We'd just about gotten over the disappointment of the Switch port of WWE 2K18, which we awarded a generous 3/10 to back in December, but following a recent patch to the Switch version the lovely folks over at Digital Foundry have opened the wound again with one of their trademark comparison videos with the Xbox One version of the game. Guess what, it still isn't much better!

Naturally, comparing a port of a game running on the Switch versus the Xbox One is a bit like comparing apples to oranges - the Nintendo Switch is a portable gaming device which uses a mobile chipset, so we have to be realistic here. Many Switch ports have graphical downgrades, but we've seen how well the system can perform when the experience is tailored properly to the power available on the Switch - like with DOOM, for example.

So what do we learn from the video above? Basically, the Switch port of WWE 2K18 is complete trash. In the cutscenes it is noted that the graphics renderer is slowing down, so what is happening on the screen doesn't stay in sync with the audio. The character models feature laughably bad low resolution textures and lack shading underneath character's hair, which looks really terrible.

In docked mode during the cutscenes the Switch version runs at 20FPS and dips down to 13FPS at the worst. During a one-on-one match the framerate is around 25-30 FPS. All in all, this feels like a lazy port that doesn't do justice to the power available on the Switch, and we're sure it could have been much better had the game been ported more carefully.

If anything, this video reminded this humble scribe of PitFighter running on the SNES, an equally upsetting event from the 16-bit days. Needless to say, if you were thinking about picking up WWE 2K18 on the Switch, just don't.

[source youtube.com]