SIGIL II - Episode 6

[Erick]

Just finished SIGIL II on Ultra-Violence and it's a fun, brutal episode for the original Doom. My three favorite levels have to be E6M6, E6M7, and E6M9. Definitely would suggest playing this on Hurt Me Plenty first and know a good amount of secrets before trying it on Ultra-Violence. You'll really want to value your bullets and rockets when you need them, even use melee to help conserve your ammo. It looks amazing, has two great soundtracks, and deathmatch arenas I would love to try out soon.

 

Admittedly the levels that come after E6M1 and E6M2 are a lot easier though that might just be playing continuously allowing me to have more health and ammo. Still, happy to play it for Doom's 30th anniversary, looking forward to see what comes in Hellion for Doom 2.

[Jimmy]

It was great to be able to work alongside John Romero for this project. Massively grateful for the opportunity and very pleased with the reception so far!

 

SIGIL 2's custom soundtrack by yours truly is available on BandCamp!

 

Edited December 11, 2023 by Jimmy

[Revae]

11 hours ago, Endless said:

One Humanity was made for Doom 2 and he also mentioned working on a separate new megawad from SIGIL, so yes, could likely happen.

He said in a stream that he is working on one and it will be called Helion... Or Hellion. Maybe Hell Eon. He didn't spell it out loud that I recall.

Edit: Also One Humanity is part of his Doom 2 megawad.

Edited December 11, 2023 by Revae

[Devalaous]

1 hour ago, Revae said:

He said in a stream that he is working on one and it will be called Helion... Or Hellion. Maybe Hell Eon. He didn't spell it out loud that I recall.

Edit: Also One Humanity is part of his Doom 2 megawad.

 

Helion is a sourceport with insane speed optimisations, probably what your thinking of. 'Hellion for Helion' would be an amusing advertisement though

[Roebloz]

I'm surprised this is for Doom 1. Oh well, time to play this and then port this to 32x Delta!!! (Because I have nothing better to do)

 

Congrats @Romero on the release!

[june gloom]

I admit I was a bit skeptical about the new musician for the MP3 soundtrack but whatever that track on E6M3 is, it's an absolute banger.

 

So far I do feel like the soundtrack is more appropriate for a Quake 2-ish techbase type of level set though. Buckethead's soundtrack in contrast really fit with the abyssal Hell theme, it really felt like you were journeying through some of the darkest parts of the underworld.

[Lizardcommando]

Just gone done playing through Sigil 2. Pretty damn cool, although I always forget that Romero kept using those floating eye things as switches lol.

 

So is Hellion mentioned at the episode's end text supposed to be a teaser for another mapset in the future?

[EPICALLL]

So, I beat the WAD on stream, and here's what I think. (take this with a mountain of salt, because these are my first impressions during an angry afternoon.)

 

E6M1:

Probably the most chaotic map in the set, this one starts with a kick, hitscanners, imps, lost souls and cacos everywhere. And then, the map gets even crazier. Cyberdemons, the Bruiser Brothers, Cacos, Imps, and the cute fireblu secret... Yeah, this map is an adrenaline jolt. All in all, solid opener.

 

Grade: B

Difficulty: B+

 

E6M2:

This one feels off. The uncharacteristically simplistic visuals, the small fights, the lack of precarious foreground... It's a deviation by Romero's standards. Unfortunately, it lacks a lot of energy that would otherwise make the level a nice punch to the gut. So...

 

Grade: C-

Difficulty: C+

 

E6M3:

OK, since the outdoor-heavy map is presenting itself, time to mock the sky. It's fine, sure it loops awkwardly, but it's otherwise serviceable. Anyways, the rest of the map is visually cool, and really absurd. Seriously, go to that one area with the funky stairs in the tight space, and tell me that's not kind of ridiculous. Anyways, the map is otherwise pretty fun, and way more nonlinear than Romero's usual output.

 

Grade: B

Difficulty: C+

 

E6M9:

John Romerk builds... A techbase? Well, this is the strangest thing I knew I would see. Cyberdemon literally visible one step from the starting room, hitscan everywhere, ammo deprivation, puzzle-oriented secrets... Yep, it's a prime Romero map. It's very, very 90s and I absolutely dig it. May not visually be as impressive as some of the other maps, but I think that adds to it's charm.

 

Grade: B+

Difficulty: B-

 

E6M4:

More techbase, except this one is a lot more hellish than in E6M9, the ground is splitting open down to the meter, and it's fucking amazing. The cracks, the damage, the combat, heck... John Romero made crushers FUN! Yeah, I said it, the crushers were fun. This map is fun.

 

Grade: A-

Difficulty: B

 

E6M5:

I watched every second of Romero building this map, so... Fun fact, this one used to have a THIRD cyberdemon in the final cave system, imagine how brutal that would have been!

Anyways, facts aside, this is just straight up a techbase, the amount of hellish stuff is outnumbered by tech 100 to 1, and it works. A strange thing about this map is that the dominant colour in the map is... Brown. Weird, I know. Anyways, the combat is nifty, fun and concise. I love it.

 

Grade: A-

Difficulty: B+

 

E6M6:

Gold star. John Romero gets a gold star. The end.

 

Grade: A

Difficulty: A

 

E6M7:

Probably the most ambitious Romero map, the Grand visuals, the weird dominance of the colour blue, the fact that there's just shy of 250 enemies in the map if you count lost souls... Yeah, this quite the biggie. Took me almost an hour to get through it. Combat is good, visuals are great... However, this is where my biggest complaint throughout the set lies... This map relies on the player's eyes too much. Several times, I ended up wall-humping everything to find the way forwards, that was never the solution, it was actually more obvious, but the fact that I ended up looking right at the solution multiple times and had no clue that was how I needed to progress irritates me. That's a shame, the map would have gotten a higher grade.

 

Grade: B+

Difficulty: A-

 

E6M8:

Let's wrap this up in three sentences. This map is short, punchy, and absurd. That fight at the end was a little underwhelming, could have used some fodder.

 

Grade: B+

Difficulty: B

 

Whole WAD Grade: B+

Whole WAD Difficulty: B

[shroomzy5000]

I swear this is the coolest thing I have ever seen...

The music in this wad is unreal.  James Paddock killed it once again.

I had to buy the WAD + Thorr soundtrack and it was the best 6.66 ive ever spent. (say for Sigil 1)

The high fidelity version hits like Doom 2016. 

I love this.

Thanks so much John

Sigil II hype!

Edited December 12, 2023 by shroomzy5000

[Devalaous]

I'll be honest, I have absolutely NO idea who 'Thorr' is, so I'll be sticking with tried and true Jimmy Music

[june gloom]

1 hour ago, Devalaous said:

I'll be honest, I have absolutely NO idea who 'Thorr' is, so I'll be sticking with tried and true Jimmy Music

When Thorr's soundtrack inevitably makes its way to Youtube and such I hope you'll give it a listen and see what you're missing out on, because it's fantastic. SIGIL II was made after Doom Eternal and it shows, and Thorr really helps connect that throughline.

 

[edit] Whaddya know, it's already on YT. Definitely recommend "Evil Dead" -- that's the track that made me a fan.

Edited December 11, 2023 by june gloom

[NightFright]

Is Jimmy also doing the soundtrack for Hellion? If so, he's going to have a lot on his plate... Anyway, no complaints in the music department.

 

As for the levels... well, it wasn't until the second half of the episode when the expected dick moves of Romero's design were finally unleashed. Fighting in extremely dark areas? Check. Balancing across narrow ledges while taking damage from all sides? Check. Cyberdemon fight in maze? Check. Admittedly, there are often some utilities available to help you out of these predicaments, but until I'd figured it out, I took some hard beatings.

 

For my taste, some of the shootable pentagrams were a bit too well hidden, especially those required to make real progress. Those FIREBLU cracks on the other hand were easy enough to spot (and known from previews already). What I haven't figured out yet is how to legitimately enter the secret level. I mean, I found out where it is and how to trigger the exit, but how to pull it off without cheating? My suspicion is

Spoiler

it works similar to E3M6 (Mt Erebus)

, but I'd like to have some confirmation, if possible.

 

The final fight was harder than in the first Sigil, at least, so that's something. I had the impression the Mastermind was able to take far more BFG hits than usual, but maybe that was just me being unlucky at RNG. Overall, it was quite amusing. But I wouldn't try this on UV. In this case, that's for masochists.

 

PS: Wished I would have found more of those Light-Amp Visors...

 

Edited December 11, 2023 by NightFright

[Midnight_00]

59 minutes ago, NightFright said:

The final fight was harder than in the first Sigil, at least, so that's something. I had the impression the Mastermind was able to take far more BFG hits than usual, but maybe that was just me being unlucky at RNG. Overall, it was quite amusing. But I wouldn't try this on UV. In this case, that's for masochists.

It probably doesn't have more health but I felt like it took more punishment than usual too. In my case after several volleys of Cyberdemon missiles it still took quite a lot of punishment from the plasma rifle.

 

But anyway I enjoyed Sigil II a lot and it was surprisingly difficult on UV continuous. I think I'd say E6M1, E6M2 and E6M6 are my tentative favourites (mirroring TFC actually) with E6M7 being least because the early parts felt a bit boring. The final boss fight was okay I guess. I didn't have any trouble triggering infighting between one of the Cybers and the Mastermind, and after that it's pretty straightforward.

[D4NUK1]

That one zombieman on the fireblue zone.
 

 

[Faceman2000]

1 hour ago, NightFright said:

What I haven't figured out yet is how to legitimately enter the secret level. I mean, I found out where it is and how to trigger the exit, but how to pull it off without cheating? My suspicion is

  Hide contents

it works similar to E3M6 (Mt Erebus)

, but I'd like to have some confirmation, if possible.

Spoiler

From the same building as the hidden BFG, I managed to SR40 into it on my second try before I realized it was the secret exit, so I loaded a previous save and beat the rest of the level. Then when I went back, I was unable to recreate the SR40 jump for the life of me and eventually found a spot where I could pull off a rocket jump.

 

I play on GZDoom without mouselook, so the movement is a little different than vanilla as I understand it, but I think either option is still technically possible.

 

[NightFright]

Looks like my impression about the Mastermind fight taking longer than expected wasn't mere imagination.

 

From DEHACKED:

Thing 20 (SpiderMastermind)
Hit points = 9000

3x tougher than default. BFG zerging FTW, I guess...

Edited December 11, 2023 by NightFright

[Flambeau]

1 hour ago, NightFright said:

 

 

For my taste, some of the shootable pentagrams were a bit too well hidden, especially those required to make real progress. Those FIREBLU cracks on the other hand were easy enough to spot (and known from previews already). What I haven't figured out yet is how to legitimately enter the secret level. I mean, I found out where it is and how to trigger the exit, but how to pull it off without cheating? My suspicion is

  Reveal hidden contents

it works similar to E3M6 (Mt Erebus)

, but I'd like to have some confirmation, if possible.

 

...

 

 

Confirmed.

E3M6 -> E6M3

[NightFright]

Ah, nice one! I knew there had to be some connection because the setup looked somewhat familiar.

[plums]

Is there some kind of greater significance to the FIREBLU secrets or is it just "lol here's a hidden monster for completionists"

[Flyxolydian]

2 hours ago, NightFright said:

Looks like my impression about the Mastermind fight taking longer than expected wasn't mere imagination.

 

From DEHACKED:

Thing 20 (SpiderMastermind)
Hit points = 9000

3x tougher than default. BFG zerging FTW, I guess...

 

Well shit... that explains why she took so damn long to die lmao. She took down one of the Cybers, all of my plasma, and all of my rockets.

[plums]

11 minutes ago, Flyxolydian said:

Well shit... that explains why she took so damn long to die lmao. She took down one of the Cybers, all of my plasma, and all of my rockets.

Hah, I got her to infight with one of the cybers and then just went back through the teleporter to let them sort it out, was quite surprised that (a) it took so long and (b) the Spiderdemon won. Now I know why!

[Rudolph]

@NightFright It could have used a custom spriteset to indicate that we are not dealing with the average Spider Mastermind.

 

It is not like John Romero did not have the means to commission one.

Edited December 11, 2023 by Rudolph

[NaturalTvventy]

I've played the first couple of maps of SIGIL, and as much I'm a fanboy of Romero (he's probably my favorite mapper), the two maps have felt quite lackluster. I found them derivative of the first SIGIL, without anything new or interesting to add to the party. I'm a big fan of the first SIGIL and I could tell a lot of work and creativity went into each of its maps. The SIGIL II maps I've played  just seem to consist of copy/pasted elements from Sigil without as much thought or play testing. Repeated aspects include:

• Pentagrams everywhere
• Find the evil eye to continue
• Red rock texture
• Bases surrounded by lava with a cyberdemon roaming around
• Glowing red cracks in the floor and ceiling
• Narrow platforming with monsters shooting at you
• Low health and ammo
• Pick up a thing and the wall next to you opens with monsters

All of these aspects were interesting in the first SIGIL, but they feel much more stale, bland, and lazy here, with poorer execution. The first map I found myself pistoling cacodemons from the start. For the platform section you didn't even need to raise the platforms, so finding the evil eyes didn't really accomplish anything. The roaming cyber was fairly ineffective because you were usually above it so its rockets would hit walls right in front of it. There are pinkies who do nothing because they can't reach you, and a final fight where the barons which you don't have ammo for are behind a door they can't pass through. The second map seemed even worse. Pick up a thing, open a wall, repeat. It was rather bland looking and the roaming cyber was even less effective than the map 1 cyber. I found he got stuck in the trees near him. The central fight was weak, with monsters teleporting in but an easy time backtracking up the stairs which the monsters themselves cannot traverse. Then there's a caco fight which poses no threat and then a baron who you don't have the ammo for but which also doesn't pose a threat. There's a hidden soul sphere around a corner through lava. You can sometimes walk on the tiny METAL ledge to prevent damage on the structure's perimeter and sometimes you can't.

 

SIGIL II's semi-official placement as e6 makes me want a new theme but SIGIL II is really just recycled semi-official e5 SIGIL. I'll keep playing but I hope Romero's next project is more inspired than what I've seen of SIGIL II so far.

Edited December 11, 2023 by NaturalTvventy

[Rudolph]

20 minutes ago, NaturalTvventy said:

You can sometimes walk on the tiny METAL ledge to prevent damage on the structure's perimeter and sometimes you can't.

There is a Radiation Suit behind the switch that opens the door to the outside area.

[NightFright]

I also wanted to curse about that Cyberdemon in the green wall maze. Until I discovered an Invulnerability on a secret ledge above me. At least on the difficulty I played. Romero's designs are often evil, but usually not unfair.

Edited December 11, 2023 by NightFright

[june gloom]

Didn't have a problem with the maze Cybie. The one on the big lava vat in E6M7 was a much bigger hassle.

 

[Devalaous]

35 minutes ago, NightFright said:

Romero's designs are often evil, but usually not unfair.

 

This is exactly why hes one of my favourite mappers.

[Xeogred]

Huge fan of Romero myself here but yeah, not sure what to make of the earlier maps so far and his newfound obsession for the shootable door triggers. I have been off DOOM for far too long at about a year, so I'm easing back in on HMP but then I feel disappointed missing the Cyberdemon in M1 haha. I saw decino is already uploading his runs so that'll be fun to watch after I clear a map.

 

Saved at the hell tech base M4 to jump back into tonight and I bet I'll love this one. Looking forward to the rest. Sigil was a blast to run through for a few playthroughs and I'm sure it'll be the same here.

 

Naturally I'm playing the free midi version for now and James Paddock/Jimmy always delivers for me. Awesome tunes so far.

 

I do hope his Doom II project is legit. I love his Doom II maps but they're so sparse and all these years later he's still stuck to Doom 1, which is fine. But I'm always anticipating what Romero could cook up with bigger maps if he wanted, the full monster roster, and the super shotgun.

 

Loved the interview with the John's the other night. All in all, a fun 30th indeed. Been playing it since the beginning and will never stop. Doom is eternal!

[june gloom]

Here's my review and companion piece.

[D4NUK1]

10 hours ago, plums said:

Is there some kind of greater significance to the FIREBLU secrets or is it just "lol here's a hidden monster for completionists"

 

I read in some article about the interview about the 2 johns, that he added that's rooms because how Fireblu was on his time, a texture to represent the combination of the mars base with the hell energy, but now the people see it more like a ugly texture, and a big meme on the community, so he added his meme to the pile of fireblu.