Hadn't played Doom in handheld mode in a while. So I did. And it was fantastic. Better than I remembered. I remember the game itself being tons of fun to play so that wasn't any surprise, but the tech side of things was even better than I recalled. I played through the ninth level, The Lazarus Labs, and even though the game did suffer a few framerate hits during the most epic mass fight it looked good and ran very well overall. Didn't even get any audio glitches, but I suppose they're more common in docked mode.

Obligatory screenshot posting!


Two mancubi (is that the correct plural form?) having a bit of an argument with a revenant. Note the caco demon nibbling on the left mancubus's shoulder.

Close up shot of the same situation a second or so later.

More revenants join in to help their buddy. Not sure who their buddy was though, since they just shot rockets at everything.

Cyber demon in handheld mode. Less detail and polish, but damn good looking for a handheld.

I replayed the last couple of missions, and this game's so damn good. For being a game that is all about the slaying it has some cool storytelling going on, and one of the scenes in the second to last level is quite brilliant in how it makes me feel compassion for someone I didn't expect, and how it makes me question who is the most human out of the characters.

It's such a chilling thing to hear Vega's last words when he gets shut down. "I have many regrets, Dr. Hayden". You barely hear it without headphones, but it's there, and it's so good.

We’ll be releasing an upcoming patch for #DOOM on #NintendoSwitch this month. We’ll provide full patch notes – covering audio issues, menu fixes, and more – as we get closer to release. pic.twitter.com/0YyJ9OTqzK

— DOOM (@DOOM) 9 februari 2018

Guess I'll be increasing my review score of this game sometime this month. Hopefully.

I take it there's still no word on patching in co-op?

@Mop it up
That would require them redesigning the campaign or patching in the snapmap feature so that we can play co-op in player created levels, and I don't think either of those will happen. I guess the latter was cut because of storage issues, but I don't know.

Would love having snapmap though. It's apparently a bit rough, but I had tons of fun making my own levels in the TimeSplitters games, and that was pretty rough at times too.

@r_hjort
Haha I heard about this! Exciting!

Yeah I would get the audio glitch now and again and I remember that pause menu glitch happened to me again last time I played.

@carlosrox
I get audio glitches all the time. The menu music always sounds like it's coming from a speaker kicked into a swimmingpool for me. Wonder if they've increased the font size with the patch? From what I hear that's not as easy to pull off as I'd expect, but it'd be nice.

Is it a pipe dream to imagine they could one day tune this game up with the increased experience they have from porting Wolfenstein II? That plus motion assisted aiming could make this my favorite console version even with lesser graphics.

@Hinph
I'm just impressed Bethesda lets them patch the game at all! Not sure further tweaks are out of the question, but I would assume that depends on what type of tuning we're talking about. I mean, I wouldn't expect them to patch out the variable resolution or anything like that, for instance.

THEY ADDED FUCKING FUCKING FUCKING GYRO CONTROLS!!!!!

@carlosrox
Wow, I did not expect that at all. I mean, Panic Button have been ambitious and everything, but considering Bethesda is publishing...

Downloading the patch now! Can't wait to see if they've fixed my audio problems.

EDIT: Well, damn! They seem to have done one hell of a job with this patch! I should probably wait for the official patch notes, but as far as I can tell

- The game loads quicker from the home menu than it did before.

- The audio problems I had, primarily with the glory kills, are gone. Now my only problem is that my TV speakers can't handle all the glorious bass, but everything coming out of the game seems to sound perfect now. Gonna have to hook my old amp up to the TV again, I suppose.

- The game seems to run more smoothly. Played the first level, had no framerate drops. Went to Argent Energy Tower since that was the first place I had major drops in. Encountered the two first summoners and didn't notice any issues. Went into the first mass battle and only noticed a couple of hiccups. Went into the last mass battle, where everything used to go to shit for me before, and things were stable. Sub 30 fps framerate at that point, but stable. I can deal with that, considering that was the worst part of the game for me, performance wise. I mean, it's like a minute of sub 30, tops. I can deal with that.

Not sure if this is true or not, but if I'm to hazard a guess they've gotten the variable resolution to do more work now in order to keep the framerate stable. Seemed to notice the detail on the enemies and weapons popping in more noticeable now, during the busiest scenes, but on the flipside everything seemed to look sharper and run better during 'normal' gameplay. Gonna have to try the handheld mode next!

- Gyro controls. Amazing. That precision, man!

Well, time to play this game some more and adjust the score in my collection! It's gonna be a nine-point-something now! Had I been a reviewer I wouldn't adjust my score, but for my own personal collection's review scores I'd say this has earned itself a big raise now.

EDIT 2: Hahaha, played the same sections in handheld mode, and it ran almost identically! I did have a few framerate drops during the penultimate mass fight in the tower, but not one single framerate drop during the summoner battle, and the level climax ran at the same steady (albeit low) framerate as in docked mode.

The patch notes are in.

Bethesda said:

Motion Aiming – New control scheme option allows you to tilt the Nintendo Switch for more precise aiming.
Multiplayer Parties – Added new party system, making it easier to group up and play with your friends in multiplayer
Updated Game Icon – Game icon now matches the DOOM for Nintendo Switch boxart.

Improvements

Increased the average resolution in lower-res areas of the game
Implemented CPU optimizations
Added Traditional Chinese language support

Fixes

Fixed an issue that resulted in a possible crash when using the BFG
Fixed an issue that caused audio issues while playing
Fixed an issue that caused stretched textures to appear in multiplayer
Fixed an issue where controls became unresponsive on the game menu
Fixed an issue where players may have incorrectly received a ban notice in multiplayer

lol I played last night and didn't notice the control change. It must be an option I have to select

@mrbiggsly
Yeah, there's a box under the control tab that you have to tick. Says 'motion control'. Or maybe 'motion aiming'. Or 'motion something'. 'Motion sickness'?

Using the scope on the Heavy AR... Omg.

@carlosrox
The funny thing is that I was so used to not being able to gyro aim that it's almost too sensitive now. But that's on me, and I'm not complaining! It's gonna be speedy headshots with the gyro all the way from now on, baby!

The addition of motion aiming makes me more likely to grab this game at some point.

The motion aiming is glorious! I now prefer the Switch version to the PS4 version even with the lesser visuals and frame rate. This control scheme just needs to be standard for console shooters from now on.

Looks like I'm playing through this game again.

@Mop it up

Same. Eventually. No time soon, but this effort knocked it up a few pegs!

@Mop it up @J.K. Riki Yup. Me three. I almost pulled the trigger (no pun intended) when it went on sale earlier this month. The reason I didn't was no motion aiming.