PAX Aus - Hands on with DOOM for Switch

Surprising me at the Nintendo booth was the chance to play the Switch version of DOOM, I honestly did not expect it to be there, but welcomed the chance to put this portable purge of hell fiends to the test.

DOOM on Switch can be summed up with its portable DOOM, there is nothing else you need to think about, the game is the same from the 2016 release. Starting off the play session from the beginning of the game, I could put into practice the games mechanics of running and shooting and it works. Each aspect of the games campaign has made the jump over and with the 15 minutes that I had played, it worked a treat, shooting was fast and responsive, with no lag of any kind and swapping between weapons was just as fast.

DOOM’s biggest addition was the fact that you could melee enemies at the right time and they would explode, in very gory fashion and leave behind lots of health or ammo for you to discover and again, here it works perfectly. Transitioning from running at an enemy and shooting him to then finishing him off with gore fuelled mayhem, was smooth, but most importantly fast, so when that enemy was defeated, I could turn my sights onto the next target. With rooms of enemies coming at you from all directions, this was one of the parts I was most worried about, so I am glad to see it working as it has in the other versions.

One part of the game that does concern me is the blur that appears to have been applied to it, it was there all the time. It was nothing like being blurry when you moved at speed or in transition, even standing still, there was a minor blur effect to what was being shown. This could be a conscious design choice, due to the limited power on offer, or it could be a by-product of early code, I honestly don’t know, but it stood out on the tv like nothing else. Removing the Switch from the dock and trying it there, did limit how much I noticed the blur, so for those keen on playing only in portable mode, it may not be an issue at all.

Given we are less than a month away from the games release, getting to try it out, helped sooth the concerns I had for the game and also makes me rest easy on next year’s Wolfenstein 2 release. Some people may disparage the visuals, but the ability to take one of 2016’s most action-packed games anywhere, is something that is hard to pass up. DOOM for Nintendo Switch is out on November 10th.