Doom For Nintendo Switch Now Has Motion Controls

Bethesda's Doom for the Nintendo Switch launched with fairly positive reactions despite some of the technical drawbacks and performance issues. Well, to help compensate, the developers decided to issue an update that adds motion control mechanics to the game, so you can play in an entirely different way.

The changelog was published over on the official Bethesda website, where it detailed the new motion aiming option for the first-person shooter. The developers made full use of the Joy-Con's gyroscopic controls, enabling gamers to use precision motion aiming in Doom. However, if you still want to use the traditional analog controls you can do that as well, combining both motion controls and the standard analog controls together.

Bethesda decided to acknowledge the request from a lot of gamers who asked for the motion control support for the game after it launched late last year for the Nintendo Switch. It's funny because, back during the Wii era, there were plenty of gamers who didn't care about motion controls and actually requested Nintendo make some games where they didn't require the motion controls due to them being poorly implemented or the Wii sensor bar not properly picking up the motions.

Times have changed, however, and the Nintendo Switch has a far more accurate reading on the gyroscopic sensors inside the Joy-Cons compared to the Wii's sensors for the Wii-motes. Nintendo did manage to fix the issue slightly with the Wii-mote enhancement accessory near the end of the Wii's life cycle but it was a little bit too late by then to make use of it.

This time around Nintendo did a much better job making the motion controls intuitive and responsive, so you get some really precise readings from the movement of the Joy-Cons in relation to the game. Playing Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, for instance, is pretty easy and very fun using the gyro controls with the Joy-Cons, and so Bethesda decided to extend that kind of playability to Doom by enabling the option to play with the motion controls.

But, that's not all. The update also makes it easier to find and group up with your friends to play the multiplayer modes. The new multiplayer party system means you can group up with and play with your friends in multiplayer without having to go through the hassle of trying to track down and remember user names or schedule meetups through random games.

Additionally, some optimizations were made in the form of improving the average resolution of the lower resolution areas of the game, so the average resolution is actually going to be higher than the standard lowest-res areas players would typically encounter, and this upgrade in resolution is being offset with new CPU optimizations so that you don't lose performance while also gaining better output rendering.

A number of fixes were also made for some of the audio issues, texture stretching, and some of the control latency and unresponsiveness that would take place in the game menus.

You can hop into Doom right now and check out the new update with the motion control support on the Nintendo Switch.