How Does Quake 2 Remastered Run On Switch?

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Resolution
Frame Rate
Additional Options
Conclusion

Quake 2 Remastered has successfully launched on just about every modern console known to man – even stretching back to the last generation. With oodles of content to battle through, it’s a good time to be a fan of classic FPS. But is it worth picking up ID Softwares legendary classic on the ageing Switch?

It’s a question worth asking since the Switch is nearing the end of its life. Sure, Quake 2 is decades old now, but a lot has been done to tart this release up. Reports that last-generation consoles are struggling to handle the load naturally raise some eyebrows when pondering the relatively dinky handheld hybrid by Nintendo. Let’s dive right in.

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Resolution

If you are a resolution buff you aren’t playing anything on Switch. That being said, most people like to have a fair amount of clarity when playing their games. Quake 2 Remastered aims to hit 1080p, and for the most part, it succeeds. This is a far cry from more modern consoles smashing 4K, but it’s solid enough and looks very clean on handheld (especially on the OLED).

To keep things running smoothly, the Switch utilises dynamic resolution, which is a trick that has kept the Switch relevant since its launch. We have found from our own testing that this will normally kick in during hectic firefights with a high number of enemies, with docked being the worst culprit.

Digital Foundry has dug deep and reported that in docked, the Switch version can drop as low as 540p, which is far from ideal in any game. Thankfully, this is only in the most extreme situations, such as the Call Of The Machine episode.

Overall, the Switch holds up admirably but does falter from time to time.

Frame Rate

When looking at frame rates on a high-octane shooter like Quake, you want stability and 60FPS (ideally). Once again, the Switch does deliver here, locking itself to 60FPS for 90% of Quake 2. By this we mean we encountered no dips during gameplay in either docked or handheld when playing any of Quake 2’s original release content (including Quake 2 64).

Things were a lot shakier when it came to Call Of The Machine, however. This expansion is new content made for this Remaster, and it has a far higher enemy count than any other campaign in Quake 2. So much so that the Switch buckles under the pressure, even with dynamic resolution working overtime. It never drops to unplayable levels – heck, we doubt it even drops below 30, but it is noticeable.

Additional Options

The Switch has most of the options available to the other platforms, although there is one notable difference – there is no motion blur on Switch. At all. This, in our opinion, is not an issue since motion blur is an abomination that needs to be purged from modern games at all costs. But, if you have grown accustomed to the effect, you are going to be out of luck here.

Not only that, the Switch (and all platforms) use texture smoothing, and we are not a fan at all of the effect. As far as we are aware, only the PC version is able to turn this option off. Like with everything, we wouldn’t consider this a dealbreaker. It is something to consider.

Conclusion

Overall, Quake 2 runs great on Switch most of the time. So much of the time, in fact, we’d give it a recommendation if you want to run Quake 2 Remastered on the go so long as you bear in mind the new expansion is pretty rough.

That’s all we have on Quake 2 Remastered for now. Be sure to check out our other guides and lists for more Quake content.