Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun

"Boomer Shooter" devs take note. This game is EXTREMELY simple and manages to be a blast on the virtue of execution alone. The shooting is fun, all the guns are good, the sound is extremely satisfying to the ear. There is nothing else to this game. No flamethrower, no mandatory 2 second long glory kills repeated over and over, little in the way of parkour. It's just shooting things and navigating the level for keys, just like older games. What you see is what you get here, a rarity these days. P.S. A lot of reviews are calling the game repetitive and I can understand that criticism if you have only played the first episode. For some reason ALL the episode 1 levels are very straightforward in design. Episode 2 and 3 are more elaborate.

This is the first Warhammer game I bought. As someone who played - and loved (who didn't?) - the first DOOM thirty years ago Boltgun made me feel home at once. It is a straight shooter, the only "puzzles" are finding different keycards and secrets. Oh, and jumping. That's it. That's all? Yes. BUT... ...it feels great. The pace, the old-school pixelized graphics, the opponents, the guns - I LOVE the Boltgun (and the Chainsaw!) - it all feels tight and gritty. It's action. No fooling around, no inventory, no deep story, no automap. Just action. Chop your way through your enemies, get to the exit - rinse and repeat. Beware though: As it was with those shooters then it is with this one - after you've seen all enemies you might have to motivate to play all the way through the game. And there's no multiplayer. But if you loved DOOM 1 and 2 you'll have a blast.

I had a lot of fun with Boltgun, I would recommend purchasing it! But I also think there is some missed potential here. Pros: + Makes you feel truly powerful throughout the game + Very beautiful artstyle, especially for the enemies + Good creativity of enemies overall - plenty of variety in terms of size, weapons, abilities, etc. + Gunplay is entertaining - guns feel appropriately powerful and different weapons are a good fit for different situations. There's only one gun I found mostly useless. It's really fun to use these weapons to defeat enemies. + Bosses are giant + Some bosses have some nice "tricks up their sleeve". + The taunt button is amazing (when I remember it exists!) Neutral: +/- Story is bare-bones but at least gives a reason to keep playing Cons: - Not enough new content to sustain the length of the game - you see almost all the enemies in episode 1, after that almost everything is a repeat. - Level design is acceptable but one can tell that clever level design wasn't really the focus. The places never feel real and essentially boil down to corridors between "arenas". - Environments are mostly your generic evil bases. There is a little variation, but not much. - It's insane that this game has corpses disappear. Part of the reason I like this 2.5D artstyle is that there should be no need for corpses to disappear to save on memory, reduce rendering time, etc. Especially in 2023, having 2d corpses disappear is absolutely ridiculous! - No puzzles or story development to break up the action. The few times the developers tried to put in some interesting puzzles that required thought they were bashed for making it "not clear where to go" (what a shame!). - I think the idea of arenas with respawning enemies is ok once or twice, but in this game they are a bit overused - and basically the only time you will face a challenge is in an arena. I also think it wasn't the best move to have all bosses with arena-style respawning enemies around then.

The greatest accomplishment of this game is that it lets you feel like a space marine. Screen shakes with your every step, one shot from boltgun turns enemies into red mist and you even have dedicated "praise the emperor" button. I just wish combat sequences didn't drag for so long.