darmok

Real geniuses on this forum

We all had internet access and knew where to get things. Please stop talking to me like I wasn't there.

My friend had the official Doom shareware floppies. Even at that time I made fun of him for paying for something you could download for free.

We don't need to turn this into a discussion about what we are allowed to critique. Doom 2 was not given away for free. Whatever pressures it was made under are irrelevant. I paid the same full price that I did for every other game at the time so it is perfectly valid to compare it to its contemporaries. I said up front that I know I am looking at this thru a modern lens. That's why I asked what others thought at the time of release. But instead of getting an answer to that question I am just getting endlessly attacked because of one comment or because some are feeling personally insulted that I dared say anything bad about their favorite game. Anyway plenty of people agree with me and plenty don't. There is nothing else to say here.

Oh right the old "you can't review a movie until you've made your own" argument. And I'm totally sure you've never given your opinion about *anything* before you made one yourself right? Right? A movie? A game? A smartphone? A car? Have you made all of those yourself? By that logic your positive comments don't mean anything either until you've made your own WAD. In fact forget the WAD you need to write your own game engine from scratch. Only then will your opinion begin to have any validity. Until then please stay quiet because you have no right to any opinion on any game. Got it?

Main thing I don't like about the bonuses is that the game lets you pick them up even when you are maxed out essentially wasting them. In fact this is true of all the power ups. I guess this was done so they could count towards the Item total.

The physical layout of the levels is only part of my complaint. If it was just that it wouldn't bother me so much. It's more the gameplay that feels gimmicky. I just finished the last few levels last night. Among them Monster Condo which is an entire level where dozens of monsters come out of hidden walls over and over. Like I said I'm sure when this is the first FPS you ever played you wouldn't be this critical. But I still remember a lot of cynicism around Doom 2 in general when it came out. "The only new weapon is another shotgun. Its just an expansion pack." etc. Even back then I heard about the ridicule/frustration at infamous levels like Barrels and Chasm.

Because you'll get into an endless debate about what constitutes a glitch. I don't really follow speedrunning but I wasn't aware that there are many glitchless categories for other games.

Dead Simple, Barrels of fun, Suburbs Yes I did. The map is called suburbs and I walk into a building with a garage door, front porch and living room. I recognized it immediately as being a house. Going to the wiki confirmed it.

Are you saying you can't make a level with a square room and an exit in the middle or a level full of 200 barrels or a level with a floor plan of your house? Because yeah I definitely could have made that. Map design in those days was always abstract even when they represented real world locations. That's because they prioritized gameplay over architectural realism. And no player complained about that in those days. Given the limitations of the tech it wasn't a good idea to try to make a real city with streets and skyscrapers rather than just go for something that's fun. And why were they so concerned with realism all of a sudden? That's never been something associated with Doom.

So obviously I'm not the first person to have this opinion. Not sure why there is much hostility around here.

Just because somebody disagrees with you doesn't make them a troll. I bow down before your greatness at a 30 year old video game. Did I ever say I wasn't an amateur?

Me and Jalad are at Tanagra. ;) Fun reading all the comments so far. I might not have fully articulated my opinion. Maybe "gimmick" isn't the right word. I've seen some using "joke" or "lazy". I don't want to be that harsh but that's kind of the vibe I get. Best comparison I can give is the "Nuts" wad. That was obviously created as a joke. "Here is a room with 10000 monsters. Have at it". No thought whatsoever for a creative and fun level design. Well isn't "Dead Simple" just about the same thing? "Here is a simple square with a dozen mancubi and arachnatrons. Go for it". And that's far from the only level that gave me that feeling. And yes I am obviously looking at this with 30 years of foresight. I'm sure no one thought this when this was the first FPS they ever played. And you certainly can't fault the designers when they were in uncharted territory.

50 is an exaggeration but not far from the truth on UV. There are a couple of places where that happens but almost every level has new enemies that appear when you press a switch or a key or backtrack. This can be fun the first couple of times but not when its relied on as a crutch. Doom3 had this same problem.

So despite having owned these games since release I'm just now doing my first complete playthru so consider this old news. As I'm going through Doom 2 I am struck by how silly many of the levels feel. A lot of these feel like something I would have made myself at the time playing around with an editor. Just creating shapes or copying my house layout. Without much thought to good design. And then you have levels like Tricks and Traps, Barrels of Fun, and the infamous Chasm which are the most gimmicky of all. I know most of these were designed by Sandy Peterson and there are lots of opinions about him. But he also did all of Episode 2 and 3 of Doom and I never really got this feeling with those levels. And then there is the gameplay itself which mostly consists of having 50 enemies appear out of nowhere. It just seems like they were needlessly punishing the player by clicking Add Monster over and over. Again something I would expect from amateur level designers. (And I know Final Doom is even harder) Maybe these were received differently at the time since it was still the infancy of FPS games. What were your thoughts then and now?