Basically, with id Tech 7, id left behind the remnants of Megatexture embracing more tried and true methods. So what has changed? Well, aside from the resolution, the most significant departure lies in the textures. It's this need for such creative changes that I find most engaging. Panic Button needed to find a way to replicate the look of the original game within the constraints of the platform. This comes back to the concept of intelligent cuts. Yes, it's blurry as a result of the lower rendering resolution, but it's unmistakably Doom Eternal. As I stacked up various scenes between Switch and Xbox One X, I found that the port captured the look of the original: overall scene complexity, lighting and effects are mostly intact. In 2021, these low pixel counts are starting to feel somewhat incompatible with modern displays, especially on a 4K TV, which must surely be the major challenge the so-called Switch Pro is looking to address, but the presentation holds up more on the handheld screen, despite the big cuts in pixel count. In portable mode, 360p is a possibility while 612p is the maximum pixel count. In comparison, Wolfenstein: The New Colossus dropped as low as 360p when docked, so this is an improvement. In docked mode, Doom Eternal maxes out at 720p - just like those other titles - but can dip just under 540p when taxed. The average resolution, for instance, is comparable to Doom 2016 but generally retains a higher pixel count than the most ambitious Wolfenstein: The New Colossus. With Doom Eternal standing as the more technically ambitious game, then, I was pleasantly surprised with how it fares in comparison. Watch on YouTube The Digital Foundry video review of the Switch port of Doom Eternal. However, each port exhibited flaws including bad frame pacing and slowdown. Doom 2016 and the various Wolfenstein titles all very clearly deliver the gameplay and visual signature of the original versions albeit at a lower resolution and frame-rate. With its prior id Tech ports, I feel that Panic Button delivered good work in achieving these objects. If your port exhibits painfully long loading times, poor performance and a huge reduction of visual quality, it's not a good conversion. Even with a reduction in visual quality, the game should retain its visual identity while offering performance characteristics that avoid spoiling the fun. That's the key here - one can find such a port impressive and interesting while still acknowledging its shortcomings.įrom my perspective, the focus of a port like this should always centre around recreating key aspects of the game in question while making intelligent cuts. By extension, I can praise Panic Button's work here while knowing full well that it is best played on other systems. It was by far the least impressive version, yet the technological achievement in actually making it happen was simply immense. In fact, it calls to mind classic conversions like Quake for Sega Saturn. Of course, by any virtually any measurable criteria - bar power consumption, of course! - the Switch rendition of Doom Eternal is the least preferable way to play the game. In theory, this should make a potential Switch conversion of the game even more challenging than prior Panic Button ports of id Tech titles and yet, there's a good argument here in saying that this the talented developer's most impressive work yet. It's a game that really demonstrates the full potential of these machines, while laying the technological foundation for the next generation. We witnessed a boost in texture quality, geometry density and world scale. The id Tech 7 engine delivers exceptionally high-quality visuals at a smooth 60 frames per second across the full range of PlayStation and Xbox consoles. There's no question about it - Doom Eternal is a remarkably impressive technical achievement.
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