Doom II

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Doom II title screen
Doom II title screen

Doom II: Hell on Earth, released September 30, 1994, is the sequel to Doom.

Contents

[edit] Story

The player once again takes the role of the Doomguy, who, after being stranded on Phobos and subsequently fighting his way out of Deimos and Hell itself, returns home to Earth — only to find that it too has fallen victim to the hellish invasion.

With all the major cities in the world in ruins, the remaining leaders plan to use spacecraft to transport the survivors of Earth's population. However, the starport is the only way for the ships to depart and the demons have protected it with a force field. All of humanity's remaining soldiers make a desperate assault on the starport, but eventually they are decimated and only the player remains. He continues on doggedly and selflessly, despite knowing that he will be left behind in order to save the rest of his race.

Once the Marine accomplishes this, he is free to live out the rest of his time alone on Earth while humanity hopefully continues on elsewhere. But along the way, he begins to learn how he might finally thwart the invasion once and for all...

Doom II CD from the Depths of Doom collection.
Doom II CD from the Depths of Doom collection.

[edit] Gameplay

Doom II is not a dramatically different game from its predecessor. There were no significant technological developments and no major graphical improvements; gameplay still consists of the player negotiating non-linear levels, picking up keys to unlock new areas, and of course shooting hundreds upon hundreds of monsters.

Unlike Doom, Doom II takes place over a single continuous sequence of linked levels, with brief textual interludes in order to advance the story. The intermission screens following each level show a simple background image instead of a map. The player can carry his weapons throughout the entire game (unless he is killed, of course), rather than starting from scratch several times as one episode ends and another begins.

The level design, as with Doom, is only loosely based on the areas the player is supposed to travel through. The initial third of the maps have a techbase theme as the player moves through the different military installations of the starport. Afterwards, as the player roams the cities and residential areas searching for the source of the infestation, the levels have an urban look and somewhat resembling terrestrial locations. Toward the end of the game, Hell has begun to merge with reality, and the final levels take place in a nightmarish, Dante-esque subterranean miasma of flowing lava and hot springs.

New enemies include the chaingun zombie, hell knight, mancubus, revenant, arachnotron, pain elemental, arch-vile, and a new final boss. Being far more varied and innovative than the original Doom monsters, these dramatically changed the single-player gameplay.

The SS trooper from Wolfenstein 3D appears in the two secret levels, which are throwbacks in design (and music) to the Wolfenstein 3D game. Also, a Commander Keen figure makes a cameo in the second secret level.

The player's only new weapon is the Super shotgun. There is also one new powerup, the Megasphere, and a few new decorations, including a burning barrel, a couple of lamps, six hanging mutilated corpses, and three other small pieces of gore.

Doom II required slightly more powerful hardware than its predecessor, due to having larger and more complicated maps and larger groups of monsters in particular rooms.

[edit] Reviews and sales

Doom II went on to sell two million copies, making it the highest-selling id Software game to date. There was praise for its many new and varied enemies, and its innovative map design which aimed to be more non-linear than its predecessor. It also introduced the FPS multi-player world to MAP07: Dead Simple, which is regarded as one of the best deathmatch maps ever published.

In general, Doom II was well-received by the gaming community but was regarded in some areas as a disappointment. Its lack of major new features and its fairly homogeneous, sometimes drab level design were the biggest complaints. This was especially in comparisons made to later games such as Star Wars: Dark Forces and Duke Nukem 3D. Some have considered Doom II an expansion pack rather than a true sequel, akin to the future Serious Sam: The Second Encounter as it relates to Serious Sam.

Unlike the original game, Doom II had no demo or shareware versions, and was available only through retail stores. Doom II was thus also known as the commercial version of the game, while the registered version was only available via mail order. (In 1995, however, the original was upgraded and also received a retail release.) Like Doom, Doom II received licensed ports after the fact to numerous additional platforms, including the Classic Mac, PlayStation, Game Boy Advance and Xbox.

[edit] Speedrunning

[edit] Current records

The Compet-N episode records for Doom II are:

RunTimePlayerDateFileNotes
UV Episode, MAP01-MAP1006:32Drew "stx-Vile" DeVore2002-12-020632uv01.zip
UV Episode, MAP11-MAP2009:52Radek Pecka2003-08-080952uv11.zip
UV Episode, MAP21-MAP3008:59Radek Pecka2004-09-280859uv21.zip
UV Run26:09Radek Pecka2003-12-2830uv2609.zip
NM Episode, MAP01-MAP1007:11Juho "ocelot" Ruohonen2003-09-030711nm01.zip
NM Episode, MAP11-MAP2011:19Drew "stx-Vile" DeVore2002-03-241119nm11.zip
NM Episode, MAP21-MAP3013:35Vincent Catalaá2002-07-221335nm21.zip
NM Run29:56Drew "stx-Vile" DeVore2004-10-1830nm2956.zip
UV Max Episode, MAP01-MAP1025:50Radek Pecka2001-06-152550uv01.zip
UV Max Episode, MAP11-MAP2047:10Radek Pecka2002-04-184710uv11.zip
UV Max Episode, MAP21-MAP3039:16Radek Pecka2002-08-293916uv21.zip
UV Max Run113:18Radek Pecka2002-04-2230uvmax4.zip
NS Episode, MAP01-MAP1014:25Drew "stx-Vile" DeVore2002-01-271425ns01.zip
NS Episode, MAP11-MAP2023:48Drew "stx-Vile" DeVore2002-01-112348ns11.zip
NS Episode, MAP21-MAP3018:27Jan "Doomgeek" Vida2002-07-151827ns21.zip
NS Run56:00Drew "stx-Vile" DeVore2004-05-3030ns5600.zip
UV -fast Episode, MAP01-MAP1025:52Ian Sabourin2002-04-272552fa01.zip
UV -fast Episode, MAP11-MAP2057:44Radek Pecka2002-08-315744fa11.zip
UV -fast Episode, MAP21-MAP3061:35Vincent Catalaá2001-02-156135fa21.zip
UV -fast Run128:04Radek Pecka2003-06-2430famax2.zip

[edit] TAS runs

[edit] See also

[edit] Levels

The levels can be divided up into three episode-like sections, defined by their corresponding sky texture and separated by a textual intermission in addition to the standard intermission screen; as well as two secret levels. Additional textual interludes appear before level 7 (which splits the first sky-based section into two parts), before each of the secret levels, and at the conclusion of the game.

MAP01 to MAP06; subterranean/starport levels:

MAP07 to MAP11; hellish outpost levels:

1: Known as Circle of Death on the intermission screen.

MAP12 to MAP20; city levels:

MAP21 to MAP30; inside hell levels:

MAP31 and MAP32; secret levels:

MAP33; bonus Xbox level:

[edit] Weapons

Doom II weapons
Fists Pistol Shotgun Chaingun Rocket launcher Plasma rifle BFG 9000
Chainsaw Super shotgun

[edit] Monsters

Doom II monsters
Arachnotron | Arch-vile | Baron of hell | Cacodemon | Commander Keen | Cyberdemon | Demon | Heavy weapon dude | Hell knight | Imp | Lost soul | Mancubus | Pain elemental | Revenant | Shotgun guy | Spectre | Spiderdemon | Zombieman | Wolfenstein SS | See also final boss

[edit] Sources

  • This article incorporates text from the open-content Wikipedia online encyclopedia article Doom II.

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Doom_II"
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