As Doom Eternal is due out in the future it’s time to look at the game it will be drawing some of its plot from. Which is important as most time the Doom story gets told it always misses out the second one and thus begins on Mars. So let’s get our guns and run faster than any living man without ever having to stop or reload as demon killing time is back again.

Doom 2 is the sequel to Doom (duh) and takes place right after the first game which had you come out of a portal from Hell to find Earth was now under attack and the demons had killed your pet bunny (you avenge him in the final doom exclusive chapter). So now Earth is under attack and everyone bar you is ether dead, a zombie or useless.

That’s the plot out the way (yeah that’s really the plot) so onto gameplay. It’s just the same as Doom 1. Really it feels more like an expansion pack, you get a few more demons (one is just a recolour of the Barons of Hell) there are no new bosses (the final one doesn’t count as it’s crap) and you only get 1 new gun the super shotgun, which despite its name isn’t all that amazing (its not a BFG kind of gun so you get it early on)

The game is however laid out differently. Rather than being designed to look like bases on Mars some of the levels are designed to look more like a residential area of cities (be it in the future) so you have less toxic waste lying round. Also rather than choosing which chapter to start in from beginning to end you play from level one all the way to the end. The story is broken up into sections but those sections aren’t ended with a boss fight like Doom 1 was and just kind of progress the basic plot.

Also there aren’t as many secret levels this time round. While Doom 1 had 1 secret level for each of the 4 chapters, Doom 2 has only 2 which leads replay value to be rather diminishing.

Overall though a follow up to the fun Doom game and some of the new enemies would become standards of the series. Doom 2 felt rather underwhelming. Yes it’s more of the classic Doom but that’s all it was, plus it was considerably less than the first Doom had in terms of hard encounters. The only real boss fight at the end was just an immobile wall that spawns demons you fire a missile into its brain (which contains a secret for people wanting to hack the game). There were actual expansions for Doom 2 but they held the same problem (not helped they also used the dull as hell final boss).

If you want more Doom levels it’s fine but I felt Doom 2 was just them doing that and the lack of proper boss fights (I love boss fights) was a real let down to me.

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