Blurry Hell
I first experienced puberty when I was 11. My second came with DOOM. Whereas the first puberty steadily introduced me to awkward changes, the DOOM Puberty forced me into keg stand after keg stand of pure testosterone. My voice dropped three octaves; my chest grew a forest of manliness; and [insert penis joke here]. My Switch was no longer a kiddie console but a portal to pure machismo.
With its endless gore, guns, and heavy synth, DOOM brought much-needed FPS hormones to Nintendo’s hybrid console. Upon arrival, critics hailed Panic Button for their masterful work in porting the behemoth to the underpowered Switch. Their praise came with an asterisk, however. Despite being a technical marvel, a Switch DOOM appeared inferior to other console editions. Considering I don’t own another console, these comparisons should not matter to me. Nonetheless, despite its quality and effects on my development, DOOM feels like a powerhouse trying to run on AA batteries.
Solomon grew a sixth finger in order to take pictures for this review.
What is it?
Contrary to popular belief, Hell is not only good for the eternal torment of the wicked and lawyers. It happens to be a phenomenal source of renewable, clean energy. The Union Aerospace Corporation on Mars labored to bring this energy to Earth, and it was successful until somebody had to make a pact with the demons and unleash unholy destruction across the facility. Now, it is up to you, the “Doom Slayer,” to eradicate the demonic hordes and close the portal to hell.
This first-person shooter focuses on frenetic battles between you and an army of monsters. The large enemy roster ranges from stereotypical zombies to the classic Cacodemons to the newcomers like the Summoners. You begin with only a pistol and a shotgun, but over the lengthy campaign, you accrue more guns, grenades, buffs, and upgrades to your suit. You will run out of ammo, but with so many weapons in your arsenal and bullets on the ground, your gore-fest will never end, especially with “Glory Kills.” When an enemy’s health runs low, you can launch a melee attack which leads to one of numerous brutal execution sequences and health drops.
As you complete missions in the main campaign, you unlock levels in the Arcade Mode. Here, you replay sections of the campaign, but the story and collectibles are stripped away. In order to win medals or rank high on the leaderboards, you must blaze through the map, slaughtering demons and racking up multipliers to contribute to your overall score.
DOOM’s multiplayer maintains the same chaotic action of the solo adventure. With no health regeneration, respawn timer, or need to reload, death dominates the battlefield. Team Deathmatch, Domination, and King of the Hill variants all make an appearance alongside unique modes like Freeze Tag in which you must freeze (kill) your opponents while thawing your teammates. Demon Runes amp the intensity by allowing players to mutate into DOOM’s iconic demons. In this form, your attacks can instakill, and you can gobble tons of damage before dying.
Being a Cacodemon is like being an M-rated Pac-Man.
What’s the Good with the Bad?
- With its adrenaline-laced battles, DOOM transforms you into a badass. Although your enemies are terrifying, they fear your overwhelming power, so much so that their texts describe you as a one-man apocalypse. Monsters can swarm you from all sides, but you’ll quickly learn how to keep moving and mow through them. BFGs splatter whole armies; chainsaws shower blood and ammo everywhere; and even the biggest bosses succumb to your Glory Kills.
- Despite how gratifying these fire fights can be, you’ll develop a tolerance for adrenaline. The DOOM campaign follows a pretty rigid formula: you enter an arena, lay waste to a demon horde, explore the surrounding area for knickknacks, and then move to the next fight. An intense soundtrack and unsettling environments establish a great atmosphere, but they can’t conceal that you’re basically moving from set piece to set piece.
This shows when Solomon gave up on moving and taking pictures.
- The multiplayer offers mindless entertainment. All of the arenas are small, forcing near-constant combat. A few modes require a bit of strategy, but for the most part, your main tactic is to go in guns blazing and not die. This mentality makes for cathartic, quick games. With not much to go against it, DOOM is still the best multiplayer FPS on the Switch.
- Unfortunately, the online network is a hell in out of itself. DOOM frequently bugs out in the lobby, stalling the countdown timer and forcing you to back out and join a different lobby. Because the online player base has dwindled significantly in recent months, getting glitched out of a full lobby is just salt on the wound. The match-making system adds another circle to this hell because players of all levels can be paired together. DOOM tries to balance teams with veteran and beginner gamers, but this just spreads out the dysfunction and results in frequent one-sided matches.
Even with a sixth finger, Solomon struggled to take pictures in multiplayer.
- Panic Button competently delivered the DOOM experience to the Switch. Apart from the online lobby issue, the game plays exactly as a Doom game should. This may sound like a bland statement, but when other ports are so poorly optimized (i.e. Rime and WWE 2K18), good porting should be lauded.
- Despite Panic Button’s hard work, the Switch noticeably struggles to keep up with the Doom Guy. Heavy amounts of blurring don’t mask the significant downgrade in graphics on the Switch, and it all becomes muddier during the intense battles. The frame rate can also stutter, and the music can cut out entirely at times. Most disappointingly, this port lacks SnapMap, a level-creation tool which can create maps for solo, co-op, and multiplayer romps.
Almost every picture came out blurry, resulting in several re-shoots. Solomon hates re-shoots.
What’s the verdict?
DOOM unleashes visceral shooting action on the Nintendo Switch. I recommend the game, but it’s a port and largely inferior to other versions. Based on the ports I’ve played thus far, I imagine I may regurgitate the same message for every other port I review. Thus, to save time for future Solomon, I present you my reoccurring “Review Port Jingle™:”
Here’s another Switch port, what can I say?
These Nintendo issues don’t go away.
The game, itself, is the same, nothing more.
But frame rate and resolution are both poor,
Like portability? Then go for it.
If not, buy it elsewhere. Apple maggot.
*Sung to the tune of Tibetan throat-singing
Arbitrary Statistics:
- Score: 8.0
- Time Played: Over 50 hours
- Number of Players: 1 (up to 12 online)
- Games Like It on Switch: Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, Fortnite