Another great addition to the DooM series, hardcore and challenging. Enjoy the massacre!
Anyways, when I started the game, I was amazed - the sounds, the levels, the graphics, the monsters, the weapons, everything was fantastic. I became a fan of DooM then. That was four or five years ago.
But now, we are talking about DooM II. In this review, I will declare what I think about this next game of the series. I am sorry for any mistakes about DooM, that's what I know about it.
Let's start with the positive part of DooM II. This game was released shortly after the Original. Deformations since the Original are numerous, in the design of the levels, and in the gameplay. The new things introduced to us in this game are a few new monsters, a new weapon, a new item, a new look of the levels.
The new creatures in this one are the Heavy Weapons Dude (or Former Commando), though zombies with a chaingun, the Hell Knight, somewhat less stronger than the Baron of Hell (in the original), the Mancubus, a big fat monster with rocket launchers instead of arms, the Revenant, a sceleton equipped with guided missiles on its shoulders, the Arachnotron, spider-like cybernetic monster, armed with a plazma gun (unlike the Spider Mastermind, Big Boss armed with a heavy Chaingun, present in Inferno, Episode 3 of the Original), the Pain Elemental, another floating head, like the Cacodemon, but firing Lost Souls, the Arch-Vile, a demon able to cast spells and to revive other demons, and finally, the Icon of Sin, the Final Boss of the game, firing little boxes from where diverse demons are spawned. The new weapon is only one, the Double-barreled shotgun, which could fire out 21 pellets instead of the regular shotgun's seven, making it very useful in dispatching Demons, Cacodemons, and any form of medium-sized monster. It was the sign of the Old-school in DooM II, and it is the favorite weapon for numerous gamers.
The new item is the Megasphere, a combination between the Combat Armour (granting 200 Armour) and the Soulsphere (granting 200 Heath). Very useful knowing what there is in this game.
The story is immediately following the events in the original DooM,
where our nameless marine comes back to Earth, only to see the billions of dead, the destruction and his old ''pals'' along with new ones.
The game is composed of 32 levels, from which 2 are secret. The first levels are on Earth, while the last ones are on Hell. On these last levels, we can see their genious design - Walls covered in human faces, all seeming to want scream out their pain, corridors with a long spine following it to the exit, pools of lava, blood - A painting of Hell, filled with the most fearsome creatures. However, you'll be able to see what Hell is only when you go there at the ''Nightmare'' difficulty setting (which is nearly impossible without cheats).
This was the good part. Now comes the bad one:
All these levels, in the whole game (except the secret levels and in the Hell levels), are BROWN. Everything, everywhere. Some levels are entirely brown. others have a few other colors, like grey, green, but it is mostly BROWN! Why? The Earth isn't that brown! This colors reminds of tunnels in the dirt! If it's on Earth, why isn't there at least 5 levels out of all these 32 that are in a ruined town, in a house, in an office, or a garden, or something... Why won't they tell us about it? OK, Underhalls (level 2), The Waste Tunnnels (level 5) or even The pit (level 9) are supposed to be underground, but what about the other levels? Are our houses supposed to be made out of dirt? No! Why then? I guess we'll never find out.
The soundtrack has changed a lot too - it isn't so DooM-like anymore. The style isn't the same, the atmosphere is changing. The hardrock present in the original has disappeared.
The difficulty has risen aswell - there are plenty of rooms filled with monsters, takiung your life for seconds. Yet, that is not my point.
My point is that all these little changes result in a big change - DooM II isn't so DooM-like. DooM II isn't so colorful, DooM II is now hardcore, and your goal, when playing on a difficulty greater than ''Don't Hurt Me'', has changed to Survival, not getting a high score on kill and secret. The whole atmosphere changes and all you want is to get the hell out of there. The soundtrack is the main thing causing this, but also that ''brown effect''.
My conclusion is - play the original DooM (all three episodes), then think about DooM II. Play it and you'll see the difference. Of course, don't think that this game doesn't deserve any attention, this game is great, maybe one of the greatest, but it's not The best.
And also, in my opinion, you cannot begin your journey in DooM's universe with DooM II, because it is just harder than the others. If you play it on low difficulty settings, you'll miss the fun, the challenge. But starting with Hard levels will bore you to death from restarting all the time. Well, it still isn't as hard as ''Thy Flesh Consumed'' (episode 4, in Ultimate DooM), which is just insane, but it still is something.
And for the final, let me just say that
''DooM shall never die, only the players!''