Ani plays Master Levels for Doom II (Part 1)

Channel:

Ani

Subscribers:

39,100

Published on May 11, 2024 8:00:11 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsbjWHWjKqY

Game:

Doom II: Hell on Earth (1994)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 30:13

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1

Another expansion for Doom II.
The first of it's kind too before Final Doom. This one was made out of spite for D!Zone, a series of CD Rom games that was selling a bunch of wads that were ripped from the internet.
I have one of those CDs I bought at a goodwill one time. No way in hell I'm doing a marathon of those wads since most are broken garbage. I wouldn't mind collecting them though, just to have an excuse to fill up a shelf cause they look good in one. Anyways Master Levels opened the door for a few level designers that'd go on to work for ID and other Game Development companies. One of which being Tim Willits who allegedly fucked American McGee over when designing Doom II levels and kind of a start of Quake's triple identity.
But one designer I do respect is the late Doctor Sleep. Rest in Peace my man.

Now when this expansion was out on Steam, you'd be booted to a DOSBox menu and you'd have to stick to the vanilla way of playing Doom II and start each new level on Pistol start since none of them are linear.
That has long since been delisted as you can just play them on the Unity Port of Doom 2.
Instead for my playthroughs I'll be using a version of Master Levels I compiled the wads together with a patcher.
I tried using a version on Reddit that's long since been abandoned and the PS3 version. Both of which has a broken map that only works if set to Map 07. It was so bad I nearly canceled my playthrough of these expansions.

The console releases for this expansion left out a few levels, I assume for modern players and console players as well as the one map bug. Cause I guess they didn't wanna rearrange the maps to work for vanilla ports. Sucky.
It's also known for being included in the Playstation version of Final Doom which took up a massive chunk of the port's line of levels with barely any TNT and Plutonia.

I barely talked much about the levels themselves so I talk about the first 9 I showcased.

Attack is a decent starting level. Starts simple with a few zombies, pinkies, imps and lost souls. Has one chaingunner and a few tougher demons near the end. It's great.

Canyon is decent I guess. But not very interesting or memorable.

Catwalk is actually fun and a better level that pulls thin platforms than Doom II's Chasm. The secret room full of goodies I the end is great too. Great way to reward the player for their hard work. Reminds me of Wolfenstein 3D's style of secrets.
Plus the level gives me a BFG which I will absolutely need going forward.

Combine is also another fun one. Honestly the first few levels aren't so bad. Though I wish the blue key was placed a but better. Other than that, the map isn't too bad and it's cleverly designed. Not a fan of the shooting switch to exit a level. I think one door for an exit is enough.

Fistula. It's forgettable honestly and I don't like the acid ring pit you can't get out of. The end however was entertaining with it's Archvile ambush.

Garrison, it's not my favorite. Mainly for this stupid way of getting the yellow key.
Everything else is just wood texture blandness. A snoozefest.

And that's all the levels I touched in Part 1. I still got a long way to go till I get around this early Doom II expansion.

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