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That one secret in Monster Condo


MFG38

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You know the one I'm talking about. The one you have to sprint into within the first 30 seconds of the map or else be locked out of it forever.

 

It was the bane of my first-ever 100% playthrough of Doom 2 last year - the only secret in the entire game I was legitimately unable to find. I'd gotten every other secret and killed all enemies in the map, one secret short of fully completing the map (minus 100% items). I kept wandering around, wondering where that last secret could be, and when I finally looked it up on the Doom Wiki, I found out that I'd long since missed my window of finding it. But I couldn't be bothered to restart the entire map, so I just left it until now - my first-ever UV and second-ever 100% playthrough of the game, which I just finished.

 

I can't help but wonder why id thought it was a good idea to put that secret in to begin with. It's little more than basically a middle finger to completionists. "Oh, you got all other secrets in the map except for one? Too bad, gonna have to restart the entire map if you want to find it!" I can only imagine the frustration of Doom players who had to figure it out for themselves back in the day when information on the Internet was far more limited. It doesn't help either that the secret is the only one of its kind in the entire game. And Doom 1/Ultimate Doom didn't have any such secrets as far as I recall.

 

So why put a literal time-locked secret into a Doom 2 map? What were they thinking?

 

/rant

Edited by MFG38

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That's the one that made me open DoomBuilder and check it. I facepalmed. In any normal play, you'd never think of rushing away from the starting area unexplored and run directly to that spot. It doesn't make sense.

 

There are two sector specials, one says close door after 30mins and there is another one that says after 5 minutes open and then close door. That second one, I don't know where it's used in classic Doom, but it's used nicely in Eternal Doom MAP05 where a monitor tells you come back in 5 mins. At least this one let's you know.

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When doom and doom 2 were released, most people didn't have internet at home, had no acces to custom wads, and were basically replaying the same levels over and over again.

 

I guess the authors were aware of that, and tried to maximise their replay value by providing difficulty settings, adding optional areas and alternative progression routes, and hiding a lot of secrets in the maps, including some very obscure ones like that room in monster condo or the rocket-jump secret exit in Mount Erebus.

 

I remember the excitement as a kid when I discovered a new secret or shortcut in my 15th playthrough of a map.

 

Today there are so many wads around, that authors usually design them to be fun and completable on a first playthrough, but it was a different context in 1994.

 

So, to sum it up: this secret frustrated you, because you wanted to complete the game with 100% kills/secrets on your first playthrough, but that's not how people played it back then.

Edited by Polri

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  On 3/22/2021 at 2:58 PM, Polri said:

this secret frustrated you, because you wanted to complete the game with 100% kills/secrets on your first playthrough

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Allow me to correct you on this point: it wasn't my first playthrough of the game. Closer to 12th if anything. I've owned Doom 2 and gone through it a bunch of times since 2008 - this was just my first time playing through it on UV and second attempt at getting 100% kills and secrets. That secret simply frustrated me because a lack of advance knowledge of its whereabouts can drop your chances of ever being able to get it to effectively 0% unless you restart the map. If someone in the modern day was going into the game completely blind and playing through it with the intention of 100%ing it on their first go, they'd need to stumble into the secret by pure dumb luck. Not many new players would know to ignore any semblance of "conventional" progression (which is an admittedly vague term, given the map's non-linear nature) and run in a very specific direction in order to find a secret before it's eternally unavailable. It's not a well-designed secret.

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I thought you were going to talk about the one were you need to use a glide to tag it.

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  On 3/22/2021 at 5:18 PM, MFG38 said:

@DSC That's in Industrial Zone.

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The one in Industrial Zone is obtainable using a completely different glitch. I'm talking about a totally different one in Monster Condo you need to use a glide, I believe.

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  On 3/22/2021 at 4:18 PM, MFG38 said:

If someone in the modern day was going into the game completely blind and playing through it with the intention of 100%ing it on their first go, they'd need to stumble into the secret by pure dumb luck. Not many new players would know to ignore any semblance of "conventional" progression (which is an admittedly vague term, given the map's non-linear nature) and run in a very specific direction in order to find a secret before it's eternally unavailable. It's not a well-designed secret.

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Sure, but like I said, Doom was designed for replayability. It wasn't the makers' intention to optimise the game for getting 100% secrets/kills on your first go. From the point of view of replayability it's actually a cool secret, as you will probably only discover it on later playthroughs, for instance by trying to see how the level plays if you visit the northern area first before collecting the key in the library area.

 

I remember spending many hours replaying the levels and discovering obscure secrets (like the mega-armor in Downtown) and alternative routes (like the one in Gotcha! where you skip the Mastermind/Cybie fight). Or watching a friend killing the Cybedemon on map 10 from behind with an invuln, asking him how he got there, and him replying: "I have no idea, I was fighting those zombies and shotgunners and suddenly I was here". And then trying to figure it out together.

Edited by Polri

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I love that secret cos its a message to tell you that progress doesn't necessarily equal time spent. intending to 100% on the first visit is kinda presumptuous, right? and unrealistic? and restrictive of the mapper? time vaults own, put them in all levels

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I love secrets like this, and actually really miss that modern games have so few of them.  The last modern bastion are things like Roguelikes (Spelunky 2's secret ending is one of the most batshit things I've ever heard of), or maybe the Souls series.

 

Monster Condo is hardly a unique example of a totally-unlike-anything-else-in-a-game secret, and it's hardly the worst either.  Off the top of my head, I recall things like the Super Midnight Secret in Serious Sam: The 2nd Encounter (which you had like 30 seconds to find, halfway through the map, or it was lost forever). 

 

Or the creme-da-le-creme of absolute bullshit secrets: the first two Crash Bandicoot games.  Crash Bandicoot 2 was literally full of them.  A bunch of levels had one or more secret gems to collect, but how you collected them varied frequently per level.  Some methods were so obscure, so unique, that to this day I have absolutely no clue how anyone discovered them.  I spent a happy summer once at University attempting to collect them all - it was absolutely nonsense and I loved it.  I'm absolutely terrible at finding them, which is possibly why I enjoy them so much.  I actually like these far more than your usual run-of-the-mill secrets, which don't tend to have the same degree of "I have to do what?" about them.

 

I would have liked Doom 2 to have more of these actually.  

Edited by Bauul

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Doom was made by the same designers as commander Keen, which had tons of optional content (including many optional levels) and quite a lot of obscure secrets and easter eggs, like having the ice cannon shoot you to the secret exit teleporter in Keen 1, or collecting the yellow worms to find the way to the secret pyramid in Goodbye Galaxy. And off course Keen "mooning" when standing idle long enough on the crescents in the Pyramid of the moon. :)

 

I'm happy that they carried some of those tropes over to Doom, but I agree that they could have done even a bit more in that respect.

 

 

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Well, well, well....that famous secret.

 

It's quite obvious that the secret is unobtainable after many tries because you don't know all of the secrets. Yes, I found out MUCH later that was a timed secret, which is quite unique, forcing you to go faster to just get enough ammo. 

 

Not many maps uses that action because completionists exists. STILL, I don't mind timed secrets once you know how to get it. Yes, it's frustrating as fuck but, once you know how to find it, you just shrug that frustration....

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  On 3/22/2021 at 5:20 PM, DSC said:

The one in Industrial Zone is obtainable using a completely different glitch. I'm talking about a totally different one in Monster Condo you need to use a glide, I believe.

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No, it's by wallrun. There's nothing to glide there.

 

For OP, I don't know why this unique timed secret will get you frustrated, because it's a secret and it's supposed to be hard. Even though rarely somebody did this later, it's back in the day of 1994 and there's no reference of how do you make a map. Judging a 1994 map from today's standard, or using your personal preference has no real point.

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Funny how people complain about one-shot or difficult to find secrets. I mean, if you are a completionist isn't the challenge the whole purpose?

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I will second Polri's argument that this map was part of a commercial product designed to be played over and over, and designed with such a variety and density of secrets & optional areas so that players could discover something new whenever they returned to it. I personally have no problem with missable content (like this timed secret or the one-time lifts found in e1m4 & e3m3), as long as it's not mandatory for map completion.

 

As for what they were thinking, well, I can't know the designer's exact intentions, but I can guess. I would argue that somebody pistol-starting the map might get the idea to go for the SuperShotgun first for convenience's sake. And upon weapon pickup, they'd be in a position to notice the brightly lit ammo cache contrasting against the darkness, the one which the Computer Area Map had shown them so many times before even though they never managed to open the wall on any of their previous visits.

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I just wish they gave some more special sector types in vanilla.   As far as this ridiculous one goes, the best uses I can think of it are to have a BFG fest for the first thirty seconds of a deathmatch before calming things down OR put some barrels underneath it so the door keeps bouncing back up until the barrels are destroyed.

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That reminded me when I recently played Doom 2 Reloaded ( https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/megawads/d2reload ). It was a hidden gem for me that I didn't know before, many clever ideas, but there is one thing. It overuses functions like 30sec close door, in way more than 1 map. It's also overuses some other ideas, that makes secrets in a lot of levels unatainable if you make a mistake. For example, secrets where the enemy has to open the door for you, but if you killed him from a window bye bye. I can't count the times in this WAD I couldn't find the secret and had to open Doom Builder to realize it's unreachable. And then went back and cheated with idclip anyway, because I don't like to leave a level without finding all secrets. There is also the secret map32 I think, where this concept goes to an entirely whole new level. There are several stages in that map and an increasing number as you advance, in many of these stages if you do the wrong thing or not run in 30s (at least in the beginning) then you have to go to some exit sectors to finish early. I finished that one with a lot of savespam, a bit of cheating and Doom Builder opening. The concept is original but not sure I liked destroying my playthrough because of unreachable secrets (or regular progression in this case).

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  On 3/23/2021 at 1:15 AM, Gokuma said:

I just wish they gave some more special sector types in vanilla.   As far as this ridiculous one goes, the best uses I can think of it are to have a BFG fest for the first thirty seconds of a deathmatch before calming things down OR put some barrels underneath it so the door keeps bouncing back up until the barrels are destroyed.

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Wont work in some ports at least; the 30 second secret in Monster condo can be made permanently open by letting it close on your head; it bounces off then stays open. Does this for me in GZDoom with Strict compat and the Unity/DCC/XBLA versions

 

Ive always hated timed secrets, especially when there's no hint about them, like this one. Its the ONLY secret of its type in the game, which makes me think Sandy was just like 'hey can you add a sector effect for this dickish secret idea?' then Romero/Carmack/Taylor highfived him and was like 'sure thing'

 

Another timed secret is in Hell to Pay, where a megasphere is locked off with an actual taunting message from the developers if you don't get it. Rude!

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Ah, bummer.   That ruins my idea and one of the few sector specials will continue to go unused by me.   Your post gets a sad Like.   Pretend tears are coming from the eye in the blur sphere.

Edited by Gokuma

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  On 3/22/2021 at 5:35 PM, Bauul said:

Off the top of my head, I recall things like the Super Midnight Secret in Serious Sam: The 2nd Encounter (which you had like 30 seconds to find, halfway through the map, or it was lost forever). 

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You can just pump multiple rockets into the door. The way I found out that the secret existed was because of one the powerups inside the house can be picked up through the back wall. This tipped me off about it and I eventually made it in by spamming the rockets into the house from all directions until the door eventually broke.

 

I had no idea about the "standard" way of getting in until much later when I looked it up.

 

Regarding the Condo secret, is nobody going to mention the giant arrow pointing to it once you open the door? I always found it weird but never found the secret because I play only methodically and never speedrun.

Edited by idbeholdME

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