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John Romero Finally Releases Fifth Episode of 'Doom' For Free (hothardware.com) 102

Posted by EditorDavid from the achievement-unlocked dept.
John Romero has finally released Sigil, his unofficial fifth episode of Doom with nine new single-player levels and nine deathmatch levels. It's available for free on Romero's web site (though you'll also need the original Doom to play it). Hot Hardware reports: If you want to know what Sigil is about, Romero explains it best. He wrote, "After killing the Spiderdemon at the end of E4M8 (Unto the Cruel), your next stop is Earth -- you must save it from hellspawn that is causing unimaginable carnage. But Baphomet glitched the final teleporter with his hidden Sigil whose eldritch power brings you to even darker shores of Hell. You fight through this stygian pocket of evil to confront the ultimate harbingers of Satan, then finally return to become Earth's savior. In summary, rip and tear!"
Kotaku calls it "some of the most punishing and devious Doom I've ever played... I've been playing it all day, and it owns..." What makes Romero's designs work so well is how unabashedly excited he seems to be about them. Levels are teeming with enemies, including many tougher ones such as the beefy, energy hurling Barons of Hell. Each new maze is punctuated with fights that mix and match Doom's precisely-designed enemies... There's a real giddiness here, a sense that a master is excitedly returning to his favourite tools... The default difficulty is tricky; higher levels feel like borderline trolling. Screw it, let's just toss a few cyberdemons at the start of this level. You know how to dodge, right?

In the old days, we used to call all first-person shooters "Doom clones". But there's nothing else like Doom. There's a particular, nearly impossible to describe playfulness that even the 2016 reboot sometimes misses. A single run through Romero's new levels feels positively joyous, a chance to see fantastic level design in action and observe a master at play.
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John Romero Finally Releases Fifth Episode of 'Doom' For Free More

John Romero Finally Releases Fifth Episode of 'Doom' For Free

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  • It was a fun game but I remember the controls to Doom being somewhat awkward.

    • Time (Score:5, Informative)

      by JBMcB ( 73720 ) on Sunday June 02, 2019 @02:05PM (#58696010)

      By today's standards they *were* awkward. But, you have to remember, this is one of the first semi-true-3d games - Wolfenstein was basically a 2.5D game, as you couldn't go up or down. Doom had up-and-down, but no underneath, so you didn't have to aim up or down, so there as no "mouselook." The mouse simply moved you around the level. It was entirely possible to play doom using just the keyboard, which is how I remember playing it.

      Marathon and Dark Forces were the first games I remember playing where you had to aim in the 3rd dimension, so mouselook was important.

      • The original Doom was fully keyboard based and didn't even support using the mouse.

        I don't recall mouselook even being an OPTION until Quake 1, and that required a console command to enable. mlook 1 or something. Quake II is the first game I recall playing that had proper mouselook as a fully supported feature.

        • Mouse (Score:2)

          by DrYak ( 748999 )

          The original Doom was fully keyboard based

          Yup, it was mostly though about being played with keys.

          Even *arrow* keys, with WASD haven't been invented yet, and the straffing keys on purpose positionned nearby the arrows (usually "" on US keyboard or you local variation at this position in your locale, here around it's "," and ".")

          and didn't even support using the mouse.

          LOL, WUT ?!?

          Even Wolfenstein 3D [mobygames.com], long before Doom did support mouse as an input.
          Only, as that game was purely 2D, the mouse is only used for latteral movement (mouse-up and mouse-down could be mapped to walk forward and backw

        • > The original Doom was fully keyboard based and didn't even support using the mouse.

          Yes, it did. You are configuring it wrong.

          WASD for movement. Mouse left/right for aiming. (You need to set your Y sensitivity to ZERO so your mouse does NOT accidentally move you forward/backward.)

      • 'Marathon "

        Please accept my virtual high five. o/' '\o

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by oneiron ( 716313 )
      What, the default controls? So what? WASD for strafe/fwd/back with the mouse for turning was the standard way to play doom...invented by doom players. There's nothing awkward about that.

      • WASD wasn't even close to the original DOOM controls, the original DOOM was designed to be played with arrow keys. Hell, it didn't even let you look up or down, and strafing used the Alt key. You *could* use the mouse to look around (if your computer had one), but it definitely wasn't designed around WASD or mouselook. It was more Quake players and Half-Life et. al. that solidified WASD as the default control scheme.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by oneiron ( 716313 )
          You're just plain wrong. Wolfenstein was the first game I bought when I got my 486, and I started playing with a mouse right away. When doom came out in my early teens, I quickly adapted my wolfenstein config to a wasd/mouse style config, and everyone I knew had a similar setup. Fact is, the vast majority of players on DWANGO or BBS multiplayer were using a WASD/mouse style scheme. It was the standard. Period.
    • like the Assassin's Creed games where you parkour mostly by moving the in direction. You get used to it pretty quickly and the game knows the limitations of it's controls. I haven't played the wad yet but assuming the level design is good (and that's kind of Romero's thing) then it'll play fine once you get used to the quirks of "hit scan"
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Civvie11's review points out that HMP is actually balanced properly with UV being kicked into overdrive pretty explicitly to give the hardcore corwd something to chew on for at least a bit. Be glad this was limited to Doom monsters and that Pain Elementals and Revenants weren't in play.

    • Use the Doom recommended, if you have Steam.

      The steam version sucks, pretty much.

      I hadn't seen a keyboard scan code table in 30 years, but I still had one within reach, lol

      It's in the Macro Assembler opcodes guide, lol.

  • Doom was way ahead of its time; the only think I hated was the lack of a jump function.

    I still have versions with tons of mods, from the full-auto BFG to the freeze ray from Duke Nukem.

    Here goes a few hours, lol.

    • Thanks, John, for a cool release!

      I'd forgotten how difficult a few dozen imps + guards were; nightmare mode in this game is much harder than the Nightmare mode in the new Doom release from 2016.

      I play the new one at nightmare mode, and do speed runs in Arcade mode, and it's fun, but it's not this difficult.

      Nightmare mode here just freaking kills me quick, lol.

      And for you Dumbasses Trolling politics; get a life.

      I know there's nothing to do in Russia, but go play some games or something.

  • I have the "new" Doom and I thought it sucked. Fuck that fucking flashlight. Grrrr.....

    • It's dark as Fuck, and every corner you want to hide in already has something in it, trying to kill you.

      The only bummer with it was the freaking cabinet codes; but luckily there's a printout for those, lol.

    • You're thinking of Doom 3 from ~2003. It was dark and generally garbage. In that era, Half Life 2 was king.

      The "new" Doom released in 2016 is fantastic, if you haven't played it.

  • 2016 Reboot... (Score:5, Funny)

    by SvnLyrBrto ( 62138 ) on Sunday June 02, 2019 @03:03PM (#58696214)

    Yeah... 2016 came closest; but none of the "modern" Doom games every really managed to recreate some of those "oh crap" moments when I'd open up a door to a room and there are literally *dozens* of imps in there waiting to kill me, by claw or fireball.

    I did have an LOL though when I bought 2016. Not being a fan of what FPSs have morphed into since consoles took over and the xbox-live generation ruined multiplayer; I didn't wind up buying it for my PS4 until it hit the bargain bin at Target. And the register minion actually CARDED me to buy the thing!!! Now, I've hit the age where I'm usually flattered when I occasionally still get asked for ID at bars and clubs. But at Target? For Doom? When I played the original back when you had to wait something like an hour for ep1 to download from a BBS, and then send in a check to get the rest of the game mailed to you? I actually missed a few beats standing there dumbfounded and incredulous with a "Seriously? WTF???", expression before I realized that said register minion was serious and I showed her my ID.

    • Our local RidgeRunner BBS was a pretty happening place back then.

      We had 14 public dialups, and 2 admin dialups; we had a setup that allowed up to play against each other, but IIRC doom was 1:1 in those days; maybe that was only with a RS232 cable, lol.

      It's been awhile. :)

      I remember getting NE2000 cards with 10base-2 coax networking running, so we could play LAN games.

      In the late 90's, we had a 250 person LAN game at a buddys house; we blew a 200A main breaker when someone put something in the microwave, lol

      • Doom was definitely just 1:1; at least at first. I remember in college, my roommate and I bought the longest serial cable we could find, and rearranged our dorm room so our computers would be close enough together to play against each other. I *think* where was a way to get up to 4 players with an add-on to Doom 2... extra serial port cards and daisy-chained connections, IIRC. But I may be misremembering that. Fun times either way though.

        And yeah... the removal of private LAN play from most games spelle

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Grog6 ( 85859 )

          Also, these games started the Whole "Upgrade Wars".

          Wolfenstein 3D ('92), Doom('93), and Heretic('94) played on anything, then there was Duke Nukem('96), the last of the popular Sprite-based 3d games.

          Quake(96) kicked it in the ass, and made high performance graphics cards a thing, due to polygon based rendering; (Remember Voodoo?), and Q2 kicked it up a big notch.

          I spent a weekend getting a 4MB Tseng Labs card to run in OpenGL mode for Q2, and while it looked beautiful, it ran 4 frames per second. :)

          I bought

        • I *think* where was a way to get up to 4 players with an add-on to Doom 2... extra serial port cards and daisy-chained connections, IIRC. But I may be misremembering that.

          The add-on was called "a network card", and was even available in Doom 1.

          It just wasn't cheap enough to be afforded by kids. It was enterprise-only equipment back then.

          • What? An ne2000 clone was like twenty bucks, and cabling might cost you another twenty, but I grew up in Santa Cruz which was full of tech companies at the time so my friends and I got our 10 base 2 and tees for free.

      • LAN (Score:2)

        by DrYak ( 748999 )

        but IIRC doom was 1:1 in those days; maybe that was only with a RS232 cable, lol.

        Yup. For the poor kids like us who only had a serial cable to play with (and/or a modem on that port for those happy enough to live in a country with cheap local rates), it was only possible to play doom 1:1 over serial.

        I remember getting NE2000 cards with 10base-2 coax networking running, so we could play LAN games.

        For the richer people (or people at work), LAN was supported in Doom (initially only built-in SPX, but then using a special external component [fandom.com]) with to 4 players.
        Or 1 single player with 4 side-view, because why not. (i.e.: main computer display what's in front of the player, like any other g

  • Does he still look like he’s about 14 years old?

  • That these legacy games are hard to find/locate? Some games/versions of them are shareware, others aren't.

    It's the same problem with the emulation scene and the console games. The manufacturer holds on tight to the source code and nothing nostalgic or memorable in terms of preserving the games ever happens aside from roms and emu programs. Nintendo released a limited rerelease of NES and SNES games, but that was it.

    Some of us had to move a lot when we were younger and lost our copies of Doom. What about us,

  • I want it for my nVidia Shield like LAST WEEK!!!! :)

  • Romero's 15 mins of fame was up arguably even before iD fell apart.

  • Run around, look for stuff, shoot the bad guys, make it to the next level. I gave up on "video games" about 15 years ago...The only time I play them now might be the dead of winter...nothing to do, good way to kill a few hours before bed LOL.

  • I always loved the human bases like in E1, E2M2, etc.

  • Crying need for a game (Score:3)

    by Sqreater ( 895148 ) on Monday June 03, 2019 @06:46AM (#58699136)
    There is a strong need for the ultimate game, a game that wipes your drive if you do not conquer it in a certain amount of time - a final "suicide" level of the game only the most elite gamers would even attempt. Only the cream of the cream of fanatics would vie for the honor of being a winning suicide gamer.

  • I'll still prefer Marathon. It was better than Doom 25 years ago, and it's still better today.

    And Marapfhont kicks the tar out of AmazDooM. ;)

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