Doom Switch review: A colossal game, now portable

Nintendo Switch - £40 - Bethesda

Last year’s Doom was an unapologetic love-letter to those glorious shooters of years past, thrusting players immediately into the action, holding absolutely nothing back.

As a result, the PS4, PC and Xbox One version was heralded as an excellent modern shooter, offering gloomy landscapes, classic weapons, non-linear levels, and frantic gameplay.

Many fans have questioned whether the Switch can handle the game’s pace. While there are some frame-rate dips — the Switch version runs at 30 frames per second rather than 60 — Doom retains that fast-paced action we have all come to love.

Playing on the small screen, the game’s scope still feels huge, the Alien-indebted maps being consistently breathtaking. Having such a colossal game available on the move thanks to the console feels like a modern marvel.

With everything being pretty much in tact from the console version, perhaps the most frustrating part of Doom on Switch are the controls. There are some very fiddly button manoeuvres not really suited to to the Joy-Cons — the pro controller plays much better.

The other console versions are indisputably smoother; the Switch can’t help having inferior power under the hood. Yet, the differences are almost negligible for regular players, and the pros of being able to take such a huge game on the road outweigh those negatives. Just make sure you have enough memory because Doom’s four times bigger than Super Mario Odyssey.