SSGs and Shotgun Guys - A 3,000 word essay on American McGee's "Underhalls"

[RonnieJamesDiner]

Some context: MisterCat posted an absolutely meaningless, throwaway joke on the Hellforge discord:

 

Spoiler

 

Naturally, all good jokes are secretly challenges. A member by the name of @Lemonbitch was the first to attempt the gauntlet:

 

Spoiler

 

Commendable, and probably still a great read. But I couldn't let the dream die, not like this. I love writing, I love Underhalls, and in the end I had a great time putting this together. This is by far the most “wall of text” I’ve ever wall-of-texted on DW, so unless you happen to REALLY love Underhalls, or just appreciate unnecessarily bloated Doom write-ups, you can probably skip this one.

 

 

 

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When it comes to commercial Doom releases, the second map slot is a critical space between the introductory nature of level one, and the true beginning of our player's journey into a world of colored keys, switches, secret hunts, and FPS power-fantasy. From the humble beginnings of Doom’s Nuclear Plant to the colorful hell of Doom 64’s The Terraformer, or the innovative breadth of 2016’s Resource Operations years later and the adrenaline fueled Exultia from Doom Eternal, players have been discovering entryways into some of their most memorable and extraordinary journeys for nearly three decades.

 

For my money, the single greatest second level in any Doom game goes to the franchises black sheep, and undisputed masterpiece in ambient horror sound design, Doom 3. Mars City Underground: Union Aerospace Subsystems is equal parts world-building and setup, serving as an introduction to combat and other gameplay mechanics, and the sum of its parts is an achievement magnitudes higher than it has any right to be. It’s the quintessential case study of “horror-shooter immersion”, as our player is thrown into the hammer blow of an unexpected Hell invasion, trapped in an isolated structure on an inhospitable planet – the execution is brilliant. Its pacing and presentation are perfect, the cinematic elements draw you in, and the sound design is master class – in my humble opinion, anyone aiming to emulate the feeling ought to study it carefully.

 

With all of that said, there is one more incredible contender still on the table. Shining under the spotlight of critique, holding its own beneath the weight of its predecessor, and under no misfortune of ever being underappreciated since its release on September 30th, 1994 – we’re here to talk about the map, the myth, the legend: the Underhalls.

 

At this point, the initiated can already hear the smooth base line, those high hats, and that vibrant spirit in the strings of Bobby Prince’s “The Healer Stalks”. The mood of this map would’ve been wildly different, and objectively wrong with the pairing of any other midi – Tenements and Circle of Death can step aside, this salsa track belongs to MAP02. As the screen melt ushers our player into the Underhalls, our brain takes a quick bath in a calming soundscape, and we set off to blast an unsuspecting garrison of zombified soldiers unprepared for Doomguy’s second tour of duty: Operation Daisy’s Revenge – double the barrels, double the fun (barrels of fun? Wait, no, that’s not what we mean).

 

Although I’m fairly certain most fans might consider MAP14: The Inmost Dens, or even Ultimate Doom’s E4M1: Hell Beneath, to be among American McGee’s best mapping contributions to the classic series – if not the most contentious, in the latter’s case – I’ve long considered Doom II: Hell on Earth’s second level to be his finest work.

 

Underhalls is a compact and at times dark, claustrophobic barrage of close-quarters carnage that wastes little time attempting to be anything other than exactly what it is: a fun blast on a very short fuse, designed to get our players blood pumping, and to highlight two very important things – that despite having the FWATER flat, there is no animated waterfall texture in this game, even if it needed it (yeah I’m lookin’ at you, sector 55), and that this game now features something called a Super Shotgun. The Doom II manual describes the SSG as “[a] double-barreled, sawed-off killing stick, [...] the ultimate in pellet warfare”. That’s funny, I can think of something else I’d aptly describe as the ultimate in pellet warfare. You guessed it, it’s called Underhalls.

 

Continuing Entryway’s instant call to action, Zombiemen guarding a small control station are caught immediately unaware, dead ahead as our player loads in. I say “guarding”, despite the fact that two of them are staring at banks of blank monitors, while the third is attempting to bore holes into a concrete wall. Whatever may be said of the intelligence of Doom’s enemies, the bastards can hit hard, especially when their attack is a hitscan and it’s used by 80% of the levels monster population. Stepping inside the control room, our player will find two switches necessary to access the rest of the map, and our initial carrot-on-a-stick in the form of locked bars. It’s here that our player will also come face to face with an old friend; the red-eyed, bald headed, blood soaked, Shotgun wielding fanatic and former human sergeant – The Shotgun Guy.

 

Mr. Shotgunner is an absolute gem of a foe, generously offering shell ammo in times of scarcity, and a Shotgun weapon pickup for the player truly in need – all for the low cost of 30 Hit Points. His attack, to quote Decino, “fires 3 pellets, with each pellet dealing between 3 and 15 damage in multiples of 3. That means a single attack can deal up to 45 damage if RNG hates you”. God bless this monster. I love this guy, and the love is clearly shared by American McGee as well, as MAP02 reveals an absolutely delicious disproportion of them.

 

Since we’re crunching numbers, we’ll take a look at some really fun statistics. On Ultra-Violence and Nightmare difficulty, in a level constructed from a modest 97 sectors, 523 linedefs, and a footprint contained comfortably within it’s less than 2048 x 2048 square, American’s MAP02 boasts a whopping 50 Shotgunners – the highest volume of any Doom II level, with second place going to MAP09’s The Pit, at a trifling 38. (At the time, this was outdone only by E1M6 and E1M7, both featuring 56 Shotgunners, and markedly larger layouts).

 

Underhalls is quite sincerely crawling with Shotgun Guys, and don’t let Sleeping Sergeant fool you, the rest of his friends came to play. Well... most of them came to play – Mr. 85 at the southern end of the waste tunnels did not. In fact, he’s about as committed to letting Doomguy witness gibbitude as any former human could ever possibly be. The remaining 48, however, are fully prepared to pump slug shot directly into our player, protecting just about every pivotal point and primary objective from here to the exit room (and in case you were wondering, yes, there’s 3 of them inside the exit room itself – 5 on the higher skills – because of course there are).

 

With the first switch activated and the veritable floodgate lowered, our player dives into the connecting tunnels and the bloodshed begins to mount – immediately. American decided to use MAP02 as his opportunity to nearly redefine “knee-deep in the dead”, because the corpse count is about to rise faster than you can scream “Mein Leben!”. Snaking around to the southern tip of the level reveals our players objective through a brick window – the shimmering Red Keycard, held in a rather nasty little nest of hitscanners. Whether or not our player found Entryway’s secret armor, there’s no hotter commodity than a health pickup in a place like this. It’s easy to forget how hard MAP02 can hit, and even easier to find yourself dead before realizing it got the better of you – especially around the red key trap, in the shadow of that random, brown lookin’ brick shithouse of fortified glory. This level is not in the business of taking prisoners.

 

But, I’ll tell you what business the level is really in – it’s in the business of showing our player the true, devastating power of the Super Shotgun. I think Civvie11 said it best, when he characterized it as “the ultimate demon slaying weapon; the pinnacle of Shotguns. If Batman was a gun he’d be this. No more extended fights with Pinkys; no more Lost Souls taking more than a split-second to exorcise. Whole groups of low-tier enemies fall at the hands of this absolute beast of a weapon.” Before reaching the red key, our player can take a small detour through a lower side passage along the eastern tunnel, and after clearing the cramped room, discover Doom II’s one and only contribution to the base arsenal. With an addition like this... it’s everything it needed to be, and more, and no sane person is left wanting.

 

It’s here that I feel the need to slam on the breaks, just for a moment, to observe what we’ve found.

 

The decision to introduce the SSG in MAP02 was a bold strategy, Cotton, with the game choosing to abandon its predecessor's episodic structure. Gone were the few points at which player weapon progression could be reset, and over the course of 30 consecutive levels, even the smallest decision can leave a huge impact on pacing. It’s little wonder why the popular trend among custom megawads came to settle on reviving the episodic formula, offering mappers and community project leaders a kind of clemency aimed at resolving the burden to design such a long campaign. The curve between MAP01 and MAP30 didn’t have to be perfect – a series of pistol start resets could shoulder much of the weight, allowing for bite-sized chunks of smooth progression in a format that was easy to tweak.

 

It’s absolutely reasonable for the team at id to have wanted to get the Super Shotgun into players’ hands, and fast, but across the 32 available levels, players can wield the SSG for as many as 30 – assuming continuous play with use of save games. The new weapon is, practically speaking, available for the entirety of Doom II. Granted, there were other things to discover, including the Megasphere first picked up in MAP06: The Crusher, as well as an entire suite of new monsters revealed – from the Chaingunner rearing its head in MAP03: The Gantlet, to MAP11 finally unveiling the Arch-Vile – but the decision to front load what little was on offer in the way of “real upgrades”, by such a huge margin, remains noteworthy. A greater lead-in for the SSG may have helped the game in a big way, allowing anticipation to simmer as tougher enemies made themselves known, and carving a clearer line in the sand between the opening act, and the moment our player received what was arguably the greatest reward Doom II had to offer.

 

Of course, this is not a hill I am prepared to die on, and I’ll say this – despite my skepticism of the weapons early introduction, the SSG absolutely belongs in Underhalls. The vast majority of its rooms and corridors are less than 200 map units in width; its space is limited, and its low-tier population is deliberately packed into clumps of defenseless meat – shark bait at the mercy of an unstoppable maw. If someone at id was tasked with proving how fun the SSG can be, American’s response was definitive. In MAP02, the Super Shotgun is a devouring force of nature. With a scattershot spreading 7 degrees vertically, and 11 degrees across, its 20 pellets go forth – and in the halls beneath Entryway, there’s nowhere to hide. The Shotgunner might be a ruthless son of a bitch, but MAP02 was built to be his tomb. In full retrospect, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

 

So, here we are with one of the best tricks Doom II had up its sleeve, and we’ve only just begun.

 

Two smoking barrels and a red key in hand, the trap is sprung and our player heads north again. The fight triggered here by the pickup is a constant reminder of what I enjoy so much about American McGee’s design. A small backtracking segment is shown now to have been a levee ready to break, instantly flooding the halls with another crashing wave of Shotgunners, Imps, and on higher difficulties, the return of the Demon. More than monster closets, McGee also uses a cleverly positioned teleport to help transfer some of our friends back to the opening room – it serves as both a means of repopulating the space, as well as a shortcut back to the red key switch for secret hunters (and there is a very precious secret to be found here, make no mistake). The best solutions solve more than one problem, as they say.

 

Before we know it, Underhalls is firing on all cylinders and guiding our player with pure combat. Its bread and butter is the marriage between packing 50 Shotgun Guys into a tiny map, and handing our player the double-barrel. It’s a little slice of that “push forward combat” philosophy so often used to describe modern Doom titles. Even a sloppy blast from the SSG is bound to kill one or two Sergeants, guaranteeing Shotgun drops – the cycle simply feeds itself. As counter-intuitive (or wasteful) as it might feel to cut a lone Shotgunner down with both barrels, our player still comes out of that math with 2 extra shells (on top of the fact that it’s stupidly satisfying). In a confined space swarming with former sergeants, the Super Shotgun is the answer to every question – if this wasn’t intentional, it’s the happiest of happy accidents.

 

Now that our player is soaked in blood, overflowing with shells, and unlocking areas teased earlier to anyone undisciplined in the art of squeeze glides, the final stretch of Underhalls presents itself. I still remember battling my way into sector 55 for the first time, locking eyes with the two black pits, listening to the cacophony of snarls rising from below like plumes of impending death, and thinking to myself, “...yeah, IDKFA is a legitimate strategy, fight me”. I was a young child, don’t judge.

 

In the ballad of MAP02, the quest for the Blue Keycard is a memorable stanza; a battle seemingly designed to remind returning players – or teach new ones – that Explosive Barrels are the players 10th weapon. At a 96 light level and audibly infested, it’s a particularly spooky blind drop to make (and not just because the sidedefs are missing their lower textures, pffff lol). After a temporary spike in the heart rate, it won’t take long before our player manages to orient themselves, clear the rooms, and probably discover why good barrel placement is one of the more subtle signs of an awesome Doom mapper. The blue key is claimed, and McGee wastes absolutely zero time reconnecting our flight to the exit room, in a final tip of the hat towards a beautiful layout.

 

By the time I get here, all I can ever think is: I love this map. I love its layout, its combat, and its color palette. I love its choice of texture combinations; I love its decision to highlight the value of exploration by making its two most significant pickups optional, off the beaten path. I love the fact that our player can choose to engage in the levels biggest ambush by circumventing it with a jump through the Megaarmor teleport, and that sector 58 is then quietly opened, giving its largest horde access to the western tunnel, regardless. I love how, in retrospect, it’s a remarkably jaunty ride, while still bearing teeth capable of cutting a careless player down with the help of 50 Shotgun Guys. Perhaps more than anything, I love that it’s full of action and reasonably passed in roughly 2:00 minutes. It doesn’t overstay its welcome, and leaves the player wanting more. Underhalls’ par time is actually 1:30 – not a difficult feat to achieve.

 

In fact, if you’re Looper, you can hotfoot it through the level in less than a third of that time (00.26.94 seconds to be exact, in a UV speed run). A UV max might take you closer to a minute (as little as 00.56.89 seconds, if you’re Kinetic).

 

MAP02 has some fun records, including j4rio’s 2:18:03 Tyson run, and Zero-Master’s NM 100S blasted out in under 45 seconds, at 00:43:54, as listed in the Doom Speed Demo Archive. But, for what is without doubt the most extraordinary demo record attached to the legacy of Doom II’s Underhalls, we’re not looking at anything below the par time – we’re looking at a nearly 21 minute run. On September 7th, 2017, Zero-Master was the first to finally conquer one of the two remaining levels yet to be finished under Pacifist rules, without tool assistance – at 20:57:34, Zero-Master’s meticulous and excruciatingly patient Pacifist demo for MAP02 entered history. Harnessing everything at their disposal, including a squeeze glide, manipulation of monster infights and pathing, and a handful of interesting engine quirks, it isn’t nearly as exciting to watch as it is astonishing. Even American McGee’s barrel placement comes back around to represent more than a principle of fun design, now serving as a saving grace for the Pacifist player – again, the best solutions solve more than one problem. For anyone interested, Karl Jobst’s video “This DOOM Challenge Took 23 YEARS To Complete!” outlines the run beautifully, and goes on to explain why after more than two decades, Underhalls likely became the last and final non-assisted Pacifist run left to conquer for Doom II: Hell on Earth. Time will tell if the record is ever succeeded, but the fact that it exists at all is stunning.

 

There’s a lot to be said for such a small, unassuming level. I think the Dean of Doom severely understated its capacity for violence, declaring “Underhalls [as] one of the friendliest levels around”, but his description of it as a palate cleanser (regardless of this being in reference to the Master Levels) is about as fitting a definition as I’m ever going to hear.

 

I’m hard-pressed to find maps more instantly replayable than this. It’s often the case that after getting dumped into MAP02 from finishing a single level PWAD, I’ll clear half of it before realizing I had no intention of actually playing it. It’s effortlessly fun, and deserves every bit of recognition. I had to add “underhalls” to the Microsoft Word dictionary almost immediately, because I simply refused to live in a world with something that didn’t recognize it as a legitimate word. Sacrilege.

 

MAP01 doesn’t encourage me to dive into the rest of Doom II: Hell on Earth – MAP02 does, because it’s fuggin’ perfect. And, if you haven’t played Underhalls in a while, you really should.

 

 

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And um, this doesn't have anything to do with anything, but I couldn't stop laughing at this:

 

Spoiler

 

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

Edited August 13, 2023 by RonnieJamesDiner

[Bridgeburner56]

holy fuck you fucking madman you actually did wtf

[Raith138]

I will not read all of this but I appreciate the dedication.

[Shepardus]

Nicely done, I enjoyed not reading that.

 

In case that wasn't enough Underhalls for you, I recommend reading the text file to Kinetic's UV Max speedrun of the map, which is around 4700 words:

Or listen to Meowgi's reading of it:

 

[Decay]

Paragraph 1

Sentence 1 is missing an apostrophe for "players"

Sentence 2 is grammatically awkward. Read that aloud to yourself with the commas. The commas make it awkward leading into an "or" statement.

 

Paragraph 2

"Franchises" needs an apostrophe for the possessive.

Sentence 2, again, awkwardly phrased. Instead you could have "Serving as an introduction to combat and other gameplay mechanics, "Mars City Underground: Union Aerospace Subsystems” is equal parts world-building and setup, the sum of its parts an achievement magnitudes higher than it has any right to be." Keep the tenses consistent. Serving/served, has/had etc

 

Paragraph 4

The bracketed statement at the end should be within the second last period, not after it.

 

Paragraph 5

So I've noticed the inconsistent use of italics for map names and game names. Game titles should be italicized, map names in quotation marks.

 

Paragraph 6

The immediate use of commas is unnecessary for the description of the level. A common writing mistake among students is the overzealous use of commas and semi-colons. If it doesn't sound quite right, use other words. "Underhalls is a compact, though at times dark, claustrophobic barrage of close-quarters carnage, ..." Also this first sentence is way too long. Missed the possessive apostrophe again.

 

Now, in the manner of a true teaching assistant, it's about at this point I get bored of giving feedback, give the paper a 8/10, and call it a day.

[RonnieJamesDiner]

Ahh SHIT. Edited the post with some of your feedback. I umm... couldn't decide whether or not I wanted to italicize map names or not, or put 'em in quotations, and pretty much forgot about all that. I'd be quite happy with the 8/10.

 

^{Reading sentences out loud is actually an awesome bit of advice, I immediately realized what you were saying about the use of commas lol. I'm going to remember that one!}

Edited August 13, 2023 by RonnieJamesDiner

[Lila Feuer]

Underhalls has an effect on me because seemingly every time I finish a MAP01 replacement I immediately start playing MAP02 with whatever I brought over before asking myself what I'm doing and I never have a good answer.

[LoatharMDPhD]

// "Oh Boy Kids, It's a Sewer Level..."

[Mr. Freeze]

I ain't reading all that. I'm happy for u tho. Or sorry that happened. 

[OniriA]

I never expected to see it, a real Underhalls worshipper. I'm offering you a new home to live in for the rest of your days. 

 

[tornado potato]

That was a great read, I agree with everything, and I gotta watch that pacifist run sometime...cheers!