With regards to the Switch port specifically, it’s the same story with Doom II as it is with its predecessor. It’s more powerful, but it uses up twice as much ammo and takes an age to reload, so you may as well just stick with the old faithful. We already sang the praises of the shotgun in our review of the first Doom so it’s a little disappointing – though not surprising – that this advanced version couldn’t improve on perfection. On the weapons front, there’s only one addition: the Super Shotgun. The majority of these enemies are significantly harder to defeat, meaning the game’s overall difficulty is higher as a result. Joining the usual grunts, imps and demons are the likes of the Chaingunner, the Mancubus (an obese monster with flamethrowers for arms), the grotesque Arch-vile and our favourite, the Arachnotron: because nothing says character design like an evil brain monster in a robotic spider suit. The number of enemy types has also been doubled. It’s clear that id Software was trying to push the technical boundaries with this one. There are more wide-open spaces and multi-tiered areas, and there’s been the greatest attempt made to give certain rooms a unique appearance rather than giving everything the same grey textures. The stages also look more varied than they did in Doom. That automap feature is even more useful than it was before, and you’ll be checking it regularly as you reach the back half of the game. The first Doom’s stages were maze-like at the best of times, but some of the levels in Doom II are full-on labyrinths, with all manner of switch-flipping, door unlocking and teleporting going on.

Doom 1 vs doom 4