Let me guess, your reasons are... -Levels are primitive and ugly compared to the community's gold standard of wads, like Ancient Aliens, Sunlust, and the Eviternity duology -Limited enemy variety and lack of a Super Shotgun makes combat "anemic" -Hell Beneath and Perfect Hatred will turn off like 95% of the player base from even *attempting* E4: Thy Flesh Consumed -The original three boss levels are considered "disappointing" by today's high standards So.... What did I miss?
@@protostar5946 Not even close! 1) I refuse to compare the game to modern WADs, it's unfair and not the point. If I were to compare the game, where would I stop? Do I compare it to Duke Nukem 3D? Doom Eternal? No, it needs to stand on its own. 2) No, I actually love the simplistic nature of the game. I didn't criticize Doom 64 for having fewer enemies either. It's just different. 3) I'm not talking about episode 4, that is its own thing in my opinion. If I made a Wolfenstein 3D critique, I also wouldn't talk about Spear of Destiny, even if they often get bunched together. 4) Only the last boss, I love the other two. There's a million things to point out, but they're none of those.
I LOVE you for making videos like this that actually show the weaknesses of games like this. It is important for future game designers to know what they should NOT take away from older games.
A lot of the criticism just sounds like a consequence of Id breaking new grounds in the FPS genre. It is hard to know what bad Level design for FPS shooters is if you are developing the genre in real time. Still criticizing that is good because it shows us that no game is perfect.
I'd argue the level design in Doom 1 is significantly better than in Doom 2. Going back to what he said about a lot of the levels having "unfair" elements, I personally feel like Doom 1 has very few, if any of those. Meanwhile to point out another one from Doom 2, in map 17 "Tenements" to raise a bridge that leads to a keycard you have to literally fall into a narrow pit with a pain elemental. How are you supposed to know that!? I feel like this was more due to the slightly rushed development than anything, the game is still good, but 10 months isn't much time to make 32 levels.
@@1mariomaniacI think that’s honestly cause doom players want that increase in difficulty, or maybe that’s the ideas they had? Furthermore It’s also a consequence of the games premise, being on earth, I suspect that leads to some really weird design choices as it’s definitely meant to be “the earth is getting more and more demonic”
Well well, I was planning on doing a video on Doom 2 as well. I realized on a vanilla replay of Doom 1 that I like it significantly more than Doom 2, but the way I was gonna approach it was from the angle of Doom 1 leaning more into survival horror, while Doom 2 leans more into action and mastery. Doom 2, though, doesn't do enough to develop the gameplay of Doom 1 to a more action-oriented title. The fist and Pistol are still useless, for example, and the slow weapon swaps become less of a clunky survival-horror mechanic that forces you to strategize your weapon usage, and more of an annoyance that cripples the flow of a fight. Not to mention the Shotgun would be way more valuable if it actually hit the breakpoints that half an SSG could cross. A Shotgun meatshot not killing an Imp or constantly coming up a few points of damage short on killing a Pinky feels a lot worse when you're fighting HUNDREDS of them.
It's worth saying that in Doom 1, these are all very deliberate choices. Chaingun is "pistol but good" on purpose, because it's harder to get your hands on each map. You're meant to struggle with the pistol for a while. The fist is meant to be a desperation weapon, and even with the beserk pack it remains a significant risk. Combat is meant to be a little methodical, because while you have speed, your weapons will often hold you back. In Doom 2 this all kind of starts to fall apart, though. Things like a dedicated enemy that drops Chainguns and the Super Shotgun being the new Shotgun feel like bandaids over the problem due to time constraints. It makes me wonder what more time in development could have made Doom 2 look like...
Cool to see someone else think about it like this, because I always have. Doom 2 is very... playful? Like Id was telling you "yeah yeah, it isn't new and cool any more, but it's fun so here's some bigger maps for advanced players". So basically: Get rid of RNG damage (across the board frankly, why is this a thing again?), design all maps for pistol starts and refrain from immediately handing people big guns. I don't think the SSG is THAT much of an issue so long as you aren't raining shotgun shells from the sky, which Doom 2 does too often. If you had less ammo you'd think twice and continue using the standard shotgun more often. (Maybe cut it down to 14 pellets, actually just twice the standard shotgun, rather than 20? Or maybe you could avoid removing damage RNG by making the standard shotgun shoot 8 pellets and the SSG 16?) Not sure what to do about the chaingun because Chaingunners are actually a great addition IMO, and shotgun guys set a precedent that enemies drop the weapon they carry. Shotgun ammo ONLY drops from shotgun guys, though, unless it's on the map, and you only get 4 shots per. The shotgun was just scarce enough ammo-wise to be interesting in the first game. Bullets, on the other hand... also drop from regular ol' zombies. The solution MIGHT have been to separate ammo between the pistol and chaingun? Doesn't feel like a very "clean" solution, though. Starting to think I want to make a mod that tries to tackle this.
@@colbyboucher6391 Frankly, give Poom a try. It's Doom for the Pico-8. It annoyed me at first, but once I started to really understand the changes it made, I started to love it way more. (Hint: the shotgunners can be strafed; it took me a while to figure that out). Project Babel also does a lot of cool things to the base formula while keeping it mostly intact, but I do think there's a few places where it goes too far though.
That giant room in the Monster Condo was one of my favorites as a kid. Atmosphere is oozing out of every corner. It sets and amazing tone and it still gives me dread whenever I enter it even at 38. Hell, it gave me dread just seeing it in this video. This is, I think, why people couldn't get into Doom 3. There were always these extremely atmospheric and even serene parts of Doom 1 and 2, but people just harp all the mindless shooting all the time. Sometimes I just turn off the monster and wander around the maps to chill.
This, honestly. Atmosphere is what makes me want to play a game, not the story or the gameplay, those are the building blocks for it together with music and visuals.
@@genyakozlov1316 I think it also depends on the game. For instance in a game like SOMA, my all time favorite game, the atmosphere is thicker than honey, but what makes me come back to it over and over again, despite it not having much of a gameplay, is the story. I always felt these things have to be valued on game by game basis, since the production teams have different goals from game to game.
I think the difference is that Doom 2 isn't really trying to build atmosphere. Doom 1 had the horror element where you're in way over your head, but Doom 2 is more of a power fantasy. Not that it can't work, of course, but when I see a giant room and there's not even any monsters in it, it feels like wasted potential. You can have both atmosphere AND combat.
Indeed. One of the best sequences in Doom 3 is the one where nothing happens. The level is empty, where are all the monsters? The quiet is suddenly more scary than all the onslaught just moments before...
@@tylisirn Doom 3 had insane moments like! I love Doom 3. One of my favorite parts is where you walk up a flight of stairs fighting off some of those spider-like Trite things. On top of the stairs you hear a woman's voice telling you to follow her and bloody footsteps appear on the ground. She leads you through a door into a dead end and suddenly she says "they took my baby" and you hear a child crying. Fucks me up every single time I replay Doom 3. Not much later you encounter the Cherubs and the entire scene is made even more poignant.
Another good thing is the Megasphere. Not only does it give you 200 health, but 200 armor as well. Another problem with Doom 2 is that some secrets are harder to trigger due to how linedefs work, like map 15: Industrial Zone, there's a hidden teleporter with a secret tagged to it, you can't reach the secret due to how the engine works. That's until Zero Master found out that you can get the secret with a Pain Elemental. Also, as a kid I got confused on some levels. Like in courtyard, I though it was just a small room and that's about it. So I typed IDKFA to get all keys to open the exit door. On my next playthrough, I used IDCLIP, and I realized there's more to the Courtyard. On my next playthrough, I shot the door by accident and opened it, and I came up with a technique where shooting the door with a BFG causes most if not all enemies to die due to tracers. I also used IDCLIP in the Spirit World. Also, about the Icon of Sin, if you use any weapon(other than the rocket launcher), your weapon is hitting John Romero, just not his hitbox(it's located in the gibs located under his head). The reason why rocket launchers hurt him is because according to Decino, the rocket's explosions are cubes with infinite height, since the explosions never check for height. Also, unlike modern Doom map editors, where you get to see everything. John Romero and the ID team had a problem where they couldn't see what they were putting in their map, unless they ran it.
I always found it funny that John Anderson, one of the best level designers of the time, kept including inaccessible secrets in his maps. He did it in one of his contributions to the Master Levels (I think it was Nessus?), and then again in his level for episode 4 of The Ultimate Doom (which of course by that point was functionally the same as Doom 2, even if they never added in a super shotgun or any of the other sequel content). Much like with Industrial Zone, I think someone found a way to get at least one of those secrets, though it involved getting blasted across the linedef by a Cyberdemon rocket and so was not exactly a great strategy if you actually wanted to survive the entire level. 😝
It’s a funny little thing, but I really appreciate how you hinted at how we all use “decimate” so wrongly :) These are some great observations about some of the parts that don’t work - I actually had no idea that those other shootable walls later in the game were necessary to find, I must have just activated them all by accident every time I played through Doom 2!
As a kid I agree the better action in maps was more appealing. It felt more exciting to play where Doom 1 felt atmospheric and gloomy. And that’s precisely why as an adult I prefer Doom 1. It’s more atmospheric, creepy and has more general focus than Doom 2’s chaos. Yes I even like Unholy Cathedral with its own visuals and teleporter puzzle even if for many of us we missed the subtle visual clue of which was the right one. Its memorable. A lot of the levels just look nicer in Doom 1.
Honestly I was shocked the first time I heard that Unholy Cathedral was a generally disliked map. The teleporter puzzle was a bit confusing, sure, but a lot of Doom levels are tricky to navigate. I really loved the aesthetic of Unholy Cathedral, and the encounters, I felt, were pretty fun. Its a really memorable map that feels kinda like a real place, unlike so many other Doom and Doom 2 maps.
1:20 yeah we need to normalize criticizing games we love TF2 a game that changed my life and I might not even be here without I have a long long list of criticisms 2:30 I’d argue the caco is a little more iconic despite not being in most modern promotions 5:40 doom 2 contains both my favorite (the crusher) and least favorite (downtown) doom levels 9:23 yeah wallhumping is why I hate doom 2s secrets feel a lot more wall humping 10:40 I hate downtown :( 13:29 I’ve played this game so Many times that I forget that this was even a problem but now that I think about it I think I did have that problem my first time 15:48 the super shotgun nullifies any criticisms of it by simply being the super shotgun
Doom 2 is, strangely enough, one of my favorite games more for providing the systems for other people to make fun FPS levels with than as a standalone game. I also really can't separate it from Doom 1 in my mind the same way that you can't really separate Terminator 1 from Terminator 2. The first entry provides a brilliant framework and a context for the second to exist in, but neither feel truly complete without the other.
even after getting the SSG i use the regular shotgun to have more control over ammo use, some enemies die in one regular shotgun blast.. therefor useing the SSG on them is wasting ammo .
Wads like BTSX even explicitly recommend using the SSG only for tanky enemies for that reason. Imagine running out of shells when you need them only because you used the SSG mostly for groups of like 1 or 2 Zombiemen, lol
Doom 2's main issue is the mediocre level design. It's the only official iwad that I just can't play from start-to-finish because there are simply too many bad levels. The first 6-8 levels aren't so bad, but then the quality plummets quickly. User made levels & mods are literally the only reason D2 is relevant at all. And the SSG should've used its own separate ammo so that it doesn't simply make the regular SG irrelevant the moment you pick it up.
I'm playing through the Doom series in anticipation for Doom: The Dark Ages, and I'm at map 25 of Doom 2. I can't play the game for more than 2 levels at a time because it really starts to feel like a slog around the halfway point. I'm gonna hope that Doom 64's level design is a bit better (excluding that yellow keycard "puzzle" I've already been warned about lmao). Edit: I know I'm in the minority when I say this, but Doom 64 is leagues better than Doom 2 imo. I ended up quitting Doom 2 and apparently I beat Doom 64 in 3 days I was hooked lmao.
Regarding the super shotgun, there should have been fewer shells overall to encourage using other weapons. I also feel like Doom 2 could've used a more episodic structure. Getting the SSG in MAP02 really gives the player very few places to go from there in terms of getting more powerful.
I guess by Doom 2, they figured nobody cares about episodes anymore, and I think they worked better for Doom 1 as well (as you die after episode 1 and have to presumably drop most your weapons to rappel down to hell after episode 2). Like you said, reducing the amount of shotgun ammo would have done wonders. I think Doom 64 had the same issue, I was almost always maxed out on shells.
So basically... Doom 2 is like Japan's version of Super Mario Bros 2, where the high difficulty was catered to players who replayed the first game to an utter mastery and were hungry for a newer, bigger challenge... but the devs went a little overboard as the game demands skill almost from the start. And yet unlike Japan's Mario 2, Id Software stood firm and didn't take the low road by, I dunno... reskinning Chex Quest under the guise of it being the actual "Doom 2". On a side note, I wholeheartedly agree about the Icon of Sin fight. It's already enough you're slowly being overwhelmed by enemies of random types being thrown at you, but the inability to aim upwards to get a better shot at the weak point is frustrating (if playing vanilla and not the mods that allow it, obviously)... Bizarrely, I know the rocket launcher auto-aims/locks-on to targets if they're above or below you as long as you have the shot centered, so why does it choose NOT to for this crucial battle? I know the reality that the weak spot is actually John Romero's head hidden within a secret tunnel inside the Icon of Sin's head, it's just the tunnel is too narrow and too deep for the rockets to go directly for it as it's the splash damage of the explosions that actually can reach it. As for the downside of the Super Shotgun... well, it does use up double the ammo of the normal shotgun, so you'll risk running out of ammo for it faster... you can maybe choose to conserve ammo by using the single-shell normal shotgun for a bit?
While obviously flawed in various ways mentioned here, I found myself really appreciating the vanilla Doom II map designs when I recently replayed the game for the first time in over 20 years. I noticed a lot of little gimmick and design tricks that were groundbreaking at the time and commonplace now, so it was just a cool little journey into the past.
I replayed Doom 2 a few weeks ago, and there were a few parts I definitely thought were at least a little better than I remembered, like Refueling Base and Downtown; but then there were levels like Suburbs which somehow managed to be even worse than my previous impressions. I think my overall opinion on the game averages out to the same as it was. Andrew Hulshult's new remixes definitely kick it up a notch though! And putting gameplay aside, it always seemed a little bit of a letdown that besides the skybox, Hell in Doom 2 looks mostly like slightly more surreal Earth and UAC. I think 2016 tried to explain this with its retcon that Hell consumes parts of other dimensions and only slowly assimilates them into itself, but even with the justification Hell just doesn't have the sense of hostility that it did in the previous game or any of the later ones.
Good video. I agree that Doom 2 has lots of problems. But imo they mostly come from this game being one of the first FPS titles, inventing the whole genre. ID didn't really have any other games for reference, because there were no other FPS games, so they were just trying out different things they thought would be cool, I guess. Also, from what I know, the game was rushed. Carmack pretty much just wanted more money for Quake's development. (Source: Nirvana's interview podcast with Sandy Petersen). A lot of balancing issues come from the fact that maps are designed for pistol start, it's pretty much the way the game is meant to be played and there isn't enough thought put into balancing the game for continuous playthrough. Which makes it even more strange that they didn't add an option to actually play pistol start without having to "idclev (map №)" every time. If you're not pistol starting, it's easy to accumulate a lot of extra ammo which kinda makes the game a joke, since now you almost always have 50+ rockets and few hundreds of cells. Pistol starting really makes it easier for level designer to create a fun and challenging experience in each map. Kinda disagree with statement about SSG overshadowing the rest of arsenal. Regular shotgun is still useful for shooting low-tier enemies or enemies that are far away, as it has a much longer effective range, especially against enemies with huge hitboxes like arachnotrons or mancubi. And while SSG deals a ton of damage, it has a long downtime between shots. Plasmagun and rocket launcher both have much higher dps, making them much more suitable for bigger harder fights. Rocket launcher has splash damage which is helpful against groups of enemies. And Plasmagun has the highest rate of fire, allowing you to stunlock most enemies in a pain state. SSG basically replaced regular shotgun as a "workhorse" weapon for most cases, because your average enemy is now much tougher: in doom 1 it was mainly imps and demons, sometimes cacos; in doom 2 there are revenants, hellknights, pain elementals etc. It would've been a pain to fight all those new enemies with regular shotgun or chaingun. Btw, in doom 1 a berserked fist was filling the role of SSG for me. Since I play pistol start, dealing with tougher enemies like barons or cacos without rocket launcher or plasma is a slog. So I just punch them, makes it much more fun. The SSG question is also kinda solved with pistol start, since not every map has it. I'd say that most of doom 2's problems come from bad level design. The core mechanics are really solid, it's just that not all levels utilize them well enough. So ultimately, the reason why Doom 2 is still relevant and has a dedicated community is because of user-made content. If the mechanics are good, but levels stink, then just make your own levels. There are plenty of great user-made wads that provide an interesting and challenging gameplay even with the basic doom 2's bestiary and weapons. And some wads also add custom weapons and enemies. Someone already mentioned in this comment section that doom 2 might be a pretty mediocre game if you consider its flaws, but it's a great engine for creating custom maps and other mods. And that's why Doom 2 is one of my favourite games.
"DECIMATES everything in your path... and then gets rid of the other 90% too" wonderful use of this term that's probably going to go over most people's heads lol
Its always important to criticize things we love. I feel like its a bit underrated to actually mention bad parts of good games, so that they can be improved even more
i disagree with the notion that being swarmed with monsters when you leave a teleporter is unfair. you just gotta have quick reflexes! i often prefer to use the regular shotgun on weaker enemies even when i have the ssg, in order to save ammo doom 2's open-ended levels are mostly pretty good from what i remember (the last time i played the game i died too many times on downtown for me to enjoy it anymore lol), but mt erebus fuckin sucks, man. its the worst level in all of doom 1, it just feels like a bunch of random level geometry thrown together haphazardly, like some of the not-so-good levels in mario 64. in addition, it and a lot of the other levels in inferno are just plain ugly. this isn't hell, it's Vaguely Threatening Red And Grey World i dont rly consider dead simple to be a boss level, it's a series of minibosses if you really stretch the definition of miniboss but that's about it once again i highly disagree with your opinion of thy flesh consumed, id even go as far as saying e4m2 is the best doom level ive played. i dont rly see what about the levels would cause you to feel claustrophobic that wouldnt also be true of other levels. also i dont see the big deal with the toxic pits. by the time you get there you already know how to deal with them, and if you ever *need* to spend more than two seconds in them they always give you a radiation suit (at least on hurt me plenty, if they dont do that on uv/nightmare then that does kinda suck but i wouldnt know) other than that, i agree with (or otherwise respond positively to) everything you said
Doom 2 is kinda similar to the Japanese Mario 2 in concept. It too is just an expansion of the original, is it a good expansion. Well yeah! But while i personally think it's better than Doom 1, i still think it's kinda disappointing in a way (But not too much to the point where it bothers me!)
@@shinyagumon7015 Hmmm, i think Quake is like, a better sequel than Doom 2, it's a perfect evolution of the formula and i imagine if there ever was a "Real Doom 2" it would probably be something like that XD.
I don't know about the super shotgun. I mean in lesser difficulties . super maybe. But with faster monsters. that fire rate is BRUTAL. You cant defeat yourself between shots. It still good at Eliminating beefy targets up close but onwhere else, the normal shotty does better at mid and even far range. The fact it has random spread makes it a waste of 2 shells from afar. Still its VERY powerful but just not applicable in open maps or when the game spams so much at you in tight rooms.
Here's a quickie: could use more enemy variety, as almost all the enemies are just a variation of Imps. Doomguy's sprite also feels out of place next to the Anime waifus and would definitely look better if he had a similar artstyle. Best to make a new game with the same premise and mechanics entirely. Oh, and having sex with the demons does absolutely nothing, you gain nothing from it. Kind of lame, if you ask me.
I have to disagree with your point that the SSG trivializes the rest of the weapons. You yourself say that it effectively only trivializes the regular shotty, because you can use other weapons for distant shots and crowd control. Yet, the simple shotty has two advantages over the SSG: 1) It doesn't eat through your ammo as quicky, 2) its spread is entirely horizontal, whereas the SSG spread horizontally and vertically, giving preference to verticality, so while it covers a larger area, it's also easier to waste ammo.
Tbh you are wrong about the rocket launcher (kinda) , its noticeably faster than the SSG and has splash damage (which its a negative since its the only weapon that can kill you) , making it better for damaging hordes of enemies from safe distance or dealing with enemies you cant see due to the highest difficulty , as for the shotgun you also kinda wrong , the chaingun are noticeable for stunlocking more than sniping while the regular shotgun is the opposite , so the shotgun still viable for sniping to save the bullets to stunlock the annoying enemies
Recently I've been playing all of doom 2 again after a long time and I don't know how when I was kid I was able to figure a lot of secrets and steps required to progress, maybe I just spent hours shooting and activating every wall until I found something, also I when I played as a kid, it was on a laptop so I didn't even had a mouse, I have no idea how I did it back then 😂
Great video as always! I remember the first time the inconsistent switches issue came up…. So frustrating! Please cover Doom 1…. And then Doom 3 pleasssseeee
A good analysis. One thing that I really like is that although Doom 2 only introduced one new weapon, the Super Shotgun radically changed how you approach combat encounters and allowed the player to be more aggressive and take more risks. The improved enemy roster and increasingly complex level design played into this perfectly. I agree that it did overshadow other weapons as well; I think this is mainly due to it being introduced so soon, and that the entire game being able to be played without choosing new episodes.
My experience recently with DOOM 2 (after DOOM 1) has been trying to beat the PS4 version on Nightmare difficulty in splitscreen Co-Op to help a friend 100% the achievements. To say there's been a learning curve would be an understatement, but when you finally crack the level and make it, it's incredible. We're up to level 29/30 but it's going to take a lot of practice to finish the gauntlet lol
As someone who has started but not finished _multiple_ Doom 2 playthroughs (almost all of which were modded to some degree), I personally find the levels boring. Also if you want a testament to how popular the Revenant is, I'm currently running a Doom monster popularity poll-tournament on Tumblr, and the Revenant beat the Zombieman, which is kinda like the Doom equivalent of a Mario enemy popularity thing where Chain Chomps win against Goombas.
Honestly, zombiemen are just kind of zombies, which can be found in literally any game. The Revenant, with its shoulder-mounted guns, is kind of unique.
I personally quite enjoy Doom 2, however, when I first played it almost a year ago now, I did not like it for the same reasons you gave: I thought it was very cryptic at many points, the SSG was fun but completely threw off balancing, the levels were so big that I often couldn't see the enemies below me, plenty of levels are just flat out terrible, etc. However, as I played the game more, I started to overlook it's faults more. And now, I genuinely really enjoy it. It has some of the lowest points and the highest points in the franchise. Although, I will disagree with you on one thing: the game is cryptic, yes, but I do not personally feel that it's more cryptic that Doom 64. With Doom 2, I searched up BigMacDavis a number of times but with Doom 64, I found myself looking up BMD on almost every level, a couple times, even twice in one level. It was so bad, that I just dropped the game at level 21. But I'm getting off topic. Overall, great video, of course.
I love seeing one who loves D2 tear it to pieces. I'd LOVE to see you do a video comparing this to the Honte remake. Probably the best D2 remake wad that doesnt overstep the og levels design, layout and intentions, simply does them better and cooler. :D
Ive been playing since doom 2's launch and never knew the teleporter trick for the red key in industrial zone. I always like jumped from the window to the the boxes then essentially ran from each platform to get to the key. Was always a pain in the butt to get and I feel dumb for not ever noticing that. 🤦
I disagree with your super shotgun opinion, I would say the super shotgun is better for crowds of enemies, while the regular shotgun is better for widespread weak enemies that only need to be shot once to be killed, if you are shooting like one shotgunner at a time with the super shotgun, that’s wasting ammo, unless it’s a crowd where the gun actually gets multiple kills
A lot of the issues with the maps you mentioned were pain points for me as well whenever I play through it. Those maps are so troublesome and they are awful, but I still like DOOM 2 a lot. But I agree. DOOM 1 has the better made maps and experience. Thanks for your insight!
I do, as it marks the end of the first "episode" and is similar in style to E1M8 (you fight multiple demons in a single arena, and the walls come down). Maybe more of a mini-boss stage then, but I doubt that concept even existed back then.
7:17 actually you can quick save in console ports, as an Xbox player myself I have many times. It has its own system. Although I guess can’t speak for PlayStation? Even tho I’m pretty sure it does too. Although it could be that this is an early build considered he said ps1.
When I first played classic Doom and Doom II, I played them back to back so it really just felt like one continious experience to me. I think Doom and Doom II are best enjoyed together.
Really don't like it. It's just kinda big and annoying to navigate and then you get locked in rooms to fight enemies. Doesn't flow naturally or anything.
Level design was definitely rushed, Sandy said so in more than one interview, but to me by adding an extra powerful weapon and a few glass cannon enemies Doom 2 had the merit to become a fast paced run n gun game instead of the slow paced survival horror that Doom 1 was. Could you Imagine a HR Wad with Doom 1 assets?
I've never enjoyed playing doom 2. I really like doom 1 a lot better. However, the expansion of the monster roster is so critical to the gameplay of future expansions and mods that when playing said mods, I have the opposite effect. It's really hard to play doom 1 wads in that way IMO.
My opinion in short summary: I like that Doom 2 has more variety and is more experimental, but I feel it has worse pacing than Doom 1, and part of that issue comes from how enemy encounters come in bigger groups than before, taking much longer to clear.
It makes sense to be critical of things you actually like. You break it down into pieces, find what you like and dislike, and use what you found to find more stuff you like.
Doom 2 is best if you are really, really patient. Searching the level for secrets, or hell, even ways to progress can take minutes at a time, but the shooting and everything else is really fun, so it's a tough balance of good and bad.
Something that I feel needs to be said: You have to take into account newer players who will discover the game to weigh pros and cons. The positives make Doom 2 a fairly impressive game in scope for its time. The negatives can make the game extremely frustrating and entirely unplayable unless you want to use walkthroughs and such. I'm a huge FPS fan, but I first played Doom 2 a few years ago. It was a miserable experience, even though I love Doom 1. I gave up halfway though, with a few good lessons in bad game design, but I'm not sure it was worth it. To me, Doom 2 is a good history class for the medium, but a catastrophic sequel aside from the revenant and the super shotgun additions. Yeah I'm going a bit hard maybe, but that's my honest feeling as someone who never played the game at the time.
Oh yeah, many of my points where problems I had with the game when I played it for the first time. I legitimately ran around the Courtyard, pressing "use" on every single switch texture. I also remember having to look up how to actually beat the final boss without the help of mouselook.
Peter Do you remember one of classic Doom's maps that remembers an castle or fortress ? It came in my mind when you were talkingn abour the levels and now i cant remember what map was it
I mean, there's the Citadel, there's Unholy Cathedral, I made a joke comparing The Inmost Dens to 2fort, and there's of course Fortress.WAD, the map 2fort was actually based on.
Your criticism of the Super Shotgun replacing all other weapons in directly answered by those situations where you get teleported into small rooms with imps, that you criticize later. Super Shotgun is absolutely inviable in such situations, while chaingun is great. I also have something to say about shootable switches. They definitely existed. There was, at the very least, the secret in the flashing lights room in e1m2 of Doom 1.
Well, as you can see in the footage, the SSG still works great in those traps... if you know when they're coming. That was my point, you get thrown into these teleporter traps without warning.
Remember: criticismis incredibly inportant for the devolopment of anything. And it is especially important to critise that which we love to 1) understand why we love it, and 2) so that more stuff like it can be made. (And it is also just a good exercise to see if you can actually judge things acurately. Or, if the thing you love is awful, being able to explain why you like it even when it is absolutely horrible…like Hunt Down the Freeman, love the game, absolutely awful.)
Doom 2 is also my favorite Doom game, and one of my favorite games ever! ... But i also realized, even tho one of its greatest strengths, the more complex level design compared to Doom 1, is a weakness to many. Most of my buddies don't seem to enjoy Doom 2 as much as Doom 1, the levels of Doom 2 are both really amazing and questionable, heh.
I agree 100% on this. I would add that there are similarities between Doom 1/2 and Doom 2016/Eternal. Like that the atmosphere and level design in Doom 1 and Doom 2016 is much more grounded and enjoyable (imo) than in Doom 2 and Eternal. But the second game has much better combat, is bigger and more chalenging. And eventually more dickish. I love all Doom games (including Doom 3) but I still enjoy Doom 1 and Doom 2016 more than their sequels.
Honestly, i have a love hate relationship with doom 2, i love the combat and enimies, as well the mods that made me love the classic games and the maps aestetics but BOY how i hate Doom 2's level design, the first third is really nice and fun but in rhe second third fowards it becomes a lot more confusing and frustraring (and i don't mean only the city levels), thing that makes it less fun for me because i hate getting lost.
Honestly in Doom 2 I found myself constantly going "Oh nice, a powerup" or "Oh nice, a keycard" followed immediately by "What's the catch level designer..." Because you KNOW there's basically ALWAYS a catch in Doom 2 lol.
OMG PETER I WILL *gently pet* YOU FOR THAT ONE 1. Super shotgun is slow, close range weapon, which has a slower dps than a rocketlaucher even against bosses. Where does it outshines every other gun? Like sure, you can kill every monster with it...also with any other weapon. But I don't think you used SSG on those big fight or ambushes, didn't you? 2. Yeah, missalighned textures and stuck mosters is pretty bad. But like, a big map is bad because there is extra space? Or because they decided to place a damaging floor here? Welp, ladies and gentelmans, Mt. Pain is officially the worst map in TNT then, because most of the space is just decoration. Just criticising the levels for ''being big'' is a poor argument and it's a really weak argument to call a game bad. 3. Oh no, Tricks 'n Traps has a trap....in the game with save and loads on PC. Yeah. Oh no, Barrels of fun is....barrels. In the game that was made for PC. YEAH. Oh no, a secret isn't revealed to you. A SECRET. S E C R E T. It's in a f*cking name. 4. Downtown can be criptic, sure. Citadel was pretty easy for me to navigate, idk guess "skill issue git gud lol". And remember: an overview are is ALSO A SECRET. You can literally finish Courtyard by picking up yellow key. Guess a ''weird quirky skill issue'' Spirit World is pretty bad, but giving 90% of the players get passed this moment I guess it works...kinda...magically... I dead ass knew playing Doom 2 through browser that I needed to open this door in Living End, it's a game knowledge you talked about, just like Sigil eyes. ICON OF SIN IS FUN AND GOOD and you can't change my mind. So the worst game in the series has a problems of:levels Let's look at other games, shall we? Doom 1: levels, gets repetative Doom 64: levels, gets repetative Doom 3: different fruit, don't really counts Doom 2016: Balance is fucked, gets repetative Doom Eternal: Balance, specificy in game mechanics. So, out of all of this, what is the worst game in the series? p.s. I wouldn't be upset if you didn't call it like that. Doom 2 has its problems, but do you REALLY needed to stab that game even more after all criticism it had received? It's an already get too much negative for some stupid reasons, guys like FP Media outright specifically state the game as "problematic". P.p.s. It might be looking like ragefull coping, I'm just doing it because HA HA EMOTIONAL ARGUMENTS ARE MUCH FUNNIER, RIGHT??
Dude, I love the game to death, like I repeatedly said in the video. Doesn't mean I'm going to downplay any of these issues. Sure, they're not completely game-breaking, but they're still pretty bad. That doesn't mean the game as a whole is irredeemable (which you seem to think I said).
@@GermanPeter no, you did not said "irredimable", but you did said it's the worst in the series. Also, I specifically written everything about your opinions in the video. Some of the examples and flaws of the game are pretty over exaggerated. I specifically written everything I disagree on. It does not mean Doom 2 don't have flaws, but rather your examples are a) not working b) too streched to the point of player-to-player occurance. It seems you did not read it at all.
None of the Doom games are better than the Last Jedi, not even Rise of Skywalker. Not even the original trilogy is better than TLJ, only the prequel trilogy.
Disclaimer: I REALLY need to make a video like this on Doom 1. My goodness, it's even worse than Doom 2 in a lot of ways. So stay tuned for that lol
I wouldn’t call that hot take elephant but a crap take lol
Let me guess, your reasons are...
-Levels are primitive and ugly compared to the community's gold standard of wads, like Ancient Aliens, Sunlust, and the Eviternity duology
-Limited enemy variety and lack of a Super Shotgun makes combat "anemic"
-Hell Beneath and Perfect Hatred will turn off like 95% of the player base from even *attempting* E4: Thy Flesh Consumed
-The original three boss levels are considered "disappointing" by today's high standards
So.... What did I miss?
Really looking forward to it!
@@protostar5946
Not even close!
1) I refuse to compare the game to modern WADs, it's unfair and not the point. If I were to compare the game, where would I stop? Do I compare it to Duke Nukem 3D? Doom Eternal? No, it needs to stand on its own.
2) No, I actually love the simplistic nature of the game. I didn't criticize Doom 64 for having fewer enemies either. It's just different.
3) I'm not talking about episode 4, that is its own thing in my opinion. If I made a Wolfenstein 3D critique, I also wouldn't talk about Spear of Destiny, even if they often get bunched together.
4) Only the last boss, I love the other two.
There's a million things to point out, but they're none of those.
@@protostar5946 Enough to make me assume you shouldn't have left a comment in the first place.
I LOVE you for making videos like this that actually show the weaknesses of games like this. It is important for future game designers to know what they should NOT take away from older games.
A lot of the criticism just sounds like a consequence of Id breaking new grounds in the FPS genre. It is hard to know what bad Level design for FPS shooters is if you are developing the genre in real time.
Still criticizing that is good because it shows us that no game is perfect.
I'd argue the level design in Doom 1 is significantly better than in Doom 2. Going back to what he said about a lot of the levels having "unfair" elements, I personally feel like Doom 1 has very few, if any of those. Meanwhile to point out another one from Doom 2, in map 17 "Tenements" to raise a bridge that leads to a keycard you have to literally fall into a narrow pit with a pain elemental. How are you supposed to know that!?
I feel like this was more due to the slightly rushed development than anything, the game is still good, but 10 months isn't much time to make 32 levels.
@@1mariomaniacI think that’s honestly cause doom players want that increase in difficulty, or maybe that’s the ideas they had?
Furthermore It’s also a consequence of the games premise, being on earth, I suspect that leads to some really weird design choices as it’s definitely meant to be “the earth is getting more and more demonic”
Well well, I was planning on doing a video on Doom 2 as well.
I realized on a vanilla replay of Doom 1 that I like it significantly more than Doom 2, but the way I was gonna approach it was from the angle of Doom 1 leaning more into survival horror, while Doom 2 leans more into action and mastery.
Doom 2, though, doesn't do enough to develop the gameplay of Doom 1 to a more action-oriented title. The fist and Pistol are still useless, for example, and the slow weapon swaps become less of a clunky survival-horror mechanic that forces you to strategize your weapon usage, and more of an annoyance that cripples the flow of a fight.
Not to mention the Shotgun would be way more valuable if it actually hit the breakpoints that half an SSG could cross. A Shotgun meatshot not killing an Imp or constantly coming up a few points of damage short on killing a Pinky feels a lot worse when you're fighting HUNDREDS of them.
It's worth saying that in Doom 1, these are all very deliberate choices. Chaingun is "pistol but good" on purpose, because it's harder to get your hands on each map. You're meant to struggle with the pistol for a while. The fist is meant to be a desperation weapon, and even with the beserk pack it remains a significant risk. Combat is meant to be a little methodical, because while you have speed, your weapons will often hold you back.
In Doom 2 this all kind of starts to fall apart, though.
Things like a dedicated enemy that drops Chainguns and the Super Shotgun being the new Shotgun feel like bandaids over the problem due to time constraints. It makes me wonder what more time in development could have made Doom 2 look like...
Cool to see someone else think about it like this, because I always have. Doom 2 is very... playful? Like Id was telling you "yeah yeah, it isn't new and cool any more, but it's fun so here's some bigger maps for advanced players".
So basically: Get rid of RNG damage (across the board frankly, why is this a thing again?), design all maps for pistol starts and refrain from immediately handing people big guns.
I don't think the SSG is THAT much of an issue so long as you aren't raining shotgun shells from the sky, which Doom 2 does too often. If you had less ammo you'd think twice and continue using the standard shotgun more often. (Maybe cut it down to 14 pellets, actually just twice the standard shotgun, rather than 20? Or maybe you could avoid removing damage RNG by making the standard shotgun shoot 8 pellets and the SSG 16?)
Not sure what to do about the chaingun because Chaingunners are actually a great addition IMO, and shotgun guys set a precedent that enemies drop the weapon they carry. Shotgun ammo ONLY drops from shotgun guys, though, unless it's on the map, and you only get 4 shots per. The shotgun was just scarce enough ammo-wise to be interesting in the first game. Bullets, on the other hand... also drop from regular ol' zombies. The solution MIGHT have been to separate ammo between the pistol and chaingun? Doesn't feel like a very "clean" solution, though.
Starting to think I want to make a mod that tries to tackle this.
@@colbyboucher6391 Frankly, give Poom a try. It's Doom for the Pico-8.
It annoyed me at first, but once I started to really understand the changes it made, I started to love it way more. (Hint: the shotgunners can be strafed; it took me a while to figure that out).
Project Babel also does a lot of cool things to the base formula while keeping it mostly intact, but I do think there's a few places where it goes too far though.
That giant room in the Monster Condo was one of my favorites as a kid. Atmosphere is oozing out of every corner. It sets and amazing tone and it still gives me dread whenever I enter it even at 38. Hell, it gave me dread just seeing it in this video. This is, I think, why people couldn't get into Doom 3. There were always these extremely atmospheric and even serene parts of Doom 1 and 2, but people just harp all the mindless shooting all the time. Sometimes I just turn off the monster and wander around the maps to chill.
This, honestly. Atmosphere is what makes me want to play a game, not the story or the gameplay, those are the building blocks for it together with music and visuals.
@@genyakozlov1316 I think it also depends on the game. For instance in a game like SOMA, my all time favorite game, the atmosphere is thicker than honey, but what makes me come back to it over and over again, despite it not having much of a gameplay, is the story. I always felt these things have to be valued on game by game basis, since the production teams have different goals from game to game.
I think the difference is that Doom 2 isn't really trying to build atmosphere. Doom 1 had the horror element where you're in way over your head, but Doom 2 is more of a power fantasy. Not that it can't work, of course, but when I see a giant room and there's not even any monsters in it, it feels like wasted potential. You can have both atmosphere AND combat.
Indeed. One of the best sequences in Doom 3 is the one where nothing happens. The level is empty, where are all the monsters? The quiet is suddenly more scary than all the onslaught just moments before...
@@tylisirn Doom 3 had insane moments like! I love Doom 3. One of my favorite parts is where you walk up a flight of stairs fighting off some of those spider-like Trite things. On top of the stairs you hear a woman's voice telling you to follow her and bloody footsteps appear on the ground. She leads you through a door into a dead end and suddenly she says "they took my baby" and you hear a child crying. Fucks me up every single time I replay Doom 3. Not much later you encounter the Cherubs and the entire scene is made even more poignant.
Another good thing is the Megasphere. Not only does it give you 200 health, but 200 armor as well. Another problem with Doom 2 is that some secrets are harder to trigger due to how linedefs work, like map 15: Industrial Zone, there's a hidden teleporter with a secret tagged to it, you can't reach the secret due to how the engine works. That's until Zero Master found out that you can get the secret with a Pain Elemental. Also, as a kid I got confused on some levels. Like in courtyard, I though it was just a small room and that's about it. So I typed IDKFA to get all keys to open the exit door. On my next playthrough, I used IDCLIP, and I realized there's more to the Courtyard. On my next playthrough, I shot the door by accident and opened it, and I came up with a technique where shooting the door with a BFG causes most if not all enemies to die due to tracers. I also used IDCLIP in the Spirit World. Also, about the Icon of Sin, if you use any weapon(other than the rocket launcher), your weapon is hitting John Romero, just not his hitbox(it's located in the gibs located under his head). The reason why rocket launchers hurt him is because according to Decino, the rocket's explosions are cubes with infinite height, since the explosions never check for height. Also, unlike modern Doom map editors, where you get to see everything. John Romero and the ID team had a problem where they couldn't see what they were putting in their map, unless they ran it.
I always found it funny that John Anderson, one of the best level designers of the time, kept including inaccessible secrets in his maps. He did it in one of his contributions to the Master Levels (I think it was Nessus?), and then again in his level for episode 4 of The Ultimate Doom (which of course by that point was functionally the same as Doom 2, even if they never added in a super shotgun or any of the other sequel content). Much like with Industrial Zone, I think someone found a way to get at least one of those secrets, though it involved getting blasted across the linedef by a Cyberdemon rocket and so was not exactly a great strategy if you actually wanted to survive the entire level. 😝
It’s a funny little thing, but I really appreciate how you hinted at how we all use “decimate” so wrongly :) These are some great observations about some of the parts that don’t work - I actually had no idea that those other shootable walls later in the game were necessary to find, I must have just activated them all by accident every time I played through Doom 2!
Hey, thanks David!
As a kid I agree the better action in maps was more appealing. It felt more exciting to play where Doom 1 felt atmospheric and gloomy. And that’s precisely why as an adult I prefer Doom 1. It’s more atmospheric, creepy and has more general focus than Doom 2’s chaos. Yes I even like Unholy Cathedral with its own visuals and teleporter puzzle even if for many of us we missed the subtle visual clue of which was the right one. Its memorable. A lot of the levels just look nicer in Doom 1.
Honestly I was shocked the first time I heard that Unholy Cathedral was a generally disliked map. The teleporter puzzle was a bit confusing, sure, but a lot of Doom levels are tricky to navigate. I really loved the aesthetic of Unholy Cathedral, and the encounters, I felt, were pretty fun. Its a really memorable map that feels kinda like a real place, unlike so many other Doom and Doom 2 maps.
1:20 yeah we need to normalize criticizing games we love
TF2 a game that changed my life and I might not even be here without I have a long long list of criticisms
2:30 I’d argue the caco is a little more iconic despite not being in most modern promotions
5:40 doom 2 contains both my favorite (the crusher) and least favorite (downtown) doom levels
9:23 yeah wallhumping is why I hate doom 2s secrets feel a lot more wall humping
10:40 I hate downtown :(
13:29 I’ve played this game so Many times that I forget that this was even a problem but now that I think about it I think I did have that problem my first time
15:48 the super shotgun nullifies any criticisms of it by simply being the super shotgun
Yeah same, I think the caco is the most iconic. Love the big ol' flying tomato.
Doom 2 is, strangely enough, one of my favorite games more for providing the systems for other people to make fun FPS levels with than as a standalone game.
I also really can't separate it from Doom 1 in my mind the same way that you can't really separate Terminator 1 from Terminator 2. The first entry provides a brilliant framework and a context for the second to exist in, but neither feel truly complete without the other.
even after getting the SSG i use the regular shotgun to have more control over ammo use,
some enemies die in one regular shotgun blast.. therefor useing the SSG on them is wasting ammo .
Wads like BTSX even explicitly recommend using the SSG only for tanky enemies for that reason. Imagine running out of shells when you need them only because you used the SSG mostly for groups of like 1 or 2 Zombiemen, lol
Doom 2's main issue is the mediocre level design. It's the only official iwad that I just can't play from start-to-finish because there are simply too many bad levels. The first 6-8 levels aren't so bad, but then the quality plummets quickly. User made levels & mods are literally the only reason D2 is relevant at all. And the SSG should've used its own separate ammo so that it doesn't simply make the regular SG irrelevant the moment you pick it up.
I'm playing through the Doom series in anticipation for Doom: The Dark Ages, and I'm at map 25 of Doom 2. I can't play the game for more than 2 levels at a time because it really starts to feel like a slog around the halfway point. I'm gonna hope that Doom 64's level design is a bit better (excluding that yellow keycard "puzzle" I've already been warned about lmao).
Edit: I know I'm in the minority when I say this, but Doom 64 is leagues better than Doom 2 imo. I ended up quitting Doom 2 and apparently I beat Doom 64 in 3 days I was hooked lmao.
The SSG makes the gameplay much more samey and boring because there’s little reason to use any of the other guns once you have it
Btw, the stuck enemies and misplaced textures are from the steam versions
Huh, I never realized that Dead Simple could be counted as a boss level...but that makes sense.
The regular shotgun is still the best sniping tool in the game, but I'll agree the SSG casts a long shadow over the rest of the arsenal.
What? Have you ever tap fired chaingun? Lol.
@@Igor369 Both work well, I typically go with whichever I have more ammo for at the moment.
Regarding the super shotgun, there should have been fewer shells overall to encourage using other weapons.
I also feel like Doom 2 could've used a more episodic structure. Getting the SSG in MAP02 really gives the player very few places to go from there in terms of getting more powerful.
I guess by Doom 2, they figured nobody cares about episodes anymore, and I think they worked better for Doom 1 as well (as you die after episode 1 and have to presumably drop most your weapons to rappel down to hell after episode 2). Like you said, reducing the amount of shotgun ammo would have done wonders. I think Doom 64 had the same issue, I was almost always maxed out on shells.
So basically... Doom 2 is like Japan's version of Super Mario Bros 2, where the high difficulty was catered to players who replayed the first game to an utter mastery and were hungry for a newer, bigger challenge... but the devs went a little overboard as the game demands skill almost from the start.
And yet unlike Japan's Mario 2, Id Software stood firm and didn't take the low road by, I dunno... reskinning Chex Quest under the guise of it being the actual "Doom 2".
On a side note, I wholeheartedly agree about the Icon of Sin fight. It's already enough you're slowly being overwhelmed by enemies of random types being thrown at you, but the inability to aim upwards to get a better shot at the weak point is frustrating (if playing vanilla and not the mods that allow it, obviously)... Bizarrely, I know the rocket launcher auto-aims/locks-on to targets if they're above or below you as long as you have the shot centered, so why does it choose NOT to for this crucial battle?
I know the reality that the weak spot is actually John Romero's head hidden within a secret tunnel inside the Icon of Sin's head, it's just the tunnel is too narrow and too deep for the rockets to go directly for it as it's the splash damage of the explosions that actually can reach it.
As for the downside of the Super Shotgun... well, it does use up double the ammo of the normal shotgun, so you'll risk running out of ammo for it faster... you can maybe choose to conserve ammo by using the single-shell normal shotgun for a bit?
While obviously flawed in various ways mentioned here, I found myself really appreciating the vanilla Doom II map designs when I recently replayed the game for the first time in over 20 years. I noticed a lot of little gimmick and design tricks that were groundbreaking at the time and commonplace now, so it was just a cool little journey into the past.
I replayed Doom 2 a few weeks ago, and there were a few parts I definitely thought were at least a little better than I remembered, like Refueling Base and Downtown; but then there were levels like Suburbs which somehow managed to be even worse than my previous impressions.
I think my overall opinion on the game averages out to the same as it was. Andrew Hulshult's new remixes definitely kick it up a notch though!
And putting gameplay aside, it always seemed a little bit of a letdown that besides the skybox, Hell in Doom 2 looks mostly like slightly more surreal Earth and UAC. I think 2016 tried to explain this with its retcon that Hell consumes parts of other dimensions and only slowly assimilates them into itself, but even with the justification Hell just doesn't have the sense of hostility that it did in the previous game or any of the later ones.
Good video. I agree that Doom 2 has lots of problems. But imo they mostly come from this game being one of the first FPS titles, inventing the whole genre. ID didn't really have any other games for reference, because there were no other FPS games, so they were just trying out different things they thought would be cool, I guess. Also, from what I know, the game was rushed. Carmack pretty much just wanted more money for Quake's development. (Source: Nirvana's interview podcast with Sandy Petersen).
A lot of balancing issues come from the fact that maps are designed for pistol start, it's pretty much the way the game is meant to be played and there isn't enough thought put into balancing the game for continuous playthrough. Which makes it even more strange that they didn't add an option to actually play pistol start without having to "idclev (map №)" every time. If you're not pistol starting, it's easy to accumulate a lot of extra ammo which kinda makes the game a joke, since now you almost always have 50+ rockets and few hundreds of cells. Pistol starting really makes it easier for level designer to create a fun and challenging experience in each map.
Kinda disagree with statement about SSG overshadowing the rest of arsenal. Regular shotgun is still useful for shooting low-tier enemies or enemies that are far away, as it has a much longer effective range, especially against enemies with huge hitboxes like arachnotrons or mancubi. And while SSG deals a ton of damage, it has a long downtime between shots. Plasmagun and rocket launcher both have much higher dps, making them much more suitable for bigger harder fights. Rocket launcher has splash damage which is helpful against groups of enemies. And Plasmagun has the highest rate of fire, allowing you to stunlock most enemies in a pain state. SSG basically replaced regular shotgun as a "workhorse" weapon for most cases, because your average enemy is now much tougher: in doom 1 it was mainly imps and demons, sometimes cacos; in doom 2 there are revenants, hellknights, pain elementals etc. It would've been a pain to fight all those new enemies with regular shotgun or chaingun. Btw, in doom 1 a berserked fist was filling the role of SSG for me. Since I play pistol start, dealing with tougher enemies like barons or cacos without rocket launcher or plasma is a slog. So I just punch them, makes it much more fun. The SSG question is also kinda solved with pistol start, since not every map has it.
I'd say that most of doom 2's problems come from bad level design. The core mechanics are really solid, it's just that not all levels utilize them well enough. So ultimately, the reason why Doom 2 is still relevant and has a dedicated community is because of user-made content. If the mechanics are good, but levels stink, then just make your own levels. There are plenty of great user-made wads that provide an interesting and challenging gameplay even with the basic doom 2's bestiary and weapons. And some wads also add custom weapons and enemies. Someone already mentioned in this comment section that doom 2 might be a pretty mediocre game if you consider its flaws, but it's a great engine for creating custom maps and other mods. And that's why Doom 2 is one of my favourite games.
"DECIMATES everything in your path... and then gets rid of the other 90% too" wonderful use of this term that's probably going to go over most people's heads lol
Its always important to criticize things we love. I feel like its a bit underrated to actually mention bad parts of good games, so that they can be improved even more
i disagree with the notion that being swarmed with monsters when you leave a teleporter is unfair. you just gotta have quick reflexes!
i often prefer to use the regular shotgun on weaker enemies even when i have the ssg, in order to save ammo
doom 2's open-ended levels are mostly pretty good from what i remember (the last time i played the game i died too many times on downtown for me to enjoy it anymore lol), but mt erebus fuckin sucks, man. its the worst level in all of doom 1, it just feels like a bunch of random level geometry thrown together haphazardly, like some of the not-so-good levels in mario 64. in addition, it and a lot of the other levels in inferno are just plain ugly. this isn't hell, it's Vaguely Threatening Red And Grey World
i dont rly consider dead simple to be a boss level, it's a series of minibosses if you really stretch the definition of miniboss but that's about it
once again i highly disagree with your opinion of thy flesh consumed, id even go as far as saying e4m2 is the best doom level ive played. i dont rly see what about the levels would cause you to feel claustrophobic that wouldnt also be true of other levels. also i dont see the big deal with the toxic pits. by the time you get there you already know how to deal with them, and if you ever *need* to spend more than two seconds in them they always give you a radiation suit (at least on hurt me plenty, if they dont do that on uv/nightmare then that does kinda suck but i wouldnt know)
other than that, i agree with (or otherwise respond positively to) everything you said
Doom 2 is kinda similar to the Japanese Mario 2 in concept.
It too is just an expansion of the original, is it a good expansion.
Well yeah!
But while i personally think it's better than Doom 1, i still think it's kinda disappointing in a way (But not too much to the point where it bothers me!)
So what game would you choose to be Doom's Doki Doki Panic? Like if they decided that they needed to replace Doom 2 with another game as the Sequel.
@@shinyagumon7015 Hmmm, i think Quake is like, a better sequel than Doom 2, it's a perfect evolution of the formula and i imagine if there ever was a "Real Doom 2" it would probably be something like that XD.
A lot of old Doom levels really do feel like what happens when you let a bunch of old AD&D players design levels for the first proper FPS in gaming.
that’s exactly what happened btw
I don't know about the super shotgun. I mean in lesser difficulties . super maybe. But with faster monsters. that fire rate is BRUTAL. You cant defeat yourself between shots. It still good at Eliminating beefy targets up close but onwhere else, the normal shotty does better at mid and even far range. The fact it has random spread makes it a waste of 2 shells from afar. Still its VERY powerful but just not applicable in open maps or when the game spams so much at you in tight rooms.
Yeah, when you play on higher difficulties, your options become less viable. That doesn't make it less good overall, though.
H-Doom review when
Here's a quickie: could use more enemy variety, as almost all the enemies are just a variation of Imps. Doomguy's sprite also feels out of place next to the Anime waifus and would definitely look better if he had a similar artstyle. Best to make a new game with the same premise and mechanics entirely.
Oh, and having sex with the demons does absolutely nothing, you gain nothing from it. Kind of lame, if you ask me.
does Hdoomguy have a RUclips account? It would be funny to mention them in this comment section
Holy based
I remember even at the time, several gaming mags feeling like the Super Shotgun unbalanced the gameplay a bit. I can kind of see it, to be fair.
I have to disagree with your point that the SSG trivializes the rest of the weapons. You yourself say that it effectively only trivializes the regular shotty, because you can use other weapons for distant shots and crowd control. Yet, the simple shotty has two advantages over the SSG: 1) It doesn't eat through your ammo as quicky, 2) its spread is entirely horizontal, whereas the SSG spread horizontally and vertically, giving preference to verticality, so while it covers a larger area, it's also easier to waste ammo.
You gotta post an album or EP for the music made for your videos, absolutely great.
Well, for the time being, you can check out the composer's other work: ruclips.net/channel/UCXhT0cnAVlZ2htMuG5vg4fw
Tbh you are wrong about the rocket launcher (kinda) , its noticeably faster than the SSG and has splash damage (which its a negative since its the only weapon that can kill you) , making it better for damaging hordes of enemies from safe distance or dealing with enemies you cant see due to the highest difficulty , as for the shotgun you also kinda wrong , the chaingun are noticeable for stunlocking more than sniping while the regular shotgun is the opposite , so the shotgun still viable for sniping to save the bullets to stunlock the annoying enemies
the chaingun is incredible at sniping if you are good at using the perfect accuracy on the first two shots and letting the recoil reset
Recently I've been playing all of doom 2 again after a long time and I don't know how when I was kid I was able to figure a lot of secrets and steps required to progress, maybe I just spent hours shooting and activating every wall until I found something, also I when I played as a kid, it was on a laptop so I didn't even had a mouse, I have no idea how I did it back then 😂
I digress: the cacodemon will always be the monster "face of doom"
Great video as always!
I remember the first time the inconsistent switches issue came up…. So frustrating!
Please cover Doom 1…. And then Doom 3 pleasssseeee
Never knew that you hate the entire Doom series too lol. I guess you're Quake only guy
A good analysis.
One thing that I really like is that although Doom 2 only introduced one new weapon, the Super Shotgun radically changed how you approach combat encounters and allowed the player to be more aggressive and take more risks. The improved enemy roster and increasingly complex level design played into this perfectly.
I agree that it did overshadow other weapons as well; I think this is mainly due to it being introduced so soon, and that the entire game being able to be played without choosing new episodes.
My experience recently with DOOM 2 (after DOOM 1) has been trying to beat the PS4 version on Nightmare difficulty in splitscreen Co-Op to help a friend 100% the achievements. To say there's been a learning curve would be an understatement, but when you finally crack the level and make it, it's incredible. We're up to level 29/30 but it's going to take a lot of practice to finish the gauntlet lol
As someone who has started but not finished _multiple_ Doom 2 playthroughs (almost all of which were modded to some degree), I personally find the levels boring.
Also if you want a testament to how popular the Revenant is, I'm currently running a Doom monster popularity poll-tournament on Tumblr, and the Revenant beat the Zombieman, which is kinda like the Doom equivalent of a Mario enemy popularity thing where Chain Chomps win against Goombas.
Honestly, zombiemen are just kind of zombies, which can be found in literally any game. The Revenant, with its shoulder-mounted guns, is kind of unique.
2:07 Strictly speaking, outside of the Thy Flesh Consumed, the Cyberdemon does appear twice in Doom's original 3 episodes - albeit in a secret level.
I personally quite enjoy Doom 2, however, when I first played it almost a year ago now, I did not like it for the same reasons you gave: I thought it was very cryptic at many points, the SSG was fun but completely threw off balancing, the levels were so big that I often couldn't see the enemies below me, plenty of levels are just flat out terrible, etc. However, as I played the game more, I started to overlook it's faults more. And now, I genuinely really enjoy it. It has some of the lowest points and the highest points in the franchise.
Although, I will disagree with you on one thing: the game is cryptic, yes, but I do not personally feel that it's more cryptic that Doom 64. With Doom 2, I searched up BigMacDavis a number of times but with Doom 64, I found myself looking up BMD on almost every level, a couple times, even twice in one level. It was so bad, that I just dropped the game at level 21. But I'm getting off topic.
Overall, great video, of course.
I like to play though the first 7 maps of Doom 2. I think it's a pretty good Doom experience with a great way to end it.
I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on Plutonia.
I prefer keeping my sanity, thanks!
I love seeing one who loves D2 tear it to pieces.
I'd LOVE to see you do a video comparing this to the Honte remake.
Probably the best D2 remake wad that doesnt overstep the og levels design, layout and intentions, simply does them better and cooler. :D
Ive been playing since doom 2's launch and never knew the teleporter trick for the red key in industrial zone. I always like jumped from the window to the the boxes then essentially ran from each platform to get to the key. Was always a pain in the butt to get and I feel dumb for not ever noticing that. 🤦
7:56 Well... that's kinda easier than it looks.
I disagree with your super shotgun opinion, I would say the super shotgun is better for crowds of enemies, while the regular shotgun is better for widespread weak enemies that only need to be shot once to be killed, if you are shooting like one shotgunner at a time with the super shotgun, that’s wasting ammo, unless it’s a crowd where the gun actually gets multiple kills
A lot of the issues with the maps you mentioned were pain points for me as well whenever I play through it. Those maps are so troublesome and they are awful, but I still like DOOM 2 a lot. But I agree. DOOM 1 has the better made maps and experience. Thanks for your insight!
doom 2 just kept me with the super shotgun honestly. It sounds cool so I just keep wanna use it. And one shotting pinkies don’t get old
I dunno man, have you played TNT Evilution? Final Doom's technically part of the classic series too
3:04 I don't really consider Dead Simple a boss stage tbh
I do, as it marks the end of the first "episode" and is similar in style to E1M8 (you fight multiple demons in a single arena, and the walls come down). Maybe more of a mini-boss stage then, but I doubt that concept even existed back then.
7:17 actually you can quick save in console ports, as an Xbox player myself I have many times. It has its own system. Although I guess can’t speak for PlayStation? Even tho I’m pretty sure it does too. Although it could be that this is an early build considered he said ps1.
Not on GBA and not on PS1 :P
@@GermanPeter damn that sucks. Must be a later build version because my Xbox one s version has saves.
OLD console ports.
@@GermanPeter no I mean quick saving is a newer feature new builds of the ports
When I first played classic Doom and Doom II, I played them back to back so it really just felt like one continious experience to me. I think Doom and Doom II are best enjoyed together.
>worst maps
>monster condo
Really don't like it. It's just kinda big and annoying to navigate and then you get locked in rooms to fight enemies. Doesn't flow naturally or anything.
@@GermanPeterthat's fair, for me the mood it has just 100% sells it
wtf theres like 3 new germanpeter videos and youtube didnt recommend me a single one
Level design was definitely rushed, Sandy said so in more than one interview, but to me by adding an extra powerful weapon and a few glass cannon enemies Doom 2 had the merit to become a fast paced run n gun game instead of the slow paced survival horror that Doom 1 was. Could you Imagine a HR Wad with Doom 1 assets?
I've never enjoyed playing doom 2. I really like doom 1 a lot better. However, the expansion of the monster roster is so critical to the gameplay of future expansions and mods that when playing said mods, I have the opposite effect. It's really hard to play doom 1 wads in that way IMO.
If you decide to do a vid on Final Doom, just know you'll have a few pedants (e.g. me) complaining that you forgot about the WraithCorp campaigns.
My opinion in short summary: I like that Doom 2 has more variety and is more experimental, but I feel it has worse pacing than Doom 1, and part of that issue comes from how enemy encounters come in bigger groups than before, taking much longer to clear.
It makes sense to be critical of things you actually like. You break it down into pieces, find what you like and dislike, and use what you found to find more stuff you like.
Doom 2 is best if you are really, really patient. Searching the level for secrets, or hell, even ways to progress can take minutes at a time, but the shooting and everything else is really fun, so it's a tough balance of good and bad.
Doom 2 is an example of bigger not always being better. It still works though. But I'd say Heretic handles outdoor levels much better.
Hexen really did outdoor levels well, but of course it also ramped up the whole "cryptic progression" thing to ridiculous degrees.
@@esmerylan yeah for sure. I'd say Heretic is best because the progression is rather straightforward.
Something that I feel needs to be said:
You have to take into account newer players who will discover the game to weigh pros and cons.
The positives make Doom 2 a fairly impressive game in scope for its time.
The negatives can make the game extremely frustrating and entirely unplayable unless you want to use walkthroughs and such.
I'm a huge FPS fan, but I first played Doom 2 a few years ago. It was a miserable experience, even though I love Doom 1.
I gave up halfway though, with a few good lessons in bad game design, but I'm not sure it was worth it.
To me, Doom 2 is a good history class for the medium, but a catastrophic sequel aside from the revenant and the super shotgun additions.
Yeah I'm going a bit hard maybe, but that's my honest feeling as someone who never played the game at the time.
Oh yeah, many of my points where problems I had with the game when I played it for the first time. I legitimately ran around the Courtyard, pressing "use" on every single switch texture. I also remember having to look up how to actually beat the final boss without the help of mouselook.
Peter
Do you remember one of classic Doom's maps that remembers an castle or fortress ? It came in my mind when you were talkingn abour the levels and now i cant remember what map was it
I mean, there's the Citadel, there's Unholy Cathedral, I made a joke comparing The Inmost Dens to 2fort, and there's of course Fortress.WAD, the map 2fort was actually based on.
Your criticism of the Super Shotgun replacing all other weapons in directly answered by those situations where you get teleported into small rooms with imps, that you criticize later. Super Shotgun is absolutely inviable in such situations, while chaingun is great.
I also have something to say about shootable switches. They definitely existed. There was, at the very least, the secret in the flashing lights room in e1m2 of Doom 1.
Well, as you can see in the footage, the SSG still works great in those traps... if you know when they're coming. That was my point, you get thrown into these teleporter traps without warning.
Remember: criticismis incredibly inportant for the devolopment of anything. And it is especially important to critise that which we love to 1) understand why we love it, and 2) so that more stuff like it can be made. (And it is also just a good exercise to see if you can actually judge things acurately. Or, if the thing you love is awful, being able to explain why you like it even when it is absolutely horrible…like Hunt Down the Freeman, love the game, absolutely awful.)
Next german censors on videogames episode: Call of Duty Black Ops 1 Zombies? Idk if there's much to talk abou it but i would find it interesting
Doom 2 is also my favorite Doom game, and one of my favorite games ever!
... But i also realized, even tho one of its greatest strengths, the more complex level design compared to Doom 1, is a weakness to many.
Most of my buddies don't seem to enjoy Doom 2 as much as Doom 1, the levels of Doom 2 are both really amazing and questionable, heh.
I agree 100% on this.
I would add that there are similarities between Doom 1/2 and Doom 2016/Eternal.
Like that the atmosphere and level design in Doom 1 and Doom 2016 is much more grounded and enjoyable (imo) than in Doom 2 and Eternal.
But the second game has much better combat, is bigger and more chalenging. And eventually more dickish.
I love all Doom games (including Doom 3) but I still enjoy Doom 1 and Doom 2016 more than their sequels.
I actually love feeling scared of each new room. They're demons, they're not playing fair. Of course they ambush you!
Doom 2 was the one that I had the most experience with so it has a special place in my heart.
Disappointed it wasn't a hatepiece on everything DOOM 1, DOOM 64 and DOOM 2.
3/100
Please pay him money for more video essays.
Honestly, i have a love hate relationship with doom 2, i love the combat and enimies, as well the mods that made me love the classic games and the maps aestetics but BOY how i hate Doom 2's level design, the first third is really nice and fun but in rhe second third fowards it becomes a lot more confusing and frustraring (and i don't mean only the city levels), thing that makes it less fun for me because i hate getting lost.
Honestly in Doom 2 I found myself constantly going "Oh nice, a powerup" or "Oh nice, a keycard" followed immediately by "What's the catch level designer..." Because you KNOW there's basically ALWAYS a catch in Doom 2 lol.
Where did you get those rifle sprites? I would love to make a mod that replaces the super shotgun with a rifle.
Check the description :)
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I agree with most of your video, but I have two words to say for Negative #3:
Skill issue.
FINALLY someone admits ep4 is bad!! :')
I disagree wholeheartedly
YOU CANT CRITICIZE DOOM.
ITS THE PERFECT GAME OF ALL TIME
7:35 if you used freelock to see the item, it's your fault. Because the game doesn't have that
You can see it without freelook, I just made it easier to see for the video. Granted, not super well, but still.
Dude you should bring back "Interveiw, not Review." imo
didn't watch the video yet, i hope you talk about the godawful level design in this game
Lol TNT evilution levels are much bigga.
es gibt nen Grund warum ich Doom 2 nicht seperat besitze LOL
I never liked the doom 2 maps that much, its too much brown, compared to doom 1 episode 1
Doom II has the worst level design in the series.
Algorithm boos!
OMG PETER I WILL *gently pet* YOU FOR THAT ONE
1. Super shotgun is slow, close range weapon, which has a slower dps than a rocketlaucher even against bosses. Where does it outshines every other gun? Like sure, you can kill every monster with it...also with any other weapon. But I don't think you used SSG on those big fight or ambushes, didn't you?
2. Yeah, missalighned textures and stuck mosters is pretty bad. But like, a big map is bad because there is extra space? Or because they decided to place a damaging floor here? Welp, ladies and gentelmans, Mt. Pain is officially the worst map in TNT then, because most of the space is just decoration. Just criticising the levels for ''being big'' is a poor argument and it's a really weak argument to call a game bad.
3. Oh no, Tricks 'n Traps has a trap....in the game with save and loads on PC. Yeah.
Oh no, Barrels of fun is....barrels. In the game that was made for PC. YEAH.
Oh no, a secret isn't revealed to you. A SECRET. S E C R E T. It's in a f*cking name.
4. Downtown can be criptic, sure.
Citadel was pretty easy for me to navigate, idk guess "skill issue git gud lol". And remember: an overview are is ALSO A SECRET.
You can literally finish Courtyard by picking up yellow key. Guess a ''weird quirky skill issue''
Spirit World is pretty bad, but giving 90% of the players get passed this moment I guess it works...kinda...magically...
I dead ass knew playing Doom 2 through browser that I needed to open this door in Living End, it's a game knowledge you talked about, just like Sigil eyes.
ICON OF SIN IS FUN AND GOOD and you can't change my mind.
So the worst game in the series has a problems of:levels
Let's look at other games, shall we?
Doom 1: levels, gets repetative
Doom 64: levels, gets repetative
Doom 3: different fruit, don't really counts
Doom 2016: Balance is fucked, gets repetative
Doom Eternal: Balance, specificy in game mechanics.
So, out of all of this, what is the worst game in the series?
p.s. I wouldn't be upset if you didn't call it like that. Doom 2 has its problems, but do you REALLY needed to stab that game even more after all criticism it had received? It's an already get too much negative for some stupid reasons, guys like FP Media outright specifically state the game as "problematic".
P.p.s. It might be looking like ragefull coping, I'm just doing it because HA HA EMOTIONAL ARGUMENTS ARE MUCH FUNNIER, RIGHT??
Dude, I love the game to death, like I repeatedly said in the video. Doesn't mean I'm going to downplay any of these issues. Sure, they're not completely game-breaking, but they're still pretty bad. That doesn't mean the game as a whole is irredeemable (which you seem to think I said).
@@GermanPeter no, you did not said "irredimable", but you did said it's the worst in the series. Also, I specifically written everything about your opinions in the video. Some of the examples and flaws of the game are pretty over exaggerated. I specifically written everything I disagree on. It does not mean Doom 2 don't have flaws, but rather your examples are a) not working b) too streched to the point of player-to-player occurance. It seems you did not read it at all.
You are wrong.
Never managed to hit the icons of sins brain and after 15 attempts I just deinstalled the game.
Worst boss battle - 5/10
Still better than Last Jedi
None of the Doom games are better than the Last Jedi, not even Rise of Skywalker.
Not even the original trilogy is better than TLJ, only the prequel trilogy.
"The revenant is the face of doom at this point"
The doom slayer :
No, the Doom Slayer is the face of the Doom Slayer. He doesn't "doom" anyone except demons!
@@GermanPeterfair point now that i think about it
3 comments in 3 mins
Funny emoji man is falling off 😭