Utter bullshit part 2
I keep screaming, but the Casalis won't answer...
On a more serious note, this still holds up splendidly and is one of my go-to mapsets for a quick run. The Casali brothers have left an indelible mark on Doom modding history in multiple ways. The most important is the sharp increase in difficulty compared to most other mapsets of the time, and the creation of a community focused on challenge and smart enemy usage. Plutonia’s approach to combat is relatively unique amongst its contemporaries. It primarily uses short maps and sharp combat encounters, with an emphasis on “gotcha” traps. The focus on traps does falter somewhat. There’s the arbitrary first-time punishment and how the traps become trivial with the mere knowledge of their existence. This format still inspired more puzzle-like combat encounters in future mapsets where the goal is to figure out the ideal strategy. Further, one can’t deny the Casalis’ remarkable intuition for enemy usage. Chaingunners with their constant firing, creating massive areas of denial; Revenants with their speed and homing missiles, forcing players out a lot more; Archviles with their enemy resurrection, resurrecting enemies. A lot of these now basic enemy use cases first had to be demonstrated in Plutonia, and the community took note.
Another mark is how the Casalis abandoned the experimental realism that characterized most 90s mapsets, and instead opted for a singular jungle prison aesthetic throughout. Funnily enough, despite Plutonia ripping off a lot of Doom 1/2 maps for level layouts and being draped in enough BROWN to make Quake proud, the “Plutonia” aesthetic still looks much better than most of its contemporaries and is actively emulated to this day.
It still has flaws for sure. Later maps lose a lot of their bite and become tedious to UV-Max. The starts to certain maps are questionably bullshit (even if I find them somewhat cute.) And it arguably needs some curation and reordering, since the difficulty curve oscillates like Quake’s quality (before crashing, like Quake’s quality.) However, what Plutonia manages to accomplish with its gameplay design and its legacy in Doom mapping cannot be overstated.
Also being like the one 90s mapset that’s still fun to play has gotta count for something…
On a more serious note, this still holds up splendidly and is one of my go-to mapsets for a quick run. The Casali brothers have left an indelible mark on Doom modding history in multiple ways. The most important is the sharp increase in difficulty compared to most other mapsets of the time, and the creation of a community focused on challenge and smart enemy usage. Plutonia’s approach to combat is relatively unique amongst its contemporaries. It primarily uses short maps and sharp combat encounters, with an emphasis on “gotcha” traps. The focus on traps does falter somewhat. There’s the arbitrary first-time punishment and how the traps become trivial with the mere knowledge of their existence. This format still inspired more puzzle-like combat encounters in future mapsets where the goal is to figure out the ideal strategy. Further, one can’t deny the Casalis’ remarkable intuition for enemy usage. Chaingunners with their constant firing, creating massive areas of denial; Revenants with their speed and homing missiles, forcing players out a lot more; Archviles with their enemy resurrection, resurrecting enemies. A lot of these now basic enemy use cases first had to be demonstrated in Plutonia, and the community took note.
Another mark is how the Casalis abandoned the experimental realism that characterized most 90s mapsets, and instead opted for a singular jungle prison aesthetic throughout. Funnily enough, despite Plutonia ripping off a lot of Doom 1/2 maps for level layouts and being draped in enough BROWN to make Quake proud, the “Plutonia” aesthetic still looks much better than most of its contemporaries and is actively emulated to this day.
It still has flaws for sure. Later maps lose a lot of their bite and become tedious to UV-Max. The starts to certain maps are questionably bullshit (even if I find them somewhat cute.) And it arguably needs some curation and reordering, since the difficulty curve oscillates like Quake’s quality (before crashing, like Quake’s quality.) However, what Plutonia manages to accomplish with its gameplay design and its legacy in Doom mapping cannot be overstated.
Also being like the one 90s mapset that’s still fun to play has gotta count for something…
it is really incredible to see how far understanding of doom map design and the single player "meta" had advanced in just 2 years after doom 2. doom 1 maps are mazes that happen to have enemies in them, doom 2 maps are admirable but sometimes ill-advised experiments, and plutonia maps are intently designed to challenge the player's execution and awareness of enemy behavior and their own resources
For a very long time I completely hated the plutonia experiment.
Plutonia is a game designed by Casali brothers as a game for people who could casually beat doom 2 on ultra violence. For example plutonia's 1st map has two archviles in 1 map on hurt me plenty. Meanwhile doom 2 doesn't do that until map 16ish and even then that's ultra violence only. And this upfront difficulty is why I hated the plutonia experiance it was hard doom for the sake of hard doom and I wasn't good enough for it.
Now On this playthrough I'm not gonna pretend I'm great at plutonia. I played on Hurt me plenty, did a single segment run and avoided the secret levels. However unlike previous attempts when I died (and I did die a lot) I almost never felt like I was up against an impossible challenge. I felt like every time I could have handled that fight more optimally and that's the sign of difficulty you can handle.
That said the reason why I kept playing through plutonia wasn't because it was simply hard but because it was crafted. Plutonias design takes much greater advantage of each specific kind of threat the various monsters bring to the table. So while yes the chaingun firing squads can be annoying with proper movement and aim you can cleanly win fights and this plutonia is at it's best
That said this megawad isn't without flaws while many of plutonia's maps are classic I would say at least a third of them are pretty rough either aesthetically, sloppy design, or both. And also one personal pet peeve is that what counts as a damaging floor changes every other map and it needs to stop.
Finally I recommend if you play through this you download and play with the plutonia mid pack created by composers in the doom community. The reason why I bring this up is unlike tnt evilution plutiona lacks an original soundtrack and simply recycles doom 1 and 2 music. And the new music adds so much atmosphere and charm to every level
Plutonia is a game designed by Casali brothers as a game for people who could casually beat doom 2 on ultra violence. For example plutonia's 1st map has two archviles in 1 map on hurt me plenty. Meanwhile doom 2 doesn't do that until map 16ish and even then that's ultra violence only. And this upfront difficulty is why I hated the plutonia experiance it was hard doom for the sake of hard doom and I wasn't good enough for it.
Now On this playthrough I'm not gonna pretend I'm great at plutonia. I played on Hurt me plenty, did a single segment run and avoided the secret levels. However unlike previous attempts when I died (and I did die a lot) I almost never felt like I was up against an impossible challenge. I felt like every time I could have handled that fight more optimally and that's the sign of difficulty you can handle.
That said the reason why I kept playing through plutonia wasn't because it was simply hard but because it was crafted. Plutonias design takes much greater advantage of each specific kind of threat the various monsters bring to the table. So while yes the chaingun firing squads can be annoying with proper movement and aim you can cleanly win fights and this plutonia is at it's best
That said this megawad isn't without flaws while many of plutonia's maps are classic I would say at least a third of them are pretty rough either aesthetically, sloppy design, or both. And also one personal pet peeve is that what counts as a damaging floor changes every other map and it needs to stop.
Finally I recommend if you play through this you download and play with the plutonia mid pack created by composers in the doom community. The reason why I bring this up is unlike tnt evilution plutiona lacks an original soundtrack and simply recycles doom 1 and 2 music. And the new music adds so much atmosphere and charm to every level
Chaingunner spam to increase difficulty