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Your thoughts on Plutonia

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Starting off, Plutonia seemed interesting with some really fantastic level designs early on. A LOT of care went into the first third of the game. I also love the jungle-base theme with a lot more vegetation and grass and moss everywhere...

 

But then it goes down HARD... like waaaaaaayy tooooo far down in entertainment.

 

Map 11 is pretty much the tipping point. It's still a fun level but what enemy does it contain? Oh right! THE ONE ENEMY NO ONE LIKES!!! What enemy does Plutonia love to use in almost E V E R Y Level? Arch-Viles! :D Oh and chaingunners our the wazoo and then some :P

 

Seriously the ridiculous spam of Arch-Viles, Revenants, Chaingunners and Pain Elementals really gets on your nerves. Especially when cyberdemons appear far too often.

 

Overall Plutonia was certainly a good experiment (haha) but it really needed to tone down the excessive enemy spam.

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Well that's just, like, your opinion man.

I liked Plutonia, frankly. MAP11 was actually one of my favorite maps of the set because it brought a unique challenge to the figurative table.

As for the "vile, rev, chaingunner, PE spam," that's why you practice. Learn how the enemy fights, learn how to fight at all ranges, learn how to use each weapon to maximum efficiency.

 

Were the traps unfair? Sometimes. But that's just the nature of the beast.

Viles suck, everyone knows that, but there are always ways to fight them in Plutonia. There are also 99 of them on skill 4/5 in Plutonia, vastly exceeding the other IWADs, but they're not often faced in groups.

The chaingunners are used everywhere, so you have to constantly be on the lookout. On top of that, there are, according to doomwiki.org, 704 chaingunners in Plutonia (on skill 4/5). TNT has 601 (skill 4/5), but no one complains about it. Though TNT has its own problems.

Revenants? Easy. Particularly in close combat. 422 in Plutonia.

Pain elemental, meet chainsaw. Also, 74 of these in Plutonia. 64 in Doom II. No complaints against Doom II.

 

Also, cyberdemons, used too often? Not really. The spiderdemon actually beats the cyber to the first appearance in single player (MAP05 vs MAP06). Also, from MAP01 to MAP30, there are only six cyberdemons in the entire set (some don't even appear on ITYTD or HNTR). Compare Cyberden, which has four by itself, and Go 2 It, which has thirteen, which means that Go 2 It, by itself, has more cyberdemons than the entire remainder of the set.

 

I agree that after about MAP10, the difficulty spikes noticeably, but I disagree that its entertainment value falls as a result.

 

However, I fail to see how "care was taken in the first third of the wad" but not the latter two thirds. Looking at it myself, I see a roughly consistent level of care taken with each map. Monster placement is consistent, traps are rather consistent, it all works with itself, almost at risk of becoming predictable.

 

Also, in reference to the "enemy spam," the largest number of monsters faced in a single map in Plutonia is 206 (on MAP32), which is exceeded by Doom II's own MAP09, MAP10, and MAP19, and by TNT's MAP09, MAP14, MAP21, and MAP27. There's no spamming going on in Plutonia. It doesn't work that way. The difficulty is made by how the monsters are placed.

 

And, of course, if it's too hard, you can always set the difficulty one tick lower. Unless you're on ITYTD.

 

The point is that you're free to have an opinion and you're free to dislike Plutonia, but citing enemy spam as a reason is ridiculous, as is saying that no care was taken in later levels. "It's too hard" also falls on its face because many wads today like Sunlust are more difficult on HMP than Plutonia was on UV.

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Doom II was harder overall than the original Doom. TNT Evilution was even tougher. Plutonia stands atop them all, with some of the most efficient and memorable fights of any WAD, ever. It's a different kind of map style than Hell Revealed, though.

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It is certainly the most consistent with map quality, in general there is a much better thought process to monster placement with a few exceptions here and there which are almost at a mockable level. I disagree on the "spamming" accusation as I think the other Iwads were far more culpable to doing this (Sandy's PE usage in the second half of the starport episode comes to mind where they were spammed with complete disregard to the physical limitations of the build engine where many pain elementals were completely harmless for instance.) Also on the whole cybers were used sparingly like the other IWads with the exception of the secret maps (Maps 06,12,19,24,29 and 30 have one in each, I may have missed a couple).

Personally I still think the best single maps in final doom were found in TNT but overall Plutonia was probably the most challenging and engaging Iwad of the set followed by the Ultimate doom.

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Based on how hyped up Plutonia's difficulty was before I went into it for the first time, I was honestly expecting a lot more Cybers than there were. I was also expecting a greater number of Arch Villes as well. You rarely have to fight more than one at a time, and a single Ville isn't usually bad to deal with at all if you have cover. I guess more difficult modern wads have trained me well for that.

 

Chaingunners were definitely the biggest bane of my existence in Plutonia, but cheap tactics let me get through them for the most part. TNT does have a high concentration of them as well, but they are usually right in front of you for 95% of the playthrough, thus they aren't hard to deal with. In Plutonia they are often placed outside of your auto-aim range and often times in very large open spaces. You can't hit them right away, but they can still hit you, and that's what differentiates their difficulty in Plutonia versus TNT.

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My thoughts on Plutonia can be described with just this little line of text:
"2manyrevsandhwd4me"

(666th post :D!!!)
 

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Well, for me, Plutonia is more visually appealing for me these days than TNT Evilution or original Doom/Doom II wads. Also, it has strong and salty combats, compared with iwad stuff. Only thing that I dislike are those exit teleporters, kinda puts me off. 

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On ‎5‎/‎20‎/‎2018 at 10:02 AM, cannonball said:

Sandy's PE usage in the second half of the starport episode comes to mind where they were spammed with complete disregard to the physical limitations of the build engine where many pain elementals were completely harmless for instance.

The Lost Soul limit may have been added after the maps in question were done and we also don't know that it wasn't deliberate on Sandy's part to make Pain Elementals appear harmless during the players first encounter with them.

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Plutonia's pretty great, the better of the two Final Doom wads, and arguably stronger than either of the id map sets. Unlike Evilution, the new textures are actually good looking and used excellently. I did find myself quick saving constantly throughout the map set, which I really don't like to do, just so I wouldn't have to start the maps from scratch so often. Most of the encounters are very punishing if you don't know how to handle them, and some of the maps feel downright unfair even when you do.

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On 5/20/2018 at 2:10 AM, DynamiteKaitorn said:

Map 11 is pretty much the tipping point. It's still a fun level but what enemy does it contain? Oh right! THE ONE ENEMY NO ONE LIKES!!! What enemy does Plutonia love to use in almost E V E R Y Level? Arch-Viles! :D

Do people generally dislike the Arch-Vile? I think it's by far the most interesting enemy in any FPS. Fast, high HP, a dangerous and unique LoS-based attack, and the ability to resurrect fallen foes. Always terrifying, and an absolute joy to fight!

 

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16 minutes ago, Archvile Hunter said:

I think it's by far the most interesting enemy in any FPS. Fast, high HP, a dangerous and unique LoS-based attack, and the ability to resurrect fallen foes. Always terrifying, and an absolute joy to fight!

 

 

Agreed. They can be fairly unpredictable as well and can really spice up certain sections of a map.

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1 hour ago, Archvile Hunter said:

Do people generally dislike the Arch-Vile? I think it's by far the most interesting enemy in any FPS. Fast, high HP, a dangerous and unique LoS-based attack, and the ability to resurrect fallen foes. Always terrifying, and an absolute joy to fight!

 

 

1: Resurrecting Revenants/chaingunners is NEVER A good thing!

2: They're really fast

3: Insane damage output (rivaling that of the cyberdemon almost)

4: Far too durable

5: (In the case of Plutonia) Used far too often to the point it's a chore to kill them rather than a nice little surprise like how they were used in the original DooM 2.

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Have to say - if someone said "here's a megawad with 32 levels" and gave me Plutonia - I'd be pretty damn impressed.

It has some unusual levels (like "Hunted"), some standard levels that are basically Doom 2 with added difficulty, and it even pulls off a pretty decent level 30 and a decent slaughtermap in "Go To It".

 

Like any megawad there are some things that aren't to everyone's taste, but on the whole I find it extremely entertaining and many levels are better than those in Doom 2.

 

Edit: Oh and I will just add - that I do wish there was less reliance on Arch-Viles, Chaingunners and Revenants throughout - but each to their own.

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On 5/19/2018 at 7:10 PM, DynamiteKaitorn said:

Overall Plutonia was certainly a good experiment (haha) but it really needed to tone down the excessive enemy spam

Maybe you could have turned down the difficulty instead?

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5 hours ago, DynamiteKaitorn said:

 

I did a run on ITYTD. Still spammy.

I don't know what you think qualifies as "spammy". Plutonia on lowest settings is a walk in the park, especially since on ITYTD you get double the ammo, and only take half the damage, meaning at some point you can rocket spam like a madman, and if that's not enough you usually also have plenty cells to fuel the BFG. At this point I am under the impression you're actually trolling.

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I can't say I'm a huge fan of "Chaingunners: The WAD". I might be a bit biased as I admittedly suck very badly at DOOM but I always found plutonia too hard for me.

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On 5/19/2018 at 5:10 PM, DynamiteKaitorn said:

Map 11 is pretty much the tipping point. It's still a fun level but what enemy does it contain? Oh right! THE ONE ENEMY NO ONE LIKES!!! What enemy does Plutonia love to use in almost E V E R Y Level? Arch-Viles! :D Oh and chaingunners our the wazoo and then some :P

1

 

I played through some of Plutonia when I was younger but have yet to play through it entirely. I did however recently play through map 11 by itself on UV with a pistol start and found it to be a very fun and well-designed map.

 

For the record, the Arch-vile is my favourite video game enemy. 

Edited by Ajora

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11 hours ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

I don't know what you think qualifies as "spammy".

Maybe he/she unfortunately picked Map21 for ITYTD because Map21 is all the same in monster placements ;P

 

Seriously, when someone is obviously giving up, I don't think there's a way to save him/her... Many of Plutonia's maps are under/around 100 enemies (not even all of the them are medium-heavy weight monsters), and this player thinks it's too spammy. Most of the Arch-viles in Plutonia can be carefully dealt with (eg: you can leave no corpse around the teleportation point to avoid resurrection etc.), but this player think they are a chore to deal with... Probably the best advise is to play Doom instead of Doom 2. BTW, when someone compares Arch-vile's damage to Cyberdemon's damage, you know this is not right... I guess.

 

Extra ranting (sorry): Sometimes, it feels difficult to talk to players who don't even try hard and leave a bunch of opinions for no particular reason, especially when we don't have the same opinion(s). For example, Map11 is the least favorite map in Plutonia to me since one thing separates Wolf3D and Doom is the way the map looks. Map11 looks mostly the same; hallways are all in 90 degree angles etc. This map reminds me of Wolf3D more than Plutonia. However, I also accept other opinions, such as Ajora's above because we both tried.

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Honestly, I thought it was too easy. I played in on 'Hurt me plenty' and it was very easy, I could've played it on 'Ultra violent' but I didn't know what I was getting into. Other than that, it was pretty solid.

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I don't like it when people complain about difficulty being too hard. I don't like it when people complain about difficulty being too easy.

 

Improve your skills if you think it's too hard. Play more casually or in different style if you think it's too easy.

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I have yet to finish TNT Evilution, I gave up on level 21 (or was it 22?) Jungle / Mansion level because I couldn't find the keys, will have to play through it again at some point, I didn't want to start playing Plutonia only because I haven't finished TNT, the only level I really tried from Plutonia was the first level but I've never actually sat down and played through the entire thing.

 

One thing I remember about it is how tough it was even on HMP, evil monster combinations (usually Hitscanners, Melee and Projectile monsters all in 1 Room).

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Best maps (artistically): Map 04, 05, 06, 09, 17, 22, 24, 27, 29

Worst maps (artistically): Map 01, 02, 03, 11, 12, 21 (Map 02 and 11 really look awful)

 

Gameplay-wise, this is more annoying, than difficult. Also, the early maps don't have a difficulty curve, some of them are harder than later maps.

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36 minutes ago, Can't play on Nightmare said:

Do anybody play the Plutonia on Nightmare :D

 

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