E4M2: Perfect Hatred (Doom)

E4M2: Perfect Hatred is the second map of Thy Flesh Consumed in The Ultimate Doom. It was designed by John Romero and uses the music track "Donna to the Rescue."

Of all the levels John Romero contributed to Doom and Doom II, E4M2 took the shortest time to finish; he started working on it at midnight and finished at 6AM.

Its open yet compact design means that the player will immediately alert and face a mass of monsters at the start, particularly a concentration of Imps and Cacodemons, without much cover and in very close quarters. Also, as much of the level consists of platforms above damaging lava, some skill is needed in making the "jumps", often while dodging enemy attacks.

Difficulty: Hard-very hard

Overview
The map title comes from Psalm 139:22: "I hate them with perfect hatred; I account them mine enemies."

Walkthrough
Fron the start point, run the left stairs up, turn right, and press the switch. (If you fell down into the lava, take the southeast lava stairs back up) Then fall down, kill the Imps you see, press the lion switch, and then run unto the ledge. (The switch can only be pressed once, so if you miss or fall off the ledge, you must take the stairs up, take the teleporter back, and go with the ledge raised) Then run to the room with the plasma rifle, kill the Baron of Hell, and there is the yellow key, along with an energy cell pack. Grab both, and go back to the beginning using that teleporter. Run the right stairs, turn left, and press the yellow switch. There will be a new opening which will summon a plenty of Lost Souls, then run there, and you will see a window. Get into there, and get to the southernmost area. Go up the stairs, kill the pack of Lost Souls, turn left, kill the Baron of Hell, grab the blue key, and head back using that teleporter. Run the left stairs again, press on the blue pillar to lower it, go up the stairs, and prepare to fight a Cyberdemon. After you kill the Cyberdemon, a door will open, with a couple of Cacodemons, continue forward, and press the exit switch.

I'm really sorry that I cannot be more specific, but unfortunately that's just how the designer of this map designed it to be played, @ a faster pace than normal. This level is harder than E4M1: Hell Beneath. In that level you only need to kill 8 shotgun guys at the beginning, while here at the beginning you must kill more powerfull monsters, including a lot of Cacodemons, Imps, and Demons. Also, there are 12 Barons of Hell, and if you don't know how to avoid projectiles, dodge shotgun blasts from shotgun guys, and/or dodge melee attacks, then you're going to die a plenty! There are medikits, but not a lot, and you must kill a lot of enemies before you can grab the health. You do get powerfull weapons, but the MAIN thing making this level harder than the last level is that you must kill a Cyberdemon without the BFG9000 (unless you could perform a telefrag on the Cyberdemon), while in the last level are only 63 enemies, and no Cyberdemon, only 5 barons of hell, and some more monsters that you can actually handle. Here, you must know how to cross the lava (I think this level should be renamed to Hell Beneath 2, because there is lava (hell) at the very bottom), by running, while there are enemies unavoidable. With a Pistol Start, this level is much more difficult, since you don't get any weapons (except for the shotgun) at the beginning. Therefore, this level was said as the hardest level of the episode. The last level would be the 2nd hardest level, due to no medikits. Here, if you get injured in the maze, you don't get a lot of medicine, so try to do this map cautiosly, but do not take your time. You might get surrounded by enemies, or get fired upon from a lot of angles, since I don't think any monsters have the Deaf flag set, and therefore can detect you if you take this map slow. Still you must be very very very careful, otherwise you're going to die more than the last level, since this map does more trouble than the last one has.

There is a walkthrough of the level on Ultra-Violence difficulty available in YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zM1Zs4la0Yo. Note that this does show two of the three secrets in the level, but not show the exit to the secret level, detailed in #3 below.

Official

 * 1) In the smaller, isolated lava pit in the southwest of the level, drop into the lava and flip the switch to raise a bridge. Step into the small triangle of lava next to the switch to open an exit out of this pit. At the top of the stairs is a teleporter. Open the wall to the left just before the teleporter; behind it is a secret cache. The right wall at the back of the secret room also opens, and you can take the other side of the teleporter to a separate secret room.
 * 2) After opening the blue "door", run up the stairs and across the raised platform with the Cyberdemon guarding it until you hear the sound of a door opening behind you. Run back down to the lower wooden platforms, and a teleporter will have appeared. Go through it to telefrag the Cyberdemon, saving you a lot of work. Pick up the BFG and lower the wall in front of you to exit.
 * 3) Secret exit: Upon lowering the wall to exit secret 2, a wall back down in the western wall of the main lava pit will lower temporarily. Quickly run into the opening to reach the exit to E4M9: Fear.

Non-official

 * 1) Getting the plasma gun opens the yellow key alcove and another one at the southern edge of the southwest lava room. Pressing the eastern edge of this alcove reveals a hidden switch that raises the central part of the floor in the main chamber.
 * 2) The first secret has an alternate exit in the North-Eastern corner that leads around the back of the teleporter in the Baron's room ,when you enter the teleporter from here you'll come out in the next room to the East (between the Cyberdemon & the teleporter that lead you here) where you will find a Blue Armor and a box of rockets.

Records
The Compet-N records for the map are:

Trivia

 * In The Ultimate Doom, it is the fourth stage in the demo rotation. The player didn't last long.
 * Due to the influx of monsters and other various moving objects, the PlayStation and Saturn ports' version of this stage suffers from varying degrees of slowdown - the PS version has minor slowdown while the Saturn version is almost unplayable.
 * The opening is considerably more difficult in the PlayStation and Saturn versions, since the sergeants standing next to the stage entrance will immediately attack the player character instead of engaging in infighting. As a counterbalance, the Cyberdemon does not appear in these versions of the level.
 * MAP15: Where Hate Runs Red, from Plutonia 2, is heavily inspired on E4M2.