Doom 1 or 2?

[ellmo]

Enjay said:

I think, for me, the biggest pant-filling moment was the first time I played E2M8. It all started out well enough in that room. OK, the music was a bit odd and creepy but then I shot a lost soul and I heard this huge roar followed by the thump thump thump of whateveritwas stomping around looking for me. Then I saw this huge daemonic skyscraper for a few seconds before my screen turned red and he obliterated me with his rockets. O_O

MikeRS said:

Haha that almost describes my first encounter with E2M8.

My first encounter was like:
"Please turn this game off!"
Which was adressed to my brother, as I was hiding behind the chair.

[Mithral_Demon]

ellmo said:

My first encounter was like:
"Please turn this game off!"
Which was adressed to my brother, as I was hiding behind the chair.

I was kinda like...
" Well... I think... Uhh... *dies in game* nvm... I'll skip."
I disliked Cybies back then when I played U.Doom.

[Jim Rainer]

ellmo said:
My first encounter was like:
"Please turn this game off!"
Which was adressed to my brother, as I was hiding behind the chair. [/B]

Really? Mine was more like:
"Damn, these fuckers are annoying as hell."
Then again, sad as it may sound, I didn't have anything but freedoom and the E1 shareware version of doom til a couple of months ago.

[YMB]

I discovered Doom on my Dad's computer, just sitting in the Start menu on his Win95 rig. I clicked it, and HOLY SHIT. I thought I broke the computer because I couldn't escape.

[Intel17]

Well, I just finished DOOM II yesterday and, having played it right after completing The Ultimate DOOM, I have to say that the Ultimate DOOM is much better -- DOOM II's maps were uninspired for the most part and the music was...blech.

Super shotgun is cool, though :)

Well, it looks like I'm off to plow through Maximum DOOM -- yay for the Master Levels CD :)

[Belial]

Doom 2 is what keeps Doom alive to this day. Without the new monsters and the SSG single player would be long lost due to the lack of fun to play PWADS and DM would've never developed as well as it had.

[Grazza]

I view Doom2 as better in all respects.

[The Lag]

i prefer episodes 1 and 2 over everything else, as far as play-through...in fact, i play them very regularly.
Doom2 i haven't played completely through in years, and i very much dislike a good chunk of the maps.
i absolutely hated the "feel" of doom2 (including ALL the new monsters, the ssg, and the "brownness") up until sometime in 2003, when i started downloading custom wads again...and then fell in love with the possibilities of the new monsters and ssg.

i can't imagine what i was thinking back then, and it sucks having missed those years (@1997-2003 minus a few months in 2001) of great wads.
i pretty much stopped playing doom when it seemed no more doom1 wads were coming out (i refused to play most doom2 wads back then.)

now i prefer doom2 for it's resources, but i never play the game itself.

[hardcore_gamer]

Why is Doom2's level design so shitty compared to The Ultimate Doom?

The Ultimate Doom has awesome level design with allot of unexpected fights and ambushes. The levels resemble stuff. But Doom 2 just has large empty areas, uninspired bland maps that don't really resemble anything, and is not even close to being as good as The Ultimate Doom. What went wrong? The same people were working on the 2 games right?

Were they just this busy trying to get the game released in time or something?

[Nuxius]

*in before another Sandy Petersen discussion.*

[myk]

Let's see whether somebody finally manages to say something sustainably reasonable about why "DOOM level design is awesome" and "DOOM II level design sucks" past the usual weak generalizations and nostalgic bullshit.

[Starke Von Oben]

hardcore_gamer said:

Why is Doom2's level design so shitty compared to The Ultimate Doom?

The Ultimate Doom has awesome level design. But Doom just has large empty areas, uninspired bland maps, and is not even close to being as good as The Ultimate Doom. What went wrong? The same people were working on the 2 games right?

Were they just this busy trying to get the game released in time or something?

The levels on Doom2 are more abstract. But I do agree, the level design in Ultimate Doom is far better.

[hardcore_gamer]

myk said:

Let's see whether somebody finally manages to say something sustainably reasonable about why "DOOM level design is awesome" and "DOOM II level design sucks" past the usual weak generalizations and nostalgic bullshit.

There are many reasons for why Doom 2's level design is weak. The areas don't really resemble anything. Each area exists mostly of random rooms and shaped glued to each other. The fights are often less creative with allot of levels just throwing large amounts of monsters at you with very few surprises. The only thing Doom 2 really added to the Doom universe were new monster and the SSG.

[Maes]

Probably trying to keep an "earthly" setting (buildings, cities, large open spaces etc. ) coupled with vanilla's mapping limits lead to weird levels, generally oversized compared to Ult. Doom and with less room for detailing and a much less clearly defined theme.

Were they set in hell? Surely not (although a few look hellish enough). In a techbase on an alien world? Nope.

Is it set on Earth, as the title claims? Could be, but it looks clumsy and ugly.

Military facilities? Hard to tell. Factories/engine rooms/processing plants? Some places are clearly that, but lack of detail makes them unconvincing. In fact the "industrial" setting is one of the weakest in Doom 2, despite the new textures supporting it. Ordinary cities with streets and buildings? They definitively tried that, but the result was for the most unrealistic and abstract.

I was always puzzled by the choice of textures: an overabundance of stone masonry, tapestries, standards, wooden panels, libraries etc. as if they planned to make a game mostly set in a gothic/magical setting or even in another point in time.

But even those textures and flats were used in an unconvincing manner, with many buildings looking like oversized wooden cabins, shacks or even pirate ships. There were very few elements suggesting that the game took place in the present-day or even the near-future Earth. On the converse, TNT: Evilution had a much more convincing setting, also thanks to the massive retexturing.

[hardcore_gamer]

Maes said:

Probably trying to keep an "earthly" setting (buildings, cities, large open spaces etc. ) coupled with vanilla's mapping limits lead to weird levels, generally oversized compared to Ult. Doom and with less room for detailing and a much less clearly defined theme.

Were they set in hell? Surely not (although a few look hellish enough). In a techbase on an alien world? Nope.

Is it set on Earth, as the title claims? Could be, but it looks clumsy and ugly.

Military facilities? Hard to tell. Industries/engine rooms/processing plants? Some places are clearly that, but lack of detail makes them unconvincing. Ordinary cities with streets and buildings? They definitively tried that, but the result was for the most unrealistic and abstract.

I was always puzzled by the choice of textures: an overabundance of stone masonry, tapestries, standards, wooden panels, libraries etc. as if they planned to make a game mostly set in a gothic/magical setting or even in another point in time. But even those textures and flats were used in an unconvincing manner, with many buildings looking like oversized wooden cabins or shacks. There were very few elements suggesting that the game took place in the present-day or even the near-future Earth. On the converse, TNT: Evilution had a much more convincing setting, also thanks to the massive retexturing.

Exactly, the first few levels in the game actually resemble stuff and are very fun (like MAP02) but after that everything just looks random and ugly. And not just in terms of visuals, the gameplay sometimes felt a little random as well. But it's the shittastic layouts and level design that got to me the most. MAP15 is also in my opinion a good example of a map that resembles nothing and just looks like a turd, though i will admit that the level actually played rather well despite that.

[Maes]

The problem is that most levels lack personality and don't look like anything. They don't resemble Earth, nor Hell, nor an alien planet. They don't remind of modern times, or of the future, and not even a recognizable past.

Someone could say that the "Earth" Doomguy is experiencing is a warped version of its former self, but most levels don't look eerie or corrupted in any way.

In fact, I'd rather the levels being deliberately bizarre and outlandish, with warped buildings, lying in a sort of liminal twilight zone, as one could expect from an Earth overrun and corrupted by daemons. Instead they mostly look bland, as if they never were real places. It almost feels as if the battles take place in a sort of movie set or theme park, for the most time.

[myk]

hardcore_gamer said:
The areas don't really resemble anything.

The areas in DOOM resemble something? They're either generic and unrealistic maze "tech bases" or hell that sometimes uses the same textures used in the tech bases. DOOM marks the game's general theme well enough, as it's the original thing and gives a good idea of progress towards hell, but that by itself doesn't make its levels better. Just good in that department.

Each area exists mostly of random rooms and shaped glued to each other. The fights are often less creative with allot of levels just throwing large amounts of monsters at you with very few surprises.

I definitely fail to see this. Various levels in DOOM II have more strategic monster and item placement than many of the levels in DOOM. If anything, the authors still maintained a good degree of consistency between the two games, but showed some additional versatility during the sequel.

Petersen, who is generally criticized more than the other designers, arguably managed a better atmosphere in many of his DOOM II levels than in most of his work in DOOM, and came up with new concepts which tended to have more game play elements than his early levels: A level using teleporting hordes (16), a intense boss-like earlier level (7), a tricky barrel-based level (23) a level combining ledges, lost souls and vast environments with separate areas to explore (24), a level using buildings to play with height variation (13), a trick-theme level (8), and a unique and fearsome* boss level that wasn't just a plain shootout (30), to name some. It shows that he had more experience and time to put into them.

* The thumping bosses in DOOM may have been intimidating at first, especially when we were still struggling with the controls as newer players, but they certainly weren't as scary as that evil face that spewed endless enemies in a closed environment.

DOOM II added American McGee that did a solid job with relatively tough levels. Just think of any of his levels. Romero expanded his repertoire by adding more massive and challenging levels and not repeating what he had already done.

I'm not surprised that people that fret over "the environment" and mimesis can't fully appreciate DOOM II. By '94, the id guys knew the limitations of DOOM's technology and concentrated on the bottom line of what the tech can deliver, setting a mood and providing fun stages to play. And they delivered the game just in time, instead of stalling it for secondary and time-consuming aspects.

Maes said:
I was always puzzled by the choice of textures: an overabundance of stone masonry, tapestries, standards, wooden panels, libraries etc. as if they planned to make a game mostly set in a gothic/magical setting or even in another point in time.

It sure delivers a gloomier environment than something like Duke Nukem. It's kind of like when you read a Lovecraft story; the places depicted aren't realistic, instead they set a mood.

even pirate ships.

Heh, I missed that one...

On the converse, TNT: Evilution had a much more convincing setting, also thanks to the massive retexturing.

The retexturing was actually a weak point there, as much of the new texturing was of poorer quality. Remember those wooden crates? The MS-paint-like tech texture edits? I favor managing a loose but relatively pleasing aesthetic than something that tends to look recognizable of "like something", especially if the former also shows more play-oriented development: stuff made a certain way specifically because it's fun and made primarily to be played.

I sense that many people who are dissatisfied with DOOM II seek more of DOOM in it, but they're different. DOOM II delves more into being a violent and oppressive environment, while DOOM is a bit more about suspense. DOOM II is more clearly or effectively an action game. This difference makes sense for a first game and a sequel, as a new game is good for exploring and a second game should concentrate on exploiting what the game is best at instead of trying what a new game can do.

[Antroid]

I like doom2's level design as abstract as it is. Lately i've even began to like it more than doom1, probably because it's more refreshing and i'm really sick of doom1 and cramped inside levels. ANd i really didn't like the visuals in TNT... Excluding that one good sky.

[Enjay]

On the whole, I'm with hardcore_gamer and Maes. Definitely!

I would, however, concede myk's point that some of the monster/item placement in the Doom2 maps was clever or did add new gameplay elements. Map23 and Map08 are two maps that I enjoy re-playing but, bottom line, I'd have preferred something more convincing as something (which could be an utterly abstract warped hellish environment) and less "game for game's sake".

I really cannot agree, however, about the "scary... evil face that spewed endless enemies in a closed environment". Right from the get go I thought "it's a fucking wall". And it is such a hideously contrived gamey "got to complete it the right way" level with that rising platform and the small brain hole etc etc.

[Graf Zahl]

The main reason should be obvious: Doom2 was rushed so less time was invested in making the levels good. The fact that the weakest of id's level designers did the majority of the work didn't help either of course.

[Maes]

myk said:

It sure delivers a gloomier environment than something like Duke Nukem. It's kind of like when you read a Lovecraft story; the places depicted aren't realistic, instead they set a mood.

That's the problem: it doesn't even appear gloomy at all. Most levels appear designed with one kind of texture/materials (hence, the "theme park" effect I mentioned before), and use of lighting effects is almost nonexistent: most places are open, bright, and generally lack any sort of mood or atmosphere. They don't convey a sense of tension/despair/liminality. If anything, I felt like playing an extended version of Urban Wars beta (only less detailed) or even a random-ass assortment of techbase/factory elements like ForgeX.

Even Bloodfalls, that should be nothing short of kickass with such a name, ends up sounding contrived and corny, because you see, indeed, blood falls as soon as you start the level. Other levels like "Barrels o' fun" felt gimmicky from the beginning.

About the pirate ship...it was an exaggeration of course, az there's no level based on a pirate ship, but there's an excessive amount of wooden constructions that look like Peter Pan's treehouse or something. Again I can't help but wonder if they had an alternate theme in mind (like e.g. a steampunk setting) that got scrapped but they were left with the resources to use or lose.

The gameplay is another matter, and any perceived lack of atmosphere was offset by the novelty and the challenge brought in by the new monsters. Still, I believe that Final Doom used Doom 2's resources, included the retexturings in a more appropriate manner, and if either was released as Doom II: Hell on Earth it would have probably been better, but maybe it's just me.

[Dutch Doomer]

Sequels suck, end of story.

[Maes]

dutch devil said:

Sequels suck, end of story.

You win the thread. Here's an internets.

[kristus]

I'll just start by saying I agree with everything Myk said. But I've argued the same point before and I am not gonna delve deep into it again.

I think people could use to be a bit more open minded when playing the Doom2 maps. Doom2 definitely did take a more abstract road than Doom1. Though to be honest there wasn't that big a detour since Doom1 was already pretty abstract.

I have a nostalgic connection to E1 of Doom. But it's not at all the most frequent set of maps I visit. That is Doom2. And if I do play Doom1, I usually play maps Episode 3 or 4.

Doom2's level design compares to abstract paintings. Someone watching can say. "-That's not art, that's something my 2 year old kid could draw." and then carry on with their life, completely missing out on the experience.

It's not something you can blame said person for really. It's a form that tends to require more of the audience.

Anyway i digress. Doom2's maps are great in my opinion. They not only have a more versatile and varied game play than Doom1's maps ever had. They are also letting your imagination roam freely.

People bitch about modern games being brown and gray and overly "realistic". Doom2 was the real deal. It was... is gameplay and imagination.

[hardcore_gamer]

myk said:

The areas in DOOM resemble something? They're either generic and unrealistic maze "tech bases"

Yea, but at least they resemble at least that. Most of the Doom 2 levels don't resemble anything at all.

Playing the game feels like being thrown into some sort of a bizzaro world.

E3 and E4 in the Ultimate Doom are sometimes like that as well, but E3 is set in hell so its done on purpose and E4 was not made until after the original Doom was released.

And many of Doom 2's maps also just plain suck gameplay wise, like that late one where you have to walk through extremely narrow paths in order to prevent yourself from falling into the slime below you.

[eargosedown]

Honestly, I don't like the Ultimate Doom outside of the first episode and a few odd levels here and there. By the same regards, I only like three or four Doom 2 levels. I believe that because all my favorite levels are immediately back to back to back, I tend to favor Doom 1.

As Maes said as well, Doom 2 was going for a 'theme' that Doom 1 wasn't, and as such, had less freedom of design.

[Coopersville]

I only still play Doom 2, because of the abundance of megawads.

[hardcore_gamer]

Coopersville said:

I only still play Doom 2, because of the abundance of megawads.

Yea, but it's the actual Doom 2 levels them self's that i think are lame.

[printz]

Doom 2 has good level design, sorry. It's near perfect on Ultra-Violence, it just stops being challenging by the late hell levels, but otherwise it's very exciting on UV, unlike Doom 1, which is very easy on UV, Thy Flesh included. And the Doom 2 monsters are very cleverly designed, filling tactical gaps of Doom 1 beasts.

My favourite Doom 2 levels are the Sandy Petersen ones, because I get the chance to run directly into masses of enemies and risk being zapped, or watch themselves rip each other. Right, they're not beautiful, but they don't have to.

What I hate about Doom 2 are the skies and textures. They appear to be caricatures of the real world and for this purpose they look very boring (especially the standard brown brick and painted metal plates, which lack the SF personality of STONE2, STAR* or METAL1 from Doom 1). There are certain skylines on the web that look much more atmospheric than that static fumed city from Doom 2, even without any processing before importing (sadly they're very likely copyrighted, for some annoying reason). Anyway, I hate it when custom Doom 2 maps or megawads are invariably started with that ugly METAL2 and TEKGREN theme.

[hardcore_gamer]

printz said:

Doom 2 has good level design,

Well some of the maps like O of destruction are actually awesome. But most of the levels look and play dull for me.