Doom 1 or 2?

[Fadri]

Doom 2 is better because is the one I played when I was a teen.

[openroadracer]

4 hours ago, daydreamer said:

I agree, the amount of Barons in Doom becomes a bit too much at the end, some variety in monsters would have been better (maybe PSX version fixed this? Haven’t tried it yet)

 

But overall, I’m finding I’m more likely to think “I wish Doom had more monster variety” than “I wish Doom II had better maps”. The atmosphere and level design/flow is just better in Doom which is why it gets my vote.

If anyone knows of a good, well-made mod that replaces a good number of DooM 93's Barons with D2's demons(maybe even thin the number of former humans by sprinkling in a few Chaingunners), I'd appreciate it.

[Captain Muskrat]

Doom's level design was better more often than not compared to Doom II, and I feel that new enemies like the chaingunners, the revenants and the arch vile were annoying to fight and turned an already challenging game into a borderline sweat fest. The roster of baddies just seemed a lot more balanced to me in Doom, and I found myself really abusing the super shotgun in Doom 2 to the point where I barely used anything else. It really threw a monkey wrench in the heirarchy of weapons, and because it made short work of pinkies they had to introduced tougher and more annoying enemies to compensate, like the ones I mentioned.

 

Some people will disagree and that's fair enough, but I seldom play Doom II at all nowadays. The lack of the episodic format means I'd have to play from start-to-finish all the time too, unless I used a console command/cheat which really doesn't count. I'd imagine Ultimate Doom + Sigil offers a more compelling experience for more people.

[enigma101]

Doom 2. I can trade Pain Elementals for the SSG.

[openroadracer]

42 minutes ago, Captain Muskrat said:

The lack of the episodic format means I'd have to play from start-to-finish all the time too, unless I used a console command/cheat which really doesn't count.

I honestly prefer the format of a singular long campaign over separate shorter episodes.

If there was a mod out there that converted all of DooM '93 into a singular 36-(45 if you count SI6IL)map continuous campaign, and added the Super Shotgun and DooM II's enemy roster, I'd pretty much have it made.

[Moustachio]

9 minutes ago, openroadracer said:

If there was a mod out there that converted all of DooM '93 into a singular 36-(45 if you count SI6IL)map continuous campaign, and added the Super Shotgun and DooM II's enemy roster, I'd pretty much have it made.

 

I think PlayStation Doom may have done it even better and converted all of Doom 93 + Doom II into one 60-odd map campaign, adding the SSG and D2 enemies into D1 maps. The trade off is that the music and aesthetics have been changed. Well worth checking out regardless.

[BeachThunder]

2 minutes ago, Moustachio said:

 

I think PlayStation Doom may have done it even better and converted all of Doom 93 + Doom II into one 60-odd map campaign, adding the SSG and D2 enemies into D1 maps. The trade off is that the music and aesthetics have been changed. Well worth checking out regardless.

I was just looking into PSX Doom the other day, I can't stop thinking about Club Doom...

[openroadracer]

14 minutes ago, Moustachio said:

I think PlayStation Doom may have done it even better and converted all of Doom 93 + Doom II into one 60-odd map campaign, adding the SSG and D2 enemies into D1 maps. The trade off is that the music and aesthetics have been changed. Well worth checking out regardless.

Meh, I'd rather keep the original PC version's soundtrack if possible.

Or, maybe I could just use a music randomizer mod loaded with fast and intense music to keep the pace up.

[Captain Muskrat]

1 minute ago, openroadracer said:

Meh, I'd rather keep the original PC version's soundtrack if possible.

Or, maybe I could just use a music randomizer mod loaded with fast and intense music to keep the pace up.

I think ambient tracks age better than loud, bombastic ones. If you play Doom enough times, you begin to really tire of it's loud soundtrack. From what I've heard of PSX Doom, it's music is enough to set the mood but not enough to annoy you on repeat playthroughs.

[openroadracer]

Just now, Captain Muskrat said:

I think ambient tracks age better than loud, bombastic ones. If you play Doom enough times, you begin to really tire of it's loud soundtrack. From what I've heard of PSX Doom, it's music is enough to set the mood but not enough to annoy you on repeat playthroughs.

Nah, not for me. ESPECIALLY not for DooM. I prefer something with some intensity and pace to it.

And with the nature of DooM's gameplay, give me some blazing electric guitars.

[AceQuorthon]

What a blast reading through this ancient forum thread!

Anyway, Doom 1 is superior. Doom 2 has more enemies and the super shotgun, but the level design can suck pretty hard compared to Doom 1.

[espilka]

Ultimate Doom, because sometimes less really is more.  There's a coherence with the lesser roster of enemies that i enjoy ultimately more over the ethos of Doom II.  As far as pwads go, there's a lot of DII wads, however, that i like as much as any for UD, yet, at the same time, i think i like a greater percentage of UD sets than DII sets that often take the game to a direction i don't really like.

[sW1chyboi]

Doom 2

 

Reason?

 

Super Shotgun

 

Leading more possibilities for modding

[Ozcar]

On 7/17/2023 at 2:54 PM, AceQuorthon said:

What a blast reading through this ancient forum thread!

Anyway, Doom 1 is superior. Doom 2 has more enemies and the super shotgun, but the level design can suck pretty hard compared to Doom 1.

Doom 2 has better gameplay than ultimate doom.
I cant stand ultimate doom without supershotgun, trying to shoot many times at cacodemon and baron of hell without super shotgun is not fun. Sure ultimate doom has better level design, but the gameplay is weak compared to ultimate doom, also doom 2 has better enemy varieties.
Gameplay >>>>> Level design.

[Individualised]

On 7/17/2023 at 2:03 AM, Moustachio said:

 

I think PlayStation Doom may have done it even better and converted all of Doom 93 + Doom II into one 60-odd map campaign, adding the SSG and D2 enemies into D1 maps. The trade off is that the music and aesthetics have been changed. Well worth checking out regardless.

No it didn't... a lot of levels, especially from the Doom 2 side are completely missing. The SSG is only in one map of the Doom 1 portion, and it's not even from an original Doom 1 level but a new level made for the PS1 version. The Doom 1 portion's levels were also barely updated from the Jaguar version (the version of Doom that the PS1 version is based on), so not only are they even more cut down than the conversions of the Doom 2 levels but they're also missing things that were removed from the Jaguar version like many power-ups. Meaning things like the night vision goggles don't appear until episode 4.

 

It's still a great version of Doom, just not as definitive as this post makes it out to be.

On 7/17/2023 at 1:07 AM, Captain Muskrat said:

Doom's level design was better more often than not compared to Doom II, and I feel that new enemies like the chaingunners, the revenants and the arch vile were annoying to fight and turned an already challenging game into a borderline sweat fest. The roster of baddies just seemed a lot more balanced to me in Doom, and I found myself really abusing the super shotgun in Doom 2 to the point where I barely used anything else. It really threw a monkey wrench in the heirarchy of weapons, and because it made short work of pinkies they had to introduced tougher and more annoying enemies to compensate, like the ones I mentioned.

 

Some people will disagree and that's fair enough, but I seldom play Doom II at all nowadays. The lack of the episodic format means I'd have to play from start-to-finish all the time too, unless I used a console command/cheat which really doesn't count. I'd imagine Ultimate Doom + Sigil offers a more compelling experience for more people.

I'm confused? Doom 2 has saving, why would you need to play from start to finish if you don't want to?

On 7/17/2023 at 2:24 AM, Captain Muskrat said:

I think ambient tracks age better than loud, bombastic ones. If you play Doom enough times, you begin to really tire of it's loud soundtrack. From what I've heard of PSX Doom, it's music is enough to set the mood but not enough to annoy you on repeat playthroughs.

I'm not a big fan of Aubrey Hodges' work for PS1 Doom. You can tell that there were strict limitations with the sound hardware and you quickly notice that many songs are just the same sample over and over. Sometimes I like repetition like that but something about it in this soundtrack doesn't really work. It's especially annoying with that one track that uses a demonic choir sample, I mean no disrespect but that track gives me a headache. It's especially worse because of the PS1's fake reverb that just doesn't sound good, PS1 Doom makes use of it extensively not only for the music but sound effects have the reverb applied to it too and it pretty much ruins the otherwise great sound effects that Aubrey did.

 

Doom 64 on the other hand has a fucking awesome sound.

Edited July 25, 2023 by Individualised

[ReaperAA]

On 7/17/2023 at 5:07 AM, Captain Muskrat said:

I feel that new enemies like the chaingunners, the revenants and the arch vile were annoying to fight and turned an already challenging game into a borderline sweat fest. The roster of baddies just seemed a lot more balanced to me in Doom

 

Not gonna say your opinion is invalid or anything. But honestly, if you play Doom 2 on easier skills and make use of saves, then it is nowhere near a sweat fest. Both Doom 1 and Doom 2 (excluding Plutonia) are arguably much easier than most 90s fps games.

 

Also I find Doom 1's roster too limited or samey. Doom 1 only has enemies that are either hitscan (zombies, spider mastermind), melee (pinkies, lost souls) or single projectiles (imps, cacodemons, barons, cyberdemon) than can be circlestrafed easily.

 

Whereas Doom 2 added:

• Enemies which fire homing projectiles (revenants) or projectiles in spread manner (mancubus), thus requiring more work to dodge than just simple circlestrafing
• Enemies which spawn enemies (pain elementals) or resurrect enemies (archviles), thus adding combat urgency to dispatch them quickly
• Enemies with good area denial capability (archvile with their delayed Line of sight attack or archnotrons with their stream of projectiles) requiring a good cover to dodge.

 

On 7/17/2023 at 5:07 AM, Captain Muskrat said:

I found myself really abusing the super shotgun in Doom 2 to the point where I barely used anything else. It really threw a monkey wrench in the heirarchy of weapons, and because it made short work of pinkies they had to introduced tougher and more annoying enemies to compensate, like the ones I mentioned.

 

This honestly could also be a reason why you find Doom 2 too hard. Although Doom 2 can be mostly beaten with the SSG (depending on your skills), there are places where you really are better off using higher tier weapons like rocket launcher, plasma or BFG.

[KickAss]

Doom ][ - Hell On Earth is the better game over all but the first episode of DooM / Ultimate DooM - Knee Deep In The Dead is a must play for very gamer!

 

 

[bsharp]

Doom the Third, obviously. 3 is bigger than both 1 and 2.

(jokes aside, doom ii)

[smeghammer]

yes...

 

Spoiler

Seriously: D2 has more 'stuff' - monsters, weapons etc. - but as I first played D1, that is forever embedded as the 'best'.

 

[NullTheShadow]

I prefer Doom II for many reasons, including more monster variety, more maps, and SSG.

[Knor964]

Doom 1 is the first game I ever played I am gonna give it a 5 out of 5.

Doom II is the second game I ever played I love the new monsters and the SSG but some of the levels are not my favorites sooo 4,5/5

 

 

[Akagi666]

Doom II for the better bestiary and new weapons. The archvile, chaingunner, revenant, arachnotron, mancubus and pain elemental add so much to the game. I don't care how good the maps in Doom 1 are if you're just shotgunning barons and pinkies in a hallway, that's boring.

[SilverHurling]

 

Doom 1 premise is that of a marine stranded in the moon base, you pick up whatever weapon is around and try to survive against all odds to the hordes of hell that are trying to get out of the moon to earth. Narratively makes sense to not be a powerhouse and gives more in the direction to moody/horror via gameplay. That I believe is what makes Doom 1 the better one.

 

But of course; SSG goes brrr

[aloysiusfreeman]

Doom Ultimate for me because thats the one which has been imprinted in my brain for my entire life. 

[OniriA]

Neither.

 

Only If I'm so tired that my eyes are constantly falling into a half awake/half sleep state, I might fire up e2m2 for the vibes and to just zone out.

 

Other then that, playing the games in any other state would bore the fuck out of me within a minute. 

[BUYXRAYS]

Usually I would say Final doom but out of the two, I would say I prefer doom 1

[Cutman 999]

Doom 2. Even if it has rougher edges than the first game, the new enemies truly carry the game for me. 

[St. Mildly Annoyed]

On 4/19/2023 at 2:03 AM, TheMightyWhoosh said:

Doom has an atmosphere that isn’t really felt in Doom II.

  I feel this is due to the higher density and attention to detail Doom had. While the new enemies and the ssg where a nice addition, to me Doom's levels felt more varied and realistic for it's time, like it was trying to make an accurate depiction of hell if it invaded in the near future. It captured the tension, brutality, and eldritch horrors of what a demonic invasion could be like in each of it's textures/level designs, with increasing intensity in the latter aspects the deeper we get into hell. Doom's density also helps make each level feel more natural and less boxy, which added to fights and avoiding levels degrading into sloughs to get through. this also helped fit demons and undead in different niches instead of having a baron = fat imp problem. Doom had some solid level design over all, with a few that stand out.

  Doom ii on the other hand had much more variable quality, with bouts of poor mapping at several points. while doom also has some poor levels, to me it doesn't have anything truly ugly, but I'll get to that point later. Doom ii seems a bit faster paced and dumber than it's predecessor, having more open space and less complexity when it comes to how demons and hell itself is approached. It ends up more as a 1st person 3d shoot em up rather than a playable action horror movie like doom 1.  this could also be why it often has more mediocre and a couple borderline awful levels , which can feel inorganic, counterintuitive, boring, and a bit frustrating at times. Worse yet, it even has one level I would consider to be genuinely hatable and posterchild of this games level problems, The Citadel. while most of doom has decent levels, some mediocre, a few good and bad, citadel is just straight up horrible to me. It's filled with wacky dumb shit no other levels have in doom ii that make it feel almost like if someone improved a mock 2 level and thrown it in just to see if anybody would notice. the one that stands out the most to me is that one key, which you supposedly need to complete the level, is one of the tougher to access goddamn SECRETs, that you fucking DON'T NEED if you just try and squeeze through the bars, which no other level allows you to do, making it completely COUNTERINTUITIVE AND IRELLEVANT TO ANY OTHER PART OF THE GAME AND IT'S MECHANICS.

Other than the citadel Doom ii's maps being mediocre on average handicap and counter balance the new enemies appeal and benefit to the gameplay. 

 When comparing mapping alone doom would be an 9 while doom ii a 7. but the ssg and extra demons boost it to an 8.5 for me. I know the rant I just posted about about the citadel may make it seem like I hate Doom ii's maps and think Doom's vastly superior, but I don't. Doom ii has quite a few levels I prefer over the earlier parts of episode 2, most of 4, and e1m9. The new enemies and ssg bring a variety that would've helped the first game out as much as it did the second. It just has worse mapping it couldn't or didn't compensate for.

 

[Individualised]

12 minutes ago, St. Mildly Annoyed said:

  I feel this is due to the higher density and attention to detail Doom had. While the new enemies and the ssg where a nice addition, to me Doom's levels felt more varied and realistic for it's time, like it was trying to make an accurate depiction of hell if it invaded in the near future. It captured the tension, brutality, and eldritch horrors of what a demonic invasion could be like in each of it's textures/level designs, with increasing intensity in the latter aspects the deeper we get into hell. Doom's density also helps make each level feel more natural and less boxy, which added to fights and avoiding levels degrading into sloughs to get through. this also helped fit demons and undead in different niches instead of having a baron = fat imp problem. Doom had some solid level design over all, with a few that stand out.

  Doom ii on the other hand had much more variable quality, with bouts of poor mapping at several points. while doom also has some poor levels, to me it doesn't have anything truly ugly, but I'll get to that point later. Doom ii seems a bit faster paced and dumber than it's predecessor, having more open space and less complexity when it comes to how demons and hell itself is approached. It ends up more as a 1st person 3d shoot em up rather than a playable action horror movie like doom 1.  this could also be why it often has more mediocre and a couple borderline awful levels , which can feel inorganic, counterintuitive, boring, and a bit frustrating at times. Worse yet, it even has one level I would consider to be genuinely hatable and posterchild of this games level problems, The Citadel. while most of doom has decent levels, some mediocre, a few good and bad, citadel is just straight up horrible to me. It's filled with wacky dumb shit no other levels have in doom ii that make it feel almost like if someone improved a mock 2 level and thrown it in just to see if anybody would notice. the one that stands out the most to me is that one key, which you supposedly need to complete the level, is one of the tougher to access goddamn SECRETs, that you fucking DON'T NEED if you just try and squeeze through the bars, which no other level allows you to do, making it completely COUNTERINTUITIVE AND IRELLEVANT TO ANY OTHER PART OF THE GAME AND IT'S MECHANICS.

Other than the citadel Doom ii's maps being mediocre on average handicap and counter balance the new enemies appeal and benefit to the gameplay. 

 When comparing mapping alone doom would be an 9 while doom ii a 7. but the ssg and extra demons boost it to an 8.5 for me. I know the rant I just posted about about the citadel may make it seem like I hate Doom ii's maps and think Doom's vastly superior, but I don't. Doom ii has quite a few levels I prefer over the earlier parts of episode 2, most of 4, and e1m9. The new enemies and ssg bring a variety that would've helped the first game out as much as it did the second. It just has worse mapping it couldn't or didn't compensate for.

 

The reason Doom 2 doesn't have the same atmosphere is because it uses generic textures for most of the levels, whether or not they're supposed to be techbase or hell, if you didn't know about the game's story you might not even be able to tell. It wasn't always like this, the reason for them changing the texturing to be like that is unknown but we know that they were having issues with storage limitations. It might also have to do with them shifting around the level order late into development.

[Akagi666]

I play games for the gameplay. If I wanted atmosphere or story, I'd read a book or watch a movie. Shotgunning Barons and Cacodemons in hallways over and over again is dog shite gameplay. Doom II has better gameplay, so it's a better game.

Edited August 12, 2023 by Akagi666