Warhammer 40K: Boltgun - The Emperor's New Clothes Need Some Tailoring

Warrhammer: Boltgun is a retro inspired Boomer Shooter with some novelty buried in a see of cruft that looks too far back and struggles to elevate itself above an all too crowded genre.

That's the meat and potatoes of this review. If you want guns, if you need pixel-y graphics, and if your soul screams for more W40K games then this title may be up your alley. I thought it would be for me, given that I'm a huge Boomer Shooter enjoyer, love me some good pixel work, and am an avid 40K fan, yet this title failed to click with me. I'm not going to go overboard and tell you its bad. Its not. But the times when it clicks and really gets your blood pumping are so few that the rest of the gameplay takes center-stage, and its more slog than whole hog.

From the guns aspect there is a lot more good than bad. I did find the inaccurate shooting to be immensely annoying, but that's a little fly in the ointment of what is otherwise a fine array of fun to shoot firearms. Pretty much every gun has its niche, and you will be lightly ammo starved on base difficulty. I don't know about higher tiers as the game just wasn't interesting enough to inspire me to those heights. Each weapon sounds and feels good to fire with no exceptions. The melee combat can work, sometimes, but its more-so an afterthought despite it being front and center during the tutorial. I will say the first episode takes way too long to get you to the other weapons so you'll get tired of the base bolter and shotgun bolter well before they grant you the plasma, heavy bolter, and the four remaining power weapons, which are locked to later episodes. A mistake. Even so, I cannot deny that the weapons and weapon-feel are two of the best aspects to this game.

A much more tepid aspect is the level and environment design. I was essentially never excited for any level and the use of pixel textures in 3D landscapes felt hollow. This title is trying to do a DOOM 93 + DOOM 2016, but something is very off. The first episode is corridor filled and unimpressive. The 2nd episode only gets good near the end when the desert world is completely replaced with something novel, and episode three feels like a mashup of what came before; with levels that feel bland as well as some more elevated ones. The encounters themselves vary, again, from open arenas of constantly teleporting in enemies (a mistake to me, as there are no subtle "alerts" to when this happens) to shuffling tunnels and peek out and dashing tactics that feel well defined and fun. When you start leaping and boosting everywhere the combat really feels great, but the levels let you down constantly as they hamper this design until far too late.

Not to harp too hard on this one, but art direction will really be up to your personal preference. There is a grand use of dynamic colors later in the game, and lighting and effects work wonders on what usually end up as bland environs. If you are a huge 40K enjoyer you may adore the effort to make many of the interiors feel mechanical and in-line with overarching warhammer aesthetics. It felt like some kind of masterstroke when the boring initial levels became something much more enjoyable to look at by episode III.

I did enjoy clocking near every demon, and there certainly is an aspect to finding and eliminating the bigger threats during chaotic (see what I did there?) firefights, but oftentimes I'd find some enemies blocking or soaking shots unnecessarily. I also hate the design for the Aspiring Champion and the more he became present the more I began to grit me teeth. When enemies react and shudder or stun from being hit with your shots its awesome. Too regularly they seem to simply poise through everything, acting like your bullets are mere bee stings. The bosses are also a mixed bag. The first time you see them you'll be impressed, but later episodes relegate these to encounter finishers as a pallid attempt to up the ante but they end up only annoying. The final showdown felt puzzle-y and weaker than the great unclean one you fight in the cathedral ship. Very confusing.

There is a "story" but most of it is relayed via beeps and boops that you have to read from your bot which is in stark contrast to the amount of bloodrage and speed they want you to take these levels at. I can't be bothered to read this while twenty nurglings are biting my heels! I wished the bot would just shut its clap(trap), but I'm harping on a fools errand as the overarching narrative just isn't there. "Go and do kill" I'm told, and indeed that is chapters 1-finale for this title.

I can't say much about the music. Oftentimes there is none, and when any track does play its limited, though fine. This really confused me as after a combat is done the exploration aspect feels dead and hollow. So too do the secrets. There are many, but 2/3rds of them barely qualify as secrets at all and do nothing to elevate your encounters. They are surprisingly underutilized and end up being a distracting, annoying element that's unneeded.

In the end I feel like I didn't like Boltgun, though it did have flashes of great fun and some epic moments. They are simply lost in a sea of its own repetitive gameplay and encounters. It ends up indistinguishable from the ocean of better, more novel Boomer Shooters out there. Better than mediocre, but not by much.