Panic Button received widespread recognition and praise for their excellent port of Doom 2016 to the Switch. They’re back again with the Switch port of Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, one of the current console generation’s most technically demanding games. Digital Foundry judged the Wolf 2 port a superior technical achievement which it clearly is. However, the sacrifices that were needed to run the game on the Switch’s limited hardware raise the question of whether Wolf 2 is worth playing on Nintendo’s console.
Preserving the Wolfenstein II experience . . .
Wolf 2 is a game with long set pieces that are dense with visual detail and rich with atmosphere. One way to handle cutting it back for the Switch would be to preserve performance and resolution as much as possible by breaking up the set pieces into individually loading segments, simplifying the underlying geometry and thus cutting back on the detail, and eliminating visual effects and hence atmosphere. Panic Button took a different approach.
Set pieces on the Switch play out just as they do on other platforms. There are no additional load times because lengthy gameplay sequences have been broken up into shorter segments. This alone is a striking technical achievement given the Switch’s limited memory.
Almost all of the detail in Wolf 2’s visually dense environments remains in place on the Switch. Panic Button did cut back on geometry, but they did it by subtly (and occasionally not so subtly) rebuilding scenes. For example, in the picture shown above, windows on the submarine that are open on other platforms are closed on the Switch. A not-so-subtle example comes at the beginning of the segment set in New York. When you first land, you can look back over a richly detailed vista of the area where you arrived. This vista is blocked out by a wall on the Switch.
Panic Button took a similar approach to most of the visual effects that give a game substance and atmosphere. Volumetric lighting, ambient occlusion, shadowing, particle and alpha effects, and object blur are all present on the Switch. In all cases, these effects are cut back in one way or another to reduce processor load but the fact that they haven’t been completely removed gives Wolf 2 much the same feel on the Switch as it has on other platforms. (If some technical terms are unfamiliar, check out this guide.)
Performance on the Switch is also remarkably good. Wolf 2 targets 60 fps on other platforms but the Switch has no hope of running at such a high frame rate. Instead, frame rate is capped at 30 fps and the Switch hits the target for much of the game. Digital Foundry points out that the New Orleans segment is an exception with much of the extended street battle playing out between 20 and 25 fps. That’s a worst-case scenario, however.
. . . at the cost of overall visual quality
Capturing the experience of Wolfenstein II is one thing, capturing it in a way that looks good is another. The Switch port has serious visual shortcomings.
To begin with, resolution is very low. Wolf 2 uses dynamic resolution scaling to maximize frame rate at the expense of resolution. The highest resolution Digital Foundry observed was 720p (1280 x 720). That was the best, and when viewed on a large screen with the Switch docked, it’s not good. The dynamic scaling solution produced lower resolutions of 624p, 540p and 432p. The lowest resolution Digital Foundry recorded was 640 x 360 with the Switch docked.
When undocked, resolution was generally worse and 768 x 432 and 640 x 360 were common. Digital Foundry characterized Wolf 2 on the Switch as “a very blurry game” and as possibly “the lowest resolution game of this generation thus far.”
In addition to low resolution, Wolf 2 on the Switch has markedly lower quality textures and texture filtering than it does on other platforms. Check out the boy’s hair in the picture at the top of the article. Shadows are noticeably softer and less defined. The low grade ambient occlusion solution produces stippling and streaking instead of smooth shadow gradations.
Playing undocked on the Switch’s small screen reduces the negative impact of these reductions in visual quality. However, the small screen can’t offset the way water looks in the game. It’s not good.
Conclusion
If you’re into game technology, it’s impossible not to admire Panic Button’s Wolfenstein II Switch port. It’s easy to imagine a developer looking at Wolf 2 running on a PC or Xbox One X and hitting the panic button while saying, “forget it, there’s no hope” when asked to port the game to the Switch. Panic Button ignored the panic button and produced a port that does a good job of capturing the essence of the experience of playing Wolfenstein II on a more powerful platform.
Capturing the experience came at the cost of a severe reduction in visual quality, however. It’s hard to recommend playing Wolfenstein II on the Switch if you can play it on a PC, PS4 or Xbox One. Of course, if you want to play on a hand-held, you have no other choice.
Panic Button’s port of Wolfenstein II for the Switch is a remarkable technical achievement. Whether it’s a game worth playing on the Switch is something every player will have to decide for herself.
If you’re interested in the Switch, here are some more articles you might enjoy.
- Can ‘Fortnite’ Handle Cross-Platform Play On The Switch?
- Taking A Look At ‘Dark Souls Remastered’ For Nintendo’s Switch
- Taking A Realistic View On Porting Games To Nintendo’s Switch
- ‘Get Ready To Stumble!’ The Switch Port Of ‘WWE 2K18′ Goes Down For The Count
- ‘Bayonetta’s Arrival On The Switch Is An Unqualified Success
- Comparing The Original And Patched Versions of ‘Doom” On Nintendo’s Switch
