Developed/Published by: Romero Games
Sweet-ass shreds by: Buckethead
Date of Release: May 31, 2019
Price: €6.66
In the year 1993, my 9 year old mind was blown by a certain little shareware game. That game was Doom, spawned by the gnarly minds at id Software, chief among them co-founder John Romero. It was received with much fanfare and acclaim, and would go on to spawn a fourth episode, and several sequels. And now John Romero has made his triumphant return with a fifth and final episode for The Ultimate Doom, known as SIGIL. It's a 9-level megawad that adds a fifth episode with an all-new soundtrack, and map designs that are more devious and challenging than anything seen before. You'll need the original retail doom iwad, and a modern source port such as GZDoom or Chocolate Doom. Trying to run SIGIL on the original dos version just won't work due to memory constraints.
The first thing that smacked me upside the head was the shredilicious Buckethead soundtrack that comes with the paid version. The tracks cover a broad spectrum of musical stylings and really set the tone well. The opening track "Romero One Mind Any Weapon" in particular could be the new E1M1 IMO. I don't want to sell the free version's midi soundtrack short however, it's pretty epic as well. The next thing that caught my attention is how freaking dark the levels are. This megawad is definitely best experienced in a dark room with the sound cranked up. It's hard as hell too, I've lost track of how many times I've died (playing on Ultra Violence), but they never felt like cheap deaths, and ask I learned the enemy placement I was able to carve a bloody path of carnage through their ranks.
SIGIL is definitely an experience for the true diehard Doom fan. If a newcomer to the series experienced SIGIL before any of the other episodes, I'm pretty sure they would be scared away by the sheer scale of the challenge. As a veteran of the series though I can say personally that it feels just right. The levels are well built, and offer an amazing feeling of tension as you explore them, and it's good to finally feel challenged again by a Doom game. Recent entries in the franchise have been far too forgiving as far as difficulty goes. Sigil just cranks things up to 11 though, and then rips the dial right off. I don't normally give a numerical score, but SIGIL deserves, nay it DEMANDS one.
John Romero's SIGIL scores a facemelting 666 out of 10
