I was looking forward to this game as I downloaded it alongside Hellblade 2 from Game Pass, but it just ended up being very disappointing for me. So I'm not a huge Warhammer 40k fan or anything, but I do love boomer shooters and the idea of one set in the Warhammer 40k universe sounded like a match made in heaven to me.
Unfortunately this was just not for me. The sound design is excellent and the guns feel nice and weighty when you fire them. The problem is the mission design is very boring with you just collecting keycards, which yes is a staple of the sub genre, but like I need more than that at this point. Sure I don't mind the odd keycard objective here and there, but some variety is needed. About the only other thing the game does is just have lots of horde mode sections where you are locked in a big room and have to fight waves of enemies, which again is another staple of the genre, but they throw TOO many enemies at you. It's hard to dodge bullets when you're essentially a walking tank and there's enemies spawning all around you and hitting you from all directions. I had to switch to god mode in some of the sections as I just couldn’t get through them and I was playing on medium difficulty. You can say skill issues on my part, but I just say it's bad difficulty balancing.
What killed it for me though was the level design, which looked great visually and I love the game's art style, but it's very easy to get lost in them. My breaking point was when I muted the game's audio so I could listen to a podcast while playing (I was tuned out at that point), finished another horde mode section and then spent 20 minutes wandering around, with no idea where to go next. At that point, I was done.
Unfortunately this was just not for me. The sound design is excellent and the guns feel nice and weighty when you fire them. The problem is the mission design is very boring with you just collecting keycards, which yes is a staple of the sub genre, but like I need more than that at this point. Sure I don't mind the odd keycard objective here and there, but some variety is needed. About the only other thing the game does is just have lots of horde mode sections where you are locked in a big room and have to fight waves of enemies, which again is another staple of the genre, but they throw TOO many enemies at you. It's hard to dodge bullets when you're essentially a walking tank and there's enemies spawning all around you and hitting you from all directions. I had to switch to god mode in some of the sections as I just couldn’t get through them and I was playing on medium difficulty. You can say skill issues on my part, but I just say it's bad difficulty balancing.
What killed it for me though was the level design, which looked great visually and I love the game's art style, but it's very easy to get lost in them. My breaking point was when I muted the game's audio so I could listen to a podcast while playing (I was tuned out at that point), finished another horde mode section and then spent 20 minutes wandering around, with no idea where to go next. At that point, I was done.
Chido en un inicio pero se vuelve aburrido rápido.
Mid game - terrible port.
What was something I was just going to bother with on Game Pass became a birthday gift from a close friend, meaning I tried quite hard to see something in this game and finish it. Sadly, Boltgun is almost everything you shouldn't do in a modern "boomer shooter;" borrowing all the worst ideas from the genre's past and delivering a poor PC port on top of it all.
There is no nice way to say that Boltgun is boring, but it's really boring. Map designs are samey mazes with little visual distinction in either color or structure, leading to the player traversing the same rocky cliffs and military bases over and over again. While the enemies offer a decent variety, the AI pathing is stupid and almost every enemy either stands in place to get blown to bits, or rush you like they have no reason to live, anymore. Spending hours running around the same-looking corridors and cliffs, fighting the same enemies over and over again, all in these giant mazes I get lost in half the time is not my idea of a good time.
Guns are largely a non-starter, either, with no weapon I picked up in my six-hours of playtime grabbing me like anything from QUAKE, DUSK, AMID EVIL, Ion Fury, etc. The drip-feed of weapons is solely that: a drip-feed. There is nowhere near enough variety in the weapons to begin with, but having still not unlocked all weapons at over six-hours of playtime is frustrating for a game like this. I understand the idea of slowly delivering all the surprises, as you don't want to "blow your load early," but it leads to Boltgun feeling like there are no substantial rewards for exploring or just playing normally. This issue is typified with Boltgun not offering any new weapons for nearly three-hours, then giving me two back-to-back; you really couldn't have spaced those out? I would never say I could design/create a game better than this, but I want to know the thought process on the genius who thought that up.
Lastly, I will just be complaining about the PC port, because it's one thing to be playing a "mid" shooter, but to have it run as poorly as it does on PCs that blow far past system recommended specs is unforgivable. As is usual with Unreal 4/5 games, Boltgun suffers from obnoxious stutter struggle with massive frame hitching and performance dips in both predictable and completely random locations. While I am not running a "top of the line rig" by any stretch of the word, my PC should be running this game better than the goddamn Nintendo Switch.
What was something I was just going to bother with on Game Pass became a birthday gift from a close friend, meaning I tried quite hard to see something in this game and finish it. Sadly, Boltgun is almost everything you shouldn't do in a modern "boomer shooter;" borrowing all the worst ideas from the genre's past and delivering a poor PC port on top of it all.
There is no nice way to say that Boltgun is boring, but it's really boring. Map designs are samey mazes with little visual distinction in either color or structure, leading to the player traversing the same rocky cliffs and military bases over and over again. While the enemies offer a decent variety, the AI pathing is stupid and almost every enemy either stands in place to get blown to bits, or rush you like they have no reason to live, anymore. Spending hours running around the same-looking corridors and cliffs, fighting the same enemies over and over again, all in these giant mazes I get lost in half the time is not my idea of a good time.
Guns are largely a non-starter, either, with no weapon I picked up in my six-hours of playtime grabbing me like anything from QUAKE, DUSK, AMID EVIL, Ion Fury, etc. The drip-feed of weapons is solely that: a drip-feed. There is nowhere near enough variety in the weapons to begin with, but having still not unlocked all weapons at over six-hours of playtime is frustrating for a game like this. I understand the idea of slowly delivering all the surprises, as you don't want to "blow your load early," but it leads to Boltgun feeling like there are no substantial rewards for exploring or just playing normally. This issue is typified with Boltgun not offering any new weapons for nearly three-hours, then giving me two back-to-back; you really couldn't have spaced those out? I would never say I could design/create a game better than this, but I want to know the thought process on the genius who thought that up.
Lastly, I will just be complaining about the PC port, because it's one thing to be playing a "mid" shooter, but to have it run as poorly as it does on PCs that blow far past system recommended specs is unforgivable. As is usual with Unreal 4/5 games, Boltgun suffers from obnoxious stutter struggle with massive frame hitching and performance dips in both predictable and completely random locations. While I am not running a "top of the line rig" by any stretch of the word, my PC should be running this game better than the goddamn Nintendo Switch.
This review contains spoilers
(Full playthrough on Hard Difficulty (Emperor’s Mercy))
Well, it’s been a while since I wrote a review, I’m kind of in the middle of a lot of games, and Street Fighter 6 and Star Rail don’t exactly have an ending. I put those two on here though since I pretty much know how I feel about them. I’m making my way through Tears of the Kingdom, I need to get back to Dead Island 2 with my friend, in the last quarter of Final Fantasy 16, and just started Diablo 4 and Pikmin 4. There are so many games this year, it’s hard to keep up. But I’ll try! Anyway, Boltgun. I had a good time with this game. I bought it when it came out and got about halfway through, and just recently picked it up again to finish the rest of it. It was a good time, and it didn’t overstay its welcome.
Performance/Bugs - Game ran great most of the time. There were a couple instances where my frames started dropping pretty heavily, especially on the last level. There are so many enemies that don’t disappear when they are killed, so I had to turn the option on to despawn those corpses on the final level. After I did this, my frame rate stabilized. I experienced no bugs.
Story - Lemme just say, I have never had less of an idea of what was going on in the story than this game. The only thing I know is that you crash landed. That’s it. I know we don’t play boomer shooters for the story, but a better way to deliver context would have been nice.
Gameplay/Design - Well, what are you expecting? It’s a boomer shooter. Well, okay, I know modern boomer shooters have had a bunch of innovations on their design, to the point where you can even really call them that anymore. Stuff like ULTRAKILL. But Boltgun is basically a classic boomer shooter with little to no modern innovations. This can be good or bad or neutral depending on what your priorities are. I myself did not mind too much, but by the end of the game I did find myself wanting a little more variety in the gunplay.
Every weapon kills every enemy. There is not a lot of strategy to be had, other than generally saving your high damaging weapons for the bosses. Some of the weapons have splash damage that can be used to kill or damage multiple enemies in one shot. But that’s mostly it. Some of the weapons just feel much better to use than others as well. Like, the shotgun just straight up sucks and the plasma gun is really clunky, especially with how easy it is to damage yourself with it. On the other hand, the bolter, grav cannon, and melta gun, and the heavy bolter feel awesome to use. The bolter and heavy bolter especially, those two were my favorite weapons. SImple, reliable, satisfying, and effective.
I was also extremely impressed by the map design. At a glance, they are just huge, sprawling maps, but they somehow cleverly shepherd you towards the right way. I only got for a significant amount of time twice in the whole game (Grand Elevator looking for the second key, and the level with all the portals where you have to follow the red symbol to go the right way). Even though a lot of the areas in each level look the same, the levels usually spit you out where you need to go, and there are sometimes markings on the wall and signs to help you out. Enemies seem to usually not respawn in places where you have been before as well, so if you see enemies, you are usually on the right track. Secrets are also hidden quite well, with some being in common hiding spots like shipping containers to ensure that you usually get at least a couple power ups per level, and some hidden more thoroughly to reward people who explore the level a little bit more. Getting lost was frustrating when it happened, but it didn’t happen enough for me to knock points off for it. My main complaint about the levels actually, is the frequency of contempt and health pickups. Sometimes there are way, way more than I need, and sometimes there are none to be found when I need them the most. I know balancing this stuff is probably pretty difficult, but more often than not, the health economy seemed to be more unbalanced than balanced.
I also did not love some of the enemies’ gameplay designs. My main gripe is that some of them have too much health, but maybe that’s just the punishment for playing on a higher difficulty. I would almost always prefer for enemies to have less health and do more damage or have more varied attacks than just getting more health. I also hated the Aspiring Champion. I know they were probably designed to be hated, but the way to deal with them sucks. They are so fast and you have to drop everything you’re doing to run away. The problem is that there’s usually a lot of stuff in the way and there aren’t a lot of long hallways to get time to turn around and shoot them, so about a third of the time they landed a hit on me, successfully transforming into an even more powerful enemy upon their death. I also wish that enemy projectiles were more visible. A lot of times when I died, I had no idea what hit me because there were so many effects on the screen. Killing tons of low health grunts with the bolter was extremely satisfying.
Art/Music - Music was nothing to write home about, but it got the job done. The art design and retro filter was very reminiscent of old school boomer shooters, but again, it was just competent. My favorite part of the art side was actually the sound design. I love the gun sounds, the bolter and heavy bolter especially, the shotgun shells falling onto the ground, the yell grunts make when they see you for the first time, your marine’s voice when they taunt. All great. The sound team did a great job.
This was a fun game to play in between big releases, and I would have no problem recommending it to someone looking to play a classic boomer shooter. Lack of innovation and certain design flaws prevent it from climbing to a higher rating, however.
Well, it’s been a while since I wrote a review, I’m kind of in the middle of a lot of games, and Street Fighter 6 and Star Rail don’t exactly have an ending. I put those two on here though since I pretty much know how I feel about them. I’m making my way through Tears of the Kingdom, I need to get back to Dead Island 2 with my friend, in the last quarter of Final Fantasy 16, and just started Diablo 4 and Pikmin 4. There are so many games this year, it’s hard to keep up. But I’ll try! Anyway, Boltgun. I had a good time with this game. I bought it when it came out and got about halfway through, and just recently picked it up again to finish the rest of it. It was a good time, and it didn’t overstay its welcome.
Performance/Bugs - Game ran great most of the time. There were a couple instances where my frames started dropping pretty heavily, especially on the last level. There are so many enemies that don’t disappear when they are killed, so I had to turn the option on to despawn those corpses on the final level. After I did this, my frame rate stabilized. I experienced no bugs.
Story - Lemme just say, I have never had less of an idea of what was going on in the story than this game. The only thing I know is that you crash landed. That’s it. I know we don’t play boomer shooters for the story, but a better way to deliver context would have been nice.
Gameplay/Design - Well, what are you expecting? It’s a boomer shooter. Well, okay, I know modern boomer shooters have had a bunch of innovations on their design, to the point where you can even really call them that anymore. Stuff like ULTRAKILL. But Boltgun is basically a classic boomer shooter with little to no modern innovations. This can be good or bad or neutral depending on what your priorities are. I myself did not mind too much, but by the end of the game I did find myself wanting a little more variety in the gunplay.
Every weapon kills every enemy. There is not a lot of strategy to be had, other than generally saving your high damaging weapons for the bosses. Some of the weapons have splash damage that can be used to kill or damage multiple enemies in one shot. But that’s mostly it. Some of the weapons just feel much better to use than others as well. Like, the shotgun just straight up sucks and the plasma gun is really clunky, especially with how easy it is to damage yourself with it. On the other hand, the bolter, grav cannon, and melta gun, and the heavy bolter feel awesome to use. The bolter and heavy bolter especially, those two were my favorite weapons. SImple, reliable, satisfying, and effective.
I was also extremely impressed by the map design. At a glance, they are just huge, sprawling maps, but they somehow cleverly shepherd you towards the right way. I only got for a significant amount of time twice in the whole game (Grand Elevator looking for the second key, and the level with all the portals where you have to follow the red symbol to go the right way). Even though a lot of the areas in each level look the same, the levels usually spit you out where you need to go, and there are sometimes markings on the wall and signs to help you out. Enemies seem to usually not respawn in places where you have been before as well, so if you see enemies, you are usually on the right track. Secrets are also hidden quite well, with some being in common hiding spots like shipping containers to ensure that you usually get at least a couple power ups per level, and some hidden more thoroughly to reward people who explore the level a little bit more. Getting lost was frustrating when it happened, but it didn’t happen enough for me to knock points off for it. My main complaint about the levels actually, is the frequency of contempt and health pickups. Sometimes there are way, way more than I need, and sometimes there are none to be found when I need them the most. I know balancing this stuff is probably pretty difficult, but more often than not, the health economy seemed to be more unbalanced than balanced.
I also did not love some of the enemies’ gameplay designs. My main gripe is that some of them have too much health, but maybe that’s just the punishment for playing on a higher difficulty. I would almost always prefer for enemies to have less health and do more damage or have more varied attacks than just getting more health. I also hated the Aspiring Champion. I know they were probably designed to be hated, but the way to deal with them sucks. They are so fast and you have to drop everything you’re doing to run away. The problem is that there’s usually a lot of stuff in the way and there aren’t a lot of long hallways to get time to turn around and shoot them, so about a third of the time they landed a hit on me, successfully transforming into an even more powerful enemy upon their death. I also wish that enemy projectiles were more visible. A lot of times when I died, I had no idea what hit me because there were so many effects on the screen. Killing tons of low health grunts with the bolter was extremely satisfying.
Art/Music - Music was nothing to write home about, but it got the job done. The art design and retro filter was very reminiscent of old school boomer shooters, but again, it was just competent. My favorite part of the art side was actually the sound design. I love the gun sounds, the bolter and heavy bolter especially, the shotgun shells falling onto the ground, the yell grunts make when they see you for the first time, your marine’s voice when they taunt. All great. The sound team did a great job.
This was a fun game to play in between big releases, and I would have no problem recommending it to someone looking to play a classic boomer shooter. Lack of innovation and certain design flaws prevent it from climbing to a higher rating, however.
It’s really fun it’s nothing that special but for a quick play through there’s nothing much more I could ask for, and I can just turn my brain off and get through a couple of missions of this at an easy pace.
Yes the level design is pretty simple but I was surprised at times by some stuff they did and I think the best things they did are the bit arenas that are just filled with enemies, and there’s a sort of cohesive story that runs through it that kind makes it make some sense
Great variety of guns and enemies, there’s so many different combinations of what gun you can use to kill what enemies and I did like the way they paced it out of unlocking the guns worked really well for me too.
Don’t really get what all the complaining because really what did you expect from this, it’s almost exactly what you see is what you get and it’s not like this was framed as some huge game.
Yes the level design is pretty simple but I was surprised at times by some stuff they did and I think the best things they did are the bit arenas that are just filled with enemies, and there’s a sort of cohesive story that runs through it that kind makes it make some sense
Great variety of guns and enemies, there’s so many different combinations of what gun you can use to kill what enemies and I did like the way they paced it out of unlocking the guns worked really well for me too.
Don’t really get what all the complaining because really what did you expect from this, it’s almost exactly what you see is what you get and it’s not like this was framed as some huge game.
Enemies don't follow the same rules as the player, as in only a few Daemon enemies aren't practically stationary, all projectiles are laughably slow, and very few last more than one second under fire, even if the enemy in question is a regular Chaos Space Marine with a Bolter just like yours, or worse yet, an honest-to-God Chaos Terminator.
More importantly however is the fact that there is no level or character editors nor any kind of official mod support, yet they still overcharge you. You are stuck playing their levels, as their OC (a Primaris Ultramarine what a vile combo) until you get all achievements and immediately drop it as you have nothing left to do except speedrun, until the DLC drops where they ask you to do it all over again.
More importantly however is the fact that there is no level or character editors nor any kind of official mod support, yet they still overcharge you. You are stuck playing their levels, as their OC (a Primaris Ultramarine what a vile combo) until you get all achievements and immediately drop it as you have nothing left to do except speedrun, until the DLC drops where they ask you to do it all over again.
Fuckin badass man. There is no plot, there is only the emperor and I am his hand.
Perfect game to dip in and out of. Movement is good, weapons are chunky, set pieces are dope. Huge fan. Will be playing the dlc in a week
Perfect game to dip in and out of. Movement is good, weapons are chunky, set pieces are dope. Huge fan. Will be playing the dlc in a week
~50% completed. Feels like i've seen most of what there is to see. Its good but I prefer to stop before getting bored.
That said, I don't think this game needs anything more or anything less. It's a perfect AA game for a specific niche.
That said, I don't think this game needs anything more or anything less. It's a perfect AA game for a specific niche.
Fun fact: Many do not know that this game happens on the same planet as another popular WH40k game, Space Marine.
A classic shooter, complete with getting lost in labyrinths while looking for keys.
they nailed everything about this game except one of the most important parts which is the level design. Cookie cutter ass game despite the love I have for warhammer.
game has a very cool look, and chainsaw feels good to use, but nothing particularly inventive going on here. level design is super bland
this game has no soul. There are some really lazy aspects to it, like putting two of the same structure on the same map and then putting the "secret" collectible in both of them in the same place.
yeah yaeh "this game has very cool look" :DDD no it's worse than almost any boomer shooter. This game feels like a student's graduation project.
yeah yaeh "this game has very cool look" :DDD no it's worse than almost any boomer shooter. This game feels like a student's graduation project.
I'm shocked that a game that feels this fucking good to play. A game that's this heavy, that is this satisfying to make enemies explode into a indistinguishable mess of gore is this unabashedly boring. Nothing about this really screams anything to me. It isn't awful, but as far as brainless shooters are concerned, just nah.
Boltgun is a pretty fun boomer shooter. Don't expect anything more from this, it's more or less the platonic ideal 7/10 experience as a boomer shooter in the Warhammer universe with a nice art style.
Wow, I’ve had it pretty rough lately with gaming. I abandoned both Diablo 4 and Outer worlds back to back. I thought Bolt Gun was a sure fire recipe for success. I love old school looking graphics and Boomer Shooters. I loaded the game up and I had a blast in the first two levels. I loved the sense of weight behind the movement. The satisfying meatiness of the gunplay and resulting enemy deaths. The only thing that could hold it back a little was its reliance on following the basic Boomer Shooter gameplay formula. Survive arena shootouts and find a vast horde of keys to progress. The usual Red, blue and yellow keys. A lack of variety doesn’t really matter when the game feels this satisfying to blast through.
So why the low score? Well I played this on Nintendo Switch and my god it ran like absolute horse shit. The frames would drop continuously to the point where playing a full level felt like it was actively damaging my eyes. I managed to complete the first 7 levels on the hardest difficulty despite how badly it ran but I couldn’t face another two acts worth of levels in this state. It’s unplayable and I find it absolutely shocking the devs released this product for sale. The Logos at the start of the game when booted up can’t even run at 30fps. It’s a shame because if I had played this on another console I might have loved this but I have to talk about my experience and on Switch, this is a shit show. I think I will revisit this game down the line on another console in future.
So why the low score? Well I played this on Nintendo Switch and my god it ran like absolute horse shit. The frames would drop continuously to the point where playing a full level felt like it was actively damaging my eyes. I managed to complete the first 7 levels on the hardest difficulty despite how badly it ran but I couldn’t face another two acts worth of levels in this state. It’s unplayable and I find it absolutely shocking the devs released this product for sale. The Logos at the start of the game when booted up can’t even run at 30fps. It’s a shame because if I had played this on another console I might have loved this but I have to talk about my experience and on Switch, this is a shit show. I think I will revisit this game down the line on another console in future.
DNF. A decent effort at a throwback shooter, but it's not very successful overall. Moving around the environment is pretty rote and also confusing a lot of the time. I got lost much more often than I wanted to put up with. The shooting feels great at first, but it gets repetitive real fast. I got stuck on the end of the 2nd of 3 chapters, and I just couldn't bring myself to keep going.
Good game but gets after few levels to difficult an you are in over run by to many strong enemies, but setting, musik and idea are great.