Did Doom II feel like a slog when it was released?

[EraserheadBaby]

Nah, it was a blast.  I mean, what else were we gonna compare it to?  Mario?  Commander Keen?  Sonic? 

 

Not pointing the finger at anyone in particular, but so much of the criticism I see about old DOOM seems to ignore the fact that it came out 30 years ago and pioneered the technology necessary for its creation not to mention conceiving design principles for a completely new genre of game. CD's weren't even a go to storage platform yet and they're ancient history.  So yeah, it might be a little rough around the edges, now.  But back then it was the most amazing thing most of us had ever seen (in a video game anyway).  And maybe DOOM 2 was A LOT like DOOM.  It's basically a map pack with a few extra enemies and the SSG, but back then the gaming landscape wasn't as lush, and we were just happy to have more DOOM.

 

"Ugh, these cave paintings are total crap"  That's what it sounds like to me.

[Gifty]

57 minutes ago, Gez said:

Eh, it has.

 

Look at Joystick's review of Doom II where they gave it a note of merely 20% for players who already had Doom...

 

This seems to be part of a separate historical phenomenon of 90s game critics grading sequels on an inverted curve as sort of a matter of principle, because they were so spoiled for original games back then they could afford to be a little prickly towards franchising. Kind of miss that attitude, to be frank. :p

Edited June 12 by Gifty

[Koko Ricky]

What seems to rub some people the wrong way about Doom 2's level design is that it leans more into individual concepts and experiments, rather than a cohesive, broader world that feels interconnected. Doom's original shareware episode, while its maps lack consistency between the names, their appearance in the intermission screen, and their actual geometry, feel like a series of manmade locations that are slowly being transformed into something otherworldly and hellish. Being that they share a lot of textures, and the intermission's implication of progression, it has led some to the opinion that Doom 1 is a tighter and more thematically sound experience.

 

The way I see it, as soon as you get into the second episode, Doom begins to lean more toward the conceptual and experimental, much in the way Doom 2 does. Then there's Thy Flesh Consumed, the 4th episode that was added later and not only lacks an intermission screen, but is perfectly content doing its own thing. Doom 2 has a lot more brown, its city maps feel more abstract than representational, and there's no strong sense of progressing toward an end goal; just a bunch of maps, and then it ends. But is that not how the OG Dooms are? 

[EraserheadBaby]

@Koko Ricky Cool take, hadn't thought of it that way.  It's a good critique.

 

Frankly, I don't really think about the faults of old DOOM in general. I just learned there are stuck monsters in "Underhalls". The game is so awesome that there are people here talking about it who weren't even alive when it was made.  Still building maps and playing.  I find it unreal that this website and community exist.  Video games don't generally live this long.

 

I love old DOOM.  Forgiving it it's slight jankiness in the face of everything it accomplished, that definitely helps me keep loving it.

Edited June 12 by EraserheadBaby

[Gifty]

The thing about Doom 2 was it was made on a time crunch with basically no rules, so you have really high highs because of the experimental, sky's-the-limit attitude, but you also have really rushed and unpolished stuff padding out the low lows. Doom 1 is maybe less transcendent in exchange for a (relatively) more cohesive and smooth experience. It's really just two different approaches to the same game. (Not that different from the dynamic between D2016 and Doom Eternal, in fact)

 

The sequel paradigm in the mid 90s was more expansion-centric and that can be an alien concept for people unfamiliar with that era. I wouldn't call it any more lazy than the sequel paradigm of today, just different and less expensive. But I don't think it tracks to call 1990s Id Software lazy when any sequel product they released was, in context, just a stopgap between huge technological shifts in which they basically threw out and rewrote the rulebook of first-person game technology every couple of years.

Edited June 12 by Gifty

[Plerb]

There's plenty of interesting things to analyze about the IWAD maps, and "Do Doom 2's Levels Suck Or Not" is not one of them.

 

My biggest issue with these type of threads is that it does not matter in the slightest if they suck, because once you have Doom 2, you have several universes worth of custom content, at least some of which is bound to perfectly fit your tastes. I'm not a big fan of Doom 2's maps myself overall, but I'm losing 0 hours of sleep over it because there are plenty of Doom 2 PWADs I enjoy a lot more.

[A339]

Problem is, you're listening to Redditors. Anything 'hard' is going to make them whine on there.

[A339]

2 hours ago, Gifty said:

"Doom 2 is terrible" seems to be some kind of increasingly self-perpetuating meme argument that is trying to Mandela everyone into thinking it's always been around.

 

Something similar has happened with Tomb Raider. Since the release of the remastered set, I've seen some strange revisionism that "actually, everyone always hated the controls" which was simply not the case in the 90s or even 2000s.

[Koko Ricky]

I'm reminded of how Doom 64 was somewhat derided by the community in the early days, criticized for its pre-rendered fuzziness, monochrome texture sets, and missing enemies. These days, it has a lot more love as well as an active sub-community.

[Caffeine Freak]

Speaking purely from personal experience:

 

The 11-12 year old version of me who beat Doom II for the very first time thought it was... a little excessive in the number of levels. At that point in time, I could've agreed that it became a bit of a slog. Later on in my teens, I thought Doom II was quite manageable in its length (not because I had been playing it constantly, but because I had more of a capacity to appreciate games at a later age). I know that one time when I was 17-18, I went through the whole game in one day, and thought it was a perfectly appropriate and manageable length of an experience.

 

I really think it comes down to how much you expect from a game of that type (early-mid 90's fast paced FPS), combined with how much exploration you do,  as well as how you handle a certain degree of open-ended level design, and how much time you take inspecting various aspects of the game and searching for secrets. If you're the kind of person who wants an action FPS to always be obvious with how it presents routing information to you, Doom II might feel like a slog with some of the more cryptic/sprawling levels. The fast action can fool you, but you really do have to use your brain and keep locations mentally bookmarked while playing. When you do that, the gameplay flows much better.

[Jayextee]

I first experienced DOOM II on the PlayStation version, where it was part of a larger 60-map (I think? Might've been high fifties) campaign with the original (kinda, give and take some maps). At the time I was convinced bigger and more equalled better so, no, I don't think it felt like a slog. I was just happy to have such a heeeuge game to play.

(My tastes have wildly changed with age, I hasten to add, and I much prefer shorter and more focused experiences now. But I digress)

[kyller92]

A slog is kind of a strong word. >)

Personally, at the time, I felt it was more that the city episode wasn't as great as the rest (especially with levels like Downtown or The Factory that felt too large and empty imo). But it's still a good game. And it's up to debate, but I'd think it's just that while some of the good things are better than the previous game, some of the bad stuff are also much worse, which, for me, led to an uneven experience.

[Michael63]

On 6/12/2024 at 10:37 AM, princetontiger said:

I have read countless posts on doomworld and reddit about Doom II's shitty level designs... did it feel this way 30 years ago?

No. 30 years ago it felt great, only slightly inferior in aesthetics to the first Doom.

Today, of course, the situation is different. We see a lot of hackwork in the Doom 2. But, nevertheless, Doom 2 has its own vibe.

[RichardDS90]

While I don't think it was too bad, I know for a fact my mum thought it was, she gave up on it because she got bored of it. I think she got as far as MAP18 if the save she had was anything to go by.