/vr/ - Retro Games

>>6179808
I don't, celtonegroidal nonce

I think only a minority of the levels actually suck, or are mediocre, but the issue would be that those that do often group together in lumps, meaning you can be playing 2 or 3 not that fun maps in one go, which isn't very appealing (though there's still good maps right to the end, so pushing through pays off), and the other is a large surplus of brown, in terms of color.
The overcast brown sky is actually not unsuitable if hell is invading and there's massive fires everywhere, if you've looked at Australia recently, they've got wildfire up to their balls, and in places there's so much smoke drifting that the sky is downright brown/orange, and you can fucking smell it, there's ash and cinder everywhere. However, you're combining that sky with a lot of very brown environments, lotta brown and tan bricks, lotta brown dirt floors and rusty plate metal, lot of tan wall panels, lotta brown caverns, lots of brown/tan wood. There's far more kinds of enviroments and textures than that in Doom 2, of course, but it's excessive enough that it's noticeable.

Map 29: The Living End, is one of the best official Doom maps, it's one of John Romero's finest, but it's still a very, very brown map, it would be a little better with some more color variety, even if it ultimately is still fun as it is.
Sandy Petersen did most of the levels, and probably under some stress and rush, but all things considered, for ever underperformer or outright stinker of a level, he made a whole bunch which were fine or outright great.

>>6179843
>celtonegroidal
That's a new one. I had to google that word, and all the results I got were 4chan archives and places like Kiwifarms.

>>6179808
Doom gameplay sucks.

>can't jump
>can't lean
>can't crouch
>no y-axis look

Why do people still play this shit?

>>6179878
ZOOM ZOOM ZOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM

>>6179878
It has actual gameplay, is not:
>cutscene
>walk 3 steps
>cutscene
>shoot a little
>cutscene

>>6179912
This board is going to shit and you're part of the problem.

>>6179918
Calling out suspected zoomers is one of the few ways this board can be saved.
In any case, this particular instance does seem more specifically meant to deflect criticism.

>>6179924
>suspected zoomers
Or he says the most infuriating shit he can think of to make people like you mad. He's bad for stirring up shit like this instead of like, talking about games, but you're bad for falling for it every fucking time.

>>6179924
>Calling out suspected zoomers is one of the few ways this board can be saved.
Are you really naive enough to think people will flee this place because you call them 4chan's latest set of buzzwords?

>>6179924
>Calling out suspected zoomers is one of the few ways this board can be saved
Are you really claiming that spamming a buzzword every time someone says something you don't like, regardless of context, is going to save this board? Zoomer is the new cuck, you've ran it into the ground and sapped all meaning it once had.

>>6179808
It's mainly the mid-game and parts of Hell. Huge directionless areas with a lot of enemies where you're intended to go stumbling around finding what opens this where and so forth. The game has a much more monster-filled mentality compared to Doom 1 but it never quite felt like anything but the rockets, BFG and super shotgun supplemented that idea, so it wears down to a sluggish pace after a while.

>>6179945
>people like you mad
>you're bad for falling for it every fucking time
buddy I'm defending the insult, you need to get your eyes checked

>>6180138
>>6180146
Why does "zoomer" offend you so much? I take it you feel the exact same way about "redditor", don't you?
Hmm... I wonder why...

>>6180206
The only thing offensive here is your level of retardation.

>>6180206
>Why does "zoomer" offend you so much?
Because latching on to hot internet phrases just shows how malleable a tool you are.

>>6180243
zoomer cope if I ever saw it

>>6180206
You don't offend me, you bore me.

>>6179924
>suspected zoomers
grow up

>>6180246
>better double down. that'll show him

>>6180259
>grow up
ditto

A lot of the maps feel empty in terms of decoration and shit, like they needed more moving space so you could fight 100 enemies at once, which to me is boring as shit. As others have said the middle of the game is a total drag. I personalyl hated every level from level 8 (Tricks and Traps) and level 24 (The Chasm), with the exception of level 14 (Inmost Dens). Also didn't like levels 27 (Monster condo) and 28 (Spirit World). That leaves about 11 levels I enjoyed.

I greatly prefer Doom 1+Sigil and 64.

>You don't offend me, you bore me.

>>6180504
this

I think DOOM II's level design is one of its saving graces. The fact the rest of the game feels more like a tacked on mod that got retail support still brings it down.

>>6180556
I disagree, Doom 2's saving grace is the expanded monster roster.

>>6179808
Ask the general. This is just spam for big brain users that choose catalog. Don't shit where you eat this isn't v

>>6180575
Doom general doesn't belong on /vr/, it should be moved to /vg/ instead.

I'm glad some anons are avoiding it like OP.

>>6180498
Oh, and O of Destruction is pretty good too.

>>6180583
It wouldn't survive there.

>>6180556
The new monsters are like the best part about Doom 2, they all add so much versatility to the roster, and they have character. Doom 2 does a decent job showing the basic ideas with them, but then Plutonia takes those new monsters and just goes balls to the walls with them, and the levels are SO good!

>>6180583
I skullfucked your mom and your dad.

The levels don't sell the setting very well. They don't feel like Earth being invaded by demons. They feel artificial and samey.

>>6181115
Kinda, but at the same time what Doom 1 did well was being abstract and not particularly realistic. Could have been more attempts at city levels though.

>>6181145
Doom 1 mostly takes place on the moons of Mars. The levels feel like video game moon bases.

>>6179808
Only the early levels and the mid-later levels suck. The majority range from good to amazing.

>>6180498
>I personalyl hated every level from level 8 (Tricks and Traps) and level 24 (The Chasm), with the exception of level 14 (Inmost Dens).
Refueling Base, Tenements, and The Courtyard were all excellent

American McGee was the only one with any map design competence.

>>6181723
E4M1 was top tier, but what else did he do on Doom that was noteworthy? Sandy and Romero had multiple hit maps.

>>6181742
Not him, but The Crusher is my very favorite canon level

>>6179808
>its levels
You might as well say "the game" then

>>6179808
Childhood nostalgia is honestly the main thing that lets me power through Doom 2 anymore. As a 60bc boomer I can recognize tediousness in a game, but as a retarded wee'un I always just assumed it was just me being bad.

>>6181745
Well, Crusher is really good. I think American McGee was even better with Quake though.

Map 01-07, 11, 17, 27-29 are good. Maybe The Chasm too.
The rest are shit.

>>6182446
Tricks & Traps is objectively good, you plebe.

>>6179808

Most of the city levels suck. Other levels are fantastic. The problem is that the middle of the game is an absolute slog.

>>6181742

Sandy Peterson is the whole reason Doom 2 has bad levels

>>6182961
The city levels are absolutely abominable and ugly to boot.

I hate underhalls

>one of the worst levels has the best song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkhCNx-8Qos

>>6182974
No he isn't, because Shawn Green made worse levels, such as Bloodfalls, which was broken and which Sandy had to fix.

Maps like Tricks & Traps, The Citadel, Barrels O' Fun, and Refueling Base, The Spirit World, each of them individually make up for underperformers like Downtown, The Pit and Nirvana.

>>6181408
Refueling Base is great. Some of the best levels in Doom 1 were Tom Hall's WIPs which Sandy and Romero finished, they took his misaimed pseudo-realism and put great abstract spins on then, and Refueling Base is yet another example of that.

>>6183058
>Maps like Tricks & Traps, The Citadel, Barrels O' Fun, and Refueling Base, The Spirit World,

That's a fair point, anon, those are damn good levels. I just really hate the city levels. Right after Tricks & Traps, the game is a huge slog until you escape.

I think the big problem with Doom 2 was not separating the levels into episodes. If they had done that, they would have had a very good first episode and a mediocre second and third episode, but with some good maps.
This is basically Doom 1. The first episode is universally acclaimed while Shores of Hell is kind of mediocre and Hell is pretty bad (the last three maps are terrible and almost unplayable).

>>6179878
You have the tardation, you'll never understand.

>>6183648
Everyone loves E1 but I think it's kind of just ok next to E2 and E3, they are so much more inventive and fun.

Of the entire game, I think only E1M9, E2M9, and E3M6 are actually bad, the rest is good to great.

Rank the iwads, Doom 64 included

>>6179914
>shoot a lot
>run around
>shoot some more
Wow, so revolutionary

>>6181805
90s marketing was so based

>>6181805
>image
You can see breasts on Sega Saturn

>>6179878
Go back to sleep, DSP, you're still drunk.
https://youtu.be/mhjr5XczKNs?t=51

It feels like a collection of babby's first custom levels instead of a cohesive single player campaign

>>6183058
IMO, The Pit isn't nearly as bad as people make it out to be. Though it definitely feels like Petersen forgot the 21 lost soul limit, considering the perfectly harmless PEs near the start.

>>6184735
Oh no, Nirvana is magnitudes worse, for sure, there's parts of The Pit which I think are good even.
As for the Lost Soul limit, it might have been added after the level was made, and nobody remembered to address this. Optionally Sandy just thought it was funny and left it like that.

>>6184169
It should probably have been divided up into three episodes or something like that, but for a game which came out in 1994,a time period where nobody else had any serious experience with making maps for Doom but Sandy, Romero, and American, it's leagues better than basically any custom mapset which you could find online in 1994, short of *maybe* Aliens TC.
Go look at 1994 era mapsets, it's a fucking wasteland, there's only a few sets/episodes which are passable, and a sparse smattering of alright lone maps. People were still learning what to do, TNT Evilution and Memento Mori won't show until after Doom 2.

In spite of its flaws, Doom 2 mostly holds up.

Doom 2's biggest sin was Sandy Petersen having too many level credits. I actually like most of his maps, but it's clear that some of them were rushed out the door and suffer in quality as a result.
He is credited for most of Doom 1's maps too, but difference there was half his credits were layouts that were already started by Tom Hall, and another is also a remixed version of one of his own maps, so he actually made far less levels completely from scratch compared to Doom 2.
>>6181723
His maps tended to look the best. But the gameplay wasn't all that interesting compared to both Romero and Petersen. He made far better maps in Quake.

>>6184763
>His maps tended to look the best. But the gameplay wasn't all that interesting compared to both Romero and Petersen.
Mostly I agree, though I think E4M1 has really fun gameplay.

>He made far better maps in Quake.
For sure.

>>6179808
Doom 1 held up well, Thy Flesh Consumed included.
Doom 2 is a huge piece of shit and the only thing of value it adds is the SSG (which is overrated) and the new enemies (which are good).

>>6184916
I wouldn't say the SSG is overrated. Overpowered? Yeah.

>>6184925
Its only overpowered in the context of how Doom 2 itself. pwads do have encounters where the SSG's slow firerate can actually bite you in the ass.

>>6179808
because a lot of them were obviously made and playtested around being gimmicky multiplayer maps and don't really make for a cohesive single-player experience

>>6184916
>>6184925
>>6184945
They probably shouldn't have just handed it to the player in Map 02. It's another argument as to why Doom 2 should probably have been divided up in episodes, to reset the player's inventory intermittently.

>>6184971
True but I always pistol start. Turns out the SSG isn't as common as one might think.

>>6184972
I hate that its completely absent in Barrel's o Fun, as that level really needs it IMO.

>>6184971
Yeah, I always felt it should've been secret only until map06 or 07.

>>6179808
Just playing through Scythe. What the fuck man, it went from 0 to 100 really fucking fast. Last level in episode2 started the trend to teleport Cyberdemons right next to you and oh boy episode 3. What the shit nigger? I admit, Fear was nice map and I had fun with it but cmon the last map, you shoot archvile ports to you, you dont shoot 6 barons rape you with imps, you press switch near start and its a cyberdemon. Its just fucking insane

>>6179808
Why are you gae.
You are gae.

I like Doom

>>6185134
Scythe goes balls to the walls, that's just how it is. Most people will say that Scythe 2 and Scythe X are much better.

>>6185364
Gonna try them, literally finished the last map 5mins ago. Fuck cyberdemons in close quarters

>>6183698
The Shores of Hell episode is really more inventive and I think he was successful in creating a different atmosphere than the first. I would say that episode 1 is 7/10 and Shores of Hell 6/10.
But Inferno sucks, in my opinion is 3/10.

>>6184760
Yes, the maps made by users at the beginning were terrible. There was not yet an established culture and nothing to be guided by except the official levels, which were few.
In addition, the editors were terrible. Even EdMap (if I'm not mistaken, it was the one used by the game's creators) was kind of trash. I didn't have BBS / Internet at the time and depended on magazine CD-Roms to get new content and I remember that there were editors who didn't even have all the functionality of Doom, like linedefs that activate objects, for example. And it was common for maps to be full of bugs even if you didn't do anything very complex.

>>6185483
Yeah, it was crude times.
One of the common map editors was DeepSea, which was actually a commercial product, you could get the free version but it had a limit on how many linedefs you could put down. There also weren't many good nodebuilders, they're fast and reliable now, but back in the day (and partially this is just because computers are more powerful now), it could take hours to build the nodes for maps, and there were plenty of room for error.
A lot of the really fine detailing people started doing later (such as Gothic 99 and Crucified Dreams) just wasn't possible to do in the early days, you couldn't have two linedefs be way too close next to each other because the nodebuilder would freak and trash the map.

>Even EdMap (if I'm not mistaken, it was the one used by the game's creators) was kind of trash
Nah, EdMap was third party software for DOS, iD wrote their own in-house software, which ran on NeXTSTEP work stations, and would obviously not run on any Windows or Macintosh computer, hence the reason they never released it.

Imagine Doom 1 level design with Doom 2 monsters

>>6185747
Basically Doom 64

>>6185775
I wish I had an N64 to verify.

>>6185747
Imagine Doom 2 level design with Doom 1 monsters
oh wait, thats basically most of Doom 2, because it was too afraid to use the new monsters a lot of the time.

>>6185820
mupen64p runs it good.

>>6185747
so PSX Doom

>>6185820
Doom 64EX
Or get the official rerelease in Mars.

>>6186029
>in Mars

>>6185820
There's a port already by the same guy who's doing the "official" rerelease. I think. If not, it'll basically be the same. Ain't much you can do with Doom.

>>6184070
Yeah, it was pretty revolutionary for its time. Personally, I think Hexen is where that class of early FPS hit its peak, and maybe throw in Duke Nukem and Dark Forces, too, but Doom holds a special place in my heart. It is easily the one Ihad the most fun with and spent my most time with, mostly due to all the mods that were available back in the day. Put Barney in Doom? Oh heck yes please, gimme that WAD.

>>6186156
Duke3D and Hexen are good, but in my opinion none of them comes close to the harmony that Doom 2 has between weapons, enemies, gameplay, etc. This harmony allows mappers to make infinite combinations and consequently generate an infinite number of situations. In my view, that's why I have been playing the game for over 20 years and never got tire of it, while Duke3D and Hexen I play sporadically and then go for months without touching them.
In fact, I think that no fps to this date has the same harmony between all its elements as Doom 2. While in modern games you need scripts to generate unique situations, in Doom 2 you only need a smart map layout with the appropriate monster placement and you are already offering a unique and interesting situation to the players.

>>6186613
Just to complement the previous message, in Duke 3D no matter how hard you try to create a decent layout for your map, monsters will always behave like retarded, or get stuck in the level geometry, or fall off the platforms, etc. This is common in games based on Build and Ion Fury the guys had to rely on some scripts to force enemies to adopt a certain type of behavior (and yet 75% of the time enemies are unable to handle the level geometry properly).
In Doom 2 the monsters simply "work" and the differents behaviors and interactions between them (infighting) creates much more complex and fun situations.

Because Sandy got the short end of the stick and had to do most of the work in a short timefrane

E3M6 is better than anything Romero and McGee have ever done and if the workload was more evenly distributed Sandy would've been able to shine more

>>6186630
I'm a huge Sandy apologist, but E3M6 is actually one of the levels of his that I don't particularly like.

>>6186630
Mt. Erebus is fucking awful.

>>6185483
Yeah I remember using DEU. Then saving and exiting and loading to see what adjustments i had to make on a 486 with 4megs of ram took 5+ minutes each time. It was painful.

e1m7 was my all time favorite doom level

>>6186624
Personally I chalk it up to the fact that the build engine is made out of chinesium held together with spit and ken silverman screaming at it angrily at 3am.

>>6179808
The levels romero breathed on are the only good ones, the rest are all gimmick focused stages, like i get they wanted to push their limits and shit but it feels like a weird challenge pack more than a sequel.

>>6186635
>>6186638
Not him, but what don't you like about E3M6?
>inb4 fireblu

>>6186842
3DRealms kind of made it that way when they started tweaking it for their games, it was much more stable in its original form.

>>6184971
Yeah, the problem was definitely that American McGee was far too generous with the SSG in the early levels. Map05 was also pretty bad in that it just hands you the SSG right from the beginning.

Compare to how KDITD handled the Rocket Launcher. The only levels that have it in a non-secret area are M7 and M9 (Which is a secret level anyway), and in both cases, they're in non-essential side areas.

There' only one good Doom. Not counting Doom 3 which is the best.

The Ultimate Doom.

>>6187752
Fireblu is awesome. The layout of the map is horrendous with no sense of direction.

>>6188285
>spoiler

>>6187752
Don't particularly like the layout or the layouts in the structures, feels somewhat 'scatterbrained' in design. Also too much FIREBLU in one place.

>>6188285
I like Doom 3 actually, but I wouldn't call it the best.

>>6188286
>>6188687
Do you not like sandbox style level design?

>>6189474
I do, but E3M6 just never clicked with me.

>>6188285
Why do you like Doom 3 the best? Genuine question.

I don't really agree with the people that claim that doom 2 was only good in the early levels. I actually personally consider American McGee's early levels to be kinda sloppy in their design compared to Doom 1's E1 levels, and a bit of a bore to replay. Sandy Petersen's later levels can be hit or miss, but I definitely have more fun when replaying them.

>>6181805
I would be embarrassed if I saw this as an adult man.

>>6192446
I *am* embarrassed by it as an adult man.

>>6179878
>reddit spacing
nice fucking job, zoomie

>>6179808
Sandy fucking Peterson.

>>6193508