The recent Doom thread inspired me to give the game another go, so I grabbed my Doom 2 floppy disks and booted it up once again (well, not really, I was fortunate enough to have the game on one of external hard drives, but I believe my family does still have those 5 floppy disks for doom 2).
Well, some 20 years after first playing it (or so I think, Doom 2 is my very first gaming memory and I can't place the exact year) I finally, legitimately beat Doom 2. I think it was only Hey, not too rough, though I can't actually remember what difficulty I set. Regardless the game was never too challenging save for a few moments where I rocketed myself, so probably the former.
As I mentioned, Doom2 is my earliest gaming memory, yet I never came close to finishing the game. Of course, as a young child of around 5 when I would first have played it, the game was not doubt too hard for me, as well as scaring the shit out of me generally. Games would generally involve me (and perhaps my older brother) maybe beating the first one or two levels before getting too scared to continue and quitting - and this even when we all knew IDKFA . Largely what I saw beyond that was from older relatives or friends playing the game.
However, one day whilst searching through my old PC's C: drive, I uncovered a peculiar .exe in the Doom folder, which I think may have just been labeled setup. In any case, this .exe (which I presume was intended mostly for multiplayer) allowed one to load up any level, and, more crucially, to opt to have 'no monsters' turned on and have the level be devoid of life. Now, you would think this would be boring, but for a very young me this was perfectly fine. I just loved to explore the levels, go through each one finding the secrets and getting to the end. It got to the point where I pretty much knew every level off by heart.
Now, I wouldn't play every level with no monsters; there were some which I still very much enjoyed playing with monsters on, such as Tricks and Traps(08), Dead Simple(07), Gotcha!(20) and Barrels of Fun(23), though generally to have a chance I would have to use IDKFA. Still, just running through the levels uncontested was my main experience of Doom for many years. Level 30 would not work with no monsters, btw, but I would still play it often and attempt to win. It wasn't until my teens that I beat it, first through the noclip method and later by actually rocketing the skull.
But until today (or, last week) I had never actually played through the game properly. My memory of the levels had faded somewhat from my youth, I could not quite remember every level by name, but still the basic layout and many of the secrets and monsters were recallable. So it wasn't a super challenge. To be honest I was a little surprised by how quickly one was able to navigate through. Given how much people bemoan shortened game times, it was strange that this classic game could be finished in around 4 hours, though obviously that is with a lost of prior familiarity. One other thing to surprise me was the Wolfenstein level, which I never actually discovered in my many no monster playthroughs but found the first time in this game.
So that was my experience finishing Doom 2, for the first time. So many memories came flooding back as I beat each level, though for some reason I basically remember none of the music whatsoever, other than the menu music. Anyway, lists:
Favourite level: 020 Gotcha! Nothing like seeing a CyberDemon and Spider Mastermind face off
Favourite Weapon: Chainsaw
Favourite Enemy: Imp This is mostly because of the nickname which my brother and I came up with for the Imp and many of the other enemies - the Imp was 'Uncle Alan', Lost Souls and Pain elementals were 'Nutcrackers' and 'Nutcracker Launchers' and Heavy Weapon dudes were 'fat guys'.
