and 26. I also enjoyed Map14 by McGee but that's pretty much it. Everything else was either boring to play through or a real pain. I think it's really just down to the rather poor mapping quality and rushed pacing. You get the SSG on the second level of the game and it's just thrown in a corner of a room, you get every other weapon extremely quickly too. The 'city' levels are probably the biggest offenders for being the most ugly and Map24 is an absolute pain in the ass to this day. I'm also not a fan of gimmicky maps like Map08. DOOM 2 just falls flat on its face for me and I don't think I ever want to return to it... it just lacks any sort of passion or soul to me.

I went through No Rest For the Living afterwards, and was really impressed with it. It strikes a balance between looking good but not looking over-engineered, and the pacing in those 8-9 levels was better then ALL of DOOM 2. You don't even get a backpack until the last level, and it slowly works up your arsenal as you go. There was a good amount of ammo and health items, and it felt like the mapper had tight control on that, every battle feels intense. No BFG until later means you can't just cheese fights and lots of good secrets just made it a very enjoyable time. Nerve did an excellent job and this reminded me I still need to play through that Quake episode that Machine Games did.

I also played through UDOOM, it was alright. I don't mind the first two episodes, episode 3 is a mixed bag, and episode 4 is a super mixed bag since it has a reputation of being hard when really, the first two levels are the only hard levels of the whole episode.

[riderr3]

Some people said Evilution is worst than Doom 2. But this is mostly because it's released after Doom 2. Imagine Evilution released after Doom 1 and called "Doom 2". I will only miss Dead Simple and some city-themed maps. Wolf3D secret maps is sucks, they had to change WolfSS to other useful monster specially for maps 31-32.

[Voros]

IIRC, the Doom 1 maps were a bit rushed, while the Doom 2 maps weren't. So what went wrong?

[purist]

They were all rushed. Doom also had the disadvantage of the engine still being built and learning it's capabilities, Doom II had the disadvantage of part of the team moving onto the next project and Romero being more interested in deathmatch than mapping.

I don't remember exactly how long Sandy made his maps in for both games but his levels would be considered speed mapping exercises by today's standards.

[Marcaek]

HavoX said:

At least some of the music in TNT (Death's Bells, Into the Beast's Belly) is good!

Beast's belly is great, unfortunate that it features on some of the wad's weakest maps :/

obligatory jd hererra pimp

[Lila Feuer]

I can't fault OP, Doom II's IWAD is weak, which is really lame considering how great a lot of user-created megawads are and of course how good/very decent Doom 1 is as a whole. Even Final Doom's IWADs are for the most part better than Doom II's game.

I'll say, replace the bad maps of D2 with some of the good ones from TNT, all of No Rest for the Living, and even sprinkle in some of the good ones from the Master Levels, and you'd have a great Doom II IWAD.

[baja blast rd.]

CARRiON said:

I agree.

Played through it again and only really enjoyed 3 of Romero's maps, 11, 17 and 26. I also enjoyed Map14 by McGee but that's pretty much it. Everything else was either boring to play through or a real pain. I think it's really just down to the rather poor mapping quality and rushed pacing. You get the SSG on the second level of the game and it's just thrown in a corner of a room, you get every other weapon extremely quickly too. The 'city' levels are probably the biggest offenders for being the most ugly and Map24 is an absolute pain in the ass to this day. I'm also not a fan of gimmicky maps like Map08. DOOM 2 just falls flat on its face for me and I don't think I ever want to return to it... it just lacks any sort of passion or soul to me.

I went through No Rest For the Living afterwards, and was really impressed with it. It strikes a balance between looking good but not looking over-engineered, and the pacing in those 8-9 levels was better then ALL of DOOM 2. You don't even get a backpack until the last level, and it slowly works up your arsenal as you go. There was a good amount of ammo and health items, and it felt like the mapper had tight control on that, every battle feels intense. No BFG until later means you can't just cheese fights and lots of good secrets just made it a very enjoyable time. Nerve did an excellent job and this reminded me I still need to play through that Quake episode that Machine Games did.

I also played through UDOOM, it was alright. I don't mind the first two episodes, episode 3 is a mixed bag, and episode 4 is a super mixed bag since it has a reputation of being hard when really, the first two levels are the only hard levels of the whole episode.

So as a continuous player with the practically limitless shell ammo that entails, you'd prefer to use your infinite shell ammo to plink away at D2's harmless meaty mid-tiers with the single shotgun instead of just killing them faster with the SSG?

NRftL is better than Doom II, being a competent polished mapset designed many many years later and all, but to single out pacing as a major reason it's better feels misguided. The difficulty peaks somewhere in the low-moderate range in map01 and never rises much beyond that in the whole mapset. The cyber boss fight is a letdown. The pacing in this set is mostly cosmetic and in service of the (well executed, imo) secret quests.

Also, the all-caps treatment that "ALL" gets in "ALL of Doom 2" is somewhat confusing. Given the size of Doom 2's rosters of weapons, items, and monsters, an episode-sized mapset lends itself to smooth pacing a lot more naturally than a 32-level mapset. So having superior pacing to "ALL of Doom 2" isn't really more of an accomplishment than having superior pacing to "all of Doom 2" or "part of Doom 2" or whatever the non-caps non-emphasized version is.

Personally, I also find it kind of lame when so many "paced" maps and mapsets unfold in the same way: SG and CG early on, maybe even a bit of pistol use at the very beginning, maybe some chainsaw/berserk action either as a supplement or (more rarely) the focus; then comes the RL or SSG (RL first or RL only if the mapper hates the SSG, lol); PR comes next if it's in the map at all (sometimes it'll be available as only a secret), and the BFG will follow (or be the secret escalation to the freely available PR), but the cell weapons are generally handled out in a less structured way, often determined more by the shape of the (cliched) climactic cyberdemon- or spiderdemon-centric encounter. And we've seen the whole stock bestiary already. Unless a custom mapset adds new monsters (e.g. Valiant) or takes a very diegetic angle to monster deployment (e.g. Hellbound), there is no real reason to pace out deployments. You can have exciting but ultimately not so hard encounters with viles and cybers in map01, and exciting but tough and mean-spirited encounters with viles and cybers in map29. The willingness to use "tough" monsters early opens up a lot more possibilities than the cliched "low-tiers early, gradual escalation of tougher monsters" stuff, which has been done dozens of times and isn't very interesting.

What mapsets that are willing to give the powerful weapons early grasp is that you can use ammo availability to "pace" the full arsenal, which is something that Doom II doesn't do and is actually the real reason it's not suitable for continuous play, at least not for a modern player. The only real restriction is that the SSG will push the SG into niche use territory (who cares though -- the SG is a shitty weapon), and the BFG unfortunately will do the same to the PR. (Also if you are playing megawads that are designed for pistol starts continuously, of course you are going to have the full arsenal and heaps of ammo within not too many levels. Don't do that. Pistol start them like you should!)

[CARRiON]

rdwpa said:

So as a continuous player with the practically limitless shell ammo that entails, you'd prefer to use your infinite shell ammo to plink away at D2's harmless meaty mid-tiers with the single shotgun instead of just killing them faster with the SSG?

The shotgun isn't that bad. It isn't as great as the SSG obviously but it still offers enough power to take down mid-tier demons quickly if you manage your movement and ammo well enough and make your shots all connect. Throwing the SSG at the player so early just devolves the mapset into just using the SSG constantly since it has about the same power as a rocket launcher and it also devalues the weapon and makes it boring to use, since now for 28 more levels where the player will most often use the SSG. Because like you said you get lots of shells and backpacks early on. Had they made it so you get it later on, it would have felt like an awesome upgrade to your shotgun.

rdwpa said:

NRftL is better than Doom II, being a competent polished mapset designed many many years later and all, but to single out pacing as a major reason it's better feels misguided. The difficulty peaks somewhere in the low-moderate range in map01 and never rises much beyond that in the whole mapset. The cyber boss fight is a letdown. The pacing in this set is mostly cosmetic and in service of the (well executed, imo) secret quests.

The pacing in NRFTL felt better to me because it slowly builds your arsenal, while still throwing lots of low-mid tier monsters at you. Ammo and health was tightly controlled and I liked that a lot. The final cyberdemon was nothing special, but was no worse then Map30's gimmicky garbage. Also I personally think the episode starts off pretty standard but ramps up around Map05.

In comparison DOOM 2 kind of just felt like it haphazardly threw items, monsters and weapons at me in mostly ugly maps.

rdwpa said:

Also, the all-caps treatment that "ALL" gets in "ALL of Doom 2" is somewhat confusing. Given the size of Doom 2's rosters of weapons, items, and monsters, an episode-sized mapset lends itself to smooth pacing a lot more naturally than a 32-level mapset. So having superior pacing to "ALL of Doom 2" isn't really more of an accomplishment than having superior pacing to "all of Doom 2" or "part of Doom 2" or whatever the non-caps non-emphasized version is.

I suppose my point being DOOM 2 didn't need 30 levels to begin with? I was just fine with the 9 NRftL gave me personally. A lot of games from the early 90's shareware days, especially FPS, are just as guilty of being longer then they need to be. Wolf 3D, Blake Stone, RoTT all come to mind. Unless the game can achieve quality for long stretches of time or keep introducing new elements, which I felt Duke 3D or Blood did, most of them could be cut in half and be better games for it.

rdwpa said:

Personally, I also find it kind of lame when so many "paced" maps and mapsets unfold in the same way: SG and CG early on, maybe even a bit of pistol use at the very beginning, maybe some chainsaw/berserk action either as a supplement or (more rarely) the focus; then comes the RL or SSG (RL first or RL only if the mapper hates the SSG, lol); PR comes next if it's in the map at all (sometimes it'll be available as only a secret), and the BFG will follow (or be the secret escalation to the freely available PR), but the cell weapons are generally handled out in a less structured way, often determined more by the shape of the (cliched) climactic cyberdemon- or spiderdemon-centric encounter.

Well that's fine and dandy if it's what you like, but the weapons are designed in such a way that of course there is an order in which you find them. The pistol is your weak starter weapon, being forced to use it for a little bit makes the player eager to upgrade, which puts the shotgun or chaingun next. Both of which are good well balanced weapons that let you plug away at low-mid tier demons. The RL and SSG are powerful puncher weapons that should be found around the middle of a mapset when larger hordes or stronger enemies start popping up, then the PL and finally the BFG. I like this formula because it makes sense and it gradually powers the player up more and more. Thus I enjoyed something like NRftL more than DOOM 2.

rdwpa said:

And we've seen the whole stock bestiary already. Unless a custom mapset adds new monsters (e.g. Valiant) or takes a very diegetic angle to monster deployment (e.g. Hellbound), there is no real reason to pace out deployments. You can have exciting but ultimately not so hard encounters with viles and cybers in map01, and exciting but tough and mean-spirited encounters with viles and cybers in map29. The willingness to use "tough" monsters early opens up a lot more possibilities than the cliched "low-tiers early, gradual escalation of tougher monsters" stuff, which has been done dozens of times and isn't very interesting.

I don't mind longer first maps that throw low-mid tier enemies at you, but I'm not interested in wads that throw high-boss tier monsters at you right from the jump. Again, this is a total preference thing. I did enjoy how DOOM 2 had a few cool introductions to monsters, like the Archvile's. I enjoy it when a game designer wants to show off a new element to the player in a cool fashion rather then just throwing it at them out of nowhere.

rdwpa said:

What mapsets that are willing to give the powerful weapons early grasp is that you can use ammo availability to "pace" the full arsenal, which is something that Doom II doesn't do and is actually the real reason it's not suitable for continuous play, at least not for a modern player. The only real restriction is that the SSG will push the SG into niche use territory (who cares though -- the SG is a shitty weapon), and the BFG unfortunately will do the same to the PR. (Also if you are playing megawads that are designed for pistol starts continuously, of course you are going to have the full arsenal and heaps of ammo within not too many levels. Don't do that. Pistol start them like you should!)

Personally, I still use the shotgun and plasma rifle despite having an SSG or BFG, if it's just a few low-mid tier demons I see no reason to waste shells or cells. The PR is a very powerful weapon, very hand for barons, revenants and fatsos.

[Spectre01]

rdwpa said:

The willingness to use "tough" monsters early opens up a lot more possibilities than the cliched "low-tiers early, gradual escalation of tougher monsters" stuff, which has been done dozens of times and isn't very interesting.

That's basically what Plutonia did, where you end up fighting everything except Barons and Zombiemen(lol) in map01, excluding boss monsters. It's actually hilarious how the Former Human makes his debut in like map04 while you're fighting Chaingunners and Shotgun dudes right away. That does mean that the difficulty stays rather consistent throughout most of the set, with occasional spikes like Go 2 It and Anti-Christ.

[The_SloVinator]

DooM & DooM 2 are my nostalgia, so me replaying DooM 2 is no problem. I know it from the back of my hand. However, I have to use Chocolate DooM source port.
It's 90s feeling. I can't use any advanced source port unless I'm trying mods out which most of them are being fun for 10 maps or so in DooM 2 IWAD till they get stale. Unless I try them in custom mapsets.

I'll have to admit one thing though. Levels requiring to find keys through secrets (Map 19: The Citadel, blue key specifically) is a total BS.

[MeetyourUnmaker]

CARRiON said:

The more that I think about it, Doom 64, Doom 3, and Plutonia/Doom 1 are all better than Doom 2 vanilla.

[Doomkid]

This point is highly contested, but I'd put D64 at #5 beneath all 4 main iwads. Mind you, I think all 5 of the old Doom campaigns are fun (master levels and NRFTL don't really count, do they? Even if they do I'd still rate D64 above them, in any case.)

[hex11]

Soldier993 said:

I'll have to admit one thing though. Levels requiring to find keys through secrets (Map 19: The Citadel, blue key specifically) is a total BS.

The exit only needs two keys; red and yellow is enough. Red key is easy to get. Yellow key is more difficult, but the "secret" door to elevator for big jump is obvious and stands out from all the other nearby textures (worn from heavy traffic?)

Actually, I tried this level again, and there's an easier path to yellow key (no secret needed).
But if you do the jump thing, you get the computer map there, so then finding all other secrets is easy.