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

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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