Barkley said:
They fall short a lot in my expectations. Dropping to 360p is unacceptable. Their priority of maintaining graphical effects at the expense of resolution means I will never play the games they port. Their priorities are all wrong in my opinion, but they get praised. Eurogamer about Wolfenstein 2 - "We pixel counted a wide variety of shots from the docked mode, and came up with a whole host of results. Everything ranging from a top end of 720p to 1216x684 to 540p and 432p all the way down to 640x360. When played in portable mode, 768x432 and 640x360 are common pixel counts... When using docked mode on a 55-inch 4K TV, I found the game to be exceptionally blurry. Just like Doom before it" I couldn't stand to play them, though worth noting that eurogamer also praise the ports. I'd rather have it look like a PS3 game at 720p portable then try to be a ps4 game and drop to 360p. But for those that don't mind it, enjoy. It seems I'm in the minority that think Panic Button are terrible. Skyrim is an example of a switch port done right. |
Wolfenstein II was patched to boost the resolution; Panic Button have continued to update and improve all their Switch ports post-launch I believe.
Things like budget need to be taken into account; rebuilding the entire game with Switch-specific assets and effects, or even to "look like a PS3 game at 720p portable" would be an expensive process they likely cannot afford within the resources they're allotted.
Games like Doom 2016, Wolfenstein II, and Doom Eternal were designed to push the limits of hardware considerably more powerful than the Switch, so the fact it can run them at all in a playable and recognizable form is a credit to PB.
As freebs2 points out, Skyrim is a very different case as it's a lot easier to take a game originally designed for weaker hardware and spruce it up than it is to cram a high end PS4 game onto a mobile device, so it's an apples to oranges comparison.
