How Doomed are we?

 I realized I never defined the scale I'm using to rate these Doom levels. It's pretty similar to the Star Wars one, I'd say.

Things I look at:

1. Fun: Obviously the most important, regardless of whether it's easy or hard, gimmicky or slaughtery, it should be fun to play.

2. Creativity: It's impressive how much weird stuff you can do with the Doom engine, and people are still finding newish gimmicks 30 years after release.

3. Aesthetics: Did you arrange the textures good?

4. Bugginess: If I cannot beat your level because the floor is broken, it's an autofail. If it's only a minor graphic glitch, I'll mostly overlook it.

The usual 0-6 scale applies:

0: Unplayably bad. Either horrendously buggy, or unfun and poor in the other areas with minor bugs.

1: Regular bad. Not fun, but at least mostly works.

2: Meh. Not worth downloading on your 56k modem, but probably worth borrowing on a floppy from a friend.

3: Minimal acceptable Doom level. Nothing crazy, but all the parts fit together correctly.

4: Actually good Doom level. Either an okay level bolstered by some cool gimmicks/aesthetics, or a well executed vanilla level.

5: Great Doom level. Not only fun and well tuned, but also makes good use of gimmicks/aesthetics.

6: Somehow, you made Doom fully 3d or something. I dunno, I guess we can give Hangar a 6/5.

Vaguely attempting to rate all the episodes from before I started doing scores.

KDitD: 4, and it's getting half a point for historical significance.

TSoH: 4, and I mean it this time.

Inferno: 5, best level set in id Doom.

TFC: 3.9? The line between this and Ep 2 is the exact line between a 3 and a 4.

Sigil 1: 3, maybe 4? You have some really strong levels balanced by some pretty poor ones.

Sigil 2: 3ish Same, actually.

Doom 2: Overall, 3. There's a lot of 2s, one or two 1s, but a couple 5s to balance them out. 

Master Levels: Rounds up to 2 if I did the math right.

I think Evilution is averaging around 1.5 right now, but I haven't spreadsheeted it yet.

Reading "Lolita" in Barnes and Noble

 My wife listened to Lolita as an audiobook this weekend, and one of my students was reading it last week, which reminded me of a couple funny stories about it while I worked at B&N.

1. For reasons that I will never understand, Barnes and Noble put Lolita on the beach read table several summers in a row. I love it just as much as any other self-respecting, edgy English major, but a beach read it is not. Definitely more of an "at home in your study" or maybe "on the bus" kind of book. Potential awkwardness aside, it's a decently heavy cognitive list, not the kind of fluff we usually associate with "beach reads."

2. One time (probably while discussing said beach read table) one of my coworkers was saying it's totally gross, we shouldn't have it, etc. He was a huge Indiana Jones fan (as anyone should be, at least for Raiders) and I remember teasing him about how Marion probably (it's not clear in the movie) isn't that much older than Dolores (though Indy is obviously younger than Humbert). Humbert first meets Dolores when she's 12, and their road trip/kidnapping lasts until she's around 14 or 15. Marion's age is given as anywhere between 15 and 17 (movie vs guidebook vs novel).

The dialogue in question:

Marion: I learned to hate you in the last ten years.

Indy: I never meant to hurt you.

Marion: I was a child. I was in love. It was wrong and you knew it!

Indy: You knew what you were doing.

Marion: Now I do! This is my place. Get out!

 (Definitely less bad than Humbert.)

Final Doom: TNT: Evilution: Secret Levels

Pharaoh: 3/5 I don't think I ever realized the "a" was before the "o" in Pharaoh before. Anyway, this hits most of the bonus level marks: piles of loot to carry you through the level and get you out the other side in as good (or better) shape than you started, a strong theme, and different enough from the main campaign to stand out. Aesthetics are mostly good, the red skybox is a nice choice (wtf is up with that Cyberdemon floating on top of some half doors?). The intermission music as the background is an unconventional, but effective, choice (or maybe it was written for this map first? Who knows!) On the other hand, it's still a TNT level, so you still get to do weird switch "puzzles", secrets that aren't secrets, the map is fairly disjointed (switches opening things halfway across the map for no apparent reason), a couple of bugs (one of which was level breaking in the original release)I'd have left out the initial dozenish hitscanners. All that ammo and a switch into the mysterious pyramid is a way creepier start than mowing down some pointless mooks.

Caribbean: 3/5 Marginally better gameplay than Pharaoh, but zero aesthetics. I was about ready to give this one a 4 after the ending Cyberdemon fight (which is mostly an infighting brawl) and I even liked the little Archvile trap. But the final "puzzle" (hit two switches and run fast) potholes the whole level. We're supposed to be in some kind of tropical vacation? But there's still hell sky (a nice cloudy blue sky would've gone a long way.) There is water. And lots of wood. So much wood. And then it's all surrounded by ivy walls for some reason. TNT time making textures to vaguely jazz up (read: uglify) tech base, but this level really could've benefited from some unique (or at least more creative use of original) stuff..Pharaoh got some custom textures and some Doomcute. Caribbean looks like an ugly Doom 2 level.

Let's make fun of the text screen:

Thanks doomwiki.org

Time for a vacation. Passable hook

You've burst the bowels of Hell and by golly you're read for a break. So we're back on Earth? Io? What?

You mutter to yourself, Maybe someone else can kick Hell's ass next time around. We're only halfway through the game, but sure.

Ahead lies a quiet town, with peaceful flowing water, quaint buildings, and presumably no hellspawn. I would not call this a town. It's like 3 buildings that're connected. Looks more like a mini resort. And again, the concept here is that we teleported to Egypt? and then got on a boat? (it looked more like a shed) to a Mediterranean resort town or something? I guess Doomguy is just nuts from going through Hell (at least) three times at this point.

As you step off the transport, you hear the stomp of a Cyberdemon's iron shoe. This line is pretty good.

I know we don't play Doom for the story, but this just feels so weird and out of place. I'd go with something more like:

Time for a vacation. This must be where all the rich demons come to chill on their day off. Crystal clear water, sandy beaches, palm trees. It's enough to make you forget you're halfway through the bowels of Hell (on a moon of Jupiter?) and kick back. But before you get to feel the sand between your toes you hear it: the stomp of a Cyberdemon's iron shoe.

Final Doom: TNT: Evilution: Industrial Levels (up to the secrets)

 Crater: 2/5 Hey, they used other monsters! Another step down in difficulty from the middle of the last pack. TNT continues to compete with themselves to find who can make the ugliest level (what if I smashed three door textures together to make a SUPER DOOR!?) Not a good level, but pretty good for Evilution.

Nukage Processing: 4/5 Not just a good Evilution map, but a good map overall. Shutters are one of Evilution's gimmicks, and this is the best implementation I've seen so far. One of the better Cyberdemon traps in any wad I've played. 

Steel Works: 2/5 I was mostly enjoying this one until they pulled the "run the level backwards with extra monsters" thing. Some levels can make that work, but this one was just another slog through a million former humans.

Dead Zone: 3/5 Kind of a boss arena, but not quite. Not great, not terrible.

But really, I want to take a minute to talk about the skybox on this level set.

Click for bigger

Let's start with the smaller issue. We're supposed to be on one of Jupiter's moon. Why can we see what looks like a galaxy and, I dunno, the space Eye of Sauron? It's not like Io got yanked to Hell like Deimos in Episode 2 (and it's not a very hellish sky anyway).

Number two is that, especially in modern ports) it looks awful in game. Zoom in a bit, and you can see that the white stars are stretched vertically, and the galaxy is super pixelated. Doom can do a good looking night sky (see Dr. Sleep's skybox used in the Master Levels), but TNT just didn't care I guess. 

That's kind of how I feel about their texture work overall. Some variety is nice, but 90% of them look significantly worse than the id textures. I'd rather look at the same textures for the 9001 time than have such ugly "variety."

Final Doom: TNT: Evilution: Military Base Maps

To answer my question last week about differentiating the style, the answer is, "Not really, but we'll throw in some castle and some new computer textures."

Prison: 2/5 Successfully ups the ante from the first "episode" (and that opening plasma gun is a nice treat). But it's just not a very fun level. And the prison theme is very poorly used. People have whined enough about Doom maps not looking like what they're named, but the Doom engine can (and has already with the Wolfenstein bonus map) done a dungeon/prison well. Special unshoutout to the double-quad-teleporters in a lava pit. I love doubling up on bad mechanics AND making you take damage while testing them.

Metal: 1/5 Mandatory secret that isn't a secret and is filled with bad guys instead of loot? Pass. Some poor enemy placement doesn't help.

Stronghold: 0/5 Ooops, all former humans is an acceptable gimmick for one level. Not for two in a row. Possibly the ugliest level I've ever played.

Redemption: 2/5 Aesthetically and difficulty-wise this map belongs in the first episode. A couple weird design choices (too many switches and backtracking) keep it meh.

Storage Facility: 1/5 What if we made a crate maze, but put all the monsters in a teleport trap so you could kill them one at a time and not bother with the maze.

Ugh

SUPER TURBO TURKEY PUNCHER 3!

 I'm not on Doom 3 yet, but I did play a little since I was on a different system earlier today.

STTP3 represents the dichotomy of Doom 3 perfectly. On the one hand, everyone who wanted Doom 3 to just be a prettier Doom 2 can agree that it's a great easter egg and possibly they best part of the game.

On the other, it represents how Doom 3 is the world's dumbest immersive sim, which is not a game anyone wanted.

I think, now that the dust has settled, the general consensus has rightly formed that Doom 3 is a bad Doom, a decent game overall, and a strong (and before its time) example of first person survival horror. I'm going to go against the grain a little and say, overall, it's a stronger title than any of the current gen Dooms.  

Final Doom: TNT: Evilution: Techbase Levels

 Final Doom is the FINAL Doom level set... sort of... for awhile... (Doom 64 would come out a year later, while No Rest for the Living came out in 2010.) 

Released in June 1996, a week before Quake. It consists of 2 level sets. Evilution is by a mapping group named Team TNT. It was originally going to be released for free before id bought it. Plutonia was made fully contracted by id by the Casali brothers, two members of TNT. Besides new levels, there's some new music and graphics, but no new enemies or monsters. I wonder what the story on id releasing these is. Just a final cash grab? Not a lot of background info available on the net.

Like Doom 2, Evilution is grouped into pseudo-episodes, the first of which uses the high tech style from Episode 1 and a few of the early Doom 2 maps.

System Control: 3/5 This is basically rearranged Entryway. I guess slightly better than the original? 

Human BBQ: 2/5 I think this is the first use of "glass" (you can see through, but not shoot through) in an official Doom level. Other than that, a pretty mediocre level. The telefrag "puzzle" is way less fun/more convoluted than it should be.

Power Control: 3/5 You can make doors use one key from one side, and a different one from the other. I think there's a couple no key/key doors in Doom 1/2, but this is the first of the different key style.  Fine, I guess?

Wormhole: 4/5 Decent, but not great, design. But the gimmick of playing the same level twice by teleporting into a second copy is neat. You can skip about 2/3 of the map easily, which isn't something I've seen since back during Doom 1. This means some of the biggest speedruns differences. ~12 seconds to run to the exit vs 4:50 to 100%. Usually 100%ing only increases the time be 2-4 times, not 24x. 

"Hanger": 1/5 Pretty ballsy naming your level after the first Doom map. Pretty stupid to spell it wrong. Bad level either way. Not challenging, just annoying (yay, monster closets!) and weak "puzzles". 

Open Season: 4/5 TNT can't really lock down a naming theme. Some of them are simple E1 style place names, while others are more evocative. Regardless, this is a strong map. "E1 but longer, faster, harder" is a popular theme for good reason. Those first 9 maps are the core of DooM that the whole community has played a million times, and they're great levels. But they're also short (or tight) and easy. This isn't a particularly tough level, but it's a bit more than the ol' Nuclear Plant and co. Starting the reactor (or whatever it's supposed to be) to open the final door is a neat mini-set piece, and closer to something out of Duke 3D or Dark Forces than Doom. This is a great way to end the "episode." Next time, Military Base. I'm curious to see, aesthetically, how different it is from this "tech lab" set.