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Post by EasyHard on Jul 4, 2021 6:08:06 GMT -5
Holy crap, I was not expecting a Sigil II. I thought Sigil was just a doom anniversary celebration, and perhaps intended as pre-marketing for "Blackroom".
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Post by Xeogred on Jul 4, 2021 9:22:36 GMT -5
Rumblings are a 2023 release, for the 30th anniversary. Even though that's Doom 1 haha. If he's been chipping away at it since Sigil, that seems believable. I still want to keep my expectations leveled though. Freaking 32 Doom 2 maps of new Romero content? That's more maps than he's made up this point. So I wonder if he'll get others to help (Sandy Petersen would be epic), or if he can even maintain quality across a full megawad. Not that I doubt him at all though. I still get the vibe he doesn't really play the unofficial stuff. At one point the interviewer asked if Sigil II would be "Plutonia hard" and Romero didn't really elaborate or hint that he knows much about Plutonia, other than its legacy I'd guess. Nor did he ever namedrop any wad or author from the new stuff that stuck out to him. Maybe he has to be humble and not be specific in his position, or either way I think if he does stay away from all this other stuff it kind of keeps his design more authentic and pure. But I don't know. That would be an impressive feat to make good maps across 25 years without being influenced or looking at other ideas along the way. I should probably buy the premium edition of Sigil sometime to play with the Buckethead tunes.
Maybe I've gotten better than the average player over there? I mean, I'll admit E4 was a grower on me too, but damn...
Also EasyHard , I'm up to map 14 of Cydonia and it's freaking amazing. It does have those 5 AD_79 maps, so it was cool to revisit those and get through them quicker. I posted some thoughts in the thread over there, but MAP09 is one of the best I've played all year. The difficulty has been pretty insane from that point, but still fun and fair... for the most part. I finally allowed one save in MAP11 and might have to do the same with MAP14, for some late map Cyberdemon parts. It's pretty fun to master the map up to that point, but then yeah... getting one shot a dozen times kind of breaks me eventually.
I suspect at this rate the quality keeps up and this is an incredible expansion pack / "Lost Levels" to Plutonia.
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Post by Xeogred on Jul 9, 2021 22:20:36 GMT -5
Ultimate Doom the Way Id Did [E4] | Like all "doom the way id did"s, the main goal of the project was to create new levels that authentically imitate the original author's styles (the accuracy of which usually varies, of course). While I feel the other Doom 1 "id Dids" lack greatness, UDTWID is absolutely excellent. I believe the project leaders explicitly stated that they "wanted to keep the pressure on the player, without ever giving them time to rest", and this definitely shines through as a welcome stylistic choice. Group B:
Thy Flesh Turned into a draft-excluder [E4] | Quite good, harder and more expansive than official Doom 1 levels. I really recommend this one out of all the wads in this tier. Usually each level has a strong level concept or architectural theme that carries through the entire map. The first map has a very good "scramble" start to find weapons and ammo and even then you still might not be able to kill everything. Several maps start with cyberdemons as level fixtures that you will be dodging and using for infights. One map has an "E4-style" Romeroish techbase. One map has a slaughter-style ending arena. I will admit I used more frequent saving as the wad progressed, which may or may not say something about the quality. Some maps use 2-4 cyberdemons at the end as a final boss fight, and usually I ran out of patience/interest with them. Still playing Doom throughout my days.
- Doom 2: Cydonia (PC)[PS/UV] - Doom 2: No Rest for the Living* (PC)[UV,~2h] - Doom 2: DBP37: AUGER;ZENITH (PC)[UV,3h48m] - Doom: Ultimate Doom the Way id Did E4 (PC)[PS/UV] - Doom: E4 Draft Excluder (PC)[PS/UV]
Cydonia is up there with Arrival for best of the year to me. Absolutely incredible stuff.
If you haven't played No Rest for the Living (nerve.wad) yet, I think you'd like it a lot. This has to be like the 3rd/4th time I've hit it up. What was extra fascinating this run was realizing how similar the first half is to Fava Beans. The levels are chalk full of non-linear secrets that lead into a lot more, completely optional keys or multiple paths through a main path, etc. It was very apparent how comparable they were. As NRFTL ditches the tech bases later on it kind of loses that flavor but is still absolutely excellent. This replay cemented it as top tier for me.
UDTWID was a mixed bag. Some great maps early on. E4M4 was an insane difficulty spike but looking back, I guess that map left a good impression on me. I ended up liking E4M5 the most, which is by some lesser known mapper without much details called "Gifty" I guess. E4M6 was good and interesting in that, this map feels a LOT like Tarnman's Projectile Hell. So this map could be an example if you'd like his style there or not. I thought E4M8 was pretty annoying and boring.
In comparison, I think I liked the Draft-Excluder more and really loved some of these maps. It goes for its own thing and the insane size of some of these maps even drawf Doom 2 stuff. The "infested" techbase was such a treat. The difficulty skyrocketed a bit too much for my liking later on though, but guess that's my fault for still sticking to UV. I mean, one of these maps had like ~6 Cyberdemon's and ~4 Spider Mastermind's. Ugh, that stuff is just getting boring to me. But I did overall like the vibe of this wad and it had some great stuff.
I've played one map of WMC02: Thy Flesh Vored RC3, another E4 inspired wad, yet I didn't realize until jumping in that it's Doom 2 base. Well the first map was quite cool and spicing it up again with Doom 2 stuff could be awesome.
Of the other Doom 1 stuff you mentioned EasyHard, I'm leaning towards The Ultimate NMD and Wonderful Doom. Double Impact and some other stuff looks pretty cool to me as well, got a bunch of tabs on another PC. I was hearing some iffy things about No End in Sight, but I'll probably consider that one sometime too.
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Post by EasyHard on Jul 10, 2021 7:57:59 GMT -5
Yeah, I've played No Rest for the Living many times. It has always been a highly regarded favorite, although at some point it stop being top tier. The Fava Beans comparison is interesting, I kind of like that observation. The later levels of NRFTL do the thing where they give you lots of chaingun and plasma ammo, but not enough shells. Which is, eeeeh fine I guess but I kind of dislike it. Also, this is minor but I absolutely do not like the decision to withhold the backpack (and I will always summon one, ha ) . Very rarely will I encounter a wad that does that without being annoying, and NRFTL really soured me on accepting that concept for a long time. UDTWID is something I should revisit more carefully next time I get the Doom bug. I've rated it highly but I remember that I blasted through it without a ton of reflection. I also played it immediately after Lunar Catastrophe's E4, so they blended together. Auger;Zenith looks neat, I should give it a chance sometime. I've only recently become aware of these "doomboard project" wad things and what they are in a vague sense. I've played Lilywhite Lilith (dbp11.zip) and Legend of the Hidden Tech (dbp_09.zip), which were okay. I don't recall being harshly critical with any creative or design choices, but I'm not going to strongly recommend them either. Map 05 ("Silent Sorrow in Empty Boats") is the best level of Lilywhite Lilith if it happens to strike you as worth checking out.
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Post by Xeogred on Dec 7, 2021 20:25:29 GMT -5
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Post by Xeogred on Dec 13, 2023 21:00:32 GMT -5
A five year old thread already huh?
Tonight I beat John Romero's new Sigil II. It was awesome stuff. Seemed more complex than Sigil and I'm a little fuzzy on that one now, so not sure how I'd rank these two. But yeah, if anyone wants tough semi-official follow ups to the original Doom, this is about as legit as it gets.
I hadn't played a lot of Doom in awhile. Only played 3 WAD's last year. Taking a look at 2023's Cacowards was pretty surprising, because in my time off from Doom... people have really opened up Doom 64 with the newer remastered release on PC and started making maps! Not one but TWO full megawads seem to be out already.
Very exciting. For now though I'm going to play some more Doom 1 WAD's to get my fix in. This one sounds awesome. It's people building upon the Doom E1-E4 maps and removing any technical limits:
But tonight I think I'll play this one...
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Post by Ex on Dec 13, 2023 21:16:17 GMT -5
Impresses me that Romero clearly still loves DOOM just as much as he did thirty years ago. Unsurprisingly he's quite good at it too.
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Post by Xeogred on Dec 13, 2023 21:45:49 GMT -5
Impresses me that Romero clearly still loves DOOM just as much as he did thirty years ago. Unsurprisingly he's quite good at it too. There were some jokes going around that when he dropped Sigil a few years ago, he realized "Oh, guess Doom players got a lot better over the years" ... thus he amped up the challenge for Sigil II. But all of Romero's are pretty tough on the higher difficulty levels. Now even as someone who's played probably 100-200 fan made maps over the years, his level design is still a breath of fresh air and such a unique flavor. It's kind of Plutonia-like in that the maps are like puzzles and probably take a bit of a trial and error, but they're always fair in the end.
This new end map/door texture was really cool.
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Post by Xeogred on Dec 14, 2023 23:25:16 GMT -5
I was mad with the economy/world stuff today and knew DOOM would get some of that out.
Did another FULL run of Sigil II on Ultra Violence, pistol start per map. Few saves per levels. After beating it on HMP and knowing several secrets per level, everything was tough but fair like usual with Romero's awesome design.
I also bought the premium digital version for $6.66, lol. So I got the mp3 THORR OST to play with. Some amazing tunes:
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Post by Ex on Dec 15, 2023 1:45:52 GMT -5
Is this expansion pack standalone? I mean like if you buy it off Steam, can you play it right away? Or do you have to install it into a preexisting load of DOOM? Back in the the '90s we'd just share .WAD files and that was it, but no idea nowadays.
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