Topic: DOOM

@rallydefault Noooooooooooo!!!!!!!

Breaking it up with puzzles would have totally ruined what this is. It is a constant ensuing battle from start to finish to a Trent Reznor inspired hard soundtrack. It is absolutely perfect at what it’s set out to achieve.

Any puzzle sections and aimless wandering would have ruined the pace and ultimately spoilt the game. In my opinion of course 😜

Finished the main campaign early this morning. Such a great game and some memorable moments. Mario Odyssey or LA Noire next...hmmm?

@KingSandyRavage
Yea, I just have to disagree. The action is great and all, but it got tedious for me by the end. If it's going to be all action (like it is), I could've done with 2 fewer stages, honestly. That would've been the perfect length for me.

But see, I've always thought of DOOM as an fps with lots of exploration. I remember playing the original DOOM with my friend on his PC back in the 90s, and yea, there was lots of gunplay, but there was also lots of backtracking and secret-finding and even some tricky jump sections if you wanted to find something cool. And yes, I know that this game has some of the that stuff if you seek it out, but in general this iteration is much more streamlined and funnels you from arena to arena.

Just played some more DOOM on Switch this morning.

I'm really kinda disappointed they didn't get the res higher. It's my one, ever present nagging complaint about this game (well, the sound bug needs fixing too, hurry up with that patch already). The game looks fine enough, they just cranked that res down a little too low for my liking.

On handheld it's ok. Still low, but ok. But on the TV I could barely even read the words in the menus. I both love this game and feel disappointed at the same time, just because I think they could've done better. I think this game could run 720p locked, and 900p on the TV. That would've been acceptable. Same for Rocket League.

Which, don't get me wrong I'm grateful for both of these games on Switch and they both play well enough, and I'm having a crap load of fun. But the more I dwell on this the more I feel like Panic Button has really dropped the ball. Even Skyrim, an open world game, had acceptable res. Sure it was a 7th gen game but like Zelda, it's open world. And given this game is running with primitive textures (no textures, even), you would think they wouldn't need to lower the resolution to such a great extent. It just seems like that's their one go-to trick that they have in their bag. I mean, you can get any game to run if you lower the resolution enough. That's not really a sign of skill.

I think Bethesda needs to contract someone else for Wolf II. I'll be happy with the game regardless just because I can have it on a handheld, but I suspect that in the right hands, more could be done.

@JaxonH I don't know if I trust anyone else but Panic Button tbh. We saw how bad the devs for Rime did. You really think PB didn't do everything they could to maximize Doom for the Switch? Remember sacrifices had to be made to make sure the whole game runs well on the system and from what is being said higher difficulty settings really kill the frame rate. Just imagine that same frame rate with a higher resolution.

Plus I'm not sure what your settings on your tv are but I'm pretty sure you have a 4k and Doom looks better on my tv then on the handheld.

@Spoony_Tech
RIME was poorly coded and ran like crap on every console, even Xbox One X and Pro. A classic example of how poor skill with development can make a game run worse than it should.

I don't think Panic Button did a bad job, but when I'm playing the game it looks so simplified, no textures... how can this game not maintain 720p with such simplified visuals? And I think a more skilled studio could have done a bit better. And the reason I think that is because of Rocket League. If it was just DOOM, maybe not. But the fact they even scaled down Rocket League to 540p is mindblowing. That game should definitely look a lot better than it does. Just seems they are the only developers out there that have to resort to lowering the resolution so low. I find that a tad coincidental.

I think given the right set of hands, with more tricks in the bag than just cranking the resolution down- it could at least hit 720p. I'm OK with 720p, which looks sharp as heck actually. But these games dipping down into the 500s and doing which dips even below that... I don't know man. I think someone could've done a better job. Maybe it wouldn't have been a drastic difference but if they could've just hit 720p instead of averaging 600p (average meaning it dips even lower) I would be more than happy. But even the menus are so blurry I can't read the text. And I'm thinking why on earth would the menus not be 1080p, or at least 720p... Know what I mean?

And don't take me wrong- I think the game is very fun and I'm having a blast with it. But the more I think about this, the more I'm convinced that better optimization could have hit 720p.

@JaxonH I don't know if you saw the digital foundry video but they struggled to get the resolution as high as Panic Button did using a PC with equivalent power. The Rocket League one is a bit strange as the split screen mode in table top looks sharper than just a single screen. Perhaps they simply had too much work to get both of these games out so close to one another.

It'll be interesting to see if we get any updates from them for these 2 games, though I think Rocket League looks fine on the TV and I dont actually mind the handheld looks. Having played this on Vita using remote play the Switch version is a breath of fresh air

@carlos82
I saw it. But keep in mind they simply ran the game from PC. No optimization. No work involved whatsoever. Now imagine having a team of professional developers working on it every single day for an entire year with the specific goal of optimizing the game to run as good as possible, changing code, adjusting settings you can't access on a PC user interface level... They most certainly should be able to get it running better than just dumping the game on a PC with low settings.

And ya, DOOM and Rocket League look good enough to play. I'm sinking hours in the both of them. But I think they could both look better. I refuse to believe that 600p and below is the absolute best they can get out of these two games. I refuse to believe that blurry text in the menu to the point you can't even read it is the best they can do. That, to me, is evidence that points towards them doing a quick and dirty job. Even if they couldn't get the game running better, you would think they would at least take the time to sharpen the menu images. So... it's all of this evidence combined. The fact the text in the menus is nearly unreadable- the fact we have a serious audio glitch they still have not patched, the fact both games dip to absurdly low resolutions to run... and the fact no other game on the system has had to resort to such low res. Only Panic Button games.

And as grateful as I am for having these games- and I am very satisfied with Rocket League in particular, I still question Panic Button. The evidence is piling up too high. I look at NBA 2K18, I look at Skyrim, even LA Noire and FIFA 18 (if FIFA 18 can hit 1080p how does Rocket League hit 1/10 of that squared pixel count)

@JaxonH I'll agree that Skyrim is definitely the elephant in the room here because that looks simply fantastic on Switch, which made me laugh when the Rime developer's came out with their game is too big excuse. FIFA though looks a bit basic and has a fixed camera and I think even on the bigger consoles it has to halve its framerate with the action cam.

Hopefully we will see some updates for the audio bug and performance, do we know if the Wolfenstein port is being done by these guys because I worry a bit about that, especially as it doesn't maintain 60 fps on any console as Doom did.

Maybe Nintendo should do some of the ports because their games are pure witchcraft which seem to defy any logic

@carlos82
It's in Nintendo's best interest to ensure these ports are top quality. And you don't have to have 60 frames per second or 1080p to hit the basic standard of quality people expect. A stable 30fps with 720p would do just fine. But I'm getting to a point where I feel like anything less than that is kind of unacceptable, even if the games are still fun to play and even if I will still buy them.

Nintendo sent me a survey about DOOM about a week ago. All kinds of questions like what I enjoyed in the game and what I did not enjoy and whether I bought a system for the game. I think they're using these ports to help bring in other gamers- but they're not going to do that if they can't at least get the res up to scratch.

@JaxonH You could see it that way or you could see it as current gen exclusive games in general being the issue, Switch is weaker than the original XB1 after all. What we'd need to see either way is a big 3rd party current gen exclusive (not on last gen consoles at all unlike your examples) which doesn't feature Panic Button.

@JaxonH Skyrim looks good but also dated. It clearly looks last gen to me whereas Doom was never intended to be on last gen systems. Now like was said NBA and FIFA only has to have a limited field of vision rendered instead of a big open world.

It's amazing they even got Doom running as good as they did and as time goes by they will get better at optimizing for the Switch.

@Spoony_Tech
Well like I said I really don't find it all that amazing they got it running, because you can get any game to run if you crank the resolution down far enough. The game practically almost ran on its own on a PC with similar settings, and that was running 720p without dynamic res- it's almost as if Panic Button simply ported the code, stripped the textures and dropped the res until it ran, without any further optimization whatsoever. As much as they downscaled everything I really don't see it is that impressive. Looking at the finished, downscaled game, there are far better looking games on the system with much higher res. Had it had medium settings and quality textures... I would find it to be very amazing. They didn't even bother to get the text in the menus into a readable state. It's blurry as heck... just reeks of minimal effort.

I do hope they get better though. My fear is they will just continue using resolution as the go-to sacrifice to get games to run. I can understand using it as one of the tools, but there should be a minimum standard to which they say OK, that's as far as we're taking this- now we need to find other ways to get the rest of the performance needed.

I hope whoever did Skyrim does Wolf 2. But I'm preparing myself for another Panic Button game that plays in the 500p range. Just by nature of Switch, it's going to be the most impressive FPS on handheld to date. That is beyond question. But it could be even more impressive.

@Grumblevolcano
Just seeing how well other ports fare is enough for me. Capcom with Resident Evil Revelations 2 running full 1080p and is a real looker.

Questions guys. I don’t play multiplayer at all on doom. Not a big multiplayer fan. Can I delete that initial update it has about 7.7GB of data on my switch. It’s just wasted space as far as I can tell. If I delete that now will it mess up anything else on the game?

@Qwertyninty You can but there's no telling if there was a day one patch in that dl that will allow single player to run better. You can try then if you notice it runs worse dl it again. Plus if you do delete it from what I here you can only play in Airplane mode to avoid the game demanding the dl.

@Qwertyninty
Spoony is right.

You can delete the patch, but you'll lose the day one update (not sure how much it helped honestly) and need to set it to airplane mode to get past the update screen.

Personally I'd just leave it installed. If space is that big an issue, 32gb microSD cards are on sale for $10. Heck, 128gb cards were $28.50. I'd make the investment. It's a good investment to make.

Yeah I’m just going to leave it. Not a big deal. I just never play online so it felt like a waste of space.

Anyone else frustrated with bugs in this game with no patch in sight? I'm almost afraid to start a new level knowing I may run into one of those annoying audio bugs that completely ruin the experience for me. I just wish Bethesda or Panic Button would acknowledge that a patch is indeed in the works. Has anyone heard anything?

Had some good games last night

@Undead_terror Nice, I should try the multiplayer at some point