News Bethesda's 'Enhanced' DOOM Xbox Ports Analysed By Digital Foundry, Mods Included

[admin]

​

During QuakeCon 2024, the team at Bethesda dropped a big old surprise with DOOM + DOOM 2; a brand-new bundle of the first two DOOM games complete with a bunch of fresh enhancements. As you'd probably expect, then, the folks over at Digital Foundry have been taking a look at these new versions of DOOM and how they perform on a variety of platforms - including Xbox.

We'll start with the fact that the base games here run flawlessly on console. DF has been putting them through their paces at 120FPS on Xbox Series X and S, and their frame graphs never waver. And yes, 120FPS also applies to Xbox Series S - at 4K no less.

"Before we go on, it's worth stressing that all current-gen machines can handle 4K gaming at 120fps - and yes, that includes Series S. The engine is optimized and fast - all the included content and every map I tested runs like greased lightning."

However, another big plus to this new DOOM package is mod support on console. Yep, these games now support a huge mod browser with tons of options for fans to enjoy, including one infamous mod that basically aims to stress the game to its max. DF goes on to give this a whirl on Xbox consoles, providing some, shall we say, interesting results.

"It was the mod support that was my first destination and with it, the chance to see how Nightdive's work would cope with the NUTS.WAD challenge. This pushes beyond the limits of what Doom engine was intended to handle and now we can test it on console and the results are interesting.
The results? As I dove into the crowd below, the Xboxes cried in unison for the gods above did not smile upon them. The frame-rates came tumbling down barely able to scratch the 20 frames per second mark."

Now, we must stress that that this mod benchmark test is very tongue-in-cheek; DF knows and expects the game to come to a crawl on pretty much every platform out there. It's fun to see it in action though, in all of its single-digit FPS glory.

Elsewhere in the analysis, the outlet talks about some of the new rendering techniques used by both id Software and Nightdive Studios, and generally speaking, these are some fascinating ports of two absolute classics of the genre. They're both on Xbox Game Pass as well, so if you want to test out some of these mods yourself, why not give them a whirl and see what you think!