DOOM - The Grand Tour - Part 1

Intro - "The Grand Tour"

Created using Eevee's excellent Doom Text Generator

Remember your last obsession? The hours of reading, writing, watching, playing... complete immersion into you new favorite thing? The Grand Tour is my way of recording the fun ride down the rabbit hole of a series or franchise. A not-so-subtle reference to the marriage of motorsport and travel, GT is a way to recount the most interesting and notable stops of a franchise and its legacy. It's also a reminder to drive at your own pace: stop and smell the roses, enjoy the ride, and when you explore your hobbies, do so in luxury and style.

This edition of The Grand Tour is all about Doom, my very own "new favorite." Take a seat and let's go for a ride.

Today's Itinerary: Classic Doom Engine Computer Games

Part 1 of our Grand Tour through DOOM will cover the classic id Tech 1 Doom games: specifically the home computer releases. The following games will be discussed:

• Doom (1993)
  • The Ultimate Doom (1995)
• Doom II: Hell on Earth (1994)
• Master Levels for Doom II (1995)
• Final Doom (1996)
  • TNT: Evilution
  • The Plutonia Experiment

We won't be talking about Doom 64, Doom 3 (the original and BFG editions), or nu-Doom yet. I also haven't had the time to play through Sigil, NRFTL, or Legacy of Rust, but those are definitely on the i n f i n i t e b a c k l o g. Ditto for Wolfenstein 3D, Heretic, and Quake. I want to play every video game ever made, so I'll do my best to make it there eventually.

An extra special note regarding Maximum Doom. For those unaware, Maximum Doom refers to the barely-curated pile of 1,830 PWADs (patch WADs, in this case usually packs of maps and levels) included as bonus content with Master Levels for Doom II. As the monarch of terrible ideas, I have the inadvisable goal of playing through every single one of these 3,000+ unique maps for Doom, Doom II, and Heretic via the incredible Maximum Doom in One compilation by Doomworld user Asbadagba. That will take a bit of time to do. I'll be sure to write about the experience once I begin the effort in earnest. Look forward to that special brand of suffering.

So let's kick off December with the inaugural DOOM edition of The Grand Tour. The past several weeks of my gaming life have been dedicated to full immersion into all things DOOM, Doom, and DooM. I dream about the Doom 1 shotgun (no offense to the SSG). We're At Doom's Gate, so let's straferun through at SR50 speeds. Hell awaits.

ℹ️ a note on DOOM + DOOM II

One fateful night in late October of this year, I purchased DOOM + DOOM II. Since then I have written extensively about this excellent release of id Software's classics put together by Nightdive Studios. This takes form of a shining recommendation of this fresh August 2024 port, especially as the first stop for someone new to classic Doom, as well as a collection of tips, tricks, and advice for Doom newcomers based on my own time with the classic titles.

This port has been my preferred way to first experience classic Doom and its official (and official-endorsed) expansions, with my personal policy being to beat a Doom game here in DOOM + DOOM II first before returning to it in the source port GZDoom afterwards. In retrospect, my Doom obsession was well-timed thanks to this port, and I'll once again briefly spotlight this excellent port.

Doom (1993) and The Ultimate Doom (1995)

First up is a journey through four episodes: Knee-Deep in the Dead, The Shores of Hell, Inferno, and Thy Flesh Consumed.

ℹ️ Obligatory context! The first episode (hereon out referred to as E1) was shareware, with the fully registered 1993 release containing E1 through E3. E4 came later as part of 1995's The Ultimate Doom, released in boxes for retail and as a patch to existing customers. But you already knew all that.

The first Doom might just be my favorite.

The episodic structure makes for excellent pacing. Every episode is 8 standard maps and 1 secret level, and never overstay their welcome. The distinct locales of each episode and ramping-up of challenge feels pretty close to perfect. The sense of closure you get after each episode's ending screen lets you take a well-earned breather before diving into the next episode with your inventory and equipment reset. That's a decision I appreciate and lends to that satisfying per-episode loop of pistol starting the first map and gradually expanding your armory once again, letting you go all out on each episode's Map 8.

The featured cast of monsters and arsenal of weapons feel complete and without excess. Your progress through its four episodes will be marked with plenty of "aha" moments as you are compelled to learn the ins and outs of each type of enemy, weapon, and puzzle. In as positive a sense as I can mean it, Doom needs no tutorial because the entire game never stops teaching you how to play it, better and better. By the end of E4M8, you have the basic kit of skills that you can take with you into every WAD you'll ever play in the future.

Doom is a simple game and certainly not a dumb game. Quick, accessible, occasionally tricky and puzzling, and almost always endlessly satisfying. Doom is excellence. I struggle not to belabor the point. Players-turned-fans must have thought the same as they clamored for a sequel, which came in the form of...

Doom II: Hell on Earth (1994)

Doom II sought to be a bigger and better Doom: it had some pretty big shoes to fill, and a short amount of development time to try to fill them. Doom II successfully laid down further groundwork for the incredible community surrounding classic Doom and is still the standard basis for the vast majority of mods and custom content to this day.

ℹ️ Tip! The Doom modding scene and creative community downright massive, and many of the WADs made by dedicated fans will require the IWAD (internal WAD, the base game files) of one of the official, commercial Doom releases to work properly. Always read the creator's notes or readme for details on the specific WAD, but very generally speaking Doom II's IWAD will be the most commonly-used, due to it having the more-expanded set of assets over its predecessor.

Doom II nearly doubles the normal enemy roster with each of the new additions demanding some new or adjusted tactics to handle. Weaponry is the same as the first Doom, with a single but very notable addition: the Super Shotgun (SSG). A double-barreled beast consuming twice as much ammo in exchange for three times as much damage. The slower fire-rate is a downside, but one that's ameliorated by your improved ability to one-shot mob enemies. The reverence and awed whispers are all deserved; the SSG is legendary. "Everyone remembers when they first picked up the Super Shotgun in Map 2." I can definitely confirm.

So the set of ingredients that Doom II has on the table is rife with potential. It's no wonder that it's the IWAD of choice for so many map creators and modders. What about the official game? In practice, Doom II's main campaign have some rough edges, especially some of the trial-and-error puzzles and backtracking/navigation challenges. They keep me from having as good of a time with all of Doom II's maps in the same way I did with the first Doom. Pacing feels less snappy and difficulty progression is at times a little inconsistent. The map design of Doom II is an unavoidable part of the experience, perhaps even more so than the first game, and your ability to catch on to the intended way of unraveling the level is more often than note the single most important key to whether you have a hard time with each map or not. Doom II is a game that becomes exponentially easier upon replay because of how critical map knowledge in this game is.

Now, in retrospect, after having some more WADs under my belt, the quality of Doom II's campaign is still solid. It could be much, much worse. But I personally think my future revisits to Doom II might be less of the full, uninterrupted M1 to M30 journey that characterized my first playthrough of this game, and more selective dips into subsections of the game, with appropriate use of the nextmap command as needed.

I do deeply respect Doom II, and the unrivaled platform it gave for new creations based on it. Kudos to the team at id and especially Sandy Petersen, a major contributor to Doom II's maps, for producing a coherent and playable game that managed to continue the honorable Doom lineage. Doom II still offers a fun time, but if I want to be let loose to play with an expanded arsenal of weapons against an expanded roster of enemies, I'd rather do so with modern WADs which have the advantage of 30 years of combined experience and practice.

Master Levels for Doom II (1995)

I think it's a near-universal experience after finishing Doom II to be hungry for more Doom II. Enter Master Levels.

id's answer to shovelware WAD compilations like D!ZONE, 1995's Master Levels for Doom II is an experience like none other, in every sense. The expansion was initially released with each of the 21 Master Levels served as individual WADs and accessible via the DOOM-IT launcher. Nightdive's KEX rerelease strings these maps together into a structured campaign with curated stage order roughly guided by map designer and difficulty.

Master Levels allowed me to take a good, long, sustained peer into the abyss.

Master Levels is a rollercoaster with some downright genius ideas neighboring complete and utter bullshit ones, sometimes in the same exact map. The wide variation in quality and polish throughout the Master Levels experience is simultaneously inspiring and maddening. I am glad I got to experience it myself, because description pales in comparison to actually playing these maps. Each new room of each new map had me both excited and dreading what ridiculous hoops the designer had in store for me to jump through, and the comedic incredulity when finally discovering (or looking up) the solution to some of the esoteric challenges took the edge off of what might have been rage were it not for the absurdity factor.

In the brief moments of lucidity that Master Levels has, it has some brilliant ideas. Special mention to Sverre André Kvernmo, also known as Cranium, for his contributions to Master Levels. Cranium's maps were often a mental tug-of-war as you unravel the tangled strings of the map's challenges, only for doors to open to rooms where the puzzles take on a new or more complicated twist. Not every mind-bender lands, and there were some solutions to the maps' riddles that I'd call unreasonable. But that's the beauty of Master Levels: even the bullshit moments are still adjacent to brilliance, and the most perplexing of designs were probably just a round or two of revisions away from achieving the excellent highs that this expansion achieves, rather than being the cause for its occasionally abysmal lows.

Master Levels for Doom II was primarily named as such because of its master designers rather than the level of mastery it demands from the player. And I would heartily agree that the talent on display in Master Levels is certainly present. The real product we got is raw and wanting refinement--I would blame no one for skipping this entry of Doom history, and might even suggest skipping it to most people--yet if you are open-minded and craving punishment, there is a diamond in the rough to be found here that will cut you on its sharp edges between bouts of shining, glittering brilliance.

What better way to cap off "Master" than with "Final"? That's what's coming next.

Final Doom (1996) - TNT: Evilution

The story behind Final Doom and the two standalone expansions that it consists of is an interesting one. I won't recount it in its entirety here (it deserves more than just a brief summary!) but suffice to say it resulted in 1996's Final Doom.

TNT: Evilution is first of Final Doom's two 32-level expansions and made by members of the titular TeamTNT. That's right, 32 maps, as big as Doom II, for better and worse. Evilution's reputation on the 'net is mixed to say the least, and I find myself agreeing with both the criticisms and tentative praise aimed towards this expansion.

TNT: Evilution is more consistent than Master Levels but doesn't achieve the same highs of brilliance. Even so, it's a good time.

I've heard Evilution be called overly large, boring, and occasionally amateurish. I'd say these are fair, if harsh, statements considering that Evilution was one of TeamTNT's earliest projects and the expansion itself had almost as many contributors as there were maps. With that in mind it's rather impressive at how relatively consistent this expansion feels throughout, especially in comparison to Master Levels.

Now, more nicely, I'd say that Evilution is a generally enjoyable marathon through 30+ levels of expansive spaces, high enemy counts, and some pretty clever ideas coming from an absolutely diverse selection of map designers. Its head-scratching design decisions are rarely too frustrating, and its new and unique ideas, while not as extremely giga-brained as certain moments in Master Levels, are peppered throughout the campaign with enough regularity to make the experience a fun and mostly upbeat one.

Just like Doom II, though, I'd probably recommend against a complete start-to-finish run of Evilution in a short period of time. The rhythm of the expansion can get monotonous, and there's still plenty of time that will be spend wandering mostly-cleared maps looking for that one switch or key you somehow missed--made all the more sour when the maps inhabit massive spaces. There are a few shining moments of "wow, that was a great map!" such as the very clever (and over-before-you-know-it) M8 "Metal," but you also have some annoyances like the time-wasting puzzle-solving of M18 "Mill" that really could have used some more smoothing out.

Ultimately, I'm glad I spent the time to push through TNT: Evilution to its completion. It's a notable point in time for id's endorsement of some of the community's content in the form of Evilution's ascension to official expansion, and an interesting time capsule into what 1995-1996 map design was like. I might only recommend this to new Doom players if they're particularly invested in seeing that for themselves, like I was. Otherwise, this might be better off skipped or reserved for a more casual modded run.

TNT: Evilution is huge, but it's just half of Final Doom. Let's talk about the other half next.

Final Doom (1996) - The Plutonia Experiment

Our final stop is the second half of Final Doom: The Plutonia Experiment. At the time of writing I am partway through this expansion and the whiplash moving from Evilution to Plutonia is as dramatic as it is ironic. So far the maps are smaller and more focused, the puzzles are more straightforward, and the combat encounters are tighter and much, much more difficult. For reference I typically play Doom on Hurt Me Plenty and the frequency of my deaths on Plutonia is far above anything I've seen during Evilution's runtime.

We have brothers Dario Casali and Milo Casali to thank for this extra-tough expansion, with Dario designing 14 maps and Milo designing 18, adding up to the 32 levels of Plutonia. The Casali brothers are known for their extensive knowledge of the Doom engine and the tricky, at times cruel, designs they can concoct as a result. Plutonia is no different in that regard, and makes for a tight and challenging experience.

And, I'll admit, maybe a bit too challenging for me. I'm not great at Doom. 40+ hours across KEX and GZDoom has helped me get better, but I'm still thoroughly trounced every couple minutes of Plutonia. At the worst moments, I'll be reloading quicksaves with embarrassingly frequency, going from 30 health to 0 on repeat after I've exhausted the map's medkits. Objectively, I know Plutonia is better-designed than Evilution, but it might take a revisit after I'm a more experienced Doom player for me to really get the most out of it.

Plutonia is probably the better expansion, but it might not be a great one for me right now.

I'm a little bummed out that I've reached this conclusion with Plutonia, but the silver lining is this: The Plutonia Experiment is now an aspiration. As I spend more time with Doom and grow into a more competent player, I know I'll eventually be able to return to Plutonia with the skills needed to truly appreciate all of its tricks and challenges. And knowing that I have one of the best official expansions to Doom waiting for me when I'm ready is one hell of a goal.

It's tough. It was intended to be tough. As Dario himself said, it's for Doomgods.

• From TeamTNT's Final Doom website, 1996

Conclusion

With that, we've come to the end of this leg of our Grand Tour through Doom. It's instilled in me a love for classic Doom that I'm excited to foster as I try more community projects and official games alike. If there's a main takeaway from this chapter, it's that these games are worthwhile and the stories behind them are fascinating. Doom is not merely the result of the world of 90s computing; it's the product of id Software and Doom's numerous and talented fans in arguably equal measure.

To readers across the full spectrum of Doom familiarity, thank you for joining me and I hope you enjoyed the journey so far. At this point, we can take a detour to Doom 64, jump to id Tech 4 and Doom 3, or delve into the depths of community maps, mods, and source ports. The distant specter of DOOM's 2016 revival in the form of nu-DOOM looms waiting as well. Not even I know what's next, but one way or another, the path will be paved with countless dead demons. See you next time.

Lete Lyre