That Was a Lot of DOOM

I’m not sure how many cacodemons I killed this past weekend as I completed my SIGIL and SIGIL II duties, but it did lead me to ask John Romero just what the hell was up with all the cacodemons in SIGIL II.

He didn’t answer, presumably because he has better things to do, like work on a new FPS that I am desperate to see any sign of, and I don’t begrudge him that. It is, however, maybe indicative of just how many cacodemons are running around in those episodes. Thanks to those of you who stopped by to watch me fulfil my obligations (and especially thanks to the couple people who kicked in some extra donations For the Kids™ while I struggled far more than I thought I would through the back half of SIGIL and the first like three levels of SIGIL II in particular but also the last five levels of SIGIL II.

I could write, at length, about how I feel about SIGIL and SIGIL II, except I already kind of did that. So instead, let’s go over how I feel about the whole thing in general and some things I have noticed, mechanically, about the game after shotgunning (har har) all six episodes over the course of three extremely long streams. Which of course there’s archives you can watch, although if you just want to see me become increasingly unhinged just watch the last stream. I was just sort of monologuing to John Romero at the end there, I think. It’s hard to remember with all the bloodlust.

A Good Soundtrack is Crucial

This probably goes without saying, but having music that loops well is kind of critical, especially when you are talking about more difficult levels that have you running around for way longer than the like three or four minute runtime of the average track. James Paddock’s MIDI soundtrack for SIGIL in particular (I still haven’t spent enough time with his soundtrack for SIGIL II to pass judgment, but I am inclined to say “it’s good” based on messing around for a few levels with it) is extremely good for this, and it is a credit to THORR that all the rock tracks in SIGIL II fade up and down naturally.

Buckethead’s soundtrack for SIGIL gets around this by having tracks that are just extremely long so you don’t care when they hit the end and start over. Funnily enough the Buckethead soundtrack really grew on me this stream – I’d bounced off of it initially, partially because I kept messing up the order of operations to get it working and partially because I just wasn’t sure how well it fit (beyond the track he did specifically for E5M1). This was the belief of a fool, because it turns out the more ambient tracks fit really nicely with SIGIL’s whole darker, weirder aesthetics.

I have already given enormous praise to Bobby Prince’s work on the original soundtrack, but for the record, this is why Bobby Prince’s soundtrack is so fucking good. It loops well! Hulshult’s remix of the soundtrack also loops well, which is why it was so fun to play through the first four episodes with it.

You’ll want the soundtrack to loop well after you die to a room full of cacodemons for the twelfth time.

Be Careful When You Quicksave

This is something I am notoriously bad about. If I were less-bad at the game, it wouldn’t matter as much, because I wouldn’t need quicksaves so much. Alas, I rely on them to get me through tough levels, and in episodes 4-6 in particular, they’re all tough levels. So when you are in a sticky situation and hit quicksave, it’s best to make sure there isn’t a shotgunner getting ready to pull the trigger just as you save, or a cacodemon’s fireball two centimetres from your ass before you press that button. I put myself in a lot of bad situations solely because I hit the quicksave button at the wrong moment! Sometimes it is better to just die and lose the progress than to quicksave at the wrong time and have to do something like fight the Spider Mastermind with 33 health. I mean I still got him down eventually, but it would’ve been easier if I could’ve taken more than a single hit. Actually maybe keep two saves so when you do something like save with 1% health you can go back to before you did that to yourself. Or maybe it will work out for you, you can never tell!

Don’t Always Sprint

One of the neat things about DOOM’s engine is that you have real momentum, and also that you can zip around at a million miles an hour. Sometimes, however, you gotta take your finger off the sprint key because otherwise you’ll fall off the same twisty path into lava about a billion times. This extends to a broader point about the game in general:

Trying to rush through to the end (unless you are speedrunning and you know the Tricks, which I do Not, beyond a few ways to cheese picking up items and a way to skip some chunks of levels by strafe jumping, something I can only do like 50% of the time. I did not do it at all during this playthrough) will always bite you in the ass. I committed some real unforced errors just trying to push my way through a demon horde rather than falling back and thinning the herd. Romero especially punishes you for this in both SIGIL and SIGIL II by having enormous doors that take forever to open, or by having multiple triggers for demons to teleport in and surround you quickly if you’re rushing through a room. American McGee is also kind of notorious for this in Thy Flesh Consumed, as well as his maps in DOOM II. Sandy Peterson also does this a lot, come to think of it.

The point is, sometimes you have to stop and shoot the demons. Rushing around will just get your ass trapped and murdered, unless you have a BFG with enough ammo to blast your way through. Which brings me to my next point…

The BFG is Not a Universal Solution Except for When It Is

This is down in part to the way that the BFG is just kind of a hacked together mess, mechanically. Depending on how close you are to your targets, what the RNG is doing that day, and where you are facing after the initial projectile explodes, you won’t get the maximum amount of damage out of it. See for evidence any of the multiple times in the streams where I opened up with it and then got shot by some shotgunner or lost soul that just happened to survive because they were just out of frame or something. Who knows!

Anyway the point is sometimes you have to just use the plasma rifle. It more reliably puts the damage on the target, because if you whiff with a plasma rifle it’s only a couple projectiles. Whiff with the BFG and that’s 50 goddamn cells! You can plasma that cyberdemon at the end of E2M8 real easy, and also hose the few remaining lost souls running around there while you’re at it. In a big open area, the BFG isn’t necessarily going to do the trick for you. In a smaller room, it’ll murder everything nine times out of ten. Just be sure you aren’t holding down the fire key and wasting ammo like I tend to do.

The Chaingun is on Number Four on the Keyboard, You Fucking Idiot. Use the Goddamn Chaingun, You Ass

I said this I think multiple times during the stream, but I always forget that I have a chaingun! I don’t know why! It’s a good fucking weapon! If you feather the trigger it shoots more accurately – it’s one of those little tricks like “let the pistol animation finish before pulling the trigger again and it’ll always hit the same spot,” and it really fucks up cacodemons! Like just melts those fuckers down, and also stunlocks them so they can’t even fire back! Why the fuck do I never use the damn thing unless I am out of every other kind of ammo? What failing in my upbringing caused this to be true?

I don’t know man, but don’t be like me. Use the damn chaingun. It’s great. Speaking of guns…

Pistol Starting Can be Your Friend

Twice during this whole run – aptly enough, on Perfect Hatred (E4M2) and Violent Hatred (E6M2), I realized that having barely made it out of the previous level alive, I really didn’t have the health necessary to make any kind of start on the next level. One of the hallmarks of great level design – and I give Perfect Hatred a lot of shit but I have to grudgingly admit it is in fact a solid level, in spite of being an absolute dick – is that you can manage to pick up enough weapons and ammo in it to get through even if you started out with just your pistol and fifty bullets. This ought to be especially true in the early levels of any of the campaigns, although even later levels really should give you all you need. There are a lot of sickos out there who pistol start every damn level! They scare me.

I in fact would’ve ended up pistol starting a third time on the run – on Twilight Desolation (E6M3), but fortunately I still had a cheat from a generous donor and so instead I just topped my health up that way (and also murdered a bunch of stuff which I’ll admit was not part of my plan, I’d intended to just flip it on and off, but the enemies come so thick and fast at the start of that level I legitimately could not get to a spot to turn the cheat off without immediately getting murdered, so slaughter a bunch of cacodemons and lost souls it was). If I’d ended up doing that, however, I still would’ve come out of the level with a full arsenal, including a damn BFG! Romero stocks his maps well, is what I’m saying, and at least for the original campaign this is pretty much always the case. Even Slough of Despair gives you a plasma rifle and a chaingun pretty quickly if you know where you’re going – and hey, exploration is part of DOOM’s charms! Intricate maps with secrets and plenty of stuff, even if sometimes it feels like it’s all shotgun ammo. Which is fine, because…

You can Shotgun Down a Cyberdemon

I don’t recommend it, but you can. I more or less did it to the final cyberdemon of the run, while making what I’m gonna go ahead and say was an extremely stupid face.

I Don’t Recommend Playing SIGIL or SIGIL II in One Sitting

I really don’t. I mean I did it for the stream, and frankly I had a good time doing it (even if it seemed like I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown by the end), but the levels, they are long and demanding, and I was fucking exhausted by the end of SIGIL II. I was legit jittery and shaky and absolutely got impatient in parts just because I’d been playing for so long. Take a break! Like a longer break than twenty minutes to hang up your laundry and eat something, even. This is mostly advice for myself, my shitty old man bod is just not able to do these sorts of marathon sessions. My shoulder’s still a little sore! I’m old, and I never learned good posture. I’m doing lots of stretches and stuff by way of apology to my joints.

More to the point though, if you aren’t playing through in one sitting you can drink in the levels more! I fucking love the intricate design work that Romero did in SIGIL and SIGIL II, and spending time nosing around into every nook and cranny instead of burning through it all at once is a pleasant way to play. It is how I usually play SIGIL – funnily enough, both times I’ve played through all of SIGIL II now it’s been more of a marathon session. I got hooked the first time and ended up binging the thing over the course of a couple of days, and then of course I did it all in one shot this time as well. Next time I play through SIGIL II I’ll take it slower. Smell the roses. Maybe not get so beat to shit finishing E6M1 I have to pistol start level two again. As for when that’ll be, well… would you believe me if I told you I fired the damn thing up again on Monday? I almost fired it up Sunday, for fuck’s sake. This is, in part, because of the final point:

DOOM Really is Perfection

I’ll admit, when I did my ranking of DOOMs and gave the top slot to DOOM, I couldn’t help but think to myself “am I just being nostalgic here for a game that sure I never actually played through until it was at least a decade old, but I did play as a kid?” Was it just me being stubborn and unwilling to admit that maybe DOOM, as good as it is, isn’t as good as like, DOOM Eternal, a game I’ve put hundreds of hours into?

Well, after playing through the entirety of the original game and also some far newer episodes – SIGIL II is only a couple years old, after all – I’m comfortable saying that no, I was absolutely right to rank it where I did. As frustrated as I got playing the game, as tired and jittery as I was afterwards, the game was fun as shit to play. Even when I was in a situation that seemed unwinnable, I still had a chance. The number of times I was down to something like 6% health and somehow managed to pull it out are numerous, and it quite simply never got old! I don’t think it ever will get old! Especially because I’ve barely even started to scratch the surface of the other .wads out there – it would be downright silly of me to not eventually get around to Plutonia or even TNT Evilution (which I’m not that fond of but I ought to be thorough), and while my view on Legacy of Rust can be boiled down to “I think the new weapons they put in kind of suck ass” I’ll have to write up something properly at some point.

Those are just the official .wads, too. I’ve got a whole list, ever-growing, of community map packs that I aim to go through (I’ll assemble a bunch and then spin a wheel to select them or something, I haven’t decided). There’s a ton of Cacowards winners out there and I’ve only touched a few of ‘em, after all.

Really I should just play more DOOM II so I can get more comfortable with it. There’s next year’s Community Endurance Run to think about, after all.