Thread:Deathstalker666/@comment-1496755-20180827202615/@comment-3547390-20181214213206

Precisely, maximum replayability. With no defined ending, that means the battle wages on!

That pretty much sums up how I feel about Doom in general. It is absolutely exhausting to play, everything feels so time consuming and dragging. Episode 2s of pretty much any game tend to be the worst. Doom's Episode 2 is pretty much what I remember as "the long drawn out episode that feels like a headache with that good boss ending". Episode 3 maps tended to be a lot more fun. Duke's Episode 2 is pretty much the main thing I remember when I think of Duke, Episode 1 and 3 had nice humor and places to explore, but Episode 2 was such a nightmare that it became hell to endure that mess. Heretic was pretty much a boring slog, but Episode 2 in particular was pretty much just constant water or lava navigation. Hexen's second part was the most nightmarish, that button puzzle managed to be an absolute headache. The city part is pretty much the most annoying part of Doom II due to the engine not really being well designed for it.

And Quake's Episode 2 is just lengthy towers. Episode 1 had a wide array of variety and each level had some key landmark. Twillits, Chthon, one of the most notable Terracotta levels. Episode 3 is pretty short, but darkness and Lava works quite well, and the shortness helps prevent the levels from getting tiresome. Episode 4 is absolutely groundbreaking, it had very good design in terms of openness, making it the most fun to play in coop, plus I am one of the rare insane people who actually enjoy the Spawn. E2M1 is probably my least favorite of the idBase levels, an easily skippable level without the outdoors areas or the unique stuff in E4M1. From the Crypt of Decay on, we just are constantly working up vertical towers in a sort of repetitive pattern that quickly gets old. The Dismal Oubliette is fun, primarily due to how legendarily evil it is to Shotgun start for me, but otherwise there just is nothing that draws me like the others. Of course, unlike the others, I find Quake a good game and thus find even these levels to be rather decent. Now what is a slog is the Aftershock Toolbox levels, some of those are just plain groan worthy, especially the one so bad it doesn't even work outside of DOS.

I guess you just need constant alcohol in your system then.

The way I see the Quake expansions, they were treated like Final Doom. They were sold as products, sure, but they were just glorified expansion packs. See, the problem with both of them in my eyes was the lack of Lovecraftian lore. The original game was focused highly on trying to weave together a game based highly in Lovecraft, something the expansions just don't offer in any way. With Quake, it is very easy to disregard plot and thus make your own canon, since it is as barebones as a porn film.

You are quite right, canon is just something people didn't really respect back in the day. It feels like as we have gone along, there has been a focus to a lot more seriousness here. Remember the Golden Age of Comics? You don't need to read a single one to get what is going on, since they have zero connections with each other. Then suddenly the Silver Age happened and Marvel started offering continuity, except that it often took liberties and even the team admitted to basically just doing whatever whims they had. Remember the 80s? Star Wars stuff came out, but it had no expectation to have any serious ties, same with the Terminator comics and anything else. Then the 90s happened and suddenly things became more serious. And since then we have just been building on that, making things all the more serialized and connected to one another. Oh, there were always exceptions to the rules (for every Quake and Unreal to an extent, there is Thief where you MUST play the games in order to fully appreciate things due to 2 being the natural continuation from 1 and continuing a lot of those elements without holding people's hands), but it has been a natural build up.