WOAH, It's Doom 2! Doom 2 is just such a bigger, badder, better version of Doom. Lots of people out there waiting for it, for sure. Pretty much more popular than football. Once you start playing you're hooked. We have a lot of people asking what to expect of Doom 2, when's it gonna come out... when's it gonna come out... 8/16-Bit rendition of Frolic By Luciano Michelini Doom 2 is where the series grew into what we know is Doom. The armies of Hell, the absolute brutality, the high enemy counts, the perfect arsenal, the enemies. There's a lot of ground to cover on this one Doom 2 came out on September 30th, 1994. About 10 months after Doom. Yeah, it didn't take them long. Same engine, some new monsters, a new weapon, doesn't seem like too much of an upgrade if you ask me... Wrong! Boring. Maybe because I've played it a thousand times. It's got a bit of a reputation. The layout lends itself to some incredible deathmatch combat. You don't even know what you're in for with this level! These are all Doom 1 monsters. If you've never played this, for whatever reason, step back, grab the chainsaw... (Visible Chainsaw Massacre) Unlike Doom 1, you're getting a few weapons in this map. Shotgun is outside. You have to run over this light here to open a door to get to the rocket launcher. There, easy. Right about here, you're gonna start noticing something a little different. Doom 2's throwing a lot more monsters at 'cha. This is the second level and there's nearly 100 Zombies, Imps, and Pinkies and it's dark and uh... ...Well... It's not important compared to... the Super Shotgun. The ultimate demon slaying weapon, the pinnacle of shotguns, you think "Why don't they just call it the double barrel?" Because it's better... Because it's super. If Batman was a gun, he'd be this. No more extended fights with Pinkies, no more Lost Souls takin' more than a split second to exorcise. Whole groups of low tier enemies fall at the hands of this absolute BEAST of a weapon! Listen to it! It has never been outdone. It is absolutely a hundred percent perfect, and anyone who says otherwise is wrong. Some people say it's overpowered. They're also wrong. Powerful? Absolutely! But with the monsters you're gonna be dealing with soon, you need that kind of power! Wait a minute. No, it's spelled different. There we go. You're just walking around having fun with your new super shotgun. Oh, yeah, just TEARING through, when you go up this elevator and this happens... The Chaingunner. The first of the new monsters you're gonna meet and an absolute bastard. You all know why... Shotgunners were bad enough. Chaingunners in large numbers are a goddamn firing squad if you'd like to experience what that's like... Plutonia's that way. It's actually been quite a while since I've played through Doom 2 all the way and it's not bad so far, even this level with Its Chaingunners and it's weird secrets. There's more emphasis on running over platforms and such in this game than in Doom 1. They knew the engine better. "A level designer's expertise in designing levels will show through because they've learned a lot from the creation of Doom 1 or 'Doom' and it, uh... their... level of expertise will show through in Doom 2." Little map with some weird- Why does walking over a box lower the other box and not the switch? Who made this? Oh, it was American McGee. He's responsible for a lot of these early doom 2 levels, except the first one, that's a Peterson map. The Focus isn't bad though. It's fine. Two sewer levels in five maps...
...awesome. If you're too blind to have gotten the super shotgun yet, here it is right at the start along with these elevators to drop you into Imp closets. I always forget how to get the Plasma Gun in this level because it's one of those patented American McGee torch secrets, where you have to press a torch despite the fact that you don't use things in Doom, just lines. So it lowers this floor and then boom, Plasma Gun. You're also introduced to our next in the lineup of all-star monsters, the Hell Knight. Not particularly creative to recolor the Baron and give them half the health. It's not the worst idea. All the other monsters are a little more unique. The Hell Knight keeps getting a redesign to make him different. The one in Doom 3 looks like this and the one in Doom 4... Looks like the one in Doom 3, which is weird. Never mind. I'll always remember this dark ass room full of hit scanners. They think they're gonna get drop on me. No! Get out! FUCK OFF! "Crusher", my ass! One room has a crusher in it with like Barons and Hell Knights on lower skills if I'm remembering right, and a Spider Demon on Ultra Violence. Good luck, dick. Oh yeah, and you get to meet the lord of Doom memes. The spooky skeleton boi himself, the Revenant. He's a dick too. His homing missiles can be avoided with enough space and not even that much movement and canceled out altogether if you take out your old friend, the Super Shotgun, get up nice and close, provoking him to try to melee you. Get used to Revenants, cuz they're gonna show up a lot from now on, boney bastards... Again, I like The Crusher, mostly, got a lot of character and cool secrets like these idiots zombies who choose to hide in a room full of explosive barrels. You have ventured deeply into the infested starport. But something is wrong. The monsters have brought their own reality with them and the starport's technology is being subverted by their presence. Basically Doom Guy has a mission in these early levels, which is to help the survivors on earth escape the planet cuz nobody else is badass enough to kill all these demons. You're the only one to ever survive an invasion followed by a trip to hell. And back! And then survive Hell Beneath, which is still harder than any level in Doom 2. Dead Simple is one of the most famous doom levels. Most Doom 2 WADs that have a Map 7 have a Dead Simple clone. There's map specific tags to use when you kill monsters in this level, see when you kill the Mancubus, like, the walls lower and if you kill an Arachnotron, the steps raise. The Mancubus. A wall of gelatinous fire spewing pain. Two at a time, three in a row. Blinding fireballs, taking four or five rockets or super shotgun blasts, he's one of the toughest monsters. Followed by the Arachnotron, a smaller version of the Spider Mastermind that didn't watch enough Rick and Morty. The manual says that it's worse that they have a plasma gun, which is nonsense. The Spider Demon's Chaingun, which is more of an automatic shotgun, is way worse. Plasma shots can be dodged. I gotta mention the sound design. Because when the enemies die, it feels less like the sound effect library stuff you got in Doom 1, where you kill the Imp and it's a camel sound. Camel Translation: "I wanna get it on~" It is a lot more satisfying. The Mancubus' grunt, which I always thought said "Hump yo Mom". "Hump your Mom!" ...which isn't some Freudian complex that Civvie has, you fucking weirdos, and the Arachnotron just shutting down and their brains collapsing, mmm! Good stuff. I had to fine time in Dead Simple! Zero damage. Just take it as a sign of how easy it is to dodge this stuff. But the fun can't last forever. We're into the giant rooms full of monsters now, Tricks and Traps! "Civvie, why don't you do some infighting?" I don't really like infighting, it's faster to kill everything yourself... Usually... This is really the turning point for Doom 2 where it goes from Doom but more to a different experience. One more savage. When this game throws a room full of monsters at you, You want to run in there and kill 'em all! You're out for blood! So much so that when I hear a monster in another room that could possibly still be alive. My response is like this: *pissant Imp noise* Civvie: Who said that? Civvie: "WHO THE FUCK SAID THAT?!" *should've stayed quiet...* You'll get your very first BFG in this level too. So we're on Level 8, you've got all the weapons, you've met most of the monsters except... UuuuuUUUUUUUGH... Remember how I really hated Lost Souls in Doom 1 because they were a fucking nuisance? Now there's a monster that does nothing but spawn Lost Souls. You want some tips? You want tricks? OK, Chaingun or Plasma. Just kill it and fast and to avoid it spawning more Lost Souls when it dies get it into a tight space. Cuz yeah, it also does that thing because it's pure evil. Other highlights in Tricks and Traps include this hallway where you're trapped with a Baron. No, fuck it. Fuck it. FUCK IT! Despite the fact that there are way too many Pain Elementals and Chaingunners in this level, I kind of love it. It is just HORDES of enemies! All over! It's also got my favorite music track in the game. You're runnin' and gunnin' in every room a battle, especially this one! Oh this one. Oh, I know what's coming! You want some of this?! From here on out, blood baths! Not as brutal or slaughter map-y as Plutonia, but this is where it comes from. This is the "Genesis". Oh and also fuck Pain Elementals. I was kind of low on ammo at the end of this map, it was kind of ugly, but I got the job done. Refueling Base. Now we're talking! A revamped Tom Hall level from Doom 1 they put into Doom 2. Stuffed to the brim with hundreds of monsters, full of cool secret paths that go all around the map. This fun little room full of hit-scanners, a Cyberdemon fight that you can cheese with two invulnerabilities. This is actually one of my favorites in the game. "Circle of Death",
"O of Destruction". This is the first Romero level in the game. And it's good! It's fine! The end is a bit of a schlep... The Arch-vile. The most worthy of opponents. No matter how good you are, no matter how much Doom you've played... There's always the Arch-vile. A line-of-sight attack that blinds you with fire before exploding your sorry ass. And he resurrects dead monsters, takes slightly more punishment than a Mancubus, and is DAMN fast. The Arch-vile is a force to be reckoned with and I love him. He's the last to be introduced and he caps off the all-star lineup of Doom 2 monsters. The monsters are extremely important and because of their incredibly varied attack patterns and how mixing and matching them can create so many different combat scenarios, this is the thing, in my opinion, that's given Doom 2 and its modding scene such longevity. Sure, having easy-to-use tools and source ports that let's you turn Doom into anything helps. But this here, this is such a perfect and delicate balance, honed over what, ten months of development? It's beautiful! Unfortunately, we have to get into the bad parts now... Okay, so here's the first map I absolutely hate. Doom's middle-third is the most questionable. Turns out the demonic invasion is coming from the heart of your hometown, which knowing iD is, probably Texas. If you look to your left, you'll see why I hate using Doom's auto-aim and why I only use it for these videos to stay "classic", without having to play like, Chocolate Doom or something with the 35 FPS cap. Yeah, 35 FPS was really cool in 1994, Hyperspace Cybernetic Intelligence and Juvenile Delinquent John Carmack, that second part is absolutely true. Okay, So this one time John Carmack went to juvie because he made some thermite to burn through a window, So he and some other kids could break into a school and steal a computer. There was a much darker timeline where he kills us all. Anyway, The Factory is a bad, bad level! My first death of the run! I know I should have taken the Berserk into this teleporter instead of being wrecked by the Imps the first time, it's fine. There's this completely unimportant roomful of Imps, I guess it's satisfying to... Step right up! Step right up! We're doing the Wang Nuke thing again this time in the future! With a BIG FUCKING GUN!!! And this room full of switches and Cacodemons, nah miss me with this shit, it's not hard, it's just a slog... Downtown, fucking, nowhere! I've never been to Texas, but I know it doesn't look like this and there isn't a goddamn Imp in every window above your view height. Hey, all you aspiring level designers. Here's the tip: If you need a giant arrow to tell you where to go in the level, the level is not well designed. I'm sorry Sandy, you do better later. And I know iD dropped half the maps on ya. When I say half the maps, well, there are 32 maps in Doom 2 and Sandy Peterson made 18 of them. I don't really count the two secret maps, you'll see why, so he had 16 maps to make for Doom 2. John Romero was off producing Heretic and Hexen, death-matching, and generally being less involved. He was a rockstar now. I mean, I just love John Romero. He's such a goddamn character. I can't even be mad. Oh that it was like 25 years ago. He says while he routinely gets the butt-pains over shitty old DOS games. Downtown, right, that's what I was talking about like two minutes ago. Full of weird teleports to take you where you need to go... Maybe... Lookin' even less like a city than any of Doom's levels look like whatever the fuck they're supposed to look like. Eh, it gets better. The Inmost Dens! McGee returns and comes out with my personal favorite Doom 2 level! Fast, Slick, Pretty, Fun, good map! That's all I got. Industrial Zone. This one doesn't look like a city either, but we can blame Romero for that. This thing here with this lowering wall I always thought that was kind of like that part in Duke 3D where you're demolishing the building, right? That's what it always seemed like to me back when I could use my imagination. Anyway, Industrial Zone is better, I guess from a design standpoint, It's got a bunch of different areas, nice verticality, the last building is a pain. Good thing you don't need to go in there. There's a switch around here somewhere, it's hazy in all of this bloodlust. Oh that's mean. That is typical Romero. Getting to the secret level is weird, you have to go into this secret here and then go on this platform and leave, and then this door across the map opens... I don't know how you're supposed to know that but, whatever. Wolfenstein! We got Nahtzees, kiddos: Nazis aren't getting their own folder. Fuck them. They're Nazis. I will not leave this level until I see 100 dead Nahtzees! And find all the secrets, but it's like a remake of Wolfenstein E1M1. Which I know like the back of my hand. More because of this secret level than actually playing Wolfenstein 3D, to the point where if I go and play Wolf3D, I always look for the secret in that room with all the dogs or Pink Demons in Doom 2, you know, where you get all this cool stuff? It's good secret! Just like in Wolfenstein 3D, there's a secret exit, inside of a secret, inside of a secret, in the end of the map. I like this level because I can just uh, uh... "Blaze through it." Ha, I didn't get that joke when I was a kid, but I do now. Anyway... Say goodbye galaxy, you fucking albino spaceman! I don't care if Sandy Petersen says he based this level on a real place, it looks nothing like one! I still like it though. This absolutely brutal battle I talked about in the last Pro Doom episode. Mwah! Great stuff, I'd even be okay with if it didn't have all these power-ups. There was nothing like this in Doom 1. This is way more bonkers. This level isn't bad either really, I just remember a Cyberdemon being here because of when I played it in co-op. I only hate this tiny ledge over this pit here. Tiny ledges over pits are kind of crap, especially when this came out and a lot of people were playing with keyboard only... A Giant arena of a level with hordes of monsters! Oh baby, keep it coming! Gets the blood pumping! I remember hating more maps in Doom 2. It's hard to look back on it now after there have been thousands of fan made maps that wiped the floor with Doom 2's stock levels. Absolute banger! Love it. If not for the kind of primitive castle design that only really has the SHAPE of a castle. I love this secret area that's just a room where you get surrounded by Imps and there's teleporters to take you all around the map, I don't know why I like it so much, honestly. I keep having to circle back around because I haven't memorized where all those teleporters go. Not quite as impressive as a Hexen castle would be. I mean visually, since in this one, you don't have to go around the perimeter of the castle looking for fucking switches... The exit is locked with all three keys, But if you're desperate you can squeeze through with only two. Battle of the century! Spider Demon versus Cyberdemon! And while most times I play the Cyberdemon wins, the spider takes it sometimes. The spider has certain advantages like being immune to splash damage from the Cyberdemon's rockets, having that chain gun... Still, usually doesn't survive, as is the case here. Bye Bye! I'll waste one BFG shot on the Cyberdemon and I'll tell you what, the auto aim fucks over the monsters, too! Another level I really like. It's very open, it's filled with secret areas that don't even need to be explored, they're just there for curious players, like this one that gets me every single time... Eh, I'm not really a fan of this one. It's... fine, I guess. Teleporter heavy and dickish. Not really badly designed. The bit where you're plowing through Shotgunners and get assaulted by Revenants, it's intense, It's, uh... It's really a butt clencher as are all situations where you get an ambush by these boners. It's a real pain in the ass, leaves you sore and tired, I'll tell you what. ... You know what, just cut all of that, that was garbage... Ah man, this one was wrecking me at first, I feel awful about it. It's a short level. Again, it's not even bad it's just- Eh, I'm more concerned about... Oh boy, Barrels of "Fun". Uh, excuse me, where's the kaboom? There's supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom. Once you actually get up to the second area here and get a full frontal assault of Pain Elementals all around these explosive barrels and then the other side opens you up to attack and once you get over there... See, okay. Sometimes I will underestimate Doom 2. I'm a pro, right? Pink Demons can't stop me! (Proceeds to be stopped by Pink Demons) Yeah, I'm overthinking it... I wasted so much plasma. I'm stuck with a rocket launcher for the Spider Demon, which seems intended what with all these rockets. Nah, fuck it. Let's turn the Arachnotrons against their mama and keep the rockets for things that aren't immune to splash damage. Without the splash damage, the Super Shotgun does comparable damage to the rocket launcher, because it's awesome! ...Okay, maybe it's a little OP. I get plenty of use out of those rockets though, but then... uuuuungh... No, God, please no! No! No! NO! If you've played Doom 2, You know The Chasm. We've gotten to the hardest parts of the game now. You're in hell, even if this is some kind of subterranean frustration factory built by... Sandy Petersen, God damn it!
>:( Yeah, it's infamous for all these tiny ledges and since Doom 2 doesn't have falling damage, you can't even jump off for the sweet release of death. So many fucking Pinkies and Spectres! Just over and over! What's next? Oh, ok. Bloodfalls. It's fine. It's not great. I'd like to know how this room is so fucking dark when there's like 25 torches in here. This is a thing, right? I have doom compatibility and gzdoom set to strict as you do for this kind of thing. Which turns on the infinitely tall monsters because doom isn't 3d and the whole height thing was still a little off, monsters and players and explosions and stuff. They're all infinitely tall. So even if you're up here, they still block you. Not as much of a problem in the first game, is occasionally crippling in this one. Holy shit! This is like my tenth death! Embarrassing! The levels kind enough to give you a ton of cell ammo. So nuke this Arch-vile... Now, some people asked me after the last video what I was talking about with this here, this effect. This is a bug that happens when you don't put a texture on a higher or lower surface in Doom. The floor just kind of repeats for a while and does this effect. It's... Interesting? It's supposed to be kind of surreal. Whatever man, it's fine. I don't even care about it. Abandoned Mines. Decent. Not bad. Claustrophobic and twisty. Sometimes hard to navigate and there's like 50 secrets out of the first room, which is an elevator. It's... Complicated but... "Ooh, whoops! Ooh! I dropped my Monster Condo that I use for my MAGNUM DONG!" Monster Condo is...
Monster Condo. I don't know why it's called that because it looks about as much like a condo as anything else. It's full of monsters. It's got the deadliest Revenant attacks in the entire game in the form of this merry-go-round of pain. And This dimension twisting trip. Oh, baby. Yeah! Fucking great! You think I'm scared of Doom 2 monsters? I've been killing these things since I was six years old!! Now we're in hell! We have gotten to the fireworks factory kids, I like this one. I really do! I like the visual design of this area, this mess of demons over here... And for some reason two Pain Elementals in cages. Why? I don't know, they can't attack you! It's like all the demons hate them too, as they fucking should! Also these bars were only textured on one side. (Ramsay Disapproves) I liked the beginning of this map, not the end so much. The end is ugly. It's got fake walls with... uuuuhh... And this. This trap where you pick up the red key... 5/10 monster closet, 10/10 meme. I don't much care for two Arch-viles at a time if I'm being honest. The Living End, they gave Romero the penultimate map and he didn't disappoint. This one's actually pretty cool. I rarely fall into the pits anymore. Once you get through this gauntlet and you get to the central area where you have to fight a Cyberdemon... ...or not, you can just run to the exit. The Icon of Sin isn't so much a boss as much as it is a wall texture that spits out demons. You have to get to the top of these platforms, hit this switch to raise up an elevator in front of the wall, and then when it comes up, you have to time your rockets to get them directly into the brain here... And it's constantly spawning monsters in order to prevent you from doing that. If you're too slow or you get screwed by the RNG, get ready to try again. Pain Elementals are a problem, Arch-viles are a goddamn curse. I've never liked this boss. I mouse look the bastard away when playing casually, but we have to do this legit, so I will. Oh and if you think I'm not gonna mention that the boss is John Romero's head on a stick well, that's just absurd! "To win the game, you must kill me, John Romero." It turns out flavor text can make you feel a little bit of accomplishment. "The horrendous visage of the biggest demon you've ever seen crumbles before you, after you pump your rockets into his exposed brain, the monster shrivels up and dies. It's thrashing limbs being impossible to render in 1994.
You've done it. The invasion is over! Earth is saved! Hell is a wreck. You wonder where bad folks will go when they die, now. Wiping sweat from your forehead, you begin the long trek back home. Rebuilding earth ought to be a lot more fun than ruining it was. iD abandoned the doom series for a while to put out Quake games and almost all of the original team would leave iD before we get a third game which was... Unsurprisingly, completely different. I may not like all of this game, but I respect the absolute hell out of it. God da- you know, I'm trying not to make Hell puns and they just keep happening. I'm sorry...
Sweet, was wondering when his next video would drop.
Man, civvie is pumping out videos lately. I did not expect him to cover Doom II yet. Especially so quickly after Duke Nukem 3D.