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Doom II

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Doom II: Hell on Earth
The cover artwork for Doom II: Hell on Earth, painted by fantasy artist Gerald Brom, depicts the Doom space marine firing a double-barreled shotgun at a Cyberdemon.
Developer(s)id Software
Publisher(s)GT Interactive (DOS/Windows), Activision (Game Boy Advance, Steam), Tapwave, Inc. (Zodiac)
Composer(s)Robert Prince
Engineid Tech 1
Platform(s)MS-DOS, Linux, Microsoft Windows, Amiga 1200, GBA, Macintosh, PlayStation, Sega Saturn, Tapwave Zodiac, Xbox Live Arcade
ReleaseOctober 10, 1994
October 23, 2002 (GBA)
Genre(s)Survival Horror
First-person shooter
Scientific Fiction
Mode(s)Single player
Multiplayer

Doom II: Hell on Earth is a first-person shooter computer game originally released in 1994 as the sequel to the immensely popular Doom, which was released a year earlier. In 1995, Doom II won the Origins Award for Best Fantasy or Science Fiction Computer Game of 1994.[1] Unlike Doom which was initially only available through shareware and mail order, Doom II was a commercial release sold in stores. Master Levels for Doom II, an expansion pack that includes twenty one new levels, was released on December 26, 1995 by id Software.[2]

Due to its popularity and success, Doom II has been released for numerous platforms, including the Amiga, Apple Macintosh, Sony PlayStation, Sega Saturn and Nintendo Game Boy Advance. The release of the original Doom source code has facilitated ports to many other platforms, including the Apple iPod, and several types of cellphones. On August 13 during the QuakeCon 2009 media conference, it was announced that Doom II had been ported to Xbox LIVE Arcade[3][4].

Plot

Immediately following the events in Doom, the player once again takes the role of the anonymous space marine who has proven too tough for the forces of Hell to contain. After being teleported from Phobos, and subsequently fighting on Deimos which is suspended above Hell itself, the Marine finds himself back home on Earth, only to find that it too has fallen victim to the hellish invasion.

The player progresses through 30 levels, which are divided into three chapters.

In the first chapter, the marine learns along the way that the remaining survivors of Earth's population are being held on Earth. The only means of escape is the space port which contains massive ships that can carry the remnants of Earth's population into space. The demons, predicting this avenue of escape, have placed a force field over the space port so those ships cannot land or leave. The marine must battle his way through the infested space port and deactivate the force field. Once humanity is finally evacuated from the ravaged, infested planet, the marine is the only human left on Earth. He sits and waits for death, content in the knowledge that he has saved his species[citation needed], giving them a chance to continue on elsewhere.

Only minutes pass before the marine receives an off-planet transmission - humans in orbit have managed to find out where the armies of Hell are spilling from. In the second part of the game, designed with a cityscape motif, the marine cuts a swath through the demons in his path before finally arriving at the gateway. He sees no way to close the portal, and so dives through to find a solution on the other side.

After brutal battles with legions of Hell in the third chapter, the marine finally reaches the home of the "largest demon (he has) ever seen", called the Icon of Sin.[citation needed] The game concludes with a battle in which the player must fire rockets into the exposed brain of the demon, dodging constant attacks from lesser demons which spawn indefinitely. Once defeated the Icon's death throes devastate vast portions of Hell and the marine sets off back to Earth, looking forward to rebuilding rather than destroying Earth.

Gameplay

Doom II was not a dramatically different game from its predecessor. There were no major technological developments, no graphical improvements, and no substantive gameplay changes. The game still consisted of the player negotiating non-linear levels, picking up keys to unlock new areas, and of course shooting down hundreds of monsters. However, due to the larger and more complicated maps with larger groups of monsters, the game had higher system requirements than the original.

The main additions to the game were the additional monsters available for the player to fight. Doom II doubled the amount of non-boss monster types and started using bosses from the original Doom as normal level enemies. In addition, the multiplayer functionality was greatly improved in Doom II, including "out of the box" support for a vastly increased number of dial-up modems. The two player dial up connection allowed one player to dial in to the other player's computer in order to play either cooperatively or in deathmatch style combat. There was also LAN functionality added, which was improved upon as patches and updates were released. This functionality was later incorporated into the original Doom.

The double-barreled shotgun in use.

The only new weapon addition was the double-barreled Super Shotgun, which used up two shotgun shells per fire but could fire out 20 pellets instead of the regular shotgun's seven pellets from one shell. This made it very useful in dispatching Demons, Cacodemons, and any other medium-sized monster.

There was also one new power-up item created: the Megasphere, a tan Soul Sphere that would give the player 200% health and armor.

A small change in gameplay was instituted. Instead of the player playing through three related episodes, gameplay takes place over one giant episode, albeit with interludes for when the story develops. Instead of watching the player's progress on a map (as in the original episodes of Doom), the screens between each level simply show a background (as in the bonus fourth episode of Doom available on The Ultimate Doom expansion pack). It also meant that the player was not forced to start over with a pistol every eight or nine levels, as was the case in Doom.

Expansion packs

Master Levels for Doom II

Master Levels for Doom II is an expansion pack for Doom II which was released officially on 26 December 1995 by id Software. The CD contains twenty WAD files created by various authors under contract. The file teeth.wad contains a secret level, so there are a total of 21 levels. As a bonus, 1,830 amateur WAD files downloaded from the Internet are also included, collectively called "Maximum Doom". They were also included in the Xbox port of Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil.

Final Doom

Main article: Final Doom

References

  1. ^ "1994 - Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design, List of Winners". Retrieved 2009-06-28.
  2. ^ Larsen, Henrik. "The Un-official Master Levels for Doom II FAQ". Retrieved 2009-06-28. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  3. ^ http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/59971 Shacknews
  4. ^ http://uk.xboxlive.ign.com/articles/101/1013852p1.html IGN
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