Nintendo are known for being pretty cookie cutter especially with most of their newer generations of consoles and devices. Wholesome family fun is more what comes to mind, I suppose. That is why, I, and probably a horde of people that own the Nintendo Switch were running down the streets cheering when we found out big triple A titles such as Skyrim, L.A Noire, Wolfenstein and yes DOOM were being added to the roster. How does a legendary title like DOOM on Switch stack up this holiday season?

Now, it is the same reboot of the original game as the title released in 2016, so a lot of details I may skim across such as plot and gameplay, because I might be a reviewer, but I am also a smart worker. Read the previous review for the full low down on DOOM (2016) by Bethesda.

The first thing clearly different in this port over is the fact the map maker is missing. NO big deal for me as I want DOOM for kicking demon’s heads in, not for building, I’d go to Sims 4 (**cough** Nintendo get onto that). However, it does take an aspect away from the community feeling of making and sharing that both DOOM and Nintendo hold so highly.

While the Map maker is missing the Campaign that includes an Arcade mode and Multiplayer is still there. The campaign is exactly the same as other console versions and Arcade enables you to replay levels on harder difficulties to beat leaderboards.. and earn that sweet respect. Multiplayer, however, was a bit of a miss affair. Sometimes I couldn’t find a game and sat in the lobby by myself for ages. Sometimes after a ridiculously long time it would find only enough people for a 2 v 2 in a 12-man lobby. Also, an annoying feature of the online play is the fact the match making is random, so this level 1, would get her ass handed to her by the three-other level 50’s over and over again, as they were the only ones the game could find. I’m just going to blame aussie servers, it’s always the ‘very lacking’ aussie servers.

But multiplayer, who buys DOOM for multiplayer. The masses bought DOOM to kick demonic, Hell spawn booty, and that is where this game really shines. The graphics are fairly decent, if not brilliant for the power the Switch outputs in both hand-held mode and docked on a screen. While there is some blur and very minor screen tears on the big screen, it definitely held its own quite well which I didn’t expect.

The music is still so atmospheric with the dope sounds of the famous, Australian, composer Mick Gordon blasting even from the small but impressive speakers of the Switch.

Gameplay wise, I found it easier to play with a controller in the dock. While it wasn’t impossible, and it actually played quite well in hand held mode most times, sometimes the angling of how I sat would throw the character off and the width of the analogue sticks at times made it hard to click in for some of those sweet glory kills. However it was easy to pick up and became quite easy to play.

One of my only criticisms are the really small text and the loading of levels took longer than I would of liked, with the latter not being a huge issue as once in the level you didn’t need to wait for any different areas to materialise.

DOOM is an essential run and gun game for anyone who is a fan of shooters. Being ported over to the Nintendo Switch, it has shown to run pretty well and hold some sort of candle to most visually high performing consoles. With so much of the original content still included, to me it is one of the best shooters available currently on Switch. May the DOOM guy be forever in your favour.

Written by: Stacey