DOOM: review on Nintendo Switch
| BASIC GAME INFORMATION |
Year of construction: 2017
Genre: Action, Shooter, 3D, 1st Person
developer: id Software
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Slay endless hordes of demons anywhere, anytime in DOOM, a brutal, fast-paced first-person shooter for Nintendo Switch. Try to survive the intense single-player campaign or battle your friends online in numerous multiplayer modes. You will find yourself in the role of a lone DOOM footsoldier, and you will have only one task - to prevent the demons from infiltrating the territory of the United Aerospace Corporation on Mars. Pick up incredibly powerful weapons and move like lightning so as not to give the demons a single chance.
Get access to all additional multiplayer content released. Create deadly weapons, transform into various monsters, customize your foot soldier and fight on additional multiplayer maps. Fight off demons anywhere, anytime in the first-person shooter DOOM for Nintendo Switch.
| GAME ENGINE |
The heart of Doom is id Tech 6. id Tech 6 is the game engine of the id Tech series, which is currently being developed by the American company id Software and which is intended to be the successor to id Tech 5. id Tech 6 is positioned as an engine for PCs and possibly for game consoles eighth generation, that is, for PlayStation 4, Xbox One. At the moment, the game Doom 4 on id Tech 6 has been announced, the engine itself is in the early stages of development. However, some characteristics and innovative features of the engine are already known. The main developers of the engine are John Carmack and John Olick.
The engine will use the innovative technology "Sparse Voxel Octree" (SVO). The geometry of the game level supported by this technology will have a voxel structure rather than a polygonal one, i.e. geometric objects will consist of voxels. Voxels will be stored in the octree. Raycasting technology will be used for lighting. One of the goals of the "SVO" technology is to be able to "load" parts of the octree into the graphics memory (video memory, memory on the video card board), going down along the branches of the tree. This means that objects on the lower branches of the octree, i.e. those objects that are located closer to the observer, will be rendered in maximum quality, with maximum detail and textures of maximum resolution. Accordingly, for distant objects that are located on higher branches of the octree, a lower quality will be used, they will be built on larger voxels. Thus, this technology is a way to control the level of detail.
Geometric objects obtained with SVO can theoretically have an unlimited number of levels of detail, moreover, these levels of detail are generated automatically. This eliminates the need to use various pseudo-1,15D techniques such as parallax mapping. However, all tests using SVO require large amounts of memory (up to several gigabytes), and John Olick stated that it is possible to compress such SVO to XNUMX bits per voxel.
In id Tech 6, only static geometry will be rendered using SVO, such as terrain, buildings, etc. Because of this, raycasting lighting will also be static. All dynamic objects such as characters, vehicles, etc. will be “built” on classic polygons and dynamically illuminated using standard rasterization techniques. Olick stated that creating dynamic objects and dynamic lighting using SVO is possible, but it will require quickly updating the rendering octree. According to Olick, dynamic lighting and geometry introduced by SVO, which will allow for the creation of variable geometry, will be present in id Tech 7.
In addition to SVO, id Tech 6 will use a more advanced megatexture technology, which was first used in the latest versions of id Tech 4. Using this technology, the entire surface of the level is covered with one texture. The developers of id Tech 6 and SVO do not focus on current hardware, but on hardware that is not yet available at the time of development. In particular, id Tech 6 focuses on CUDA, Intel Larrabee and AMD Fusion. Carmack stated that if the next generation of gaming consoles (successors to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3) have hardware specifications that will satisfy the engine architecture, then perhaps id Tech 6 will work on them.
According to Olick, on a GeForce GTX 280 at 720p (1280 x 720 pixels, progressive scan), the id Tech 6 may be able to render 60 frames per second. In this case, the engine will consistently render at least 30 frames/sec. In an interview with PC Perspective, when asked what hardware would have to be and how much it would have to change to be suitable for SVO, Carmack responded with the following: “Hardware designed specifically for SVO can be much smaller, simpler and more efficient. than general purpose tools, but no one in their right mind would want to bet on our technology or want to create a specific hardware solution for a technology that no one has already used."
| WHAT IS Nintendo Switch |
For those who do not yet know what the Nintendo Switch is, it is a new generation portable console that allows you to play full-fledged games not only stationary, but also portable, which makes it very attractive to a very wide range of gamers.
The console itself is a tablet with a docking station and pluggable joysticks (Joy-Con). GAMES are sold on cartridges, but you can also download their digital versions to a MicroSD card or to the console's internal memory.
The console has quite powerful hardware for a portable device based on the NVIDIA Tegra X1 mobile processor, which makes it possible to play not only Nintendo exclusives in portable mode, but also such multi-platform AAA games as DOOM, but with noticeably simplified graphics.
The console's RAM capacity is 4 gigabytes, and its internal memory is 30, which is quite small. So for a sophisticated gamer, purchasing a MicroSD memory with a size of at least 128 gigabytes is mandatory. The Nintendo Switch console will eventually support memory cards up to 2 terabytes.
| TECHNICAL INFORMATION |
DOOM on Nintendo Switch is version 1.1. When purchasing a game in a store Nintendo downloads it to the most capacious storage device (internal memory or SD card).
The total size of the downloaded game is about 22 gigabytes. If you buy the game on a cartridge there will be about 15 gigabytes with the multiplayer version downloaded separately.
| CONTROL |
The control settings are standard, as for the console version of the program. There are enough different types of interaction in the game, so that all game controller buttons are used.
Of course, the “R” pad is somewhat confusing, as it is assigned to several actions at once, which in the turmoil of battles can cause several incorrect actions.
| SETTINGS |
Despite all the modesty of the gaming platform, there are also graphic settings, but very meager.
To be fair, it is worth noting that they are also available on PCs, but according to many users, disabling them provides greater gaming comfort.
| MODES COMPARISON between Nintendo Switch and PC |
Now let's compare it with the PC version of the project. The basic settings were "medium", "low" and "very low". "Very low" means reducing the resolution scaling to 50%.
In the first case, the portable version outperforms the "very low" settings, but is inferior to the "low" settings.
In the second case, the portable version is slightly below the level of “very low” settings, due to the deterioration of the display of metal surfaces.
Well, in the third case, as in the first, the portable version is superior to the “very low” settings, but inferior to the “low” settings.
It’s also fair to note that the PC version has minimal differences between low and medium settings. But also in the portable version, the environment textures were simplified, which made it possible to reduce the size of the game by more than 2 times, which simplified the picture from certain angles.
| OVERALL GAMING IMPRESSION |
Well, now about the gameplay itself. In portable mode, DOOM plays simply amazing and is almost impossible to tear yourself away from it. In a few hours you get used to the game sticks and the gameplay feels the same as on a PC. The game produces an almost stable 30 frames and is really comfortable to play.
As for the TV mode, it’s the same here, more or less. Some reviewers mentioned that the game looks dull on a 4K 55-inch TV, but on a worker-peasant 42-inch FullHD at a distance of 3 meters the game feels like the portable version, but not as bright.
| GAME PROCESS |
Well, below are the first 15 minutes on the console itself in 720P portable mode resolution, enjoy:
Disadvantages:
- price ($60 is hellishly expensive...)
- simplified graphics relative to other versions of consoles and PCs
Advantages:
- this is all the same DOOM!!!, without donations and other evil spirits
- portability, which simply negates the disadvantages of porting...
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Rating 89% [14 vote(s)]
