Doom II

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

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 &mdash; 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...



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.

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.

Legal issues in Germany
According to the German Strafgesetzbuch §86a, the usage of unconstitutional symbols is forbidden. Because the two secret maps Wolfenstein and Grosse use swastikas and pictures of Hitler, the German version does not contain these maps to prevent the game from being the subject of search and seizure procedures (as Wolfenstein 3-D had been). This means that it is forbidden to sell, hire or otherwise give the game to anybody, although merely owning the game is legal.

However, on 31 December 1994 (date of official announcement) the game was put on the Index of the Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Schriften (Medien), which means only that the game can not be advertised, sold, rented, or otherwise given to minors. That apply to all versions of the game, except for the Game Boy Advance.

The German release is engine version 1.666, and doom2.wad is a little bit smaller than is standard. Under MS-DOS, the game instantly crashes upon using the level warp cheat for either of the secret maps.

Current records
The Compet-N episode records for Doom II are:

TAS runs

 * 30uv1617
 * 30uv1441

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:


 * Level 1: Entryway
 * Level 2: Underhalls (Exit to secret level; Xbox only)
 * Level 3: The Gantlet
 * Level 4: The Focus
 * Level 5: The Waste Tunnels
 * Level 6: The Crusher

MAP07 to MAP11; hellish outpost levels:


 * Level 7: Dead Simple
 * Level 8: Tricks and Traps
 * Level 9: The Pit
 * Level 10: Refueling Base
 * Level 11: 'O' of Destruction!1


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

MAP12 to MAP20; city levels:


 * Level 12: The Factory
 * Level 13: Downtown
 * Level 14: The Inmost Dens
 * Level 15: Industrial Zone (Exit to secret level)
 * Level 16: Suburbs
 * Level 17: Tenements
 * Level 18: The Courtyard
 * Level 19: The Citadel
 * Level 20: Gotcha!

MAP21 to MAP30; inside hell levels:


 * Level 21: Nirvana
 * Level 22: The Catacombs
 * Level 23: Barrels o' Fun
 * Level 24: The Chasm
 * Level 25: Bloodfalls
 * Level 26: The Abandoned Mines
 * Level 27: Monster Condo
 * Level 28: The Spirit World
 * Level 29: The Living End
 * Level 30: Icon of Sin

MAP31</tt> and MAP32</tt>; secret levels:


 * Level 31: Wolfenstein1 (Exit to super secret level)
 * Level 32: Grosse1


 * 1: ''This map is missed in the german version.

MAP33</tt>; bonus Xbox level:


 * Level 33: Betray

Trivia

 * In the Id Software's official site, the page of Doom II shows a preview image of an unknown level not included in the game. The picture can be viewed here. As seen in the picture, it displays the sky of Knee Deep in the Dead from Doom.