Doom II: Hell on Earth

Da Vinci might have been a genius, but he didn't think of giving the Mona Lisa a double shotgun to fight archviles in the sequel.

I really prefer Doom 1 over Doom 2 for a couple of reason. Here's a simple explanation for Doom 2:

Pros:

-Super Shotgun
-Most new enemy types are fun
-The final boss is pretty cool

Cons:

-Some of the levels are very bad and in general I prefer the level design in Doom 1
-Archviles and chaingunners can go to hell

To me the game is almost just an expansion pack that doesn't significantly improve over the first game. It's still a great game though.

More enemy variety and a double shotgun elevate DOOM II to the best classic doom game. But the levels definitely leave something to be desired. 4/5 with a half point added for the modding community. Vanilla DOOM II has almost 20 years of mods, so really the true potential of this game is sky high.

Doom II is essentially the same as the original Doom but with a few new weapons, enemies, and slightly less consistent map design. Unlike the original Doom this Doom game plays more like a traditional game where you play from start to finish until you completed all the levels rather than choose episodes. I do find the improvements in this are good ones, the double shotgun is one of the best and most fun weapons in FPS history, it removes the annoyances the original game posed with the single barrel shotgun taking long to kill some tougher enemies. The chaingun is also a pretty cool weapon that can make quick work of the weaker enemies. The textures have been updated so everything look smoother. Now as for map design, which in my opinion is the essence of Doom and made the series so good, well its not quite as good as Doom. Some of the maps in this game just feel like filler maps or just cram in annoying enemies into areas to artificially ramp up the difficulty. Sure the original Doom had some issues with that too but I feel its more present here. Not to mention many maps in this just weren't too memorable. The final boss in this game is just frustrating beyond all belief too and requires good luck and hope you can kill it before it spawns an overpowered enemy.

Without a doubt this is still a great game and I love it almost as much as the original, there are plenty of good maps in this game too, I'd say at least half of the maps are really solid and 2/3 are well above average by Doom standards. Plus the additional guns and enemies all add more challenge and variety. But I do think the first game just had more focus on level design and enemy placement, and also the fact it was broken into episodes means you didn't have to play through the entire game to replay a level you really like. Regardless of these issues, this is still one of the best shooters of its time and only a small step behind the original Doom in terms of quality.

Its more DOOM basically.

Nothing has been changed when it comes to audiovisual presentation, which means its a still really satisfying shooter to play nowadays.

Gameplaywise there have been a couple of changes. The first one is that its not divided by episodes, and instead it plays like a full game divided by short levels. I prefer this change since i feel that it helps the pacing and gradual increase in difficulty of the maps. Other changes are a new weapon (super shotgun, which ends up replacing the shotgun) and a couple of new enemy types. The game suffers a bit from sequel syndrome. In this i mean that they tried to make everything bigger and more bombastic in the sequel, and that doesnt always mean its better. The levels are much bigger and more complex than in the first game, and there are rooms that are literally filled with enemies. THe increase in challenge is apparent, but at times the game might feel cheap because of this, since lack of bullets can become a problem in this situation. And unfortunatly DOOM kinda sucks with no guns.

Apart from its few flaws, like its predecessor its an excellent fps.