Wolfenstein II The New Colossus: review on Nintendo Switch

Author -, July 03 2018. Published in Nintendo

BASIC GAME INFORMATION

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Year of construction: June 29, 2017
Genre: Action (Shooter) / 3D / 1st Person
developer: MachineGames
Publisher: Bethesda Game Studios

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is the highly anticipated sequel to Wolfenstein®: The New Order™, the critically acclaimed first-person action game from award-winning studio MachineGames.

In Wolfenstein II, you'll embark on an exciting new adventure made possible by the cutting-edge technology of id Tech® 6. You'll visit Nazi-invaded America and find the brave resistance leaders who managed to survive. Fight Nazis in the small town of Roswell, New Mexico, the flooded streets of New Orleans and radiation-infested Manhattan. Collect a cool arsenal and master new abilities to defeat legions of Nazi fighters, cyborgs and super soldiers.

TECHNICAL INFORMATION

Fortnite is version 1.1. When purchasing a game in a store Nintendo downloads it to a MicroSD card or internal memory.

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The total size of the downloaded game is about 22 gigabytes, which is much smaller than the PC version, which weighs about 60 gigabytes.

GAME ENGINE

The heart of Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus 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 PC and, perhaps for eighth generation game consoles, 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.

idSoftware

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.

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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.

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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."

CONTROL

The control settings are standard, as for other consoles. Absolutely all buttons are used.

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It is also possible to enable aiming with gyroscopes, which greatly simplifies the gameplay itself.

SETTINGS

And there are no graphics settings in the game, only changing the brightness is available.

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Well, then let’s see how the game differs from the PC version.

MODES COMPARISON between Nintendo Switch and PC

Now let's compare it with the PC version of the project. “Medium”, “low”, “maximum” settings were taken as the basis.

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In the first case, as we see, the Nintendo Switch shows a better picture than the low settings on the PC. Medium quality looks a little better due to clearer detail of objects. The maximum quality, as expected, is much better than that of the Nintendo Switch.

Well, in the second case, with low settings, the graphics on the Switch are better on almost everything, with the exception of water. At medium and maximum, the PC has an advantage: lighting, texture and water quality.

COMPARISON OF TV AND PORTABLE MODE

In this review, we presented comparisons of the rendering quality of stationary and portable modes:

As we can see, when switching to portable mode, the developers decided to sacrifice resolution and lighting quality. But in portable mode, on a small screen, the game looks much more attractive...

OVERALL GAMING IMPRESSION

Wolfenstein II The New Colossus on Nintendo Switch is of course inferior in terms of graphics to older consoles and PCs, and playing in TV mode would not be very logical if you buy this game.

The beauty of Wolfenstein II The New Colossus on Switch is revealed in portable mode. You get incredible pleasure from playing on a portable device, which is very difficult to explain, but rather it all comes from the understanding that no other device in the world is capable of this.

It is also worth noting that playing Wolfenstein II The New Colossus is much more enjoyable than DOOM, perhaps a matter of taste, but the presence of a full-fledged plot and narrative, in our opinion, makes the game much “richer”.