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AngryLittleAlchemist on 01 December 2020
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curl-6 said:
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

@Bolded Can we really consider these games as pushing the hardware of those systems? It's weird. When a game is really well optimized and pushes some technological innovations, like Doom Eternal does with iD Tech 7 for example, I guess you could say it pushes innovation. But I don't really think that's what people mean when they say it pushes a console, no? We can at least make the excuse for Doom Eternal that technically it running and looking better than Doom 2016 on the same base hardware platforms is counterbalanced by the fact that it's on a new engine which maybe less optimized for Switch, thus making the port even more impressive despite the game already running better on the same weak hardware known as the Playstation 4 and Xbox One. Doom 2016 and Wolfenstein II though, I don't think there's any excuse for saying those were designed to "push the limits of hardware considerably more powerful". They were designed for hardware that was considerably more powerful, yes, but they didn't push the limits of that hardware. And I'm not even saying that because they're  60fps, because adding that contextualization just makes Doom Eternal more impressive on the PS4/Xbox One, but Doom 2016 and Wolfenstein II? Eh. And on Switch Eternal had half the framerate to work with, and probably about half the resolution, too. 

I think all of these ports are pretty impressive, mind you. Just ... saying that 2/3 of those games are made to push the limits of hardware considerably more powerful seems odd. My medum-end PC gaming specs (which include a GPU from 2014 and a CPU from 2015) match the recommended specs for Doom Eternal, and that's on PC where games aren't tailor-made for specific hardware configurations. Again in Eternal's case it's probably just godly optimization, but still. 

Last edited by AngryLittleAlchemist - on 01 December 2020