Doom II (Classic) (Nintendo Switch) Review

For those who've read Cubed3's review of the Switch port of Doom, there's no point in wasting your time with re-explaining what this is all about. Doom II is essentially an expansion of the first title - one that adds a couple of new enemies, the slow-but-powerful double-barrelled shotgun, and new levels to kill pixelated demons on. Just note that, while the additional content is great, the level design is a few steps behind Doom in terms of quality, as it lacks the elegant balance that the 1993 classic had, with a couple of stages even being more boring than fun - but don't let anyone tell you that this is a bad game. It's just that it is somewhat overshadowed by its slightly older brother.

As for the port at hand, it's pretty much the same thing all over again - in other words, a solid transition to the Switch, and so on, but at the same time, a tad disappointing. It plays, looks, and sounds alright, but if looking for the best console version of Doom II this isn't it. For starters, "purists" will be sad to learn that some of its content has been cut for censorship reasons. It's silly to complain about the disappearance of a few Swastikas, and in a level that's actually a secret one? Possibly, but it's equally silly to include a portrait of Hitler without his ridiculous moustache, when the Switch includes titles like Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus...

Moving on, when playing in 16:9 aspect ratio the two textured borders are kept were they are, and the whole stretching thing isn't even applied correctly, as everything has become a bit shorter, with the Doomguy's portrait looking as if "crushed" from the weight of what is happening on-screen. Oh, and this also runs by using Unity as its frontend, which is probably why it tends to eat battery life somewhat faster than what you would expect from such a light piece of software. Add to that the fact that the, originally, tiny midi soundtrack, is now a 100+ Mb re-recording, and it's hard not to start scratching your head over what Nerve was thinking when it started porting this.

Things are better when you take the amount of content you are buying for such a tiny price tag. Apart from Doom II you are getting the Master Levels pack of stages, and by logging to a Bethesda account, one can download similar add-on packages, like the two Final Doom megawads, the fun-made, The Plutonia Experiment and TNT: Evilution. For those into the multiplayer aspect of Doom, it's not possible to play online, but at least you can enjoy split-screen co-op and deathmatch for up to four players, with co-op being particularly satisfying. All in all, great fun, coupled by a great price, even if the port could be better.