All you really need to know about this port is that it’s a very good port. Yes, it runs at 30 FPS and its quite low resolution but come on…do you really care that much about it? The entire game is here in all of its glory. It’s a perfectly competent porting effort.

Story

I’m aware there’s an entire lore to Doom but I have zero knowledge of it (and don’t really care too much of it). In this version of Doom, there is some semblance of a story (especially compared to the original) but it’s not particularly important or prominent throughout the course of the game. You can get by just fine without paying any attention to it.

Gameplay

Gameplay is enjoyable here; it’s a pretty intense shooter at times and dealing with that intensity is quite fun. One thing I want to highlight here is that this game is on the shorter side. I couldn’t get an exact measurement of the time I spent on the campaign (there should be an option for this!!!), but judging by the rough estimation on my Nintendo Switch profile it was in the neighbourhood of 15 hours. However! I think this game is of the right length. Because yes, it does get rather repetitive. By the time the fatigue of doing the same thing over and over again began to hit, I was nearing the end of the campaign. So all is good ✨.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack here is pretty well known. It’s a mixture of metal/electronic/ambient music and it’s amazing. Hellwalker  is probably my favourite piece here.

Graphics

I played through this game in handheld mode only; I didn’t play docked whatsoever. In handheld mode then, Doom looks quite nice. You can tell it’s running at a lower resolution than most games, but as long as you’re a normal distance away from the screen, it doesn’t really matter nor does it hinder your enjoyment of the game. If you look up close, the low resolution is quite apparent, though. But aside from the resolution, I think the VFX and lighting look really good. I’m perfectly satisfied in this department.

I’ll put some screenshots below and you will see the low resolution, but you’ll have to trust me that it looks better when you actually play the game.

Performance

I’ll touch on the default performance of the game first. It runs at fairly solid 30 FPS throughout, but there are some dips here and there. Sometimes, it did get particularly choppy but it was never anything offensive. It’s perfectly servicable out-of-the-box.

However, my Nintendo Switch is modded, so I can overclock it and increase the framerate cap. I tried a 60 FPS cap out of curiosity, and Doom will not run at that framerate unless you do a moderate overclock. I ran a moderate overclock and got closer to 60, not locked, in the region of 40-60 FPS. I feel like an average FPS in this manner would yield around 50 FPS. I actually preferred playing it this way, because there are moments where it feels much smoother to play. I’m sure you’ll get closer to the 60 FPS mark if you do a beefier overclock than what I did.

Another perk of modding my Switch is that I could check out the difference in performance between handheld and docked mode without docking at all. The short story is that if you want the better framerate, stick to handheld mode. Docked mode will get you better visuals, but the framerate does not increase anywhere near as much as in handheld mode. If you’re playing docked, you might want to change your Switch to handheld mode (using something like ReverseNX-RT ) for the better FPS.

Conclusion

I’m happy with this port. Visuals are competent, performance is fairly good (though I would prefer the overclock + unlocked framerate) and this is pretty much the entire Doom 2016 experience. No major problems here 👍.