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Doom II

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"Doom 2" redirects here. For other topics with similar names, see doom2.

Doom II (officially titled Doom II: Hell on Earth) is the first sequel to Doom. It was released on September 30, 1994.

Story[]

The player once again takes the role of a lone Marine, an unnamed hero, who, after escaping Hell and being the only survivor, returns to Earth. He discovers that Earth has been invaded by Hell's demon army.

With all the major cities of the world in ruins, the remaining leaders plan to use spacecraft to evacuate the survivors of Earth's population. However, the starport is the only way for the ships to depart and the demons have protected it with a force field. All of humanity's remaining soldiers make a desperate assault on the starport, but eventually they are decimated and only the player remains.

The Marine manages to enter the infested starport, slay all the demons in his way and is able to shut down the force field. The surviving humans escape, and he sits quietly waiting for death, knowing he saved humanity from extinction.

Then, the remaining humans discover the source of the hellish invasion: the Marine's hometown. He gets back into the fight and exterminates the hellspawn from the town, and finds another entryway into Hell.

To close the portal, he must enter Hell again to stop the invasion. After journeying through its twisted surface, the Marine manages to confront the Icon of Sin, a gigantic demon, and kills it. Its gruesome death causes devastation on Hell, and the portal to Earth has been sealed.

Gameplay[]

Doom II doesn't differ from its predecessor. The gameplay still consists of the player navigating through non-linear levels, picking up keys to unlock new areas, and killing as many monsters as possible. There are no technical or graphical improvements.

Doom II is played over the course of 30 consecutive levels, distinguished only by an overall map theme, which changes after a brief text interlude is shown to advance the story. This stands in contrast to the original Doom, which combined eight levels into one cohesive episode with its own thematical hover map and the text interlude shown after beating the whole episode. The intermission screens following each level show a simple background image instead of a map. The player can carry his weapons throughout the entire game (unless he is killed), rather than starting from scratch each time a new episode begins.

The level design is only loosely based on the areas the player is supposed to travel through. The initial third of the maps have a techbase theme as the player moves through the different military installations of the starport. Afterwards, as the player roams the cities and residential areas searching for the source of the infestation, the levels have an urban look and somewhat resemble terrestrial locations. In the last third of the game, you play in hell and the levels are designed in a nightmarish, surreal way.

New enemies include the Commando, Hell Knight, Mancubus, Revenant, Arachnotron, Pain Elemental, Arch-vile, and a new final boss.

The Wolfenstein SS from Wolfenstein 3D appears in the two secret levels, which are throwbacks in design (and music) to the Wolfenstein 3D. Also, a Commander Keen figure makes a cameo in the second secret level.

The player's only new weapon is the super shotgun (double-barreled shotgun). There is also one new powerup, the megasphere, and a few new decorations, including a burning barrel, a couple of lamps, six hanging mutilated corpses, and three other small pieces of gore.

Reviews and sales[]

Doom II went on to sell two million copies, making it the highest-selling id Software game at that time. There was praise for its many new and varied enemies, and its innovative map design which aimed to be more non-linear than its predecessor. It also introduced the FPS multi-player world to MAP01: Entryway, which is regarded as one of the best deathmatch maps ever published, though some argue that MAP07: Dead Simple (doom II) would hold that title of "best deathmatch level".

In general, Doom II was well-received by the gaming community but was regarded in some areas as a disappointment. Its lack of major new features and its fairly homogeneous, sometimes drab level design were the biggest complaints. This was especially in comparisons made to later games such as Star Wars: Dark Forces and Duke Nukem 3D.

Unlike the original game, Doom II had no demo or shareware versions, and was available only through retail stores. Doom II was thus also known as the commercial version of the game, while the registered version was only available via mail order. (In 1995, however, the original was upgraded and also received a retail release.) Like Doom, Doom II received licensed ports after the fact to numerous additional platforms, including the Classic Mac, PlayStation, Sega Saturn, Game Boy Advance, and Xbox, although most of these ports included levels from both The Ultimate doom and doom II.

Doom II was re-released in the Doom 3 BFG Edition; however, this version is different in that the Nazi references were removed from MAP31 and MAP32.

Legal issues in Germany[]

According to the German Strafgesetzbuch §86a, the usage of unconstitutional symbols is forbidden outside of certain contexts such as research, teaching and others. Because the two secret maps called Wolfenstein and Grosse use swastikas, the German version does not contain these maps to prevent the game from being the subject of search and seizure procedures (as Wolfenstein 3D had been, which was banned for 20 years in Germany).

On 31 December 1994 (date of official announcement), however, the game was put on the Index of the Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Schriften (Medien), which means that the game cannot be advertised, sold or rented. This restriction applies to all versions of the game, except for the Game Boy Advance version.

The German release is engine version 1.666, and doom2.wad is a little bit smaller than its standard, as a result of the removed content. Under MS-DOS, when the player attempts to use the level warp cheat for either of the secret maps, the game instantly crashes, because the code for the maps is still there, but the maps are simply removed.

Following an appeal by Bethesda Softworks (now owning ID Software) Doom and Doom II have been taken from the Index of the Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährende Medien (BPjM). The restriction on the two games expired on 31 August 2011 following a meeting of the BPjM. The decision was based mainly on the fact that in context with modern day video games the violence depicted in doom and doom II can't be described as realistic anymore and its pixelated presentation makes it more cartoonish in nature. This didn't include the Doom II version containing the two Wolfenstein levels with its swastikas and SS soldiers.

In 2019, Doom II was struck from the index together with Wolfenstein 3D and is now available in Germany without restrictions.

Levels[]

The levels can be divided into three theme sections, defined by their corresponding sky map and different environmental textures and are separated by a text intermission in addition to the standard intermission screen. There are two additional, hidden secret maps, which are not needed to complete the game. Additional text interludes appear before MAP07 (without changing the theme), before each of the secret levels and after the final level of the game.

MAP01 to MAP11; subterranean/outpost levels:

1: Known as Circle of Death on the intermission screen.

MAP12 to MAP20; city levels:

MAP21 to MAP30; Hell levels:

MAP31 and MAP32; secret levels:

2: These two levels do not appear in the German version.

MAP33; bonus Xbox level:

Weapons[]

  1. The super shotgun is a new weapon which Doom II introduced to the series.

Monsters[]

Doom II includes all the monsters from doom:

Doom II also has new monsters, which are:

DOS Print (Exit Screen)[]

If any of the original DOS versions of Doom II being exited, an Exit Screen will pop up in the form of a DOS Print. In this screen the player is being thanked for playing the game and the game credits are being shown. These credits show the constellation of id software at that time and the exact positions within that company that each member (at the time of the release) held.

Speedrunning[]

Current records[]

The Compet-N episode records for doom II are:

Run Time Player Date File Notes
UV Episode, MAP01-MAP10 06:32 Drew "stx-Vile" DeVore 2002-12-02 0632uv01.zip
UV Episode, MAP11-MAP20 09:52 Radek Pecka 2003-08-08 0952uv11.zip
UV Episode, MAP21-MAP30 08:59 Radek Pecka 2004-09-28 0859uv21.zip
UV Run 26:09 Radek Pecka 2003-12-28 30uv2609.zip
NM Episode, MAP01-MAP10 07:11 Juho "ocelot" Ruohonen 2003-09-03 0711nm01.zip
NM Episode, MAP11-MAP20 11:19 Drew "stx-Vile" DeVore 2002-03-24 1119nm11.zip
NM Episode, MAP21-MAP30 13:35 Vincent Catalaá 2002-07-22 1335nm21.zip
NM Run 29:56 Drew "stx-Vile" DeVore 2004-10-18 30nm2956.zip
UV Max Episode, MAP01-MAP10 25:50 Radek Pecka 2001-06-15 2550uv01.zip
UV Max Episode, MAP11-MAP20 47:10 Radek Pecka 2002-04-18 4710uv11.zip
UV Max Episode, MAP21-MAP30 39:16 Radek Pecka 2002-08-29 3916uv21.zip
UV Max Run 113:18 Radek Pecka 2002-04-22 30uvmax4.zip
NS Episode, MAP01-MAP10 14:25 Drew "stx-Vile" DeVore 2002-01-27 1425ns01.zip
NS Episode, MAP11-MAP20 23:48 Drew "stx-Vile" DeVore 2002-01-11 2348ns11.zip
NS Episode, MAP21-MAP30 18:27 Jan "Doomgeek" Vida 2002-07-15 1827ns21.zip
NS Run 56:00 Drew "stx-Vile" DeVore 2004-05-30 30ns5600.zip
UV -fast Episode, MAP01-MAP10 25:52 Ian Sabourin 2002-04-27 2552fa01.zip
UV -fast Episode, MAP11-MAP20 57:44 Radek Pecka 2002-08-31 5744fa11.zip
UV -fast Episode, MAP21-MAP30 61:35 Vincent Catalaá 2001-02-15 6135fa21.zip
UV -fast Run 128:04 Radek Pecka 2003-06-24 30famax2.zip

TAS runs[]

See also[]

Trivia[]

  • Various screenshots on the back cover of the original game box show scenery and an Arachnotron sprite that are not present in the final game. These were likely screenshots from a pre-release version of Doom II which had differing level structure and graphics than what was included in the official commercial release. These unconventional screenshots have been later used in various re-releases of Doom II, including the doom95 repackaging in 1995, the Steam release in 2007, and on id Software's own doom II page.
  • The Doom II Cover Art was drawn by occult/fantasy artist Gerald Brom.
  • In Jazz Jackrabbit 2 there is a comical drawn spoof cover of doom for one of the levels, showing Jazz fighting a demonized version of Devan Shell.
  • Doom II was the first doom game to be commercially released to the retail market. The original doom could only be purchased through mail order, and an updated version, The Ultimate Doom, wouldn't be released until April 30, 1995.

Gallery[]

Video[]

Sources[]

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This page uses content from Wikipedia. The original article was at Doom II. As with Doom Wiki, the text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.

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