Doom II, More Variety, More Hardcore
Marathon was a very similar looking game to Doom, but the controls were different.
Doom II is now available on the Xbox Live Arcade Marketplace, almost a long year of waiting for a launch date. Now is it worth over 800 ms points just for an outdated, 15 year old MS-DOS game? Actually it is, why wouldn't you play a re-mastered classic FPS game with HD 1080 and Online multiplayer, something you didn't have back in the past with your old windows 95.
The plot's simple. The story picks up after the events of the first Doom. You as the UAC Space Marine fighting through hell returns back to sweet sweet Earth! To find it invaded already by the evilness of Hell itself. It seemed Hell has made it to Earth before you. Now you want revenge, not just for mother Earth but for what happened to your pet rabbit, Daisy. You and Daisy did everything together. From winning a pie-eating contest to fishing in the Wisconsin lakes. All that changed all of a sudden, memories are gone, time for revenge. The story isn't something ID Software didn't really worked on, but they still got the job done well.
Now the gameplay for Doom II is actually a lot similar from the first game. You got the same HUD, weapons, items, you could see they didn't do any changes at all for the game and just shoved up over 32 levels in your face. They thought they could apologize by giving us a doubled-barreled action shotgun and a megasphere but that didn't do a damn thing. The only thing I was impressed from Doom II was the new variety of enemies. It was Id's hugest success.
The music for the game is still awesome, they used the same music composer and editor Robert Prince, so that's why you'll find the tracks a lot similar from the original Doom. The only probz was that they reused some of the songs in certain levels, the same problem like the original Doom. They really should have used some of the classic tracks from Classic Doom or even the unused tracks.
Now I have told you all about Doom II, now we'll talk about some of the newest additions and features that appeared in the new XBLA version of Doom II. Like all XBLA games, they come with achievements and online deathmatch. The achievements total have 200 GS and some of them are actually pretty fun to do.
The online deathmatch for this game is awfully terrible. They didn't improved anything at all from the original Doom XBLA online multiplayer. And you know what else is bad? The gameplay for online multiplayer is extremely choppy and laggy. Once everyone gets the achievement for 100 frags on Xbox Live, no one will play online on Doom II anymore! I'm gonna list my problems with online and list what Nerve Software could do to fix these problems.
Sprinting: They should remove this for deathmatch, I'm sick of people jumping all over the place.
Maps: Nerve Software didn't even bother making any deathmatch levels for the multiplayer. They expect us to use the big levels that are meant only for single player. The only levels are good to use for Doom II multiplayer is the first 3 levels, that's ridiculous.
Weapon Placements: I only have this problem in entryway. The best weapons which are the BFG 9000, Double-barreled action shotgun, and the rocket launcher are only available in one spot of the map and the only way to get them is if you spawn there. If you spawn somewhere else, you will not be able to access those weapons which is bull, and players that DO spawn there stay camping with their rocket launcher out there.
Frag Loss: If you have a match with 4 players, and they all leave, you lose all your frags you've earned. What the hell.. It just pisses you off whenever this happens.
If these problems are fixed up, online multiplayer for Doom II won't be half bad, but right now it's REALLY bad.
Doom II for XBLA also includes an all new exclusive episode entitled "No Rest for the Living", created by Nerve Software. This episode is hardcore and extremely difficult. It's especially hardcore when played on Ultra Violence mode. The episode comes over with 8 levels, including a secret level. This is a great episode Nerve worked on, and it could also be transferred from your Xbox 360 to your PC by using a memory stick.
So far this sounds like a good port for Doom II ey? Too bad Gamespot gave it a letdown, even the GiantBomb review was more entertaining. So Doom II is a great port, stays very true and accurate to the original PC version with a few tweaks and edits but not really noticeable. I would definitely recommend it to anyone that loves old school classics.
Up for Deathmatch anyone? -Jvilchez