Welcome to a new edition of Retro Corner Review and we tackle Doom II on PC for this edition. Doom II, released in 1994, continues the trend of what made the original great and uses the same engine with little changes. However, unlike the first game, the sequel wasn’t ported to death as the PS1, Sega Saturn and GBA were the only versions to come to home systems. It probably has to do with how massive and complex the maps were in the Original release. Even the PS1/Saturn port had to scale these levels and removed some. Despite its praise for the time, over the years the sequel saw criticism from fans for the complex level design. Fortunately, no one is using the Mortal Kombat 3 argument to prove some ridiculous point—The criticism of the maps is actually fair when stacked up to other FPSs in that decade. While it is true, the sequel doesn’t change a few things; it did step away from corridor design levels. Even back in the mid-90s producing hallways and closed areas as the level design was often considered lazy work. It isn’t the best when this comes down to intricate gameplay as later FPSs did a much better job. An improved design (no matter how rough it was) starts somewhere and for something else to build on later. Gameplay Doom II follows the usual traditional level design that was often common during the 90s to use. The concept is simple, the player kills enemies, collects items and keys and gets to the exit being the bases of the challenge. Nothing also hasn’t changed for the weapon selection since it uses the same guns. Now, they did add the Super Shotgun which is the only upgradeable gun to get such treatment. It is hands down one of the best shotguns in FPSs due to how many mid-tier enemies this weapon can kill in a few shots. The Super Shotgun is so powerful you could kill a Hell Knight in a few hits while a Revenant is taken down after two shots. Some new enemy types appear such as arachnotrons, revenants and arch-viles. In honesty, any new enemies are always welcome but these demons either added to the challenge or made it worse. Take the chain gun Zombie, and I swear they are the worst hit scanners of them all. It literally takes a few seconds for them to drain your health down before you realize this. Those don’t even compare to the most difficult demon in the series called the arch-viles. Depending on the map, they are a pain in the ass to deal with between reviving killed enemies and their flame attack. In fact their flame is so powerful it can take nearly half the health away even with armor on. Despite the maps being more intricate then in the last entry, there were some with odd level design choices. The left caption shows the Factory as the challenge is looking through the warehouses. The problem is the exploration wasn’t good here and this map forces you to do that in order to progress. Even though exploration was done right on some levels, the Factory wasn’t one of them. The idea of aimlessly wandering around to find where you had to progress is a terrible challenge. Now, we talk about one of the newer enemies known as the Arch-Vile, the most dangerous demon in the 90s games. There were times where the Arch-Vile had proper placement like in the image on the right found at the top of the stairs. The map here is called Gotcha! and the player will encounter this beast once they reach the middle of the level. However, in the same level there was an Arch-Vile placed terribly in a secret area that also had a Mega Sphere. The point of these hidden areas is to reward you for finding something good and not give us the middle finger. Now, we come to the level design as it includes a good mix between corridors and exploration. I never understood why some had a problem with this as the size of the maps broke away from the corridor environments. It’s not like you can’t complete these maps in a straightforward manner as the first title. The level design was actually intricate this time not only allowing straightforward gameplay but nonlinear ways to complete a stage. If the player went off the beaten path often, they would get rewarded with extra ammo, armor and health like a Mega Sphere. That is how you program exploration in FPSs especially when it involves nonlinear areas—That is because the player would want to seek these paths if they wanted those much needed items. It’s obvious this was meant for more difficult settings such as Hurt Me Plenty and Ultraviolent because you will take a beating. Of course, Doom II’s controls are dated with no proper auto aim and movement set to one height of shooting. It’s hard to go back to early FPSs after playing Quake and Duke Nukem 3D with their fluent controls. Even missing mechanics like jumping, swimming and doing melee attacks proves this even further. Unfortunately, we have to wait until Doom 3 came out in 2004 to experience the series with modern mechanics. It is best to download the GZDoom mod because this will add modern features that are not in the vanilla base. Even those gory kills from the recent games today were added giving us different ways to play. Rating: 8.3/10 Graphics/Presentation The common thing most studios do is continue using similar assets from a previous product within a generation. Before Id developed the Quake Engine, the Id Tech 1 was the most advanced software tools for its time. That is how Heretic and Hexen was made and used the same tools Id sourced out to third parties. The Doom Engine set a standard so much that the Jedi Engine from Lucas Arts and the Build Engine by Ken Silverman came out later. Doom II doesn’t really push the software to the maximum as the visuals look nearly identical to its predecessor. Both the enemies and textures continue using the sprite designs with using that same psecedo-3D effects. It’s no doubt more special effects are shown as seen from the arch-viles’ flame attack and its many animated frames. Of course, then there are the flesh-machine hybrid demons as Id expanded on this from the Cyberdemon and the Spider mastermind. The revenants and Arachnotron continue these odd designs since this are the best thing about their concepts. That shows the forces of Hell learned how to develop technological monstrosities from whatever tech they found from the humans on Mars. That brings us to the Icon of Sin, and it was behind the invasion on Earth after the Spider Mastermind’s defeat. It’s a shame that the final boss is just a massive horned head demon attached to a tech wall. If you look at today’s mods of Doom II, these modders will go out of their way to make the Icon of Sin a true final boss. The modders would either make the thing fly as a massive beast or design the one after Eternal. The newer enemies truly brought the challenge up a notch, and this goes beyond brutes rushing at the player. The Revenants and Arachnotrons were different from the usual hit scanners. It wasn’t just them — mainly the revenants due to their missiles homing — the idea you knew they were there would cause players to gun for these monsters first. Even the Mancubus with its dual missile shooters had the player try taking it out before their blasts reached them. Unlike in the previous game, the Icon of Sin being a simple tech wall that summons demons was an anti-climactic final boss. Even modders on multiple occasions have presented this beast with much better challenges then Romero’s original team could. All you had to do was shoot its exposed brain on the forehead while fending off demons who got close and that was the challenge. Id would use the same level design in Doom 3’s expansion showing they had no idea how to make the final battle interesting. Even if one could argue they didn’t have the types of computers back then nothing was stopping them from being creative. The only difference in the environments came from the sky boxes as Id moved away from the mountain backgrounds. In the UAC military bases and temple structure within Hell continue the same trend. However, if there is one area, the team drops the ball in the urban settings—It's like they decided to stick with the vanilla assets from the first game instead of making new ones to capture those places better. In maps such as the Downtown and the Suburbs hardly looked like towns or cities you would find. I know for a fact Id at the time could have designed new detailed textures especially when modders were doing this for years. Nothing was stopping them from developing new assets within the same engine for another year. Even Doom Zero continues using the vanilla base and still manages to create a detailed urban setting of a city then this studio could do. The Hell environments show Id’s creative ideas in truly making a place you would expect to look the part. That tells me they have enough creativity to produce environments from mythological stories. The development team was literally being lazy in this department considering the effort shouldn’t have taken much to design city locations. I mean, the concept is already there which is why Gearbox executed this better and still do today with Ion Fury. There were some great maps here but unfortunately the Suburbs is a good example of bad visual design. The left caption has the Slayer overlooking his work in the middle of a lot where two buildings that were supposed to represent houses stood. Nothing in this level looks remotely close to a suburb’s appearance but a bland lot. I have seen modders — Christopher Golden with Doom Zero is an example — produce a better representation of a city using the same assets. It’s obvious they needed to reevaluate the concept of the metro maps. Speaking of cities, the next caption is from Downtown where once again Id dropped the ball in its concept. All I see is tall bland buildings with reused textures from earlier maps that do a miserable job replicating the real thing. If you are anticipating similar suburban environments akin to Duke Nukem 3D then Doom’s sequel isn’t one of these. For the soundtrack, it’s not as iconic as the Original but that doesn’t have to sound just as good. Sometimes many get caught up from a previous OST’s quality that we forget to appreciate a new music. Fortunately, the second game doesn’t suffer from the Mega Man III effect because it provides a familiar but new take. The first thing you will notice is the tracks were designed to come off eerie thanks to a slower pace. That was done for a reason when Hell was invading Earth thus creating a tense atmosphere. You will often hear the tone from Countdown to Death, Doom (maps 5 and 13) and The Demon’s Dead. Of course, the rock based tracks are used again to give the player that run and gun attitude. These are found in Shawn’s Got a Shotgun, Into Sandy City, Between Lands and the Dave D. Taylor Blues. Then there is the infamous Bye Bye American Pie that sounds oddly like Them Bones from Alice in Chains. It isn’t the first time a game composer tried emulating hit songs when putting together a music track. David Wise, who took inspiration from In the Air by Phil Collins, would use that to create Bayou Boogie in Donkey Kong Country 2. Even Robo’s Theme in Chrono Trigger sounds similar to Rick Ashley’s Never Gonna Give you Up—It might’ve been by accident when the composer of Chrono Trigger made his song, but the point still stands. It is obvious these inspirations would create great music when going into each map. Now, thanks to combining a balance between eerie, tense and rock based music does make the OST as Iconic as the Original. Rating: 7.8/10 Features/Content Does the second game’s online still work, some of you might ask? The answer is yes and in fact, there are updated programs to make the online multiplayer work today. It’s true that those old servers through a 54 KB connection are long gone but that didn’t stop the modding community. You can still use the DOSBox emulator that comes with the game as its source port. However, there is a much better and cleaner way (as in online connection) to get multiplayer across a LAN to work. I have talked about GZDoom here multiple times as the program allows you to play enhanced versions. However, that isn’t the only one out there as Zandronum and ZDoom give these options to you in a much easier manner. The classic games along with several mods allow co-op campaigns and deathmatch multiplayer. The greatest thing about multiplayer is you can use several players at once to play against. I never understood why Bethesda never brought it upon themselves to ask Nerve Software to add online to the recent console releases. Nightdive did this for Turok 2 across Nintendo Switch/PS4/Xbox One which was a nice added feature. There was nothing stopping Bethesda from doing the same for the modern console releases. Fortunately, the modding community was there to save face for the PC edition as they have their own servers to play online. Rating: 8.2/10 The Doom series is no exception to the Golden Age rule considering most maps are filled to the gills of secret areas. In Map 22 is one of the Hell stages and the Slayer finds a secret behind a wall with a Specter waiting for him. Unlike the Arch-Vile surprise in Map 22, placing a lower tier enemy — a specter as seen here in the image — in these hidden spots sometimes was warrant. Placing enemies in specific spots should make sense without putting a strong tier one to anger us. One of the interesting secrets is finding the head of John Romero on a wooden stake when fighting the Icon of Sin. The second caption shows this little secret hidden between the floor and the Icon of Sin’s head. The point of the hidden feature gives the player an easier way to defeat this massive demon. These are the many secrets developers would put in that rewards the player when found. Other games such as Metroid II, Final Fantasy II, Super Mario Bros 3 and Zelda II had the feature too in their final battles. I also love how Romero took inspiration from Ed Boon and John Tobias from the first Mortal Kombat when they placed their heads on spikes. Final Rating The second entry in the iconic series continued what made the Original a true trend setter in the genre. It doesn't change the game up enough or take the first Doom further, but the level design expanded away from some quarks. Most of the level design is no longer limited to just corridor areas as the environments are intricate this time. Some of these corridor stages are still present but most were consistent. However, some maps were badly put together while a few others were head scratchers to why they existed. A map like the Suburbs or the Factory is a prime example of Id trying to do too many things with the level design. Even the visuals and presentation didn’t see an upgrade, despite the programmers, could’ve added additional details—After looking at the Return to Saturn series it is obvious the development team could’ve done more. The soundtrack, while not as iconic as the Original, still does its job. Doom II’s original content supported 54k online modern and with 32 maps for the offline campaign. Of course that has since been obsolete thanks to better technology and the Doom Mod community deserves a pat on the back. Another thing is these modders also deserve a massive thank you for creating fantastic WADs using the Vanilla Base. Gameplay: 8.3/10 Graphics/Presentation: 7.8/10 Features/Content: 8.2/10 Final Rating: 8.1/10 Very Good
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Retro Gamer has over 25 years of gaming experience and played many classics since the Golden Age. She has been an avid fan since the day the NES graced her life and changed it forever.
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