Difference between revisions of "Doom II"

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* [http://www.steampowered.com/Manuals/2300/DOOM%20II%20Manual.pdf Doom II manual]
 
* [http://www.steampowered.com/Manuals/2300/DOOM%20II%20Manual.pdf Doom II manual]
 
* [http://ian-albert.com/misc/doom2maps.php Top-down perspective view of all Doom II levels] by Ian Albert
 
* [http://ian-albert.com/misc/doom2maps.php Top-down perspective view of all Doom II levels] by Ian Albert
*[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom_II:_Hell_on_Earth Wikipedia]
 
*[http://www.moddb.com/games/doom-ii MODDB]
 
*[http://www.mobygames.com/game/doom-ii_ Mobygames]
 
*[http://www.gamefront.com/files/listing/pub2/Doom-2 Downloads from GameFront]
 
*[http://store.steampowered.com/app/2300/ PURCHASE from STEAM]
 
* [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBF0124F1AF90BBE3 Youtube Walkthrough by Lingyan203]
 
* [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL88GXgIuBiiFuzNKxwPqjphPEljwGk8vk Youtube Walkthrough by GalleyUK]
 
* [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1B7EEEE1A085D3F9 Youtube Walkthrough by BaronOfStuff]
 
* [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA458030F208B7F6C Youtube Walkthrough by TehDoomer666]
 
 
[[Category:Games]]
 
[[Category:Games]]

Revision as of 10:26, 5 March 2014

"Doom 2" redirects here.  For other topics with similar names, see Doom2.
Doom II title screen

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

Story

The player once again takes the role of the Marine, 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.

Gameplay

Doom II is not a dramatically different game from its predecessor. There were no significant technological or 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 generic 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 on each episode.

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 resemble 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 than the original Doom monsters, these dramatically changed the single-player gameplay.

The SS trooper from Wolfenstein 3D also 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 more complicated maps with larger fights.

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, although most of these ports included levels from both Ultimate Doom and Doom II.

Legal issues in Germany

According to the German Strafgesetzbuch §86a, the usage of unconstitutional symbols is forbidden outside of certain contexts such as research, teaching and others. Because the two secret maps Wolfenstein and Grosse use swastikas, 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.

On 31 December 1994 (date of official announcement), however, 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. This restriction applies to all versions of the game, except for the Game Boy Advance version.

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

On the 4th of august 2011 the Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien deleted Doom from the Index on request by ZeniMax Media.[1]

However, the official announcement state, that not all versions are delisted.

"Lediglich die amerikanische Fassung von "Doom II - Hell on Earth" wurde in der Liste belassen, da diese zwei zusätzliche Level mit Darstellungen aus dem indizierten und bundesweit beschlagnahmten Spiel "Wolfenstein 3D" enthält."

Translated: "Only the American version of 'Doom II - Hell on Earth' has been left in the list, because it contains two additional levels with representations from the indexed and nationwide-seized 'Wolfenstein 3D'".

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. In older versions of SETUP.EXE (confirmed at least in v1.5), the "help text" for the level warp feature displays episode names in the status bar: "The Space Station", "The City", and "Hell".

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:

2: These two levels do not appear in the German version.

MAP33; bonus Xbox level:

The new episode, No Rest for the Living, originally designed for the Xbox 360 version

Weapons

  1. The super shotgun is a new weapon which Doom II introduced to the series.

Monsters

Doom II includes all the monsters from Doom:

Doom II also has new monsters, which are:

Speedrunning

Current records

The Compet-N episode records for Doom II are:

Run Time Player Date File Notes
UV episode, MAP01-MAP10 0:05:44 Looper 2011-02-14 0544uv01.zip
UV episode, MAP11-MAP20 0:09:52 Radek Pecka 2003-08-08 0952uv11.zip
UV episode, MAP21-MAP30 0:08:59 Radek Pecka 2004-09-28 0859uv21.zip
UV run 0:23:25 Looper 2010-12-05 30uv2325.zip
NM episode, MAP01-MAP10 0:07:11 Juho Ruohonen (ocelot) 2003-09-02 0711nm01.zip
NM episode, MAP11-MAP20 0:11:19 Drew DeVore (stx-Vile) 2002-03-24 1119nm11.zip
NM episode, MAP21-MAP30 0:13:35 Vincent Catalaá 2002-07-22 1335nm21.zip
NM run 0:29:39 Henning Skogstø 2009-07-23 30nm2939.zip
UV max episode, MAP01-MAP10 0:25:50 Radek Pecka 2001-06-15 2550uv01.zip
UV max episode, MAP11-MAP20 0:47:10 Radek Pecka 2002-04-18 4710uv11.zip
UV max episode, MAP21-MAP30 0:39:16 Radek Pecka 2002-08-29 3916uv21.zip
UV max run 1:53:18 Radek Pecka 2002-04-22 30uvmax4.zip
NS episode, MAP01-MAP10 0:14:25 Drew DeVore (stx-Vile) 2002-01-27 1425ns01.zip
NS episode, MAP11-MAP20 0:23:48 Drew DeVore (stx-Vile) 2002-01-11 2348ns11.zip
NS episode, MAP21-MAP30 0:18:27 Jan Vida (Doomgeek) 2002-07-15 1827ns21.zip
NS run 0:56:00 Drew DeVore (stx-Vile) 2004-05-30 30ns5600.zip
UV -fast episode, MAP01-MAP10 0:25:52 Ian Sabourin 2002-04-27 2552fa01.zip
UV -fast episode, MAP11-MAP20 0:57:44 Radek Pecka 2002-08-31 5744fa11.zip
UV -fast episode, MAP21-MAP30 1:01:35 Vincent Catalaá 2001-02-15 6135fa21.zip
UV -fast run 2:08:04 Radek Pecka 2003-06-24 30famax2.zip
UV Tyson episode, MAP01-MAP10 1:44:45 Looper 2011-11-29 10445ty1.zip

The data was last verified in its entirety on May 10, 2013.

TAS runs

See also

Trivia

  • Various screenshots on the back cover of the original Doom II game box display scenery and an arachnotron sprite which are not found in the officially released game. These were likely screenshots from a pre-release version of Doom II which had differing level structure and graphics than what was included in the official commercial release. These unconventional screenshots have been later used in various Doom II re-releases, including the Doom95 repackaging in 1995, the Steam release in 2007 and on id Software's own Doom II page.
  • The Doom II cover art was drawn by occult/fantasy artist Gerald Brom.

Sources

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

References

  1. Announcement of the BPjM (german)

External links