Frustration and Determination - Part 15 - Scythe - Doom 2 Mod

Channel:

Artega Omega

Subscribers:

2,050

Published on February 18, 2023 8:00:00 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X7Ypjk_bVA

Game:

Doom II: Hell on Earth (1994)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 41:53

57 views

6

A full game playthrough of Scythe, a difficult level pack for Doom 2, on Ultra Violence (UV) difficulty, with a pistol start on each level. I'll be playing on PC with unedited gameplay and commentary.

Welcome to the world of Doom II custom campaigns. A full 30 maps are prepared to take us across a wide range of settings and difficulties in a showcase of everything Doom 2 has to offer. Doom2 is a legendary game, famous for its incredibly solid gameplay, tight controls, and its ability to be ran on a toaster/microwave/appliance of choice.

Doom is a marvel of programming, a basis upon which truly wonderful creations can be made. The original Doom 2 however is plagued by one particular issue: a certain 'inconsistency' of level design quality. The original maps aren't awful, but they're not great either, and they certainly don't live up to potential that the game offers. Fortunately many people came to realise this wasted opportunity, and so the Doom II custom level scene was born.

Being conceived shortly after Doom's launch, and still being active to this day, many map makers are busy pushing the Doom engine to its limits. They have crafted features beyond anything you could have imagined in Doom; level design that dwarfs the originals and push the game's difficulty up to a level that only the best can hope to handle.

Scythe is reknown as one of the earlier 30-map level packs, known as a Mega WAD, that showed the world what the Doom 2 experience could truly be. Starting off with a modest challenge for beginners, the difficulty sky rockets towards the end, with stages that will likely require 10s of attempts to clear a single time. It's well designed, it's challenging, and it's fun. All of this ontop of the already superb Doom engine. What's not to love?

This playthrough takes place on the Ultra Violence, or UV, difficulty. This is the hardest setting that is reasonable without breaking the intended design of the stages (the only harder setting causes monsters to respawn, which is unintended in Scythe, given the amount of back-tracking and area re-use in its level design).

To make things even harder we will be performing a 'pistol start' at the beginning of each level. This means I will be resetting my character (effectively dying) when I start each map, so that I don't get to keep my weapons/ammunition/armour from the previous map. This is not mandatory, but most levels are based around the assumption that you will play like this, as the flow of levels will often lead you to acquire ever increasingly powerful weapons whilst simultaneously facing ever increasingly power enemies. There are also certain levels that rely on a scarcity of ammo to limit the player's options, a feature that is lost when weapons can be carried forwards.

I am an enormous fan of Doom 2's gameplay, and especially the fantastic custom maps, levels and entire campaigns that people have created for it. Hopefully I can share some of that appeal with you, and you'll end up enjoying this video series as much as I enjoyed making it.

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#doom2 #doom2wad #doom
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On this channel I make a variety of gaming content. Sometimes we're reviewing up and coming indie games, sometimes we're revisiting retro classics for a Let's Play. The only consistent factor is that it's all gaming, and it's all accompanied by sarcastic commentary. If that's your thing then I have links:

Current Long-Form Let's Play
C&C Red Alert 2: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZNTVa-GeoDefLSaDgwBLF_w1ki24VIlj

Short, Single Video Let's Plays
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZNTVa-GeoDezmO3uEvmsVTddqvAsQtwu

A Short Review Series (Indie game reviews approx. 5-10mins)
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZNTVa-GeoDduBiahGykCqg6InPRlfmM4

Hopefully you'll join me for those, and I shall see you then.

I always try to be as fair and objective as possible when making my review videos, giving some honest feedback and a bit of criticsm here and there. Remember that games these days are always subject to change so many of the things mentioned here may no longer be true depending on how old this video is.

Please leave a comment if you have any questions about this video, or suggestions for future videos. I'm always open to hearing what you guys have to say.

Thanks again for watching and please, enjoy.

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