Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun

It took me about 24 hours to beat the game since I was dying a lot (not a bad thing by itself) and getting lost for hours on some levels (OK, this is a deal breaker). Nostalgia driven, great license if you are into Warhammer 40K universe, a lot of fun fighting regular enemies, but major flaws to give it a recommendation. For starters, no map feels like an artificial way to pad the play time. It's no fun looking for a door with graphics like it's 1999. The main protagonist is definitely unremarkable, no Duke Nukem here. Difficulty spiked really hard towards the end of the game. Boss fights are boring since you are pretty much fending off neverending waves of enemies that simply overwhelm you.

It feels and plays just like some 1990/2000 classic, along the lines of Quake or, more modern, Ion Fury. The optics are fittingly old - the cultists are indeed the old "models" before the 2020 redesign, same goes for the Chaos Space Marines. If you are into WH40K and especially Space Marines, you will probably feel right at home. The enemies behave like expected from tabletop, your weapons do as they should. So far the best game that came out of the grim, dark future of the 40th century. Bonus points for including a truly Tzeenchian map that is really able to erode your sanity.

WH40K: Boltgun has a fantastic concept, one we didn’t know we needed. A boomer shooter set in the Grim Darkness of the Far Future, serving as a sequel to the fantastic WH40K: Space Marine? By the God-Emperor, sign me up! And indeed, while it feels fairly modern overall and not quite as retro as marketed, it’s a damn fine FPS. Like Space Marine before it, it gives you pretty much what you’d want from a game where you play as a member of the Adeptus Astartes: awe-inspiring environments, hectic combat, and hundreds of fiends and heretics to turn into red paste with ridiculously powerful guns – the titular Boltgun being the most versatile. It’s a satisfying, fast-paced slaughterfest with some genuinely clever game design, like how the melee system works. The visuals and mood are on point. It looks deliciously chunky and colorful (although too elaborate to really feel straight out the 90’s), and features a variety of iconic and distinctively 40k-esque environments: giants cathedrals, barren canyons, mechanical superstructures… Fans of the franchise should be satisfied by the atmosphere. So, Boltgun delivers on action and gets the WH40K vibe well... and yet, a bunch of things don’t quite click, at least not for me. The movement tends to feel heavy and slippery, which as appropriate for a Space Marine as it may be, is sometimes awkward. A lot of enemy types are bullet sponges: again, this is lore-accurate, but those aren’t very fun and are encountered way too frequently - not to mention the excruciatingly long boss battles. The pacing and quality of the level design also fluctuates wildly: it’s decent overall (with chapter 2 being the best in my opinion), but a few levels are either bland, confusing, or a slog to get through. In the end, while Boltgun is alas not quite the banger it could have been, it's still a well-made and very fun game that I would definitely recommend it to both BoomShoots and WH40K appreciators. I am curious to see if this will get a sequel.

If you want a simple, straightforward WH40K shooter then you won't be disappointed, but it lacks when compared to the modern boomer-shooter greats.

A fun time. A great throwback to old school games. Stays true to the source material too.