Doom On Switch Makes Me a Happy Console Peasant

Rend and Tear. On the shitter.

I love Doom. I watched my old man play the original Doom way back when I was a kid and it was the scariest shit, ever. The gore, the screams, the dark corridors with the flashing lights. Since then I played it on the PC, the Gameboy Advance, PSP, 3DS and god knows how many other consoles, phones and other such devices. Heck, the game has been ported to ATMs and even a car.

When the 2016 version of Doom came out, I was really happy with it. Sure, I absolutely don't care for the platforming bits, the game was juuust a little bit too long for me towards the end and the whole corridors with tiny puzzles followed by a monster arena followed by more corridors etc. thing got a little repetitive after a while. It's still a fantastic game with incredible artwork and super fast-paced gameplay. And then they released that exact same game on the Nintendo Switch. What the fuck.

Like the real thing, but blurrier.

I didn't care for the Switch version much, because I prefer playing shooters with a mouse and keyboard. The PC version also runs really well in 4K, while the Switch version barely maintains 720p at 30fps. Reviews mentioned frame drops and the occasional awful texture, so I gave this one a hard pass. But then they added motion controls. Motion controls change everything.

I absolutely love playing Resident Evil: Revelations (2) on the Switch, because with a bit of practice the game's motion controls feel just as accurate and comfortable as playing with a mouse. In fact, I think they're a bit more immersive, because aiming and pulling the trigger on the joycon just feels a bit better than clicking my rodent. There's something immensely satisfying about aiming at a zombie's head and blowing his head off using motion controls. Call me crazy, but I might actually enjoy this playstyle even more than my mouse and keyboard.

And HD rumble really makes you feel the chainsaw as it goes through your enemies.

Of course I had to take a look at Doom on the Switch now. It also helps that the game's most recent update has upped the average FPS to 27.6 - sure, this sounds like a bit of a joke when compared to other platforms, but we're talking about a portable device here. If I can play Doom on the go, chilling on the sofa while Claire watches her soap operas, waiting for food in the pub or whilst keeping Claire company at work, then I'll gladly take those 27 FPS without bitching.

The campaign runs just as I remember it from the PC version. I didn't notice any dramatic hiccups. The textures looked decent enough, though I didn't get an awful lot of time to stand still and appreciate every wall, floor and ceiling whilst getting beat up by an angry army of pissed-off hellspawn. The game is blurry as fuck, alright. I play most games in 1440p or 4K where possible, so 720p is a bit of a step down. The fact that Doom makes aggressive use of dynamic resolution for the sake of performance doesn't help here. It rarely hits the 720p mark and you can tell. It looks like the real thing, but Doomguy didn't put his glasses on.

In some situations I'm almost grateful for a little less detail.

There's no way around it - if you have a decent enough PC or any other current-gen console, then there's really no need for the Switch version. That is, unless you like the idea of playing Doom on the go, which I do. And there is another reason why I'm enjoying Doom on the Switch so much, even though I already had it for PC: Multiplayer.

Playing multiplayer in the PC version of Doom means cheaters. Way too many fucking cheaters everywhere. And no anticheat measures or a report function. When it comes to mainstream FPS titles, the PC as a platform tends to be a bit of an afterthought, which simply doesn't get a lot of love. The vast majority of players are on consoles. Customer support and cheat detection cost money, so fuck that. Doom is hardly the only game with that problem - just look at any CoD game, ever. Some master race.

Chainsaw the bastards!

But while every idiot can fire up Cheatengine or subscribe to some fine russian hacks on PC, it's a different story on the Switch. I used to bump into players who would headshot me from every angle, across the entire map, never needing to reload, never running out of health. Things seem a lot less extreme now that I play on Nintendo's hybrid console.

Though I can't carry an entire terrible team all by myself.

Sure - just like the campaign, multiplayer is blurry, the resolution is all over the place and in really intense matches the sound tends to glitch out for some reason. But the framerate is reasonably stable even in matches with 12 players, demons, BFGs and all that sort of thing. And damn is it fun to play with motion controls! I won't lie - it's a lot harder than Resident Evil, because it's just more difficult to keep track of a bunch of bouncy human players than it is to keep your eye on some shuffling AI zombies. I'm gonna have to practice a lot more until this playstyle will start to feel as natural and easy as using a mouse, but I'm getting there. I couldn't get myself to play an FPS using only a controller, but motion controls are fine. I don't feel like I'm gimping myself.

My main problem is getting used to looking around and rotating with the right analog stick, while adjusting my aim with motion controls. Keeping the two separate is difficult and requires some getting used to. Though just like Resident Evil, it's incredibly satisfying to aim your shotgun at somebody, to pull the trigger and blow them to bits.

Sneaking up on a player to rip their head off is also fun. The game is blurry and it's difficult to tell that's what happened. You had to be there.

If you always hated Doom 2016's multiplayer, then the lack of cheaters alone won't make you love it on the Switch. The game still uses loadouts and CoD-style unlocks and the most popular game mode is still TDM. But if you're just looking for some dumb, mindless fun, over the top gore and violence and a refreshingly non-toxic multiplayer environment, then the Switch version might just be the best place to look. Because for better or worse, there's no voice chat, there sure as fuck is no text chat and taunts don't get much more offensive than someone doing the Carlton Dance. I'm almost sad there are no teenagers informing me about my mother's sexual antics.

I've put quite a few hours into Doom's multiplayer mode and I'm not going to quit anytime soon. The campaign is still great fun and I'm sure I'll appreciate having it with me when I have to go to London and Indianapolis for work this year. In the meanwhile, however, I might actually spend more time playing multiplayer than playing the campaign. I wasn't expecting to have so much fun with it, but it was absolutely worth it. Rend and Tear!