Wolfenstein II The New Colossus- Review on Nintendo Switch

BASIC INFORMATION ON THE GAME

Release Year : June 29, 2017
Genre : Action (Shooter) / 3D / 1st Person
Developer : MachineGames
Publisher : Bethesda Game Studios

Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is the highly anticipated sequel to Wolfenstein®: The New Order™, the critically acclaimed first-person action game from award-winning studio MachineGames.

In Wolfenstein II, you will embark on an exciting new adventure made possible by the cutting-edge technology of id Tech® 6. You will visit Nazi-occupied America and seek out the brave leaders of the resistance who managed to survive. Fight the Nazis in the small town of Roswell, New Mexico, on the flooded streets of New Orleans and in the radiation-contaminated Manhattan. Collect a cool arsenal and master new abilities to crush the legions of Nazi fighters, cyborgs and super soldiers.

TECHNICAL INFORMATION

Fortnite has software version 1.1. When you purchase a game from the  Nintendo Store, it is downloaded to a microSD card or internal storage.

The total size of the downloaded game is about 22 gigabytes, which is much smaller than the PC version, which weighs about 60 gigabytes.

GAME ENGINE

The heart of Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus is id Tech 6. id Tech 6 is the game engine of the id Tech series, which is currently being developed by the American company id Software and which is supposed to be the successor to id Tech 5. id Tech 6 is positioned as an engine for the PC and, perhaps for the eighth generation of game consoles, that is, for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One. At the moment, the game Doom 4 on id Tech 6 has been announced, the engine itself is at the initial stage of development. However, some characteristics and innovative features of the engine are already known. The main developers of the engine are John Carmack and John Olick.

The engine will use the innovative technology "Sparse Voxel Octree" (SVO, Rus. Sparse Voxel Octree). The geometry of the game level, supported by this technology, will have a voxel rather than a polygonal structure, that is, geometric objects will consist of voxels. Voxels will be stored in an octree. Ray casting technology will be used for lighting. One of the goals of the "SVO" technology is to be able to "load" parts of the octree into graphics memory (video memory, memory on the video card), going down along the branches of the tree. This means that objects on the lower branches of the octree, that is, those objects that are closest to the observer, will be rendered in maximum quality, with maximum detail and maximum resolution textures. Accordingly, for distant objects, which are located on higher branches of the octree will use a lower quality, they will be built on larger voxels. Thus, this technology is a way to control the level of detail.

Geometric objects obtained thanks to SVO can theoretically have an unlimited number of levels of detail, moreover, these levels of detail are automatically generated. This eliminates the need to use different pseudo-3D techniques such as parallax mapping. However, all tests using SVO require a large amount of memory (up to several gigabytes), and John Olick stated that it is possible to compress such an SVO to 1.15 bits per voxel.

In id Tech 6, only static geometry will be rendered using SVO, such as terrain, buildings, etc. Because of this, raycast lighting will also be static. All dynamic objects such as characters, vehicles, etc. will be "built" on classic polygons and dynamically illuminated using standard rasterization techniques. Olik stated that creating dynamic objects and dynamic lighting with SVO is possible, however it would require a quick refresh of the rendering octree. According to Olik, the dynamic lighting and geometry introduced by SVO, which will allow the creation of variable geometry, will be present in id Tech 7.

In addition to SVO, id Tech 6 will use a more advanced megatexture technology, which was first used in the latest versions of id Tech 4. With this technology, the entire surface of the level is covered with one texture. The developers at id Tech 6 and SVO are not targeting current hardware, but hardware that is not yet available when development begins. In particular, id Tech 6 targets CUDA, Intel Larrabee and AMD Fusion. Carmack stated that if the next generation of game consoles (successors of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3) have hardware specifications that will suit the architecture of the engine, then perhaps id Tech 6 will work on them.

According to Olik, on a GeForce GTX 280 at 720p (1280 × 720 pixels progressive) id Tech 6 might be able to render 60 fps. In this case, the engine will consistently render at least 30 frames / sec. In an interview with PC Perspective, when asked what and how much hardware would need to change to be suitable for SVO, Carmack responded: “Hardware designed specifically for SVO can be much smaller, simpler, and more efficient, than general purpose tools, but no one in their right mind wants to bet on our technology and want to create a specific hardware solution for a technology that no other developer has used yet.”

CONTROL

The control setting is standard, as for other consoles. Absolutely all buttons are involved.

It is also possible to enable aiming with gyroscopes, which greatly simplifies the gameplay itself.

SETTINGS

And there are no graphics settings in the game, only a change in brightness is available.

Well, then let's see how the game differs from the PC version.

MODES COMPARISON Nintendo Switch and PC

Now let's compare with the PC version of the project. The "medium", "low", "maximum" settings were taken as the basis. 

In the first case, as we can see, Nintendo Switch shows a better picture than low settings on PC. The average quality looks a bit better, due to the sharper detail of objects. The maximum quality, as expected, is much better than that of the Nintendo Switch.

 Well, in the second case, at low settings, the graphics on the Switch are better on almost everything, with the exception of water. At medium and maximum, the advantage for PC: lighting, texture quality and water.

COMPARISON OF TV AND PORTABLE MODE

In this review, we presented comparisons of rendering quality between stationary and portable modes:

As we can see, when switching to portable mode, the developers decided to sacrifice resolution and lighting quality. But still, in portable mode, on a small screen, the game looks much more attractive...

OVERALL GAMING EXPERIENCE

Wolfenstein II The New Colossus on Nintendo Switch is of course inferior in terms of graphics from older consoles and PCs, and playing in TV mode will not be very logical when buying this game.

All the charm of Wolfenstein II The New Colossus on the Switch is revealed in portable mode. You get an incredible pleasure from playing on a portable device, which is very difficult to explain, but most likely it comes from the understanding that no other device in the world is capable of this.

It is also worth noting that playing Wolfenstein II The New Colossus is much more enjoyable than DOOM, perhaps a matter of taste, but the presence of a full-fledged plot and narrative, in our opinion, makes the game much "richer".

There were no special shortcomings, bugs and crashes.

GAME PROCESS

Well, below are 30 minutes of the game on the console itself:

 Flaws:

- graphics are significantly inferior to older platforms

- price, like all games for Switch

Advantages:

- one of the best modern shooters now on Nintendo Switch

- the most magnificent experience from the game in handheld mode

 

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