Anyone reading this watch the YouTuber TomSka? He's the creator of the ASDFMovie series as well as funny shorts like Baby With a Gun and Meanwhile. Definitely check his stuff out.
When I was thinking of writing about this game, one of his animated shorts came to mind. It had him and JackSepticEye going against each other in an increasingly ridiculous game of Russian Roulette.
Imagine that short as a video game, but with both idiots on the table shooting each other/themselves and surviving...and with a shotgun.
What you have is Buckshot Roulette- set up in a secret room above a nightclub somewhere in the world, you pit yourself against...
...whatever the hell that low-res abomination is... in a 1v1 duel of blanks and buckshot. However, death doesn't come easy. Both you and the abomination are strapped to defibs that will (somehow) bring you back to life after getting shot. Take too many fatal hits and the game is over. If you beat the abomination, you walk away with a score based on how you did and a suitcase full of money, probably heading to Disney World.
You have to beat him in three rounds. The first plays it straight (as straight as blasting chunks of brain matter and still surviving can be), then round two makes everything spicier when items start to come into play. Things like handcuffs, beer, cigarettes and knives can be used by either player to their advantage to preserve their lives or royally screw each other over. And you can use more than one per turn too. I'll let you folks figure the math out on that.
Though any thrill seekers like me playing this for the first time may find the intensity getting taken out after dying in round two. I'd imagined having to start all over from the beginning after I died, only to find out after blasting through those doors again and starting back on round two like nothing ever happened. There isn't any serious punishment for dying until the final round, where both players' defibrillators are cut off. If killed off at that point, THEN you have to start all over again at round one.
But that's nothing but a tutorial. That stuff's easy mode for what I consider the REAL game.
In the bathroom where you start, there is a pill bottle that you can interact with on the sink. Taking the bottle starts the game's survival mode- where the REAL ACTION is at. Items are available at the start of the game and after three rounds, the game will invite you to go "Double or nothing?" It turns into an arcade game going for a higher score and going as far as possible before dying or calling it quits. Unfortunately, there are no online leaderboards, so the bragging rights are limited down to old fashioned screencaps and anyone interested in the game.
I'd recommend giving this game a shot- it's cheap as dirt for only a buck twenty on Mike Klubnika's Itch.io page:
I'm going to be quite busy for a while with these games, so it'll probably be a while before I get something fully written up. In the meantime, I will be posting various gameplay clips on my YouTube channel, starting with this one of the Joker beating up, stunning and shooting various representatives of Arkham Asylum's most elite security!
Portal 64 is NOT a graphics mod that change the PC game's visuals more akin to what can be seen on the Nintendo 64. In fact, it is an actual remake/demake of Valve's first person puzzler being made from the ground up for Nintendo 64 hardware.
Since March 2022, designer James Lambert has been chronicling its development on his personal YouTube channel and sharing in-progress builds of the game on GitHub. His latest build was released at the end of last year, which has the first thirteen tests fully playable on top of other graphical enhancements among other improvements and fixes.
I've given it a playthrough and was quite impressed with how much he has gotten done with the project so far. So impressed, that despite playing the game through the Project64 emulator, I can not believe some of what it can do COULD be done through hardware from far back into the mid-to-late nineties.
The portals can actually show the environment through the opening's view, even display your character as seen as early on from waking up in your living chambers. Physics from storage cubes and flying in and out of portals feel strangely in line to how they act in the original game. In fact, I don't think I've even had to wait for it load ONCE, or if it did, it was unnoticable. Other ports of Portal I've played like on Xbox 360 or Switch had to stop and load several times for up to ten seconds.
Is this how people reacted to Doom on the Switch? This cannot be happening...
Yet I've seen videos online that visually show this running on ACTUAL Nintendo 64 hardware. It's insane just what Lambert can do with just a little tech wizardry to make something like Portal 64 actually possible. I've watched some of his diaries on YouTube going into some of the developmental tricks to get it all to work and I still can't wrap my head around it. It's the kind of work that should land him a job at Valve, for real (or for retro sakes, Nightdive).
Portal 64 is still in development- experiments to run and there's research to be done- and has recently set up a Patreon to help fund further work on the game. I've placed links to this as well as his YouTube and GitHub pages below for anyone wanting to check it out and give him some support. I wish huge success for James Lambert and for Portal 64. Hopefully a delicious polygonal cake that is anything BUT a lie.
In my prior post about the Switch port of Doom 2016, I had put one of my videos where I ran through the first level of Doom 1993. It was one of thirteen secret classic levels you could find and unlock by playing through the campaign and finding out of the way hidden switches which would open up a secret room made to look like a section from those old levels.
I had made the video as a joke poking fun at the Switch's graphics- putting modern day demons back into recreated levels all the way back from 1993.
A day after I posted the video however, it had garnered a hundred views. I thought that was pretty cool. But I also wondered if any of those viewers took it seriously too. Why the hell would anybody watch some random guy casually speedrun through a remake of E1M1 through a new Doom game?
Then the other day, I thought I'd take a crack at running through a couple more classic Doom levels through 2016 just for the fun of it. I'd already played these levels through numerous times regularly, so breezing through them here would be a cake walk.
Keep in mind, these runs are being done on my Switch. I do not have any other way to capture footage other than what's being offered through my Switch, which can only record up to thirty seconds of gameplay. E1M2 and E1M3 have obvious cuts as it transitions to the next portion of footage. These should not be taken as legit runs. Much like the first video, these were made for shits and giggles.
And with that in mind, enjoy the videos!!!
This one was interesting to play. Usually I would play up to the point of getting to the secret level in the regular game. When setting up the run for this one, I initially planned to run it to the secret level exit but it doesn't seem to exist in 2016's version. So I went the route up the steps to the regular exit.
I did this one because it was quick as hell. No other reason.
In the past, me and shooters on the Nintendo Switch never quite got along too well. Most of the time I played them, the controls would be too sensitive- I'd be aiming everywhere else EXCEPT the actual target I was trying to shoot at. Even with a pro controller or constantly going into the options to alter the sensitivity, it always felt twitchy (#2Twitchy4Switchy) that I could never get a comfortable configuration. So I kept away from them when it came to the Switch and preferred to play them on other platforms.
Lately however, I've since started warming up to playing them more on there. I've gotten back onto Fortnite after not playing it for some time and have it downloaded on pretty much everything in my house that can play it, including my Switch. While I would not recommend playing unless with a pro controller, I've played on it a fair amount and even managed to win a victory royale. And just recently I got the Portal games on the Switch. Not exactly shooters, but they still resemble ones and are worth mentioning. I played through the first one and it actually controlled pretty well without having to tweak the camera controls or keeping to a pro controller to make it playable.
Which brings me to Doom 2016.
The series celebrated its thirtieth anniversary last year in 2023. That and the release of John Romero's SIGIL II is what got me back on the rip and tear train once again. I have all the series twice over on Xbox and on PC as well as the classic games (I, Hell on Earth, and 64) on Switch. Those games in particular I can play no hassle, given there's no vertical plane to worry about!
Anyway, I was looking at the eShop's Winter Sale for any games that looked even remotely interesting. That was when I noticed that Doom 2016 was going on sale for eight bucks (That's $7.99 if you're a stickler like that). I thought- Hey, if I could play something like Fortnite at a point where I could feel comfortable with, maybe I can do the same with this game? If I couldn't, then it was eight bucks wasted, which was probably better then what it was going for not on sale.
Just as suspected though upon booting up the game, my aim was complete Cacocrap. I was getting my ass kicked by all the imps in the first gore nest arena- the first five minutes of the game! All because I was trying to get accustomed to the controls. On any other platform, I would have blasted all their brains out with little or no trouble. On Ultra-Violence too!
I had almost given up on playing any further until finally I had toned the sensitivity down enough and started to land more of my shots against the imps. Managed to make playing portably with Joy-Cons work too. Movement and aiming was still a little janky, in particular towards the imps crawling up on walls or other demons on top of platforms above or below me. But at least dying to them became more from lack of environmental awareness and stupidity than from control issues.
Would you believe me if I said I killed this thing with only a pistol?
Despite initial control maintenance- Doom 2016 on Nintendo Switch is still Doom 2016, and I was having a good time with the game. Its (almost) give no shits vibe is terrific. Doom always prioritized learning the vicious and gory ballet against the demons from hell with badass weaponry and gratuitous violence. There is a story and lore hidden throughout the game, but most folks like me will probably be like the Doom Slayer in that they are more interested in blazing through demons and wondering about what the insides of a Pinky look like after shoving shotgun shells up their bunghole.
...if players can forgive that the game can occasionally look like a Pinky's bunghole. The Switch has hands down the worst looking version of Doom 2016 when in comparison to its more stronger brethren. At best, the game looks like a latter day PS3/Xbox 360 game on a 480p TV. Other times is as if someone threw a glob of lard on the camera lens and the poor thing is continually trying to refocus on the action in front of it. It doesn't look too bad- weapon and demon models look good enough. It runs at a steady framerate with rarely a time I can recall seeing it chug. I can excuse this game for having lesser graphics given its size, unlike that House of the Dead Remake which had no excuse looking as low-res on the same console.
Given how demanding a game like Doom 2016 can be, it's a miracle the game can even run on the Switch at all without making extreme cuts to content (Only Snapmap is excluded in this port). There was one time that a loading screen came up during a level transition and it was only that one time. There are videos online that dive deeper into how the game runs on Switch, with several calling it a game that should've been "impossible" to port (At least until Eternal came out and got "impossibly" ported to Switch as well). It deserves an honorable spot in the series' legendary history of console ports. A history of ports that contain various graphical qualities and/or have levels that were cut for various reasons.
Yet for all the commendable remarks that this port deserves... why the hell would anyone want to play Doom 2016 on the Nintendo Switch? Because of the Switch's portability? Maybe got it on a sale on a whim? Maybe the Switch is the only console/handheld hybrid they have/wanted and need their rip and tear fix?
Or maybe the answer is DEAD SIMPLE.
Because it's DOOM.
Make that total thrice over now.
Sometime down the road I'll probably tackle Doom Eternal on Switch as well. I also got that game for twenty bucks for the deluxe edition, which includes the Ancient Gods DLC. Doom II celebrates its thirtieth anniversary alongside Doom 3's twentieth, so Doom will definitely be on my mind quite a bit all through 2024.
I'm also thinking about pursuing other games that have been notably ported over on the Switch that catch my interest, good or bad.
One concerning a man dressed as a bat certainly comes to mind...
