As announced during the QuakeCon 2019, Bethesda has finally brought the first three DOOM on the current console generation. You can buy them on digital stores at the price of 5 € for the first two and of 10 € for the third.
These ports were created to celebrate the 25 years of DOOM and have been looked after by Nerve (the first two) and from Panic Button (the third). Their purpose was to reproduce the feeling of the first 3 Dooms on consoles with modern hardware.
The first two titles were among the most important games of the whole industry, and turn out to be real milestones for the genre of FPS (first person shooter), which in fact at the beginning were simply called DOOM-like. Nowadays they remain one of the main reference points for any game of the genre, mainly because of theirs speed and theirs accessibility.
Il at first Death in particular it was among the first games around which a real one was created competitive scene, and it wasn't even hard for people to approach it at least once, as it existed in test format on most PCs that were running Windows at the time.
DOOM 3 instead, with his cutting-edge graphics and its atmospheres dark and frightening, surprised the whole market at the time, going to renew the standards of the genre again and once again guiding FPS into the future.
These titles are, ultimately, gods industry giants, and they deserve mind-blowing ports in such a way that their value can be preserved even for years to come.
Nerve e Panic Button will they then succeed in the venture? Let's go and find out together in this review.
Updating: E 'news a few days ago the release of one patch for all platforms of all the titles covered in this review, which finally allow you to play them offline, greatly improving the qualities of the ports on Switch and Mobile, but does not particularly affect the PlayStation 4 version.
Additionally, Bethesda has announced that there are plans for improve the titles (in particular for the problems caused by logging in to Bethesda.net, which from now on is only optional).
The ports and the potential of modern consoles
One of the purposes of this port was precisely to be able to make the most of the potential of console of new generation. But does it succeed?
The answer varies according to the game we consider: for the first two DOOM it is definitely a "No", While for the Third one can say nothing but"Yes".
The work done by Nerve is definitely insufficient from this point of view: the game has many problems per quanto riguarda the resolution, which presents serious defects especially in the image quality And in the contours. Often the enemies will appear squat and squashed above and below, and the same goes for the face of the DOOM Guy.
But not only that: the game will turn out to have too fluency problems caused by the FPS block to a maximum of 35.
There are also serious graphical problems with the texture, which often turn out to be grainy and in low quality.
Disastrous is also theusing the pad in the title: already at the DOOM release it gave a certain feeling of "slipperiness“, But with the pad and exaggerated sensitivity date him the problem only gets worse.
We have often had difficulties in shooting e in the movement in general, without mentioning the fact that such a high sensitivity combined with the slipperiness of the controls has a good chance of causing real phenomena of motion sickness to the player.
The bad choice - in this case for all three games - of is also very serious apply for a mandatory Bethesda.net membership, therefore needing to have a continuous internet connection to be able to play. This problem is particularly felt on very portable consoles like the Nintendo Switch and mobile devices, and will go for this to negatively affect on the evaluation of each of the three ports.
With regard to DOOM performance 3, on the other hand, we did not encounter any particular problems, on the contrary, in the version we tested on PlayStation 4 the frame rate was maintained fixed at 60 FPS even in very hectic contexts.
THEexcellent game graphics was fully enhanced by the work of Panick Button, resulting still enjoyable even today.
An original experience only partially maintained
From the point of view of the gameplay we have already seen some problems regarding the first two chapters, but the situation will get even worse when we go to consider their sound side.
Starting from Soundtrack, in fact, we will notice how they have undergone a sort of slowdown: they will not be completely unlistenable, but they will still turn out to have been disfigured than the originals.
This problem even affects the general audio sector: all sounds appear distorted or muffled, managing to give a different feeling to the players who have grown up with these two titles.
But the thing that definitively ruins the experience of these historical chapters is the complete absence of the famous multiplayer compartment online courses we told you about in the introduction. However, there is a modality local multiplayer, but it does not even remotely compensate for this very serious lack
DOOM 3, on the other hand, it manages to offer an experience far better compared to the other. Panic Button has managed to perfectly capture the essence of the title, and playing it in this version will give you an experience how much more similar than the original one.
The verdict
These ports of Doom, as you will have understood by now at this point, they didn't convince us from almost any point of view.
The work of Nerve it turned out in fact disappointing e not even remotely representative of the original experience, failing even in being able to take advantage of the new generation consoles to be able to return an experience fedele but also improved of the two titles.
I ported to DOOM 1 e 2 per PlayStation 4 they are not even worth the price they are sold for, managing to fail in a simple task that many fans have previously managed to successfully replicate.
The situation is different with regards to the work of Panic Button, which turned out to be instead of good workmanship He is able to best represent the original titlewhile also being able to leverage the hardware of modern consoles to ensure an experience smoother and more enjoyable than ever.
For all 3, moreover, there is the negative note of not being able to take advantage of the portability of certain peripherals, going to lower even more the quality of the overall work of the two software houses.
