I bet John is actually happier that the game he helped create almost 30 years ago is still so popular and has such a vibrant community that he's not the top dog in level creation.

The standard of DOOM maps has gotten very high. SIGIL is fine, but compared to the current standard, the maps were pretty crappy tbh, in every respect, technical, encounters, design. Afaik they only included it at all as an honour to Romero. If some randomer had submitted it, it would not have been mentioned.

I'm a hardcore Doom fan; have been since its release. I have it as one of the first installs on every device I have; even my Windows machines have a portable Doom configured and ready to go in their Onedrive folders.

SIGIL is probably one of the best _Doom_ experiences since "Doom the way id Did". Too many modern maps lean heavily on limit-removing ports, and other modern features, and lose the sine qua non that made Doom unique and special. They eschew the radically unreal lighting and abstract-but-familiar level design to push the engine towards realism, and consider hardness to be a factor of enemy quantity and not the complexity of the situation.

I'd rather be dying because I was sniped while low on health and fending off a lone imp than find myself circling an insufferably large swath of enemies, soaking them with BFG blasts.

Somehow I find those high-class wads to be tedious and frustrating. But I find slaughterwads to be a great way to clear my head and truly escape the normal world. They get your heart racing. No time to stop for a breath. If you even turn around, you'll be dead. They're all I play on Doom. Some of my favorites are Dholes and Royale Arena - Cannonball which have beautiful architecture and some puzzle elements but still swarms of monsters. Working through Oreo Cake Massacre at the moment which is more crude.

It's clearly a matter of taste, for sure! Ain't nothing wrong with slaughter wads. If they're your bag, then I'm glad you enjoy them.

I think the last I played was Sunder[0]. Good times.

0: https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Sunder

Yea, different strokes. Sunder looks great. Thanks. Downloaded it for future needs.

>Too many modern maps lean heavily on limit-removing ports, and other modern features, and lose the sine qua non that made Doom unique and special.

Boom-level limiting removing ports and WADs are not that distinct to for example, Memento Mori, Requiem or Scythe.

That's what I like about it, it feels like a natural continuation from the original.

This is often the case with games with an active mod community - modders are often willing to spend way more time on polishing and perfecting things than the original designers were.

They should have given Romero Most promising newcomer.

Do you play a lot of modern Doom wads and thus have a good feel for the state of the art, or is there some other basis for believing SIGIL would be unmatched?