I think Quake and Quake 2 returned to the more serious take when it came to level design and atmosphere. I think in addition to the difficulty of game balance the level designers decided to have more 'fun' with their designs instead of trying to keep a certain atmosphere. You're not forced to keep throwing more and more monsters at the player. With an episodic game the difficulty level can ramp differently, you can restrict weapon and item sets more effectively, and you can change the entire look of the game between episodes. It's a difficult task to balance difficulty and challenge against not overly frustrating the player.

Master Levels for Doom II, an expansion pack with 21 new levels, was released on December. Unlike the original Doom, which was initially only available through shareware and mail order, Doom II was sold in stores. It was originally released for MS-DOS computers in 1994 and Macintosh computers in 1995. You have to keep the player challenged, but to do so you have to either make items scarce, increase the number and difficulty of the monsters, make the level geometry more forbidding, or some combination of the above - The Living End being a prime example of the last of those. Doom II, also known as Doom II: Hell on Earth is a first-person shooter game by id Software.

I think part of the problem was the change from being episodic to a linear progression. Doom 2's levels do feel somewhat gimicky. Originally posted by Phoenix:The level design in Doom 1 was absolutely superb. That's not to say I don't enjoy Doom 2, but I still just love the original more. You have to keep the player challenged, but to do so you have to either make items scarce, increase the number and difficulty of the monsters, make the level geometry more forbidding, or some combination of the above - The Living End being a prime example of the last of those. The level design in Doom 1 was absolutely superb.

Doom 2 barrels of fun