TNT or Plutonia?

[Geqoph]

TNT is just straight up boring, plutonia at least gives a challenge and has a cool "atmosphere"

[Shakariki Heisenberg]

some TNT maps are awesome but i gotta say plutonia

[Midway64]

Gonna have to say TNT, why?

I like Plutonia, gives a good challenge, but:

 

2 reasons.

1. It fits more with my style (and game experience)
2. I like techbases

 

Oh and, for the Plutonium folks, remember Plutonia wouldn't have existed if it wasn't for the Casali's meeting the id Software employees

after the purchase of TNT Evilution.

[Gougaru]

You TNT lovers are sinners!

[Mr. Freeze]

Plutonia is the "real" Doom 3 to me, it's a natural evolution of Classic Doom and optimized to challenge veterans of the first two games. It also manages to have it's own atmosphere and biv using just vanilla textures, hence "Plutonia-like" maps being a thing. 

[Individualised]

3 minutes ago, Mr. Freeze said:

Plutonia is the "real" Doom 3 to me, it's a natural evolution of Classic Doom and optimized to challenge veterans of the first two games. It also manages to have it's own atmosphere and biv using just vanilla textures, hence "Plutonia-like" maps being a thing. 

Plutonia has new textures.

[HumanBean]

TNT in my opinion

[RonLivingston]

I happen to be a TNT fan

[netcurse2000]

TNT forever.

[bofu]

I'll take TNT over Plutonia almost entirely because I still have PTSD of the late 90s to late 00s where every FPS was brown, and also, TNT's music is amazing (I'm not including any MIDI packs in this discussion, they're great but also not part of the actual IWAD).

[FecalMystAche]

Final Doom (PS1)

[Individualised]

2 minutes ago, FecalMystAche said:

Final Doom (PS1)

How could you even say that...

[volleyvalley]

I love TNT for the mood, atmosphere and the more abstract level design, but I also like Plutonia for the challenge. It really just depends what I'm currently in the mood for if I'm being honest.

Edited July 17, 2023 by volleyvalley

[vee]

Plutonia, TNT is also great but the maps are just way better

[ENEMY!!!]

A tough choice for me because I personally prefer the TNT style of gameplay over the "knockabout" Plutonia style, but on the other hand I think of TNT as a rather mixed bag and it feels unfinished to me, whereas Plutonia feels like a finished and polished product.  When I weighed up the pros and cons, Plutonia got the nod.

[EPICALLL]

I guess I'll throw my cards out.

As the OP, my personal opinion is this; I prefer TNT over Plutonia due to the more distinctive and memorable designs that vary from map to map as opposed to the much more consistent and polished look of Plutonia. I know it's not exactly fair to say this, however I've always had a strange attachment to TNT, maybe it's the highly atmospheric rhomps like MAP12 (Crater) or MAP04 (Wormhole) to name a few. I don't know. My point being, I prefer TNT, but I totally understand why one may disagree.

[Faceman2000]

8 hours ago, Gregor said:

I look at it this way: if TNT hadn't been picked up by id Software, most people wouldn't care much about it nowadays and it be considered more of a cumbersome relic of the past than mandatory playing for any newcomers to classic Doom (like Team TNT's very own Icarus: Alien Vanguard from the same year). Plutonia on the other hand would have left its mark in the community as one of the most significant Doom mods of all time as a free release just as much, similar to Alien Vendetta. It just did so much more for Doomdom overall and stood the test of time far better.

This really is the definitive test in my opinion and I really think you nail it on the head. Evilution has been played way more than its contemporaries like Icarus and MM even though both of them are arguably way better products simply because Evilution is official.

6 hours ago, Individualised said:

Plutonia has new textures.

Yeah but they're vanilla to Plutonia.

[Individualised]

4 minutes ago, Faceman2000 said:

Yeah but they're vanilla to Plutonia.

Yes... but the post was talking about Plutonia as if it was a Doom mod rather than a part of vanilla Doom.

[Faceman2000]

Sorry, I should've put an emoticon or something to make it clearer I was joking haha!

[mrthejoshmon]

If TNT has a million fans, then I am one of them. If TNT has ten fans, then I am one of them. If TNT has only one fan then that is me. If TNT has no fans, then that means I am no longer on earth. If the world is against TNT, then I am against the world.

[espilka]

TNT: Evilution.  i even prefer the level design, with its flaws and all, but i do respect the Plutonia Experiment's architecture also - it's certainly well-made and polished.

[Captain Muskrat]

Anyone who prefers TNT over Plutonia has to fight me, that's right, anyone who prefers Plutonia over TNT is a dead man!.

[EPICALLL]

1 hour ago, Captain Muskrat said:

Anyone who prefers TNT over Plutonia has to fight me, that's right, anyone who prefers Plutonia over TNT is a dead man!.

In just this poll, it would be 43 on 1 then. Good luck, pal

[xX_Lol6_Xx]

Kinda heavy take, but using Chaingunners, Revenats and Archviles endlessly to create artificial difficulty and forcing me to play in almost always brown and gray, tiny ass maps with unfair traps and inconsistent damaging floors is BS. Heck, even The Master Levels made a better attempt at constructing decent maps with more variety, both fail spectacularly but TEETH and Black Tower are at least consistent with their theme.

 

I'm not saying that TNT is perfect, it does have it's stinkers and they are the absolute worst maps ever, but I'll never say it's unfairly difficult, quite the opposite actually, health is nearly always abundant or sometimes slightly hidden yet always accessible. It's level design is also more varied, and while it mostly consist of techbases, they don't look or play the same as the one that came before, and for some reason people love to complain about Mount Pain being "uNfAIr" while ignoring that Plutonia (And a lot of modern megawads that people praise with a passion) has maps harder than it, which follow the classic map cliché of "I grab key or flip a switch, Chaingunners, Revenats and Archviles spawn in a wide open room with no cover, they block my ONLY exit and while I attempt to kill them, more demons spawn in while I run out of ammo, I get hit by 80 damage fireball and gang-banged by the chaingunners, my health drops in two seconds, I *somehow* manage to kill them, only to die to water that for some reason damages me". Heck, on one map a Chaingunner starts right behind you and immediately gets alerted to your presence , having the potential of killing you before you even have a chance to properly begin, why people like that and at the same time complain about difficult maps in TNT (Map 09 and 27 again as an example) is beyond me, because it's, again, bullshit, and out of the 32 maps of this cheap attempt of a difficult game, I only like 4 maps.

 

TNT is more creative, it's best levels are hands down the best out of ANY of the classic commercial games, has better set pieces, it's well balanced with difficulty that naturally progresses as you'd expect from any game really (It has it's spikes on some maps like Map 09, 20, 26 and 27, but again, they're usually a fair challenge and manageable as long as you play properly), again, it's levels are more varied and reward exploration with power ups and ammunition, has new banging music and overall it's a better product.

 

So to answer OP: I prefer TNT, I always enjoy revisiting it because of all reasons listed above, and I absolutely despise Plutonia, which I only have because of PL2, which is actually good and really fun.

[Maximum Matt]

TNT, mainly because it's fresher in my mind, after Civvie recently did a vid praising it.

The Mill haunts my dreams.

[Kor]

On 7/16/2023 at 10:23 PM, gamingcooler said:

The TNT Team did do a good job on most of their levels, though, but it's still stupid how Id tried to monetize off of the project.

 

I may be remembering incorrectly, but back when I was a member of TeamTNT, Ty Halderman told me that Id wanted to publish with them because they needed money while they were working on Quake.

[Kor]

I voted TNT, but it's actually hard to say. I find that TNT has more interesting level design, even if it is a bit uglier than Plutonia. Gameplay wise, I pretty much enjoy them both equally.

[Deadwing]

Plutonia

+ shorter maps

+ more challenging

+ more interesting setups

+ atmosphere

- stock music

[Faceman2000]

9 hours ago, xX_Lol6_Xx said:

Kinda heavy take, but using Chaingunners endlessly to create artificial difficulty and forcing me to play in almost always brown and gray, tiny ass maps with unfair traps is BS.

Yeah I hate Metal and Stronghold too. ;P

[PsychEyeball]

Gonna have to go with Plutonia, although I'll say my stance on TNT has become less severe lately. Dare I say, TNT remade from memory gave me new appreciation for the original product.

 

I'll pull a Deadwing and do a plus-minus for each WAD.

 

TNT

+ love techbases? TNT got you covered!

+ original music

+ ambitious in its goal to look more "realistic"

+ some maps are fun to explore

+ "Human BBQ" is the most kickass name for an official Doom map

+ Can be pretty moody at times

- Too hitscan heavy at times

- Progression in some maps is very stilted and awkward

- Some maps don't know when to quit (Mill, Central Processing, Administration Center might be the worst culprits)

- The Hell episode starts out very weak: Maps 21-25 might be the worst stretch of official Doom content (Map 23 is not totally bad, but it feels misplaced and doesn't look Hell-related at all)

- Map 30 serves a godawful torch puzzle and the Icon of Sin texture is not even aligned with where the actual hole is!

 

Plutonia

+ Unified and unique visual design throughout the whole mapset

+ Interesting and inventive encounter design

+ Go 2 It offered a blueprint and official birth to the slaughter genre

+ Maps are short and usually straightforward carnage

+ More consistent map quality, even Plutonia's worst maps don't stand out as poorly than TNT's duds

+ Highly challenging, good if you want to brush up your skills...

- ...but some maps go too far and become quite unfair (*cough* Onslaught *cough*)

- Hunted is just dreadful to navigate. Let me open the doors myself instead of tying the doors to out there linedefs!

- Stock music kills whatever atmosphere and mood the maps may have

- Lack of enemy variety: too many revenants, archviles and chaingunners for one single map pack

- Weird logic when it comes to hurt floors, you never know when liquids will hurt or not