I finished EVILUTION from FINAL DOOM in the first time in ages. I definitely think itโs the better out of the two episodes included. I think itโs because it feels more like Doom 1 than 2 aesthetically, with levels that vaguely resemble real locations at first but still focus on being a abstract place focused on exploring and encounters. Also, the episode gets more Hell-ish as you progress.
Many levels are built around a single interesting idea that make each feel pretty distinct from the previous (making it more Doom 2 than 1 in this aspect), and theyโre all a good length and donโt overstay their welcome. The difficulty does suddenly ramp up in the last half dozen levels or so though, and the final boss is BS because there is no indication as to what youโre supposed to do and it doesnโt make sense even when you do (I had to look it up).
Now Iโm going through Plutonia, which I always bounce off and pretty much remember hating. Letโs see if I still do.
i kind of agree with you, to a point. from my experience most of the Doom community tends to kind of hate Evilution and likes Plutonia. i feel like you see the influence of Plutonia in so many community megawads. i had never played through a lot of either until more recently.
i agree that Evilution does feel more like Doom 1 and there are some maps i really like in there (most of them are in the 10-20 range from what i recall). i think the quality is pretty inconsistent though, and there are definitely some pretty low lows. i also donโt think it compares favorably to the two Memento Mori sets, or Requiem which came out around the same time and were free.
Plutonia has some interesting tricky encounters and is obviously more internally consistent, but it really just kind of feels like Doom 2 hard mode to me. i never felt super inspired by it, and always kind of give up around a certain point because i just find it frustrating. it has a similar kind of combat design to a lot of contemporary Doom wads (a lot of which i also give up on because i find them both too hard and too predictable) but less of the cool environments and stuff, i guess you could say. i always feel like i must be missing something, though, given how many people from the Doom community seem to like it.
you might know this already but Dario (one of the two brothers who did Plutonia) ended up getting hired by Valve to work on Half-Life 1 and i think still works there to this day. he was one of the designers on Surface Tension apparently, which is my favorite map in that game. so thatโs cool i suppose.
I donโt remember the lows being that low, but I agree the best levels are in 10-20 range. Also I donโt like the Half-Life games too much so I guess that explains that lol
I forgot to mention I finished Plutonia Experiment and while it has a few levels I really liked, I hated most of it. As others said, it feels like Doom 2 with difficulty cranked up to 11 (including several levels which are just remixes of Doom 2 maps).
The problem is that itโs not difficult in a way I find interesting or creative. 90% of the time it was like โhurr hurr here are 40 revenants and chaingunners.โ It became pretty predictable and dull. It also really liked putting chain gunners out of range to make things extra tedious.
Also I find the aesthetic ugly and the actual level design pretty boring.
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