{"id":51672,"date":"2017-11-10T06:17:06","date_gmt":"2017-11-10T06:17:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=51672"},"modified":"2017-11-10T06:17:06","modified_gmt":"2017-11-10T06:17:06","slug":"doom-on-the-nintendo-switch-is-surprisingly-great","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/entertainment\/games\/doom-on-the-nintendo-switch-is-surprisingly-great.html","title":{"rendered":"Doom on the Nintendo Switch is surprisingly great"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 18pt\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Doom on the Nintendo Switch is surprisingly great<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">Doom on the Nintendo Switch is surprisingly great:- Whatever I expected I\u2019d be playing on the Switch when Nintendo announced its latest console a year ago, I didn\u2019t expect it to be Doom. With its cutting-edge visuals and ultraviolence, id Software\u2019s well-received reboot is exactly the sort of thing that doesn\u2019t tend to make it onto Nintendo\u2019s modest hardware.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">That makes it all the more unexpected that Bethesda, Doom\u2019s publisher, has been one of Nintendo\u2019s strongest third-party supporters this year with versions of Skyrim and Wolfenstein II also coming soon. And now that Doom is here on my Switch, I can say that the most surprising thing about it isn\u2019t that it exists \u2014 it\u2019s that it\u2019s actually pretty great.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">The Switch completely upends the traditional notion of what handheld video games can be, and Doom is one of the strongest examples yet. This really is Doom in full, and it\u2019s lost none of its lean, brutal luster in the time since I first reviewed it. Doom is one of the most aggressively focused first-person shooters made in recent years. There\u2019s almost nothing to it beyond its tight, rhythmical action and throwback level design. It\u2019s one of those games that won\u2019t be for everyone, but achieves almost everything it sets out to.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">That said, there\u2019s no getting around the fact that this version of Doom is technically compromised. While the game itself is intact, with all of the same levels and most of the same visual effects, the fidelity has been reduced significantly. Every console version of Doom uses dynamic resolution, meaning that the number of pixels rendered decreases as the strain on the hardware increases, but the Switch port seems to top out somewhere below the screen\u2019s 720p resolution \u2014 and things only get blurrier from there.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">The visual trade-off is understandable, but the more serious compromise comes with the hit to frame rate. Doom is a fast-paced game that runs at 60 frames per second on the PS4 and Xbox One, and the Switch version\u2019s 30 fps performance makes a material difference to how fluid, responsive, and ultimately fun it is. The frame rate is relatively stable, and mitigated to a limited extent by effects like motion blur, but there\u2019s no question that it\u2019s a downgrade over the PC or console versions.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">But of course it is: you\u2019re holding Doom in your hands, on a portable console with the same processor as a two-year-old Android tablet, and it basically still feels like Doom. That\u2019s something. Handheld first-person shooters tend to be pretty rare, and this is a far more viable product than, say, the PS Vita version of Borderlands 2. Context is important; it\u2019s hard not to be impressed by this version of Doom.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">The importance of context, however, means that you will only be impressed by this version of Doom when you play it in the Switch\u2019s handheld mode. It looks awful on a big TV, even if the resolution drops are a little less dramatic, and there\u2019s just not really any reason to spend sofa time with this version when you could get far better results for a far lower price on other platforms. The Switch is still difficult enough to buy that I can\u2019t imagine there are many owners out there who don\u2019t have other options. The merit of Doom for the Switch is that it\u2019s the most advanced, most playable first-person shooter ever released for a portable device. No more, no less.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">Doom is an important release for the Switch. On a technical level, it should expand the general perception of what\u2019s possible to produce on the system. The original version\u2019s 60 fps first design no doubt made it easier to create the Switch port, since halving the frame rate to free up system resources could still produce acceptable results, but it still serves as a useful example of how high-end AAA games could work on Nintendo\u2019s low-power console.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">On a commercial level, too, Doom could help prove the potential for third-party games to sell well on the Switch. It\u2019s not exactly a new game, and Skyrim and Rockstar\u2019s LA Noire are even older. Wolfenstein 2 is coming to the Switch just a few months after its debut on other platforms, however, and if it or any of Bethesda\u2019s other Switch releases prove successful, it\u2019d be an encouraging sign for other Western publishers\u2019 prospects \u2014 something that\u2019s consistently been a problem for Nintendo.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">In the here and now, though, what we have is an unexpectedly pleasant surprise. Doom on the Switch is, well, Doom. On the Switch. And I couldn\u2019t really have expected it to turn out any better than this.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 8pt\">Source:-\u00a0https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2017\/11\/9\/16627782\/doom-nintendo-switch-review<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-background-color\">\n\t\t\t  <div \n\t\t\t  \tclass = \"fb-comments\" \n\t\t\t  \tdata-href = \"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/entertainment\/games\/doom-on-the-nintendo-switch-is-surprisingly-great.html\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-numposts = \"10\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-lazy = \"true\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-colorscheme = \"light\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-order-by = \"social\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-mobile=true>\n\t\t\t  <\/div><\/div>\n\t\t  <style>\n\t\t    .fb-background-color {\n\t\t\t\tbackground: #ffffff !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t.fb_iframe_widget_fluid_desktop iframe {\n\t\t\t    width: 630px !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t  <\/style>\n\t\t  ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Doom on the Nintendo Switch is surprisingly great Doom on the Nintendo Switch is surprisingly great:- Whatever I expected I\u2019d be playing on the Switch when Nintendo announced its latest console a year ago, I didn\u2019t expect it to be Doom. With its cutting-edge visuals and ultraviolence, id Software\u2019s well-received [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":51682,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[923],"tags":[97697,97701,97699,97700,97702,97698],"class_list":["post-51672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-games","tag-doom-on-the-switch","tag-high-end-aaa-games","tag-nintendos-strongest-third-party","tag-ps4-and-xbox-one","tag-skyrim-and-rockstars-la-noire","tag-unexpectedly-pleasant-surprise"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}