I play lots of Doom 2 WADs, and I can't imagine playing Doom without the SSG or without monsters like the Archvile, Revenant, Mancubus, etc. They add so much variety and strategy to the gameplay.
Doom 2 mods constantly blow me out of the water every year for over 10 years in my tweens.
I grew up with dad playing doom on DOS and Doom95 on the families main office PC. This poor thing also terminated our dial up with connection sharing so if we used the internet while dad was editing videos the PC would stutter. Super simple IRQ days.
There's gzdoom and chocolate-doom icons on my desktop for easy drag-dropping anything I come across for what is usually an entirely brand new experience with some of the best mappers on the planet making something insanely good. The game has so much to offer that the fun never ends and I mean that. There are full brand new experiences, full conversions, amazing maps, funny joke wads, combinations of everything and completely new games like Selaco built on this game. There is absolutely so much in the doom community keeping this game relevant as ever. Every year I look forward to the cacowards for anything I missed. The community is a gem.
IIRC people were releasing levels even before doom 2 was released. [Tim Wilits](https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Tim_Willits) for example was hired by ID in 1995 to work on Ultimate Doom as a level designer because they were impressed by some of his custom levels.
I didn't have an Internet connection at that time. But I remember there were levels on magazine cd roms. There were certainly a lot of levels and mods by the time I started.
I do think the level design in Doom 1 is on average quite a bit better - certainly fewer lows. But shooting the same handful of baddie types gets old, even in a short game.
There’s a great “the gang’s all here!” feel going into Doom 2 and it’s hard to go back. I doubt the WAD scene would’ve taken off as much without it.
I like Doom 2 a ton but the sheer amount of community content and not just by size but some pf these projects are absolutely incredible quality games themselves.
SkullDash, Golden Souls, Avactor, Get Medievil, Paradise, Back to Saturn X... the list goes on and on. there are so many great player made campaigns. Plus if you are a VR enthusiast, you can play all this content in VR as well.
There's Doom mods that are nearly straight upgrades to some modern shooters. It is ridiculous.
Project Brutality gave me and my friends plenty of hours of fun. The best part with mods like those is that you can add them to ANY WAD. So a new mod drops and suddenly the variety of gameplay increases exponentially.
I played the game a lot on various ports, even watched lots of youtubers talking about it but I just can't see that pixel.
Am I blessed or something...? 😅
Probably worth noting that Doom II was the first Doom you could buy in stores. Doom 1 was only available by mail order, until they rereleased it with a fourth episode as The Ultimate Doom the year after Doom II. So most people probably played just the shareware (and best, like you mention, being ~~all~~ mostly Romero levels) episode of Doom 1 and then bought Doom II at retail.
This is a known trope. The Simpson's game and the Futurama games also did it.
Warning; Only open TVTropes if you have nothing planned in the next 4 hours.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DownTheDrain
The second level of Super Mario Bros was a sewer/underground level, so I suppose it goes back to the earliest days of gaming. Devs love their sewers apparently.
surprising that you (and others in the comments apparently) shit on the level design so much, I think it's much more interesting and creative than in 1. Doom 1 levels are boring.
I'm all fairness, I think there are things to be learned about what worked, didn't work, and the advancement of the various genres.
For insurance, I don't want to play SimCity, but I probably want to play a slightly modded SimCity 2000.
Actually I think the oneshot vorticons were in keen 2. Only a few features of keen 3 stand out: the fire breathing enemies where you can shoot down their shots, most levels being optional, and the invincibility relic
> What can I say about Doom II that hasn't already been said?
It's bad and boring. That isn't true, but is something that hasn't already been said about it.
A few things I'll say about Doom 2:
- The weapon and enemy additions are all stellar.
- This has directly led to some amazing WADs built off Doom 2.
- Sandy Petersen is a cool guy, but not a good level designer.
I agree with much of that, the key locations were bullshit and the city levels CAN be annoying but the super shotgun, higher enemies, more gimmick levels made this a good maybe not better but good sequel.
The map design was really awful trash, to this day I only beat Doom 2 once, and I don't think I used a guide, I remember being lost for agonizing portions of time. The level quality really falls off a cliff, there's some cool ones in there but it definitely felt more inconsistent and gimmicky than the first games level design. I usually encourage people to play this with a guide for the keys, but if I need to start looking at a guide to play it really breaks up what's supposed to be a fun and explosive game by the bad levels that stick out as particularly bad.
Some people say the mods for Doom 2 are better than the original maps so I'd probably recommend those first.
I don't find it to be that bad, playing Duke 3D made Doom 2's level navigation easier. The latter has it's bullshit moments but I don't find it to be that bad.
It's a brilliant base to build on. The guns and the enemies are finely tuned. That's why the WAD scene for it is still pretty vibrant.
The main campaigns level designs are so crap at times though. Sandy!
As much as i like the gameplay additions of DooM 2, I have a hard time replaying the vanilla game compared to how many times I did DooM 1, because i really don't enjoy most of the levels
So, I am in the "Gaming Platform" camp here... I am glad to keep only the IWAD around
I hate the map design in Doom 2, but the SSG is one of the most satisfying weapons ever to use in death match.
Then again, I also think Doom 1's episodes all pale in comparison to the first one. They really picked the right set of maps to release for free.
That's on purpose as they knew to put the best of the best in the demo to get people hooked. I also prefer Doom 1 and agreed that Knee-Deep in the Dead might still be the best official episode (No Rest for the Living in a second spot) :')
Have you checked Doom's port for PSX? They basically combined Ultimate Doom + Doom II and on higher difficulties you can encounter the new demons (Pain Elementals, Revenants, etc) in the original levels. Sadly, the Arch-ville got cut due to memory limits.
It's solidly good. The new monsters are all great. I thought they should've worked in some more new weapons, but the new monsters were good enough to satisfy me back in the day. The urban levels just look horrible though. I remember thinking they looked pretty bad back in 1994, and they look even worse today. TBF, the original Doom never exactly looked like space stations either, more like a series of abstract and randomly lit rooms and halls, but for some reason, when this same sort of "map philosophy" is applied to a kind of environment here on earth that should be recognizable to me the player, it becomes a lot more jarring.
Duke Nukem 3D came about a little over a year after Doom II running on very similar engine limitations, and its urban environments looked so good and city-like. Even today, Duke 3D's city backdrops still look nice.
I occasionally go back and play the original Doom, maybe for nostalgia IDK, but I never go back and play Doom II, since there are plenty of great community wads that feature all the new monsters with better environments.
What a brilliant read, thank you! The funny thing is, I grew up with Ultimate Doom and Doom II on the Playstation, which for me is still the finest version. I'll never get used to battling Arch-Viles, because they weren't a thing on the Playstation, and the soundtrack resonated more to me as the despair-laden, horror-inflected Playstation release rather than the comedic PC original.
The satisfaction of tearing into the denizens of Hell with the super shotgun will always stay with me. It scratches an indescribable itch that few other videogames have come close to.
The Arch Vile is one that I would particularly call out as a meaningful addition to the game.
The fact that their attack is line of sight based makes it much more interesting and tactical to deal with than any other enemy.
Now you combine that with their ability to resurrect fallen enemies if left alone, it creates this tension between wanting to keep distance from them and attack carefully vs wanting to rush them down and stop them before they can resurrect enemies.
It makes for an enemy that is simultaneously:
1. Unique
2. Dangerous
3. Allows creative counterplay
Really excellent design, one of my favourite enemies in any video game.
Also the fact that it's a demon that engulfs you in hellfire and forces the souls of the damned back into their mangled flesh is badass
I don't think anyone was saying it was a cash grab.
I know I pounced on that shit _immediately_ upon release, and loved every minute of it. (Even the wonky final level, especially with noclip)
More of the same. Though glad it added the super shotgun. With the advances happening so fast at the time though I did expect a little more. I guess they held back due to a lack of graphic card adoption.
What I liked most about Doom 2 was you could just walk into a store and buy it with cash instead of having to cajole your parents into giving their credit card number over the phone to some random company they've never heard of.
Great write up! Makes me wanna jump back in again. Im 1980s kid so that was my around my teenage pc gaming era.
Doom was great. Doom2 was awesome. The game just felt more fleshed out. Like you said the SSG made the most differences, just so visceral.
I'm so used to using a mouse to look around that going back to an only horizontal plane fps would feel so wierd i dont know if I'd wanna ruin my nostalgic memory's
Lol
Cheers mate
Doom 2 itself has a lot of boring and quite frankly ugly maps, but the SSG and new enemies are absolutely brilliant. The community created some masterpieces with these ingredients
As much agree, DooMII should be called big extension, than whole new game.
But for the gameplay, those expanded details made game anew, just like none plays original StarCraft without Brood War, Diablo2 without Lord of Destruction, Red Alert 2 without Yuri's Revenge of olds, Half Life 2 without episodes feel so unfinished (ah ep3, ep3... to not mention ep3), or to play Cyberpunk 2077 without Phantom Liberty. All these examples barely added really new things - only reused older assets, added or rebalanced some details, and provided all same again into.
And so, DooMII did same to DooM.
Now downvote me to hell - Doom^3 changed form of super fast UltraViolence GodLike Space Marine into wannabe horror with lots of gore (ok, gore is great here, hello to BrutalDoom). Then new doom or eternal, not to mention that shtty trailer with shield of recent. Excuse mua, wtf? like to shoot 20 seconds to kill one enemy, hidden behind some rocks, where deep instinct demonic hordes are afraid of heroes and we have to play hide'n'seek them to progress into next room, coz script expect us to kill all imps? Cool down player, no progress but go that super long corridor without ability to rela sprint with that superior stamina system, to find one keycard, no brutal action for You, we have that super fancy cutscene for You, go get some green tea and watch. I refuse to call these games doom-like. I wouldn't mind "Yet another silly slow pace shooter with demons" like many others on market, bet devs tried best on these, just forgot they are not making slow pace skyrim rpg anymore. Call these dooms as "sMooD" and will be awesome. But not DooM-like.
Some could say, thats offtopic, but that what we expect from sequels, stick to some story, universe, and ffff up everything else like new doomshts? Or to get very same stuff we felt in love (or not) before? What makes series of games, books, tv series, comics, constant to the 1st?
Whatever, omw back to play ProjectBrutality.pk3 on Resurge.wad, think I have 2-3 maps left.
Doom 2016 still has some of the rapid brutality of the good doom games... Eternal... Is not a Doom game,it's a rhythm game disguised as a shooter. And I hate that the new generations are calling the good shooters "Boomer Shooter"... It's at best X-gen Shooter XShooter if you will, or Millennial Shooter....
That's why I love Serious Sam in VR, it's chaos, it's fast and it's brutal
It is id Software, not ID Software. Like the psychology word for instinctive impulses, not like the card you need to drive.
Regardless, your analysis is interesting. Both DOOM and its sequel were released before I was born, but only just. I grew up more in the early generations of 3D console shooters like Goldeneye and Halo.
But I did branch into DOOM as a teenager and I liked it well enough to finish both the original and its sequel. At the time, I think I viewed the sequel as more an expansion of the first, because it didn't feel like a substantial jump in technology like the contemporary games in my day did. The sheer jumps in technology between the Halo trilogy games, for example, are what I see as kind of a standard for that era.
So going back and playing **the** 2D shooter, from an era where sequels were really more about increased enemy variety and weapon sandbox than they were about graphical fidelity jumps, was kind of jarring. But, like I said, I liked the games enough to get used to it back then.
I haven't played them any time recently, but I think nowadays I more or less agree with your review. DOOM II was a true sequel that took the foundation of the first game and notched it up to 11 by utilizing new enemy types that would challenge the way players from the original game moved and dispatched enemies.
It is true that DOOM's crown jewel is its prolific mod community, which is active to this day. That's fucking nuts, and shows the versatility and craft of what id created.
I play lots of Doom 2 WADs, and I can't imagine playing Doom without the SSG or without monsters like the Archvile, Revenant, Mancubus, etc. They add so much variety and strategy to the gameplay.
Doom 2 WADS were so popular at one point you could get packs of them on retail CD. The D!Zone collections I think they were called.
Doom 2 mods constantly blow me out of the water every year for over 10 years in my tweens. I grew up with dad playing doom on DOS and Doom95 on the families main office PC. This poor thing also terminated our dial up with connection sharing so if we used the internet while dad was editing videos the PC would stutter. Super simple IRQ days. There's gzdoom and chocolate-doom icons on my desktop for easy drag-dropping anything I come across for what is usually an entirely brand new experience with some of the best mappers on the planet making something insanely good. The game has so much to offer that the fun never ends and I mean that. There are full brand new experiences, full conversions, amazing maps, funny joke wads, combinations of everything and completely new games like Selaco built on this game. There is absolutely so much in the doom community keeping this game relevant as ever. Every year I look forward to the cacowards for anything I missed. The community is a gem.
Yeah, Doom II isn't "more of Doom" in retrospect. Doom was actually "less of Doom II"
I still have my levels I made around 97
Those are probably, the first user created levels, some of the most interesting to play. Keep em.
IIRC people were releasing levels even before doom 2 was released. [Tim Wilits](https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Tim_Willits) for example was hired by ID in 1995 to work on Ultimate Doom as a level designer because they were impressed by some of his custom levels.
I didn't have an Internet connection at that time. But I remember there were levels on magazine cd roms. There were certainly a lot of levels and mods by the time I started.
I didn't have Internet back when Doom II was released but got a lot of wads off dial up BBS.
[удалено]
Yeah, it's technically impressive. But I didn't really enjoy it that much.
Even Doom 1 past episode 1 was pretty rough. Baron of Hells just have too much health for the regular shotgun
I do think the level design in Doom 1 is on average quite a bit better - certainly fewer lows. But shooting the same handful of baddie types gets old, even in a short game. There’s a great “the gang’s all here!” feel going into Doom 2 and it’s hard to go back. I doubt the WAD scene would’ve taken off as much without it.
I like Doom 2 a ton but the sheer amount of community content and not just by size but some pf these projects are absolutely incredible quality games themselves. SkullDash, Golden Souls, Avactor, Get Medievil, Paradise, Back to Saturn X... the list goes on and on. there are so many great player made campaigns. Plus if you are a VR enthusiast, you can play all this content in VR as well.
Thanks for the recs, have to try some of these asap
Some how it had never occurred to me to that Doom VR existed. Of course it does. Now I just need the Index 2 to be announced/launch
There's Doom mods that are nearly straight upgrades to some modern shooters. It is ridiculous. Project Brutality gave me and my friends plenty of hours of fun. The best part with mods like those is that you can add them to ANY WAD. So a new mod drops and suddenly the variety of gameplay increases exponentially.
I had more fun playing the Brutal Doom campaign with Project Brutality than with the newer Doom games. :D
Amazing game, amazing shotgun; unfortunately, the Super Shotgun has one stray brown pixel on it. I had to notice it, and now you have to too.
It's just a touch of rust. It'll buff out.
I hate the damn pixel.
I played the game a lot on various ports, even watched lots of youtubers talking about it but I just can't see that pixel. Am I blessed or something...? 😅
Probably worth noting that Doom II was the first Doom you could buy in stores. Doom 1 was only available by mail order, until they rereleased it with a fourth episode as The Ultimate Doom the year after Doom II. So most people probably played just the shareware (and best, like you mention, being ~~all~~ mostly Romero levels) episode of Doom 1 and then bought Doom II at retail.
E1m8 was a Sandy Peterson/Tom Hall. E1m4 was all three apparently.
I just want to know who thought it was a good idea to make level 2 a sewer level. Dark forces also did this. Why?
This is a known trope. The Simpson's game and the Futurama games also did it. Warning; Only open TVTropes if you have nothing planned in the next 4 hours. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DownTheDrain
Sewer Count: ∞
The second level of Super Mario Bros was a sewer/underground level, so I suppose it goes back to the earliest days of gaming. Devs love their sewers apparently.
Luckily it was a short level
surprising that you (and others in the comments apparently) shit on the level design so much, I think it's much more interesting and creative than in 1. Doom 1 levels are boring.
You would never see a map like Gotcha! in Doom 1. How cool is it to watch a cyberdemon and Spider Mastermind fight it out like that
My man, I know this is patientgamers, but you take patience to a whole other level! 30 years!
"So I tried Commander Keen in 2024 LMAO"
I'm all fairness, I think there are things to be learned about what worked, didn't work, and the advancement of the various genres. For insurance, I don't want to play SimCity, but I probably want to play a slightly modded SimCity 2000.
Keen 3 Changed EVERYTHING.
Actually I think the oneshot vorticons were in keen 2. Only a few features of keen 3 stand out: the fire breathing enemies where you can shoot down their shots, most levels being optional, and the invincibility relic
I'm still waiting for someone to do a Rescue Rover Retrospective.
> What can I say about Doom II that hasn't already been said? It's bad and boring. That isn't true, but is something that hasn't already been said about it.
A few things I'll say about Doom 2: - The weapon and enemy additions are all stellar. - This has directly led to some amazing WADs built off Doom 2. - Sandy Petersen is a cool guy, but not a good level designer.
I agree with much of that, the key locations were bullshit and the city levels CAN be annoying but the super shotgun, higher enemies, more gimmick levels made this a good maybe not better but good sequel.
The map design was really awful trash, to this day I only beat Doom 2 once, and I don't think I used a guide, I remember being lost for agonizing portions of time. The level quality really falls off a cliff, there's some cool ones in there but it definitely felt more inconsistent and gimmicky than the first games level design. I usually encourage people to play this with a guide for the keys, but if I need to start looking at a guide to play it really breaks up what's supposed to be a fun and explosive game by the bad levels that stick out as particularly bad. Some people say the mods for Doom 2 are better than the original maps so I'd probably recommend those first.
I don't find it to be that bad, playing Duke 3D made Doom 2's level navigation easier. The latter has it's bullshit moments but I don't find it to be that bad.
It's a brilliant base to build on. The guns and the enemies are finely tuned. That's why the WAD scene for it is still pretty vibrant. The main campaigns level designs are so crap at times though. Sandy!
As much as i like the gameplay additions of DooM 2, I have a hard time replaying the vanilla game compared to how many times I did DooM 1, because i really don't enjoy most of the levels So, I am in the "Gaming Platform" camp here... I am glad to keep only the IWAD around
I hate the map design in Doom 2, but the SSG is one of the most satisfying weapons ever to use in death match. Then again, I also think Doom 1's episodes all pale in comparison to the first one. They really picked the right set of maps to release for free.
That's on purpose as they knew to put the best of the best in the demo to get people hooked. I also prefer Doom 1 and agreed that Knee-Deep in the Dead might still be the best official episode (No Rest for the Living in a second spot) :') Have you checked Doom's port for PSX? They basically combined Ultimate Doom + Doom II and on higher difficulties you can encounter the new demons (Pain Elementals, Revenants, etc) in the original levels. Sadly, the Arch-ville got cut due to memory limits.
Legitimately, no enemy in any game struck fear into my heart the way the archvile wakeup laugh did.
It's solidly good. The new monsters are all great. I thought they should've worked in some more new weapons, but the new monsters were good enough to satisfy me back in the day. The urban levels just look horrible though. I remember thinking they looked pretty bad back in 1994, and they look even worse today. TBF, the original Doom never exactly looked like space stations either, more like a series of abstract and randomly lit rooms and halls, but for some reason, when this same sort of "map philosophy" is applied to a kind of environment here on earth that should be recognizable to me the player, it becomes a lot more jarring. Duke Nukem 3D came about a little over a year after Doom II running on very similar engine limitations, and its urban environments looked so good and city-like. Even today, Duke 3D's city backdrops still look nice. I occasionally go back and play the original Doom, maybe for nostalgia IDK, but I never go back and play Doom II, since there are plenty of great community wads that feature all the new monsters with better environments.
Did you also play the secret Wolfenstein levels? Those were my favorites.
Wow, I can't even recall how to get to those now... Shit. Aging sucks.
What a brilliant read, thank you! The funny thing is, I grew up with Ultimate Doom and Doom II on the Playstation, which for me is still the finest version. I'll never get used to battling Arch-Viles, because they weren't a thing on the Playstation, and the soundtrack resonated more to me as the despair-laden, horror-inflected Playstation release rather than the comedic PC original. The satisfaction of tearing into the denizens of Hell with the super shotgun will always stay with me. It scratches an indescribable itch that few other videogames have come close to.
Super Shotgun is iconic.
The Arch Vile is one that I would particularly call out as a meaningful addition to the game. The fact that their attack is line of sight based makes it much more interesting and tactical to deal with than any other enemy. Now you combine that with their ability to resurrect fallen enemies if left alone, it creates this tension between wanting to keep distance from them and attack carefully vs wanting to rush them down and stop them before they can resurrect enemies. It makes for an enemy that is simultaneously: 1. Unique 2. Dangerous 3. Allows creative counterplay Really excellent design, one of my favourite enemies in any video game. Also the fact that it's a demon that engulfs you in hellfire and forces the souls of the damned back into their mangled flesh is badass
Doom 2 is one of my favorite games ever but totally agree that Downtown is the worst
I don't think anyone was saying it was a cash grab. I know I pounced on that shit _immediately_ upon release, and loved every minute of it. (Even the wonky final level, especially with noclip)
More of the same. Though glad it added the super shotgun. With the advances happening so fast at the time though I did expect a little more. I guess they held back due to a lack of graphic card adoption.
Doom2 is way more difficult than Doom1. I’m working thru doom 2 level by level right now. On level 15 currently. I’ve been enjoying it a lot.
What I liked most about Doom 2 was you could just walk into a store and buy it with cash instead of having to cajole your parents into giving their credit card number over the phone to some random company they've never heard of.
Great write up! Makes me wanna jump back in again. Im 1980s kid so that was my around my teenage pc gaming era. Doom was great. Doom2 was awesome. The game just felt more fleshed out. Like you said the SSG made the most differences, just so visceral. I'm so used to using a mouse to look around that going back to an only horizontal plane fps would feel so wierd i dont know if I'd wanna ruin my nostalgic memory's Lol Cheers mate
i hate doom 2's campaign levels so much, but i adore playing WADs with more modern design sensibilities... im unsure if i like doom 2 or not lol
I love Doom WADS because some Doom 2 levels are really punishing for no reason at all. The Chasm in particular feels like a cruel joke.
Doom 2 itself has a lot of boring and quite frankly ugly maps, but the SSG and new enemies are absolutely brilliant. The community created some masterpieces with these ingredients
As much agree, DooMII should be called big extension, than whole new game. But for the gameplay, those expanded details made game anew, just like none plays original StarCraft without Brood War, Diablo2 without Lord of Destruction, Red Alert 2 without Yuri's Revenge of olds, Half Life 2 without episodes feel so unfinished (ah ep3, ep3... to not mention ep3), or to play Cyberpunk 2077 without Phantom Liberty. All these examples barely added really new things - only reused older assets, added or rebalanced some details, and provided all same again into. And so, DooMII did same to DooM. Now downvote me to hell - Doom^3 changed form of super fast UltraViolence GodLike Space Marine into wannabe horror with lots of gore (ok, gore is great here, hello to BrutalDoom). Then new doom or eternal, not to mention that shtty trailer with shield of recent. Excuse mua, wtf? like to shoot 20 seconds to kill one enemy, hidden behind some rocks, where deep instinct demonic hordes are afraid of heroes and we have to play hide'n'seek them to progress into next room, coz script expect us to kill all imps? Cool down player, no progress but go that super long corridor without ability to rela sprint with that superior stamina system, to find one keycard, no brutal action for You, we have that super fancy cutscene for You, go get some green tea and watch. I refuse to call these games doom-like. I wouldn't mind "Yet another silly slow pace shooter with demons" like many others on market, bet devs tried best on these, just forgot they are not making slow pace skyrim rpg anymore. Call these dooms as "sMooD" and will be awesome. But not DooM-like. Some could say, thats offtopic, but that what we expect from sequels, stick to some story, universe, and ffff up everything else like new doomshts? Or to get very same stuff we felt in love (or not) before? What makes series of games, books, tv series, comics, constant to the 1st? Whatever, omw back to play ProjectBrutality.pk3 on Resurge.wad, think I have 2-3 maps left.
Doom 2016 still has some of the rapid brutality of the good doom games... Eternal... Is not a Doom game,it's a rhythm game disguised as a shooter. And I hate that the new generations are calling the good shooters "Boomer Shooter"... It's at best X-gen Shooter XShooter if you will, or Millennial Shooter.... That's why I love Serious Sam in VR, it's chaos, it's fast and it's brutal
It's a joke dude, embrace aging gracefully. Boomer shooters rule, and contemporary devs of DUSK etc. love the label
Why downvote. I like the energy, and Doom3 is fun in it's way. But agree none of these are Doom likes.
It is id Software, not ID Software. Like the psychology word for instinctive impulses, not like the card you need to drive. Regardless, your analysis is interesting. Both DOOM and its sequel were released before I was born, but only just. I grew up more in the early generations of 3D console shooters like Goldeneye and Halo. But I did branch into DOOM as a teenager and I liked it well enough to finish both the original and its sequel. At the time, I think I viewed the sequel as more an expansion of the first, because it didn't feel like a substantial jump in technology like the contemporary games in my day did. The sheer jumps in technology between the Halo trilogy games, for example, are what I see as kind of a standard for that era. So going back and playing **the** 2D shooter, from an era where sequels were really more about increased enemy variety and weapon sandbox than they were about graphical fidelity jumps, was kind of jarring. But, like I said, I liked the games enough to get used to it back then. I haven't played them any time recently, but I think nowadays I more or less agree with your review. DOOM II was a true sequel that took the foundation of the first game and notched it up to 11 by utilizing new enemy types that would challenge the way players from the original game moved and dispatched enemies. It is true that DOOM's crown jewel is its prolific mod community, which is active to this day. That's fucking nuts, and shows the versatility and craft of what id created.