Doom 2 level design is very gimmicky

[darmok]

So despite having owned these games since release I'm just now doing my first complete playthru so consider this old news.

 

As I'm going through Doom 2 I am struck by how silly many of the levels feel. A lot of these feel like something I would have made myself at the time playing around with an editor. Just creating shapes or copying my house layout. Without much thought to good design. And then you have levels like Tricks and Traps, Barrels of Fun, and the infamous Chasm which are the most gimmicky of all.

 

I know most of these were designed by Sandy Peterson and there are lots of opinions about him. But he also did all of Episode 2 and 3 of Doom and I never really got this feeling with those levels.

 

And then there is the gameplay itself which mostly consists of having 50 enemies appear out of nowhere. It just seems like they were needlessly punishing the player by clicking Add Monster over and over. Again something I would expect from amateur level designers. (And I know Final Doom is even harder)

 

Maybe these were received differently at the time since it was still the infancy of FPS games. What were your thoughts then and now?

[Shepardus]

You say that like there's something wrong with gimmicks.

 

I don't recall anything like "50 enemies appear out of nowhere" besides MAP16 (The Suburbs), which I'd hardly call "punishing the player" because the enemies infight a bunch and the map gives you a lot of resources to deal with them, including an invulnerability sphere.

[dististik]

I'd definitely argue that without their gimmicks, Doom II's levels would not be nearly as memorable.

 

Also to parrot Shepardus a bit, I don't recall suddenly being bashed over the head with a large influx of enemies with no way to reasonably fend for myself, and I've just recently started replaying the IWAD myself.

[darmok]

50 is an exaggeration but not far from the truth on UV. There are a couple of places where that happens but almost every level has new enemies that appear when you press a switch or a key or backtrack. This can be fun the first couple of times but not when its relied on as a crutch. Doom3 had this same problem.

Edited March 2, 2023 by darmok

[LadyMistDragon]

I mean.....that was kind of Sandy's schtick. He liked to incorporate various concepts from his RPG background and reformatting them to fit within an action context. Although this misfires sometimes (Nirvana, The Pit, euuuuuuuu) it's generally tolerable (Tricks and Traps and the Chasm, dare I say). Like I'm far from the biggest fan of Sandy's design choices in general but the gimmicks as such are rarely annoying. His visual choices are far more of a problem.

Edited March 2, 2023 by LadyMistDragon

[RHhe82]

It’s impossible to recall how I felt about Doom II’s level design back in the day, aside from the fact I liked (Ultimate) Doom’s design more. I wasn’t disappointed. I felt Doom II should have been better, I guess that’s the way to put it. They should have spent more time on polishing the end product, although admittedly back then the competition was fierce, it was far from certain anyone would have bought Doom II if Duke Nukem 3D had been there first (even if in 2020s it looks like Doom has aged far better as far as I’m concerned).

[dististik]

1 hour ago, darmok said:

almost every level has new enemies that appear when you press a switch or a key or backtrack.

 

In a lot of ways that does happen to be the gameplay loop. Entice the player into putting themselves into a position that makes an initiating fight a challenge for them to survive; in my humblest of opinions it'd get more boring much quicker if all of the combat was incidental and all of the ambushes were a handful or less of enemies.

 

UV is supposed to be the "Hard" difficulty, contrary to the UV or bust mentality, so at least to me it makes sense the levels would be meaner to you on that skill.

 

That all said, to properly answer your question, I first played Doom II in 2019 and at the time I enjoyed it. It was more engaging than the first game which I had just finished prior and the new enemies made me have to consider my movement and weapon choices a heck of a lot more than the first game which I liked. These days I play most things from pistol start trying to get 100% kills and secrets as I go and I can safely say I still enjoy most of Doom II, I can just more easily pick out what I like and dislike about the levels.

[Professor Hastig]

58 minutes ago, RHhe82 said:

(even if in 2020s it looks like Doom has aged far better as far as I’m concerned).

 

I think that's debatable. If we disregard Duke's antiquated personality we at least got a game where a lot of effort went into the level design and considering the limitations of mid 90's tech they still hold up somewhat.

 

Doom 2 on the other hand is just a random jumble of places that poorly represent what they are supposed to be. For me the game's sole saving grace is the endless supply of custom levels, not the IWAD itself.

 

[Sonikkumania]

For me they are satisfying enough to return to the game here and then. 

[volleyvalley]

I think that the gimmicky and abstract level design aided the game massively in the terms of replay value. If it weren't for these wacky design choices, the levels would play and feel more bland and generic, in a way D2TWID ended up.

 

Doom II had much interesting combat IMO (MAP06, MAP08, MAP11, MAP14, MAP18, MAP20, MAP27, MAP28), Doom I was much more of a corridor shooter at times, and when there were an outside area with monsters, there were barely any monsters there. (E1M3, E1M6, E2M5, E2M6, E2M7 and huge portions of E3M4)

 

In summary, Doom II had much more gripping combat thanks to the more unconventional and weird gimmicks and wacky layouts of the maps themselves.

[RHhe82]

12 minutes ago, Professor Hastig said:

 

I think that's debatable. If we disregard Duke's antiquated personality we at least got a game where a lot of effort went into the level design and considering the limitations of mid 90's tech they still hold up somewhat.

 

Doom 2 on the other hand is just a random jumble of places that poorly represent what they are supposed to be. For me the game's sole saving grace is the endless supply of custom levels, not the IWAD itself.

 

Fair enough. Admittedly it’s not the IWAD levels that have aged well, but rather the engine, the feel of it.

[Professor Hastig]

1 minute ago, RHhe82 said:

Fair enough. Admittedly it’s not the IWAD levels that have aged well, but rather the engine, the feel of it.

 

Yeah, that's about it. And in that regard Doom definitely has aged better than Duke. There's not that much user content for Duke that I enjoyed playing and it is clearly a lot harder to balance its enemies right.

 

[yakfak]

"doom 2 level design is very gimmicky" good

"without much thought to good design" what?
"poorly represent what they are supposed to be" good

"needlessly punish the player by clicking Add Monster" what?

 

[Liberation]

3 hours ago, Shepardus said:

I don't recall anything like "50 enemies appear out of nowhere" besides MAP16 (The Suburbs), which I'd hardly call "punishing the player" because the enemies infight a bunch and the map gives you a lot of resources to deal with them, including an invulnerability sphere.

 

That is actually one of my favourite and most memorable bits from Doom 2.

[idbeholdME]

2 hours ago, Professor Hastig said:

 

There's not that much user content for Duke that I enjoyed playing and it is clearly a lot harder to balance its enemies right.

 

The balance in Duke has always been horrendous. It's "75% of the game dies to 1-2 shotgun shots" balance. All the enemies have samey HP and it kills the variety.

 

I used a port to give the enemies 60-70% reduction in damage received and it felt much better, when the enemies had at least some amount of staying power and made me use some of the more high powered weapons. Still, there is the issue with Octabrains getting instagibbed by explosions no matter what. And the Shrinker, which doesn't care about enemy HP. Balance is by far the worst aspect of Duke 3D.

Edited March 2, 2023 by idbeholdME

[Professor Hastig]

20 minutes ago, idbeholdME said:

Still, there is the issue with Octabrains getting instagibbed by explosions no matter what. And the Shrinker, which doesn't care about enemy HP. Balance is by far the worst aspect of Duke 3D.

 

Why are these "issues"? Enemies with specific weaknesses or weapons that can overcome high-HP enemies are what makes things interesting for planning a strategy.

What bothers me more is that the attacks of some of the lower enemies are far too deadly and the poor collision detection for rockets causing misses where none should be.

 

[DoctorKlump]

well I gotta tell you that doom 2 levels were designed the way they were because thy had to be special in order to stand out from other video games during that era. sandy peterson was a true pioneer who had a knack for creating something truly unique.

[xdarkmasterx]

It works better for the kind of game that Doom is. The enemies by themselves are quite weak and aren't a challenge by themselves, so you kinda need "gimmicks" and high monster counts for the game to be very difficult. This isn't like Duke Nukem or Blood where a couple of shotgunners on their own will annihilate you if you're not careful

Edited March 2, 2023 by xdarkmasterx

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

14 hours ago, darmok said:

Maybe these were received differently at the time since it was still the infancy of FPS games

Infancy is a huge understatement. Have you played wolf3d recently? Imagine you bought wolf3d and your mind is blown by the 3D environment. How fast you can run through it, shooting realistically looking nazis. There's dungeon crawlers like Ultima underworld but it's really slow and methodical. Doesn't have the catharsis. And then Doom comes out and all your notions of mind-blowing action are shattered. Suddenly, you see that wolf is just a series of squares, but doom is different. It's got non-orthogonal walls everywhere, height variations, things hiding in the darkness. It's like you're actually there, the place feels real.

 

I believe it's really important to think about the time and circumstances. 

Also, sandy made the doom 2 levels in what, 2 months? In a painfully bare bones level editor. With new monster design and mechanics that change everything. 

Id knew they have a winner on their hands with Doom, Doom 2 was thought of as just something extra before quake is ready. Didn't quite turn out to be that way. But it can make you think. Doom 2 wasn't expected to be such a massive success. More like the spear of destiny was to wolf. But the revolutionary thing was meant to be quake. I would love to see an alternate reality whereid decided to make another game in the doom engine while carmack grinds away at quake engine. 

 

edit: thanks for the correction, essel

Edited March 2, 2023 by Sneezy McGlassFace

[jazzmaster9]

Its exactly what I love about Doom 2. There is something cool about level that are just made purely to maximize gameplay even if the area itself is too abstract to be a believable place, like its a test of Skill for someone who already went through Doom 1.

[Professor Hastig]

13 minutes ago, Sneezy McGlassFace said:

Also, sandy made the doom 2 levels in what, 2 months?

 

There's one other thing here: Doom 2's textures are awfully generic. I wonder what might have been, had they had a texture pack more like Duke Nukem's with textures that actually match the visuals of a modern city. It would have been impossible for anyone with the available assets to make good city maps.

 

But be it as it may, I don't have any rose-tinted glasses to look at Doom's history. When I played Doom 2 for the first time I was quite disappointed that the whole game felt rather sloppy compared to its predecessor and this sentiment never really went away.

 

 

[esselfortium]

1 hour ago, Sneezy McGlassFace said:

Also, sandy made the doom 2 levels in what, 2 months?

You're thinking of his Doom 1 levels.

 

It will always be funny to me that the flat corridors made in two months running up against a deadline are frequently considered a better and more polished work than the Doom 2 levels they spent 9 months on with much more accumulated knowledge and experience to draw on. It's like people are more concerned with whether a Doom map represents a real place (hint: there is no map in any iwad that even remotely does this, and this is a feature) than they are about whether it's fun and interesting to play?

[volleyvalley]

1 hour ago, Professor Hastig said:

There's one other thing here: Doom 2's textures are awfully generic. I wonder what might have been, had they had a texture pack more like Duke Nukem's with textures that actually match the visuals of a modern city. It would have been impossible for anyone with the available assets to make good city maps.

I've felt the same too! What especially grinds my gears is that some D1 textures didn't carry over to D2, and the result is pretty sad. No vine textures or proper reds alongside many nice D1 textures! 

[Wyrmwood]

For me Doom's great because it's not all about combat (though that's obviously important) but also about traps and puzzles and exploration. Doom focused more on combat but Doom 2 puts more emphasis on the latter three and for me feels a more complete experience for it, gimmicky or not. I am one of those odd people who loves TNT though and would rather play puzzle/exploration wads over more combat focused ones. Personal taste I guess.

[Professor Hastig]

1 hour ago, esselfortium said:

You're thinking of his Doom 1 levels.

 

It will always be funny to me that the flat corridors made in two months running up against a deadline are frequently considered a better and more polished work than the Doom 2 levels they spent 9 months on with much more accumulated knowledge and experience to draw on. It's like people are more concerned with whether a Doom map represents a real place (hint: there is no map in any iwad that even remotely does this, and this is a feature) than they are about whether it's fun and interesting to play?

 

For me Doom 1 is a lot more fun and interesting to play than Doom 2, so there's that. So what does this tell us about "gaining more experience". It looks like it all went into the wrong direction - at least in my opinion. :P

 

33 minutes ago, Wyrmwood said:

For me Doom's great because it's not all about combat (though that's obviously important) but also about traps and puzzles and exploration. Doom focused more on combat but Doom 2 puts more emphasis on the latter three and for me feels a more complete experience for it, gimmicky or not. I am one of those odd people who loves TNT though and would rather play puzzle/exploration wads over more combat focused ones. Personal taste I guess.

 

Actually, Doom's E1 had an incredible rewarding amount of exploration with its vast secret areas that were often visible through some windows.

IMO Doom 2 had a far stronger focus on combat with all its new mid and high tier enemies.

[Somniac]

I've always thought that was the point? Its Hell on Earth, so reality is getting a bit jumbled. We can even infer this from the intermission text - "but something is wrong. The demons have brought their reality with them", that's what it says IIRC. Now, how much of that is intentional or a scapegoat for nonsensical level design is open to debate, but that's always been enough for me.

 

Even in the first Doom, there was significant abstraction. What part of Phobos Labs looks remotely like a lab? I feel like you could swap any map name in E1 with any other map in E1 and it'd make no difference. Computer Station could just as easily be Toxin Refinery or Command Control in a parallel universe. There's nothing resembling a hangar in Hangar either really, unless we're talking about that bit in the opening shot that you maybe could land a tiny spaceship full of tiny Doomguys in, if you really tried. 

 

The game engine just doesn't do "true" realism very well (unlike say, Build or Goldsrc), which is actually what makes it so good IMO. In the Unofficial Wad Designers Handbook from 1994 or so, they write that when trying to design a believable place, *suggesting* a location is generally enough for it to work in the engine, taking gameplay and mechanics into account, and is more important than trying to make everything look exact. I agree with that completely. Even TNT, known for a more obvious attempt at defined spaces, has its share of inherent weirdness.  

[LouigiVerona]

7 hours ago, Professor Hastig said:

 

I think that's debatable. If we disregard Duke's antiquated personality we at least got a game where a lot of effort went into the level design and considering the limitations of mid 90's tech they still hold up somewhat.

 

Doom 2 on the other hand is just a random jumble of places that poorly represent what they are supposed to be. For me the game's sole saving grace is the endless supply of custom levels, not the IWAD itself.

 

 

I actually found myself agreeing with that quite a bit.

 

I think Duke definitely looks quite timeless in that sense - it's well drawn and has a comics book feel to it. Original Doom wads do look bare and blocky compared to Duke.

 

As I'm writing this, I'd say that actually Doom 1 looks very convincing when lunar base levels are concerned - they actually look somewhat realistic or rather somewhat filled with stuff.

 

You can also argue that it is a planet's moon and so the more hellish levels are supposed to be emptier and blockier, but I think the point stands - original IWADs have aged quite a bit.

[Guff dotD]

10 hours ago, darmok said:

And then there is the gameplay itself which mostly consists of having 50 enemies appear out of nowhere.

IMO Spear of Destiny is much more guilty of same-y combat, not to mention the lack of Monster Variety.

Doom II has aged much better, with much more monster variety, basically doubling the amount of non-boss enemies from Doom 1.

 

As for the gimmicky levels, they help to make Doom II stand out among the other IWADS.

Imagine if Doom II was just more of the techbases and 2.5D Hell castles from Doom 1. That sure would have gotten old quickly.

At least they tried to take a creative liberty and do something different, although the City levels have aged roughly (they're definitely not on the level of Duke3D, as stated by others in this thread.)

Doom II's gimmick levels helped it to stand out from what had come before (Wolf3D, Doom) and after (Doom64, Final Doom, Quake, [although there are gimmicks in Quake, they are not quite on the same level. (Edit: Don't Mention Armagon!)])

^Edit: [It could've been far worse; we could've gotten Quake II 3 years earlier, with almost no variation between the same brown levels, strung together with bad pacing]

 

And on the topic of a massive amount of enemies appearing out of nowhere, Plutonia is certainly guilty of this to a far greater extent than Doom II.

Edited March 2, 2023 by Guff dotD

[Midnight_00]

A lot of games do that, not even just FPS games. I like it because it adds variety and makes the levels stand out. (The gimmick thing that is, since the rest is really another topic entirely)

Edited March 2, 2023 by Midnight_00

[Graf Zahl]

1 hour ago, Guff dotD said:

^Edit: [It could've been far worse; we could've gotten Quake II 3 years earlier, with almost no variation between the same brown levels, strung together with bad pacing]

 

I like Quake 2 a lot more than Doom 2. The design fits the theme, i.e. oppressive architecture by an evil alien race.

 

Regarding gimmick levels, they tend to get old fast. The best Doom related example is Plutonia's MAP11. These days it's just an annoying break in an otherwise well flowing game.