Last night at around 1:15 am my time I downloaded and booted up Romero's birthday present to DOOM on its 30th birthday, SIGIL II. I whacked the difficulty on Ultraviolence, because I'm an idiot, and the picture above is what greeted me. Compare that to the picture below, which is the game on Hurt Me Plenty, which is what I probably should have played this on but I didn't because I enjoy stories about arrogance leading to one's downfall because I am built different and I myself could never be so foolish as to be hoist by my own petard.

Literally the first thing you have to do is survive this, and what you can't see is that behind me there's a big wall, and walking on top of that wall are way too many imps (I think there's like four of them on HMP but I didn't look too hard) ready to rain fire down on my head as I try to dodge the fireballs from the three bastards in front of me and hopefully not get shotgunned to death. It took me roughly twenty minutes to get to a point in the proceedings where I could be said to have made any progress at all, progress that I then immediately shitcanned when I sat down to play again at a far more reasonable hour. I can't even get into the stuff that came after this, which included a Cyberdemon just roaming around and functioning less as an enemy to be overcome and more as a mobile rocket turret to be avoided and to discourage the player (me) from staying outside for more than was absolutely necessary.

I thought, foolishly, that having just gone through all of SIGIL on ultraviolence like, two weeks ago (and episode one and most of episode two when I realized I still craved DOOM and had a week to kill before SIGIL II came out) meant I was ready for the challenge of whatever Romero cooked up for SIGIL II and let me tell you, no I fucking wasn't.

I mean I say that but I've since sat down and gotten through the first five levels (three more to go and I'll be done, but I've stopped for today) of the game, so obviously I've managed to adjust a little. This game is fucking gorgeous, it's legitimately amazing to me what Romero managed to coax out of the stock (for the most part, I think the level exits are new art) DOOM assets - and more than that, how well he's constructed encounters that are only using the DOOM assets and nothing else. The way the geometry shifts in some of the levels (there is a moment in the first map that legitimately took my breath away) is so impressive I can't even begin to process it, like, I know that it is pretty basic mechanically but all the basic mechanics come together to do something you wouldn't think possible. It's a masterpiece.

I ponied up the money for the THORR soundtrack too, and hey let me tell you how much ass it kicks: a lot. I am generally a MIDI man when it comes to DOOM, but the guitars and drums just really help drive you forward. It's good demon killing music, a fine thing, and I think I might like it more than the Buckethead soundtrack for SIGIL but don't let that fool you, the Buckethead soundtrack in SIGIL kicks ass. More baffling is the fact that if you don't get that, you get to hear some sweet, sweet MIDI rock from James Paddock, who also did the SIGIL soundtrack, and that is also incredible.

My only complaint is that just like in SIGIL, you have to shoot these little eye switches to activate things, and Romero might have gotten a little too good at hiding some of them. I was at a loss for a while in level four, and it turned out that the thing I was missing was a switch you could only see if you went into a room and stared out the window at a specific angle, which also meant you had to shoot it at a specific angle, which wasn't great - some of the gaps are extremely narrow which means you end up spending a couple pistol shots to sight it in (I could just turn on crosshairs for this but for whatever reason I never play DOOM with crosshairs unless I'm on my Steam Deck, I know, this is probably stupid behavior but I've been playing DOOM this way for almost as long as DOOM as been a going concern, so shut up). That and sometimes I think maybe there is such a thing as too many Barons of Hell, but to his credit Romero is very good about giving you a BFG and enough cell ammo to solve those problems if you're willing to take a minute to poke around a bit in the middle of trying not to die. There's the off chance that somehow Romero fumbles the ending, but I really doubt it. I'll be sure to update my impressions accordingly when I get to the end (I gotta assume the final boss will be a Spider Mastermind, or, given the way this game's been turning up the heat at all possible opportunities, two Spiders Mastermind. Either way I'm sure I'll come back with some thoughts on that once I get there.

That said, I think I feel pretty comfortable saying Romero has once again delivered the goods, which is to say this new episode fucking owns and at the low cost of Free there's no reason you shouldn't play it if you have even the slightest interest in DOOM.

I am very excited to get the boxed version in the mail sometime in the next couple of weeks. Merry Christmas to me.