Doom II: Hell on Earth

THE BAD:
Huh??

SUMMARY:
After the incredible success of the first Doom game it was inevitable that ID would release a follow up in the form of Doom II. This game didn’t go with chapters, instead it went ahead with 30 straight levels and two secret ones. The game used the same engine and pretty much everything that they did before but decided to include a few new enemies and the Super Shotgun as a new weapon. I can’t remember the storyline for this game too well, but all I cared about was kicking some monster butt.

Yet again it’s all up to you to save the population of Earth. The monsters have recovered from the ass-kicking you gave them last time and they want revenge. Again you only start off wit ha pistol but it doesn’t take long for you to find bigger and better ones. The enemies you come across will be pretty familiar and most people play this on the harder modes after having played the first Doom game as the methods of beating them are the same. But there are differences.

As far as I’m aware there were two new enemies in this game. There was the Baron of Hell who was the same as the Hell Knight except he was red, took 2-3 more rockets to kill and did more damage to you. Then there’s the Arch Vile, one of the cleverest monster designs I’ve ever seen. He seemed like a normal enemy but his main power came in the fact he can resurrect any fallen enemy meaning you have to kill them again. Also, when he decides to attack you it’s a direct hit that produces a yellow flame in the front of your screen. The only way to evade this attack is to get out of his line of vision by going behind a wall because as long as you’re in his direct line of vision his attack can hit you no matter how far back you go. He takes 3-4 rockets or full Super Shotgun blasts to kill, so he’s no easy customer. There is one map where there are two Arch Viles in one area but they appear to be unable to revive other Arch Viles, otherwise it could be nearly impossible.

The enemies can still attack each other if an attack hits them first. Funny thing is that no-one will retaliate if an Arch Vile is provoked and keeps on attacking. He will carry on attacking an enemy without being fired back on. Also there is one room with a Cyberdemon and 12-15 Baron of Hells in. This seems like it would take forever to kill them all but in fact if you let the Cyberdemon hit the Barons first then they will all gang up on the Cyberdemon and they can kill it, or at least leave it with only a small amount of health left so you can kill it easily.
While in the first Doom you came across the Cyberdemon once, here you will come across him several times, and in one room he keeps on teleporting all over the place which makes it extremely hard to kill him. Some of the levels are also massive, taking quite a while to navigate through some of them. The second to last one is one of my favourite levels and although you can see where you’re aiming to get to at the start of the level, you have to almost go in circles to get there. Again, if the game appears too easy then you’ve got the final difficulty which makes monsters respawn and do a ton of damage. I only ever got to the second level on this difficulty and I couldn’t get past it.

The only new weapon in this game is the Super Shotgun. This is a double barrelled shotgun which uses two shells at once and takes longer to reload than the regular shotgun. It also has a large spread which makes it fairly ineffective at longer distances. But close up it’s as powerful as a Rocket Launcher and at a bit of a range you can kill several weaker enemies in just one blast. This is the weapon of choice for medium to tough enemies. All the items from the previous game are still in this one and the backpack is even more important now because you’ve got 30 levels to get through in one piece.

Even though the basics of this game are the same as the last one, this game was even more popular than the first one and built upon the large fanbase of the first one. I don’t know how many copies were actually sold, but it was more than enough to cement the series’ place in history.