Sunday, January 05, 2020

Retro Review - DOOM II: Hell on Earth [1994]

This time last year, I gave a retro review of the original DOOM! So again I decided to end the year's gaming by returning to the DOOM universe for the sequel DOOM II: Hell on Earth in honour of that game's 25th Anniversary.

Unlike it's directly supplied predecessor DOOM II got a commercial boxed release and was understandably a best seller. It is however a textbook definition "more of the same" as it quite literally just the same game albeit with some new enemy types and more open space to the levels. This couldn't be done today, it's expected that sequels today have some significant degree of gameplay improvements, graphics upgrades and in the cases of a franchise - a continuation of the narrative. DOOM II however has the same bare-bones narrative (not that it really needs any) but has absolutely no graphics or gameplay upgrades.

Only three things define DOOM II as being different from DOOM. The first is the super-shotgun, the single new weapon added to your arsenal and it's both welcome and useful. The second is some genuinely interesting new enemies: A Chain-gun Dude who uses a chain-gun and drops it when you kill him, a Cacodemon upgrade called a Pain Elemental (above) who shoots Lost Souls from it's mouth and explodes in Lost Souls when killed, the Mancubus who shoots fireballs, the rocket-firing skeleton Revenant and of course the Archvile who can burn you and raise other demons you've killed from the dead! The third defining characteristic of DOOM II is that id were able to take advantage of upgrades in computer hardware within the year and make the physical size of each level much larger with higher geometry, wider areas and more enemies.

DOOM II: Hell on Earth feels bigger and more difficult then it's predecessor and it does take a bit longer - about 7 hours to complete it's 30 levels. While it's levels pose more of a challenge in many respects, I don't think they are as interesting as what were originally designed and DOOM's use of Satanic references to the Bible and Dante's Inferno are not as prominent for most of the sequel. The ending is disappointingly lacklustre with the final boss - the visage of Baphomet - just being a static but heavily guarded, invulnerable monster whom can only be killed with a few precise rocket shots to the brain (below). This boss dynamic is in contrast to the more satisfactory and dynamic Spider-Demon end boss of DOOM but sadly id would revisit this boring mechanic with Shub-Niggurath in their following game Quake 18 months later. That said, the journey to this point, the other 99% of DOOM II is well worth a revisit.

Despite its total lack of innovation over it's predecessor, DOOM II: Hell on Earth was a commercial success for id and even provided stiff completion for the technically superior evolutions to the genre that were released not long after - 3DRealms' Duke Nukem 3D and LucasArts' Dark Forces.

DOOM II is available from Steam for about €5, and often discounted to about €1.50. DOOM II comes bundled with Final Doom on GOG for about €9 but frequently discounted for about €2.60.
Alternatively the DOOM 3: BFG Edition bundles DOOM 3, DOOM II and Ultimate DOOM for €19.99 on GOG and Steam, but again, frequently discounted for about €6 (as of time of writing).