Retro Corner: Doom II: Hell on Earth (PC) Review · 5:36am Apr 17th, 2022
A new edition of Retro Corner Reviews is up, and we take a look at Doom II for the PC. At this point who hasn’t played the classic games from the 90s. That is how much influence the series has had on gaming and the FPS genre. Not only did Doom spawn a sequel but many developers wanted to emulate its success. Before Duke, Quake and Golden Eye were released many tried to make clones of Doom. The series Blake Stone springs to mind and even though it used the Wolfenstein Engine, you can tell where the inspiration came from. Fortunately, many developers didn’t resort to emulating Id as most 90s FPSs had their own weapons and themes. A clear difference between Duke, Quake, Turok and Golden Eye is what made them unique.
As for the second game, most will agree the sequel felt more like an expansion off the first entry. Nothing was vastly improved upon as only tweaks is what Id did instead of building on the Engine. Its obvious Id was coasting on their success from the previous hit games of Wolfenstein and Doom. They would continue this until the Quake Engine was created in 1995 when something fresh needed to come out. It’s a shame the developers waited until the development of Doom 64 for them to finally build on the software tools. By then these software tools were already obsolete when a superior Quake Engine was being used. I can never understand why they didn’t simply utilize Quake’s own to develop Doom 64. Even modders have used the Quake Engine to recreate the first game in actual fifth gen 3D visuals and gameplay. Doom 64 is still a classic, but Id should’ve used Quake’s 3D assets to produce the series fourth entry.
