Fairy Tale Spotlight: Doom II (Game Review)

I made it pretty clear in an earlier blog that I was a huge fan of Doom. The first game was sort of an introduction into what made the game wonderful. Doom II (released in 1994) is really what made the series stick, and I want to talk a little bit as to why.

The story still follows the nameless space marine... or is he really nameless? The novels have him named as Flynn "Fly" Taggart. The games never make reference to this. Anyways, the sequel continues the journey of the hero into some of the most complex and amazing environments that still look pretty awesome today. He travels to hell and back to Earth where demons have taken over. Damn spooky stuff, but the game play remains the same: go in and kill everything!

So what made Doom II so great? In many ways, it felt the same as the first. But there is no denying that people always have more fun with the 2nd game. There are multiple reasons and I'll try and cover most of them.

1. The Super Shotgun. Double the power of the original shotgun, twice the fun. Dear god. The addition of this weapon made the game so much more fun. It made dealing with more enemies so much more manageable. There was no enemy that was not, to some degree, vulnerable to this insanely powerful weapon. It fit into the strategy of each level in a multitude of ways. From the moment you first collect it, you know you'll be the best of friends.

2. Superior Level Design. The levels in the first Doom were good, but they learned from all their failings and blew it out of the water with the sequel. These levels are wonderfully built, interesting, and fun to explore. To this day, I still find myself poking around for new secrets that I've missed since the 90's. Amazing flow, brilliant use of textures, and perfect setups for monster killing madness.

3. New enemies. The enemies of the first Doom were pretty slim. Doom II added a whopping 9 new enemies to defeat. Every single one of them was interesting. The Revenant is one of my favorite of these, I'll go more into these enemies in a later blog. The addition of these new enemies lead to new strategies and play styles in your quest to kill, kill, kill.

These additions actually made it difficult to go back to the first game. I still do though. I think all the games are great, but Doom II is just a masterpiece. It's a perfectly executed ballet of death and destruction at the hands of one single space marine. It's brilliant.

I'm keeping this blog short. I just wanted to rave about how much I love this game and still play it often. Over the next weeks, I'll be going over the enemies of Doom with a fine tooth comb. I actually do love all of the enemies, and I want to share with you what I love about each and every one. If you've played these games before, you'll probably share in the love along with me. I hope you look forward to it.

Thank you for reading my blog! Did you enjoy it? Either way, you can comment below, or you can email me at tkwadeauthor@gmail.com. You can also visit my website at www.tkwade.com. Check out my books! Thanks!