The True Meaning of Plutonia

[T-Rex]

Battle_Kirby said:

Aight, here is what bugs me with Plutonia.

A lot of people would spit on unknown mappers for using the same method as Plutonia did, yet praise Plutonia all the way. And not like "Hooo you copy plutonia how dare you", but just like...

Lets say some guy decides to release his wad, which is quite pretty tense in gameplay, much monotonous with enemies, puts in a trap or two... soon people critize how the map puts too much of a pressure on them, or how enemies make no sense, or how traps shouldn't even be a thing, then the same people praise Plutonia for its "master this for that and this for this and these for those and those for this" whatever.

I simply don't understand the hype over Plutonia. Is it because its old? Because its approved by the id dudes? I get the "arcadey" style, but to me, the map pack was pretty much the same stuff as usual. Is there some kind of trend or fetish or secret going around the community, some secret wall in this and that map that says "if you made it here you rule everyone else sux" or what?

Jayextee said:

As for "spitting on" maps aping the approach, Plutonia 2, PRCP and Urania were all well-received. I don't know from where you're getting that.

There are other wads aside from Plutonia 2, PRCP, and Urania that uses Plutonia's knockabout gameplay style of nasty traps and monster placement. Hell Revealed, for example, is the first and foremost of those wads. Thematically, it doesn't use the jungle/catacombs setting as Plutonia, but it implements and expands on its gameplay style. I agree with Battle Kirby on his thoughts, because from what I remembered last year when playing HR with the DWMC, there were several people bashing and hating on the mapset because it's "too Wolf 3D/RotT-ish (which is bullshit, there's variety and eye-catching level design on HR), gameplay's a broken slog, it's all slaughter, it's impossible on UV, Plutonia did it better, blah, blah, blah," which translates to "It's the wad's fault I can't beat it! Plutonia rules, HR drools!" That to me is unfair and very biased, because they're overly praising one wad and ignore its flaws, yet spit on another wad that uses the same kind of stratagems as its predecessor and point out its so-called "problems" without even taking note of the more positive aspects, like the music, for example (huge fan of the RotT soundtrack which most of HR uses). Nowadays, it seems to be a trend for the majority of the community to openly and adamantly despise HR, and that's really sad to know since it's one of my favourite classic megawads and it still is to this day. Don't get me wrong, Plutonia is a good mapset for the most part, but I give other wads a chance and not hate them for trivial reasons.

[AD_79]

It's not about the methods used. It's the execution of said methods, and Hell Revealed for the most part did not use them well (and honestly, I wouldn't say that Plutonia's and HR's methods are all that similar). Sorry, but people like Plutonia because the gameplay isn't a colossal drag. Hell Revealed does a lot of "stuffing rooms full of monsters for the sake of having shit to kill with the SSG", which generally translates to boring, sloggy gameplay, especially considering just how pinky/HK/baron-infested the whole endeavour is. Plutonia's a little more restrained and thoughtful with its approach to monster placement. Combine this with stronger layouts than HR could ever dream of (go compare the average Plutonia layout to the average HR layout, I'll wait) and you get fast but still moderately challenging which holds up well today. This is why people like it and will endlessly ""hate on"" Hell Revealed.

By the way, I'm not denying that Plutonia has flaws. Speed is an obnoxious map to play. Cyberden sucks more than all the ticks and leeches in the world. I'm just saying that HR's flaws are far greater and get in the way of simply trying to have fun with it.

[Master O]

Jayextee said:

The homage, I can dig. In fact as an official Doom sequel (it kinda is, albeit not a numbered one) it has in common with an R-Type or Gradius game callbacks and homages to its own more memorable moments. And that's probably why I love it so much; you stick a lives system in there (Megasphere = 1up? :P) and the levels are (mostly) short enough that restarting isn't a too much ballache upon death.

Plutonia actually does share something in common with Gradius.

Gradius 3 is considered the most difficult of all of the Gradius arcade games (there are 4 of them released in arcades) and arguably one of the most difficult arcade games of all time, so much so that few people have ever beaten it in one life (or 1cc, as that's known in the arcade community). Whereas, Plutonia is considered the most difficult, by far, of the official Doom 2 IWADs.

[Tarnsman]

T-Rex said:

There are other wads aside from Plutonia 2, PRCP, and Urania that uses Plutonia's knockabout gameplay style of nasty traps and monster placement.

Except all three of those are actually really bad at emulating Plutonia outside of visual aesthetic and "being hard". Urania in particular (beyond being full of TNT stuff) is basically the antithesis of Plutonia.

[Jayextee]

Master O said:

Gradius 3 is considered the most difficult of all of the Gradius arcade games (there are 4 of them released in arcades) and arguably one of the most difficult arcade games of all time, so much so that few people have ever beaten it in one life (or 1cc, as that's known in the arcade community).

"No miss clear", bub. 1cc is "one-credit completion", AKA reaching the end without continues.

Take me at my word that I'm a big fan of arcade games when I make the comparison with Plutonia, yeah? ;)

Hell, I'd love to have at that with a lives system (Megaspheres probably being 1ups or something) and a decent scoring mechanic. I'd fanboy harder than I do already. ;)

[T-Rex]

AD_79 said:

It's not about the methods used. It's the execution of said methods, and Hell Revealed for the most part did not use them well (and honestly, I wouldn't say that Plutonia's and HR's methods are all that similar). Sorry, but people like Plutonia because the gameplay isn't a colossal drag. Hell Revealed does a lot of "stuffing rooms full of monsters for the sake of having shit to kill with the SSG", which generally translates to boring, sloggy gameplay, especially considering just how pinky/HK/baron-infested the whole endeavour is. Plutonia's a little more restrained and thoughtful with its approach to monster placement. Combine this with stronger layouts than HR could ever dream of (go compare the average Plutonia layout to the average HR layout, I'll wait) and you get fast but still moderately challenging which holds up well today. This is why people like it and will endlessly ""hate on"" Hell Revealed.

I won't deny that there are levels in HR that use the method of "stuffing rooms full of pinkie/hell knights/barons" to kill with the SSG, but there's only like a handful of them, with most of them being in the last episode. To you, Plutonia and HR's methods aren't all that similar, but I don't really see much of a difference since both are the toughest megawads of their time (Maps like Last Look at Eden, Resistance is Futile, Post Mortem, Dead Progressive, Hell Revealed, and Mostly Harmful have similar level design aspects and gameplay to that of Plutonia). Nowadays they're quite tame. You seem to be forgetting that with the HR monster placement, Donner and Niv never really intended players to UV-Max the maps and designed them with speedrunning in mind, since they were high-ranking speedrunners for Doom and Quake and even done speedrunning videos of HR. It seems to me that HR was designed more for continuous play and speedrunning than UV-Maxing. As for the level design, well, Plutonia's stronger layouts are mostly found in the maps by Dario Casali. Milo Casali sometimes has strong layouts, but due to their simplicity, not as much, and HR's level design seem to draw from Milo in that sense. Nevertheless, at least the music selection for HR is excellent. I mean, who here doesn't enjoy RotT's soundtrack? Fits very well in Doom, if you ask me, even if they were introduced in a wad that seemed like a slog for a lot of people. So no doubt I would be such a fanboy of HR and other wads that use its soundtrack. With that said and done, HR is anything but a "crappy" megawad, and offers a variety of themes and settings. Plutonia just recycles the same theme over and over again in many of the levels so it does get old pretty fast for some people.

[Tarnsman]

T-Rex said:

To you, Plutonia and HR's methods aren't all that similar, but I don't really see much of a difference since both are the toughest megawads of their time (Maps like Last Look at Eden, Resistance is Futile, Post Mortem, Dead Progressive, Hell Revealed, and Mostly Harmful have similar level design aspects and gameplay to that of Plutonia).

If HR took anything from Plutonia, it was Go 2 It.

Plutonia has an average of 95 monsters per map. It only has 1 map with over 200 monsters. (Go 2 It at 206). Hell Revealed on the other hand averages 217 monsters per map. (Which is dragged down by that first episode which is distinctly not what people think about when they think HR)

[Tracer]

I always got a very overgrown ruins feel from plutonia. Like, humanity is nearly extinct and nature is taking earth back.

[Alfonzo]

T-Rex said:

To [AD_79], Plutonia and HR's methods aren't all that similar, but I don't really see much of a difference since both are the toughest megawads of their time (Maps like Last Look at Eden, Resistance is Futile, Post Mortem, Dead Progressive, Hell Revealed, and Mostly Harmful have similar level design aspects and gameplay to that of Plutonia) [...] As for the level design, well, Plutonia's stronger layouts are mostly found in the maps by Dario Casali. Milo Casali sometimes has strong layouts, but due to their simplicity, not as much, and HR's level design seem to draw from Milo in that sense.

Without an informed understanding of exactly what kind of a relation the two authors of HR had with the existing demographic of Doom players at the time, I don't think it's unreasonable to believe that HR was riffing off some of the goals that Plutonia successfully set in attempting to punish the player and cater to a more dedicated audience of speedrunners. I suspect it was riding a wave of that kind but it's only a guess. Maybe you know more on that front. Regardless of what their intentions were, however, we do know this:

The overlap between HR and Plutonia terminates well before the details of level design are brought into question - if there is any overlap. How the layouts function, regardless of their simplicity or size, or shape, or resemblance to an existing level from Doom, all of which they differ on massively; the placement of the monsters and their numbers; the pace that results; the progression through those layouts, etc.. All of this amounts to the megawads being placed on opposite sides of the track. There is next to zero cross-over. The level of difficulty can be seen as similar, yes, but even as the natural product of any set that plays to Doom's strengths of speed and movement as defense, it is a difficulty that's achieved by very different means. Attrition and planning are a couple of HR calling cards that you won't find anywhere in Plutonia outside of a couple of select instances, where it's a more visceral and 'in the moment' brand that is applied broad-stroke across its entirety. These are qualities that are basically leaned on once the player crosses over into map13 of HR.

I like HR... as an historical piece. I think it helped to galvanize the community post-Quake with a kind of soft-checked proviso, that players should expect to be challenged and not apologized to for the sorts of ostracizing difficulty that speedrunners look for in major releases. But it's dated, now; old, rusted, busted. Its methods have been built upon and bettered countless times. If I want to play HR again it'll probably be in a museum somewhere, or indeed in an amusement arcade. I think the analogy works even better with it than it does with Plutonia.

[T-Rex]

Alfonzo said:

If I want to play HR again it'll probably be in a museum somewhere, or indeed in an amusement arcade. I think the analogy works even better with it than it does with Plutonia.

Still, I'm among those who believe that Plutonia plays just as much as an arcade game, especially considering the fact that it strictly adheres to a consistent theme similar to Gradius and R-type, is brutally difficult from the very first level and it stays that way in every single level with little to distinguish each one in the difficulty, they're also short, and there's a few gimmick levels which can be treated as bonus levels (Map07 is an obvious Dead Simple homage, Map11 with the debatably frustrating arch-vile maze, and Map17 being the only map in Plutonia where there are no revenants present), and there's of course the secret levels. HR, to a certain degree, though it starts off easy before spiking up the difficulty from Map11, and fortunately there's some breather levels along the way. It may seem to be dated by today's standards, but to me it still holds up quite well, and I usually come back to it for the music, even though I do have Rise of the Triad and there are other Doom wads that use its soundtrack. Just that when it comes to Doom, RotT's soundtrack seems to be synonymous with HR and other wads inspired by it.

Oh, and given how large many of HR's maps are compared to the more compact maps that make up most of Plutonia, I'm sure the monster count is justified. Also, you admitted there were some maps in Plutonia that had instances of attrition and planning. True, they happen rarely, but that's still something. To me, HR doesn't seem like a completely new concept, contrary to the popular belief that it's in a niche on its own. Given that Go 2 It was once of HR's influences is an indication that there's some connections between the two wads, especially in the concept of making heavyweight enemies as commonplace; a medium which was passed on to other wads like Alien Vendetta, Speed of Doom, Scythe, et al.

[Da Werecat]

40oz said:

Plutonia is this interesting collision of UAC teleport technology and military outposts with ancient ruins and desolation. Its hard to decide if its a different planet or an alternate dimension, but it does well to depict a land that's been uninhabited by man for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. Ancient villages, caves, castles, tombs, forts, overrun by vegetation and the paranormal do better to characterize the evil Doom beasts that have dominated it than the original Doom campaign does. I find it to be the ultimate test of the Doom guys survival skills as he is unforgivenly dumped in a land far far away from human civilization, only lightly charted by the demolished UAC recon. A primal land full of traps, snares, poison darts, spikes, sacrificial burial grounds, and deity worship. All of which are dominated by the ancient spirits that possess the demons that now roam the land.

This is how I viewed Plutonia in the early days, when I was only familiar with the first few levels. Coincidentally, those first few levels seem to be unloved by those who enjoy the rest. They aren't action-packed as much as they're just creepy, still spending time to promise death before delivering it.

It was a good decision to include something like this at the beginning - to set the mood of the adventure before the scenery becomes oversaturated with enemies and the remaining suspense wanes. Community sequels never gave me this feeling.

I was exposed to Doom 2 and Plutonia at the same time, so the new monsters the latter introduces as early as the first level were actually new to me. They seemed to fit the aesthetics like a glove - creepy "voodoo" skeletons, demon "shamans" with magical powers (they gave this vibe long before Darch made them into actual shamans) - primitive and deadly. Almost looked out of place when I finally encountered them in the generic bases of Doom 2.

T-Rex said:

I mean, who here doesn't enjoy RotT's soundtrack?

Well I guess that would be me.

This might sound strange, but I generally don't associate Doom with the kind of GUNG-HO AMERICANS WITH BIG GUNS AGAINST FORCES OF EVIL (WITH WEAKER AND/OR VERY INACCURATE GUNS) feeling that RotT's soundtrack is trying to achieve. If I would, I probably wouldn't like it all that much.

[Deadwing]

I love Plutonia. It's all about creating tough and short levels with minimum amount of monsters (most levels barely pass 100 monsters). It's a bit assholish with some traps, but with some foreknowledge (not sure if this is the right word lol), it's no really big deal. I didn't like Hell Revealed at all.

[Cynical]

Alfonzo said:

I like HR... as an historical piece. I think it helped to galvanize the community post-Quake with a kind of soft-checked proviso, that players should expect to be challenged and not apologized to for the sorts of ostracizing difficulty that speedrunners look for in major releases. But it's dated, now; old, rusted, busted. Its methods have been built upon and bettered countless times. If I want to play HR again it'll probably be in a museum somewhere, or indeed in an amusement arcade. I think the analogy works even better with it than it does with Plutonia.

I seriously want to know what the "built upon and bettered" versions of "City in the Clouds", "Postmortem", "Dead Progressive", and "Afterlife" are.

[dew]

Cynical said:

I seriously want to know what the "built upon and bettered" versions of "City in the Clouds", "Postmortem", "Dead Progressive", and "Afterlife" are.

Alien Vendetta. Kama Sutra. Scythe map30. One Bloody Night. Deus Vult. All their authors confessed their admiration to and inspiration by HR, the archetypal challenge megawad from speedrunners for speedrunners. They took the formula pioneered by Donner and Niv and tried to make it better, because that's how you surpass your teachers.

There's no need to be defensive about HR getting old... you picked the cream of the crop, the maps that still live up to the legend surrounding the wad, but for every one you named there's two or three fossils that could be done so much better with our current science, please take that figuratively.

P.S. See how I also dodged the "slaughter" term altogether? It is significant indeed for we are currently in a discussion setting apart HR and Plutonia with its Go2It and I may have had reasons for dropping such subtle hints. Somebody help me, I can't turn off the snark even when I want to.

[sesq]

dew said:

Alien Vendetta. Kama Sutra. Scythe map30. One Bloody Night. Deus Vult. All their authors confessed their admiration to and inspiration by HR, the archetypal challenge megawad from speedrunners for speedrunners. They took the formula pioneered by Donner and Niv and tried to make it better, because that's how you surpass your teachers.

There's no need to be defensive about HR getting old... you picked the cream of the crop, the maps that still live up to the legend surrounding the wad, but for every one you named there's two or three fossils that could be done so much better with our current science, please take that figuratively.

P.S. See how I also dodged the "slaughter" term altogether? It is significant indeed for we are currently in a discussion setting apart HR and Plutonia with its Go2It and I may have had reasons for dropping such subtle hints. Somebody help me, I can't turn off the snark even when I want to.

The slaughter parts of Scythe 2 I also found to be excellent.

When it comes to slaughtermaps, I gotta agree, HR really isn't that impressive... nor was its sequel. They were difficult but empty in terms of pure masochism. Deus Vult is the best example of a good slaughtermap (or maps, if you play the inferior method) that I've come across.

I'm thinking I should give Plutonia another shot, but I don't want to go through that much hard. I usually play things on HMP to be honest.

[Cynical]

Most of the later "challenge" wads didn't really follow HR's approach, though. To borrow DotW's terminology, HR is mostly defined by its "zone of influence" maps (Ascending to the Stars and arguably Afterlife are the only encounter-based maps among HR's high points); AV in particular is heavily encounter-based, with only Dark Dome, NGNG, and a brief bit of Lake Poison dipping their toe into ZoI play.

Aside from maybe Resurgence's bigger/more recently built maps, it's hard to come up with wads that have done more with the ZoI style than HR did (I won't disagree that most of its more encounter-based maps are basically crap by modern standards, though).

[T-Rex]

dew said:

P.S. See how I also dodged the "slaughter" term altogether? It is significant indeed for we are currently in a discussion setting apart HR and Plutonia with its Go2It and I may have had reasons for dropping such subtle hints. Somebody help me, I can't turn off the snark even when I want to.

I think you managed to dodge the "slaughter" term because even though HR has a significantly higher monster count than Plutonia, it is still not entirely slaughter-based, considering how many of the levels are bigger than Plutonia's, and there's like about several maps in the set that would qualify as "slaughter," the most notable ones being Last Look at Eden (for some people), Hard Attack, Resistance is Futile, Ascending to the Stars, Post Mortem, and Mostly Harmful.

I won't deny however that many of HR's successors have improved on its concepts, much as I will defend that wad to the very end. I personally find Plutonia to be far more chaotic and intense due to the compact and, dare I say, cramped layout of many of the maps that make the traps and encounters lethal, some bordering on to kaizo-esque.

[dew]

We are on the brink of agreeing, my friends. I cannot disagree with your latest posts at all!

Plutonia layouts are incredibly compact and even though you can find the occasional "splits", or "points of no return" here and there, the predominant characteristic is a sandbox where anything you wake up at the other side of the map will continue to harrass you constantly until you kill it, because it will get surprising attack angles on you when you least expect it.

Meanwhile, if you allow me to set Post Mortem aside as a very particular case, HR pioneers and champions the "scenario" approach to challenge. You get to restart your luck in front of every major encounter where plutonia might just shaft you with relentless attrition in smaller ambushes.

And of course, the following megawads would find inspiration in both approaches. Goddamn, they'd be stupid not to! If anything, striking balance between the PL/HR approaches sounds like a recipe for total success to me!

[Cynical]

I guess the difference is my impression of those two mapsets is almost opposite (admittedly, I have played Plutonia a LOT less than HR).

Plutonia, I always remember for its trapfests like NME or Well of Souls. HR, I always remember for the "strategic sandboxes" -- City in the Clouds, The Black Towers, The Path, Resistance is Futile, Postmortem, and Dead Progressive (and even Top Hell is built roughly in that style, although it sucks, and Afterlife is sort of a combination of the "strategic" and encounter-oriented approaches). It's true that you can generally "reset" at will in HR, but that's more a function of the layouts being really open and supplies being relatively plentiful than it being particularly encounter-based.

[Tracer]

The true meaning of Plutonia is not about anything tangible. It's about family, peace on earth, and good will toward man. It isn't about material possessions or...wait...I'm confusing Plutonia with Christmas again.

[esselfortium]

TraceOfSpades said:

The true meaning of Plutonia is not about anything tangible. It's about family, peace on earth, and good will toward man. It isn't about material possessions or...wait...I'm confusing Plutonia with Christmas again.

Piper Maru beat you to it on the first page.

[Job]

Plutonia is going in dry.

[VGamingJunkie]

Hey, maybe there is no Plutonia. Maybe it's one of them, um, metaphorical things. Like maybe "Plutonia" is the place inside each of us created by our desire to be challenged to the up-most extreme. Nah, they said there'd be Revanants.

[Tracer]

esselfortium said:

Piper Maru beat you to it on the first page.

Drats, foiled again. Or maybe that's why I confused it with Christmas.

MetroidJunkie said:

Hey, maybe there is no Plutonia -

- only Zuul.

-----------------
Maybe the point of Plutonia is that there were unpopulated places on earth that the forces of hell went so that in the event they were defeated, they had other cells in places where they had time to increase their numbers unbothered.

[Woolie Wool]

On 3/5/2017 at 11:09 AM, T-Rex said:

 

There are other wads aside from Plutonia 2, PRCP, and Urania that uses Plutonia's knockabout gameplay style of nasty traps and monster placement. Hell Revealed, for example, is the first and foremost of those wads. Thematically, it doesn't use the jungle/catacombs setting as Plutonia, but it implements and expands on its gameplay style. I agree with Battle Kirby on his thoughts, because from what I remembered last year when playing HR with the DWMC, there were several people bashing and hating on the mapset because it's "too Wolf 3D/RotT-ish (which is bullshit, there's variety and eye-catching level design on HR), gameplay's a broken slog, it's all slaughter, it's impossible on UV, Plutonia did it better, blah, blah, blah," which translates to "It's the wad's fault I can't beat it! Plutonia rules, HR drools!" That to me is unfair and very biased, because they're overly praising one wad and ignore its flaws, yet spit on another wad that uses the same kind of stratagems as its predecessor and point out its so-called "problems" without even taking note of the more positive aspects, like the music, for example (huge fan of the RotT soundtrack which most of HR uses). Nowadays, it seems to be a trend for the majority of the community to openly and adamantly despise HR, and that's really sad to know since it's one of my favourite classic megawads and it still is to this day. Don't get me wrong, Plutonia is a good mapset for the most part, but I give other wads a chance and not hate them for trivial reasons.

There seems to be a lot of people talking about "the community" supposedly despising this and that in this thread despite the community having people with all sorts of tastes like my fondness for huge, slow-burning adventure maps, people who dig the arty approach of people like Xaser, fans of exposure/pressure based maps like skillsaw's, the people who love Plutonia so much that they've made several tribute megawads, hardcore slaughter fans, ella guro's attraction to the Russian Doom community's maps, etc. But HR is regarded as a classic for a reason, and its influence can be felt in the entire slaughter genre, plus the tendency of more traditional megawads to turn towards slaughter in the third episode.

 

E: holy fuck I should remind myself not to reply to shit I find via the search

Edited May 29, 2017 by Woolie Wool