Doom II

aka: Doom II: Hell on Earth
Moby ID: 299
DOS Specs
Buy on DOS
$13.49 used, $99.99 new on eBay
Buy on Game Boy Advance
$76.76 used on eBay
Buy on Windows
$4.99 new on Steam
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Description official descriptions

In this sequel to the original Doom, the protagonist is still the same hero - the last remaining space marine. After having single-handedly saved Mars from demonic threat, he returns to Earth, only to find out that the demons have already invaded it, killed most of its inhabitants or possessed them. It's his task to bring down the force field around the last operational star port to allow the remnants of mankind to escape to the stars.

Doom II looks and plays very similarly to its predecessor, utilizing the same 3D graphical engine with 2D sprites for enemies. The gameplay once again consists entirely of navigating the hero from first-person view through 3D environments and shooting at the demons while attempting to find the way out by flipping switches and looking for keys. Unlike in Doom, which is divided into three episodes, the 30 levels of this game (plus the 2 secret levels) form one long episode.

The game adds one new weapon to the player's arsenal; the super shotgun, several new demon types with more advanced attacks than those of the predecessor, such as the chaingun-toting Heavy Weapon Dudes, the skeletal Revenants who launch homing missiles and the sinister Arch-Viles who have a highly damaging fire attack.

Spellings

  • ドゥームII - Japanese spelling
  • 毁灭战士2 - Simplified Chinese spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (DOS version)

21 People (19 developers, 2 thanks)

Biz
Programming
Music / Sound Programming
Level / Scenario Design
Graphics / Artwork
3D Modelling
Music
Sound
Support
Biz Assistant
Special Thanks To
Cover Illustration
French Translation
  • Art of Words
German Manual Translation

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 82% (based on 45 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 404 ratings with 19 reviews)

Still great as a game, merely decent as a sequel

The Good
So you went to hell and loved every second of it. Guess what? Now hell is coming your way baby! That's right, Doom has returned guns blazing, and if you thought it was a nerve-wrecking, balls-to-the-walls, ultra-violent action fest the first time around, then be prepared because Doom 2 comes with bigger, harder levels to complete, even more grueling artwork, and much more enemies to decimate and mutilate.

Doom 2 improves upon the original by adding an atmosphere of sheer chaos with dozens of Demons going for your throat as well as out to get themselves. One of the simple yet clever ideas found on Doom was the fact that the monsters hated themselves as much as they hated you, and thus you could waltz in a room and find a couple of demons duking it out (which makes quite a bit of sense, since you wouldn't expect deranged demons to wait around calmly until you happened to stroll by, wouldn't you?). However in the original this was at best a cosmetic detail that happened every now and then. On Doom 2 however this is taken to the extreme and you can find yourself in the midst of veritable wars among feuding demons, in fact one of the most memorable levels consists of nothing but rooms filled with demons going at each other (and you if you get in the way) And that "everyone against everyone" only serves to raise even more that "holy-shit-just-shoot-and-pray-they-don't-kill-you" feeling of mad desperation Doom introduced to the world! In a word... Brilliant!

The levels themselves are also much bigger and well laid out, without the overdose of mazes that sometimes plaged the original (though never at the extent of say, Dark Forces). In short, pretty much everything that was added is cool, the new enemies are fantastic (my favorites being the rocket-launching Revenant and the Arch Vile, which ads an interesting twist to the game since he can resurrect the enemies you have already dispatched). The double-barreled shotgun is simply amazing and gives a feel of satisfaction that not even the original pump-action one had. Nothing beats that feeling you get from watching a bull demon charging at you and then stopping him dead on it's feet at the last second with one deafening double-barreled shot to the head... ah..... 'tis the simple things that matter, right? :))

The Bad
Yeah, it's all good right? The problem is that when you think about it, for as good as it is it just isn't enough for a sequel. This is the sort of small additions and improvements you would expect in an expansion pack, not a full-blown sequel. I mean, when you get right down to it, it's just better level design, some new textures, 7 new enemies and one new weapon... wee...

I am not the type of player that demands a new engine for every incarnation of a series, but c'mon.... Doom 2 is certainly the best example of "let's just add some stuff and re-sell the whole thing" they didn't even bother to add an ending cutscene this time around, which is okay since nobody plays Doom for it's story but shows the level of lazyness with which the game was released.

Another not-so-hot point is the level of difficulty in the single player part of the game, sometimes it can be just plain imposible! If you were amongst the ones that rejoiced on killing every enemy and discovering every secret on a level, then you better lose that custom pal, 'cos most of the time you are going to be running for the exit praying nothing hits you in the back. Really, I don't want to be over-dramatic but Doom 2 IS HARD. VERY HARD. Even ANNOYINGLY hard, so much so that it feels like a trick to cover what we all already know by now: this isn't worthy as a sequel.

The Bottom Line
So yeah, yeah, Doom kicks ass, it always has, and it always will. But Doom 2 certainly is a letdown as the sequel to one of the best videogames ever... the only thing that saves it is that it is overall slightly better than it's predecessor, and that it literally came out a year after the original (effectively saving it from the "You took XX years to give us the Same thing all over again???").

Still it was flat-out unaceptable at it's time, and I really hated id for not putting more effort into it. However, considering that you no longer have to worry about such things as it's price (45-55 u$s when released) or that you had to have a pretty beefy machine to run it, then Doom 2 is still worth it. Just think of it as an expansion of the original and you'll be okay. Be warned tough, it is NOT for FPS newbies and it is effectively one of the hardest fps ever made. Those looking for a challenge will find that they may bite more than they can chew...

DOS · by Zovni (10504) · 2002

More DOOM!

The Good
Doom was the first shareware game that I actually went out and purchased. After playing it over and over, I was ready for Doom II and it didn't disappoint. You had more weapons, more monsters, more levels, and even 2 secret Castle Wolfenstein (sp) levels! This game was a good improvement over the original Doom and certainly took many hours of my life back in 1994!

The Bad
The bobbing motion of the character as he ran always made me sick after a long time of play. Ugh. So after I solved this game, I never went back to play again.

The Bottom Line
This is the sequel to the first-person shooter that started the craze. The object of the game is to kill everything that moves, clear levels, solve puzzles (usually to get out of a level), find secret passages and hidden monsters, and just go nuts! You start with a 9mm and a few rounds but can immediately find a chainsaw! Later weapons are the shotgun, the super shotgun (double-barrel), the chain gun, the rocket launcher, the plasma gun, and the BFG-9000 (not sure about the number) gun. Plenty of levels to play (30) and more difficulty settings including one that continuously spawns new monsters to attack you. Fun, fun, fun!

DOS · by AstroNerdBoy (35) · 2002

A great, evolutionary sequel to an already awesome game

The Good
Awesome graphics (at the time), especially if you were used to Wolfenstein 3d. Ran pretty well on my 486. Fun, brutal demon killing-spree gameplay. Modded like crazy. I made a few major mods of my own, such as an almost complete recreation of all graphics and sounds. I could play 4-player deathmatch games over a modem using the game server in MBBS. 2-player would run full speed over 9600bps :) It introduced me to networked multiplayer gaming. Ultra-violence mode >:) While nightmare is great and all, I like to KILL all the demons. 'Exit to dos' messages.

The Bad
The simplicity of the game is a double-edged sword. It makes it generally very fun to play. However, more complicated 1st person games such as System Shock were fun and interesting on a totally different level. I believe both styles have their own place in the world of gaming.

Nothing much else I can complain about.

The Bottom Line
Doom ][ was largely different from Doom. First, the code was more mature and more stable. Doom ][ had multiple revisions that improved stability, compatibility, and networking performance. Second, the level design had a different emphasis. While Doom strived to maintain a similar style of gameplay to existing games (usually 2d), which included navigating mazes, solving stupid puzzles, etc., Doom ][ focused more on kicking demon ass. The levels are more obvious and less confusing (most of the time). Third, They add new enemies and a new weapon (the double-barrel shotgun). The game is 30 consecutive levels, so you get to keep all your accumulated stuff with nothing but little written narratives every 10 levels.

To me the gameplay just seemed much more fluid. I like prefer fighting 10 imps at a time with a shotgun over navigating a maze with a pistol being chased by a demon, but that's just me. (This is why I don't much like Doom3, actually, as it went back to that Doom1 mentality).

I agree with others that the graphics did not change, and while that may be disappointing to some, it also meant that people didn't really have to upgrade to play Doom ][. It ran on computers about as well as Doom. Doom 3 has much nicer graphics, yes, but there definitely exists a performance penalty...

And on that note, at the time, the graphics did not have to improve much to keep people playing. Doom had an awesome dark and, at the time, immersing engine and style. Its one of the few games that you could find impaled and/or mutilated people hanging from the ceiling twitching. I mean, nowdays thats a lot more popular... but then it was pretty novel.

All and all, awesome. I still play it sometimes.

DOS · by Chaz Erin (3) · 2006

[ View all 19 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Original floppies just sold by Romero for $3150 on eBay Cavalary (11445) Jun 28, 2017
The ultimate DOOM weapon chirinea (47504) Jun 26, 2010

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Doom II: Hell on Earth appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Arcade Version

In the 1997 film Grosse Point Blank a store clerk can be seen playing on a DOOM II arcade cabinet. An arcade version was however never released and the game seen in the film is a film prop with a PC inside.

Boss' Sound File

If you play the boss' sound file backwards, it says "To win the game, you must beat me, John Romero." John Romero is one of the developers.

Columbine High-School Shooting

While it's a well-known fact today, it is worth mentioning that after the much-publicized Columbine high-school shooting, DOOM II became a showcase for media finger-pointing and for a collective lawsuit by parents of teenagers killed in the shooting. The reason was that the shooters, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, were both into DOOM and Quake; Harris even made some amateur levels for DOOM II. He went under the names RebDooMer, Rebldomakr and Rebdomine, and hosted a set of WADs on AOL. In his AOL profile he listed himself as a "professional DOOM and DOOM II creator", although all of his WADs appeared to be for DOOM II, mostly deathmatch, and he was not paid for them. The most polished one is uaclabs.wad, a simple pair of levels. They are short, crude but entertaining, and give no clue as to Harris' later actions. Also of note is that the text file for Bricks.wad credits "My good friend Dylan Klebold for helping me play-test this WAD".

Harris' AOL directory, which was mirrored at http://columbine.free2host.net/aolhp.html, also includes what appears to be a menu image reading "Quake Files", although no Harris-designed Quake levels have surfaced; he seems to have hosted a Quake level designed by another person, and a utility for viewing and altering Quake sprites. Harris seemed to lose interest in DOOM at the end of 1996.

Soon after the shootings, rumors surfaced that Harris made some levels which bear an uncanny resemblance to Columbine High School. According to the rumor, Harris and his friend Klebold modeled the levels after the school, filled it with enemies meant to represent students and teachers, and played through it again and again... until the day they decided to do it for real. However, if such levels ever really existed, they have not surfaced on the internet and none of Harris's known levels bear resemblance to real-world architecture.

Development

MAP10: Refueling Base, was originally started by Tom Hall as a level in the original DOOM, and even appeared as E1M6 in DOOM 0.5, but did not make it to the final game. Instead, it was completed by Sandy Petersen for this game. This game took 8 months to make (unlike its predecessor which spent a year in production).

DOSBox Controversy

The Steam download version of the game is listed as running on Windows 2000/XP/Vista because the executables are modified to use a DOSBox variant (v 0.70); additionally the traditional setup.exe is missing. It is confirmed that neither Valve nor id Software contacted the DOSBox project staff and initially the game didn't even include the txt files that must be present under the GPL license (so they failed to fulfill 2 points of the GPL license). Two days after the launch, there was an update that included COPYING, AUTHORS and THANKS.txt of DOSBox 0.71.

ESRB Ratings

DOOM II was the first game to be rated by the ESRB, as its predecessor naturally inspired it due to the violence controversy.

German Ratings

On December 31, 1994, DOOM II was put on the infamous German index by the BPjS. Indexed products by the BPjS/BPjM are illegal to sell or make available to minors in Germany and it is illegal to advertise for it in any form. But there is absolutely no law forbidding any adult to buy such a product. The only exception is when a game was in addition also confiscated (or put on the so-called "List B" for BPjM games), but this is rather seldom the case. In this particularly case here, DOOM II was just indexed, but not confiscated. However, due to the fact that advertisement also means the presence of a product on the shelves of a store, the product will disappear from the public. But it can be bought in supporting stores "under the desk" (per request).

DOOM and the German version of DOOM II were removed from the German index on August 4, 2011 following a request of the license holder of these games. The BPjM board of 12 did not secure a 2/3 majority vote to prevent the removal from the index. The board justified their decision stating among other things that "Due to the distancing effect of the graphics the player is no longer emotionally engaged in the combat action. There remains both on the visual as well as on the auditory level the impression of abstract depictions, which are therefore also bluntly recognisable as fictional and unrealistic." This decision does not include the US version of DOOM II. This version remains on the index because it includes two levels from Wolfenstein 3D which has been banned and confiscated nationwide in Germany.

The Game Boy Advance version is the only one not banned in Germany, as the color of blood in that version was changed to green in an attempt to preserve the GBA's kid-friendly reputation.

References

  • Like in its predecessor, some soundtracks in DOOM II are similar and were likely inspired to be created after songs by famous heavy metal bands. For example, the soundtrack for the first level, Entryway, is similar to Megadeth's Hangar 18, the soundtrack for MAP07: Dead Simple is very similar to South of Heaven by Slayer.
  • DOOM II has a few references to Ultima games. One of the quit messages is "You want to quit? Then, thou hast lost an eighth!", which is a reference to Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar, and the automap title of MAP11: Circle of Death is The 'O' of Destruction, which is a reference to the Ultima VII weapon Hoe of Destruction.
  • In MAP13: Downtown, a very big black building can be seen. id Software's offices in Texas are in a building that looks like this one.
  • MAP21: Nirvana may be an homage to Kurt Cobain and the band Nirvana. Cobain committed suicide the same year DOOM II was released and used a shotgun to do so. As a possible reference, the level starts out with a double barreled shotgun in front of the player.
  • The final boss of the game shoots out cubes, which contain demons, from his brain. This is similar to how Satan gives birth to his daughter Sin in John Milton's Paradise Lost, where she is born out of his head (a parthenogenesis based on Zeus and his daughter, Athena).

Retail Release

DOOM II actually preceded the retail release of its predecessor. While the shareware version of DOOM was available before DOOM II's box release, it wasn't until the release of The Ultimate DOOM in 1995 that the full version of DOOM was finally available on retail shelves.

Secret Levels

DOOM II features two secret levels. Both pay homage to earlier id Software titles. MAP31: Wolfenstein (accessible from MAP15: Industrial Zone) is a recreation of the first level of the first episode of id's Wolfenstein 3D using the DOOM engine. The map layout is almost identical. Even the secret areas from the original game can be found in the same places, and some additional secret areas have been added. The brown-uniformed guards from the original are replaced by blue-uniformed SS troopers (complete with re-recordings of their original exclamations "Schutzstaffel!" and "Mein Leben!") and dogs are replaced by pinky demons.

When using the secret exit (also present in the original), MAP32: Grosse can be accessed. This is a recreation of the last level of Wolfenstein 3D's first episode. The end boss Hans Grosse (hence the level name) is replaced by a Cyberdemon. In the room behind him, there is another reference to an earlier id title: four Commander Keens are hanging by their necks on ropes. They have to be shot and killed to reveal the button that exits the level. The sound effects heard when shooting at them are renditions of PC speaker effects from the first three Commander Keen games. According to John Romero (source), this gag was artist Adrian Carmack's idea, who never wanted to work on Keen again.

Both levels also feature music taken from Wolfenstein 3D, rearranged from the original FM sound to General MIDI.

The levels are included in the version of the game sold in Germany but are inaccessible during regular game-play. The secret exit in the game that leads to the secret levels has been blocked but it is possible to use the cheat code for map selection to enter these levels. This was probably done to avoid more controversy due to restrictions on the use of swastikas and other Nazi symbols in Germany, however all game graphics and sounds are in the German version as well.

The Game Boy Advance version also features the levels, but removes all Nazi symbolism.

Sound Effects

The shee-koufff noise heard when the final boss spawns a flying cube has been continuously used since the game's release, in TV shows, movies and commercials. This sound effect is the Fireball sound effect from the Sound Ideas General Series. id Software was the first game company to use that sound effect (unaltered).

User Created Content

  • The jDoom port features a 1024x768x32 resolution with dynamic colored lighting, completely customizable controls, mouselook, and 3D sound. See the related sites section for a link.
  • The US Marine Core created their own DOOM II WAD files for training in four-player co-op levels. More information was available at http://www.tec.army.mil/TD/tvd/survey/Marine_Doom.html .

Xbox release

In April 2005 a full port of this game was brought to Xbox as part of the DOOM³ (Limited Collector's Edition) special edition.

Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • 1994 - Game of the Year
  • PC Gamer
    • 1994 - Game of the Year
  • Power Play
    • Issue 02/1995 – Best Doom Clone in 1994

Information also contributed by ApTyp, Ashley Pomeroy, DarkDante, Dragoon, Emepol, James1, John Romero, jTrippy, Kalirion, Maw, MegaMegaMan, Sam Jeffreys, Scott Monster, Steve ., Terok Nor, The Cliffe, WWWWolf, Xoleras, Zack Green and theclue.

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Related Sites +

  • ClassicDOOM.com
    Walkthroughs, cheat codes, passwords, demos, FAQs, reference files and more, for game-console and PC Doom games.
  • DOOMWORLD
    It is a site dedicated to DOOM, and especially to the total conversions of DOOM2, done with these marvelous wad editors. You need only DOOMWORLD if you want to be informed about the DOOM community!
  • Doom II EPK at archive.org
    Electronic Press Kit for Doom II: Hell on Earth. Features gameplay demonstration and developer interviews.
  • Doom Wiki
    A Wiki site for the Doom series.
  • JDoom
    Arguably the best revisited Doom engine. Take your original WAD files from Doom 1, 2 etc. and run them on this D3D/OpenGL and A3D enabled engine.
  • NewDoom
    A big fansite dedicated to the Doom series.
  • OC ReMix Game Profile
    Fan remixes of music from DOOM II: Hell on Earth, including the albums "Delta-Q-Delta" and "The American Album".
  • S&F Prod.'s Doom Page
    Here you'll find a Duke Nukem in Doom add-on and more.

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 299
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Contribute

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Tomer Gabel.

Game Boy Advance added by Corn Popper. Zodiac added by Kabushi. PC-98, Macintosh added by Terok Nor.

Additional contributors: Optimus, Kate Jones, Ledmeister, Unicorn Lynx, Frenkel, Corn Popper, Guy Chapman, Alaka, Pseudo_Intellectual, Havoc Crow, vedder, Cantillon, Medicine Man, Patrick Bregger, Thomas Thompson, Éiregamer94, Rik Hideto, FatherJack, theclue.

Game added February 19, 2020. Last modified March 15, 2024.