Doom 1 & Doom 2 maps that tripped you up on your first playthrough

[Doomkid]

Even though my first time playing Doom 2 was when I was a dumb little kid, I still remember some moments of my first Doom 2 playthrough (with iddqd, of course) very vividly. Because I hadn't yet discovered the idclip code - only knowing of idspispopd at the time - I actually had to navigate the levels in the intended way, and I really appreciate that looking back.

 

Anyway, onto the main point - Map25: Bloodfalls had a pretty non-obvious mandatory secret in 1.666. There's a grey rock wall that you can lower and progress to the red key fairly easily, but it used to be a brown wall that blended 100% with its surroundings. After the Hell I went through to navigate my way through The Chasm, having a mandatory secret actually felt like a cheap shot, even as a kid. All of Doom 2 was extremely not straightforward I feel, but that was just mean. Glad it was improved in 1.9.

 

Any spots like that which stand out in your memory? I know I struggled with a few others, but that one really stands out clearly (possibly because it was changed).

[Sonikkumania]

One thing I can remember is when you press the use key (space bar in this case) in Doom 2's first story screen, you know, between MAP06 and 07, you accidentally active the switch and meet the Mancubi for the 1st time. Classic.

 

Also E1M8 and Baron Bruisers were cool too.

[Fernito]

Cool thread! 

 

For some reason back then I played Doom 2 before Doom 1, so that was my first Doom experience. I remember I didn't beat the game the intended way, but I used to go into SETUP.EXE and use the warp function there to visit all the levels and beat them in any order (with iddqd, of course :) which I found out about in some videogame magazine). The first thing that comes into mind is map18. I was totally clueless about this one the first bunch of times I warped into it, for some reason it never occurred to me that you could shoot at switches haha, so I even started to think that the map was just broken or it was just this little unbeatable room. Stupid me lol.

 

BTW, don't remember having trouble finding my way in map25, as obscure as it is. I guess I loved humping random walls back then.

[TheFocus]

Downtown still fucks with me.

Limbo took me 4 hours to figure out my first time.

and Industrial Zone is one of my favorite OG Doom levels, but damn, is it complicated.

[RHhe82]

Well, I remember E2M4, another scary level for a 11 year old kid. I think that in some older version of the game (probably even earlier than v1.666... v1.2?) in the lava tunnels there was this room which closes up upon the player entering it, and back then it crushed the player, and somehow that felt very crushing (no pun intended) at the time.

 

In the same map, just before the final area, in the some sort of tower structure area, there were small closets with barons in them, and in the old version, I think you could softlock yourself, which I did. (Or did they merely crush you... In any case, whenever I replay that level, I'm still surprised the area feels a lot less mean than I remember :P).

[TheMightyWhoosh]

E4M1 took me an age to complete back in the day and is the reason why I love and appreciate maps that force you to manage your ammo conservatively. 

[yakfak]

all my memories of navigating og doom levels got wiped away by the shovelware maps i tried afterwards... there's an oldschool Doom 1 map with a cave that's flesh/snake decorated, and some of the lines are hidden on the automap, and the whole time you're searching around it there's a spider mastermind going stomp stomp stomp stomp out of sight and it's still in my dreams :))) i'm not lying around thinking about the citadel

[Thelokk]

There is one obvious answer.

 

 

This map is *THE* trip.

[Dexiaz]

I do remember I lost on E3M3 as kid, oh. And E3M7 was a total mess. I was just running on those damaging floors and didn't get where I must go.

[LustrousGerm]

MAP27, beforehand E1M7 in Doom 1, along with E2M6 and E2M4. The most tenious was E3M5.

[PsychEyeball]

I struggled with every map that required you to shoot a switch to proceed. I never knew that was a mechanic until much later.

[Pechudin]

MAP15, the Industrial Zone, where you have to back into the teleporter you just went into to grab the Red Key. I had to look up a walkthrough for that one.

[Berubaretto]

MAP15, for its extremely complex design. I still remeber how this map confused me on my first playthrough.

Also E4M6 for its high difficulty. Actually for a long time I couldn't finish this map until recently.

[Gregor]

In Doom 2, Dead Simple was definitely a major stumbling block at first. I just couldn't figure out how to deal with all those Mancubus fireballs that Map07 threw at me, especially with the limited movement that the layout of the map enforced. I think the main problem was that back then, i wanted to take each encounter in Doom nice and slow but Dead Simple simply didn't allow me to do that. Whenever i tried to camp behind a pillar to take potshots at the monsters from behind cover, one of those ground-roaming Mancubus' would quickly come waddling around the corner and start pelting me. And of course i always accidentally picked up those blur spheres as i was running for cover to the next pillar, which made things even more hopeless when it came to dodging. In short, i died an awful lot. And when i finally managed to kill all the fatsos (after many, many attempts) and the walls came down to reveal the spiders outside, i panicked and walked right into the trap. I didn't figure out that you need to shoot yourself through the spiders into the outer perimeter. Instead i retreated into the center of the courtyard, where i was duly fried over and over again... after about 30-40 deaths, i concluded that this map can't be beaten and turned to Youtube for help.

Edited August 14, 2022 by Gregor

[Biodegradable]

MAP22: The Catacombs is one that tripped me up the first time revisiting Doom it back in 2019 when it came to progression. The three gargoyle pillars at the three other corners beyond the starting point at the center of the map (C, F and H) don't look like they can be interacted with, so I remember feeling really lost and stuck and unsure how on Earth I was meant to progress once I'd killed all immediate opposition in that general area. Up until this map (at least from what I can remember), green marbled gargoyle faces weren't interactive which instilled in the player that, "oh I can't interact with those particular gargoyle faces." Just one of many progression oversights one can point out in Doom 2.

 

Edited August 13, 2022 by Biodegradable

[peach freak]

E3M6, I first played it on the SNES port of Doom, and SNES Doom has this mechanic where you can only play the later episodes on the harder skill levels. E3M6 has a Blue Key, and its location depends on the skill level, on the easy skill levels, the key is out in the open and easy to find, it's much harder to find on the harder skill levels (requires opening a hidden door and jumping into a box to teleport into the building). I was stuck on this level for seemingly months and I actually ended up finding the secret exit by mistake, before I even found the Blue Key. When I jumped into the blue box that contains the secret exit switch, I thought hitting that switch would just lower the box and allow you to get out, the fact that it would exit the level was the last thing I expected it to do.

 

And this was in the early 2000s, where there wasn't much on the internet to help out, no YouTube, and the FAQs available on GameFAQs at the time made no mention of how to get this key (the Key FAQ was extremely vague about it, just saying it's in the "Y-shaped structure", with no explanation on how to get into said structure).

 

Runner-up goes to E3M7, took me forever to find the Red Key, when I entered that lava maze after going through the Blue Door, I didn't know there was an entrance on the left you could take (it eventually leads you to the Red Key area), I always went right to that BFG area that's actually marked as a secret.

[ImproversGaming]

Well there are two that jump to mind straight away. These were burned into my young memory and are still vivid today:

MAP23: Barrels o' Fun - found this really tough from a pistol start and worked hard to get through it.

MAP30: Icon of Sin - I spend hours / days firing all my weapons and achieving nothing. I worked out that hitting the exposed brain was the target but not that I needed rocket splash damage or that the rockets had no effect if they were launched from the topmost position of the pillar. I must have launched thousands of rockets and just did not get it. I remember being mad when I finally found out!

[ENEMY!!!]

I first completed Doom 1 back in 1995, so I don't have many strong memories of my first playthrough, but I definitely remember being stumped by the switch puzzles near the end of E3M4 for a while, and taking a while to figure out E3M7's system.  It took me a while to summon up the courage to complete E2M8, as I remember that in the original DOS Doom I would walk up to the Cyberdemon and then the screen would abruptly turn bright red.  I remember I had little difficulty beating the Spider Mastermind in E3M8 or the Barons in E1M8 though.

[Budoka]

The Pit. As a kid, I couldn't make sense of most of the abstract progression in that one, even with already a few years of video game experience. Ditto Circle of Death, which I don't believe I ever beat before high school at the very least. Forget Ultimate Doom, my family never acquired episodes 2, 3 and 4 back in the retail days, and in fact outright forgot that the options menu in shareware Doom even teased the existence of E2 and E3.

[QuaketallicA]

The infamous fake exit in E2M6. That got me.

 

And accidentally discovering the E3 secret level, thinking it was a demented trick to send me back to the beginning of the episode. I said "F that, I'll just reload last save to previous level."

[Dimon12321]

I spent about an hour on figuring out how to upper the bridge on E1M3, and I gave up at the end and used the regular exit.

[out_of_service]

That switch puzzle you have to complete before accessing the exit on Map 11: Circle of Death/"'O' of Destruction! really tripped me up way back in the day when I was an ignorant little turd.

[Grain of Salt]

E2M8 - took me many days to beat the cyberdemon, presumably because I didn't strafe in those days. I don't remember any other doom 1 level delaying me noticeably.

MAP20 - I hadn't really noticed infighting was a thing.

MAP28 - I never figured out that you have to shoot that stupid spine texture. In my defense.... why would I.

MAP30 - Also never figured out what you were meant to do to kill the IOS back in the day, before eventually reading it on the internet ofc. It just seemed like the level must be broken. It's not a great puzzle really.

 

I remember being very lost on MAP13 and MAP19 in multiple subsequent playthroughs, but not on the first time.

[Razza]

My first playthrough of E3M7 made me find out that you can get SUCKS as a time, 10 year old me could NOT make any sense of that damn level

Edited August 13, 2022 by Razza

[bofu]

TNT MAP31. I never could find that yellow key.l, and I didn't even know that the patch was a thing.

 

Actually, I remember the Icon of Sin in TNT giving me problems as well. It hasn't happened when i play the game now, but I remember the Icon of Sin never woke up, and I also couldn't hit its brain for some reason, like it was blocked no matter what I did. I think I ended up just using noclip.

[The BMFG]

episode 3 is like a maze 

[ebrl]

I got so fucking lost in E2M2 (don't ask) and E3M5.

 

MAP08 in Doom 2 was also a trip, but at least it eventually provided a moment of clarity: wait a second I can just leave instead of dealing with most of this crap?

[D4NUK1]

Man, Episode 3 was a Pain for me (Not played Ultimate until BFG Port if i remeber correctly, as i just ended DOOM 1 killing the mastermind and played DOOM 2 in the 95 Port).

 

From Doom 2 i got a few.

The Factory, Downtown, Industrial Zone took me a lot of time,  The Abandoned Mines and The Living End had taken me like hours figthing without cheats playing keyboard only, it's really punishing even for HMP, and some of their keyhunting maze have a lot of traps to get a quick death.

[spineapple tea]

E3M5 is one of those maps where I don't go for any secrets or whatnot to this day because I just have to run the path I've remembered to the exit or else I get lost. Besides that and E3M7, the first Doom doesn't have too many confusing maps.

 

Oddly enough, one of my first memories with Doom II is getting lost in The Inmost Dens of all maps, just because I couldn't actually figure out the exit (I was on the wrong side of the map where the archvile is). And The Citadel. The fucking Citadel. As recently as last year I had to download a demo and play it back to figure out what to do. I've wasted several hours of my life running around this awful map listening to Shawn's Got the Shotgun and feeling stupid.

 

And I know this thread only mentions Doom and Doom II, but pretty much all of TNT confused and still confuses me. I don't understand how someone can find it fun without having grown up with it.

Edited August 13, 2022 by Spineapple tea

[pcorf]

When I first played Doom 2 I used the keyboard. When I reached MAP08 I tripped many times over the falling platforms that led to the exit.