What Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun lacks in substance it makes up for sheer, unadulterated viscera; it is a boomer shooter to its very core. Nothing else matters other than painting the walls of each of the game's 24 chapters crimson with the blood of the heretics that dare stand against you. The game asks you not to think, just kill without discrimination.
The weapons appropriately match this sentiment; the guns are blunt, with disregard to any sense of utility in exchange for raw fire power. Not to say they all do the same thing though; there are of course situations where the shotgun is going to be better than the titular boltgun, and the plasma guns splash damage is particularly handy in some scenarios, but really just holding down the trigger and letting bullets and blood fly is often the best way to approach encounters. As well, the sound design of the guns play into this play style; all the weapons just have a punch and power that makes them unendingly satisfying to fire in long bursts, to the point where I would often use a gun because I just wanted hear the sound of the projectile shooting out of the barrel and the shell hitting the floor. The game also provides copious amounts of ammo to ensure that you can fulfill this desire, there was never a single time where I didn’t have a sufficient amount of ammo, say for the game's BFG equivalent. The level design also encourages this run and gun strategy. The levels vary from being linear hallways where enemies are lined up like bowling pins for the marine to knock down in absurdly bloody fashion, and gigantic open maps where, to open the exit door, you run around and kill everything in sight, and sometimes then some. As well, health packs, armor (called contempt here), ammo, and secret power ups are all scattered around these arenas; so if you want to live you are going to have to run, jump, and pile drive through the environment.
However, as fun and cathartic as running through enemies with the force of god, it inevitably loses its luster after a while; and that is where the core flaw of this game lies. The game has no nuance. Like I mentioned, the guns only exist to do damage, they have no utility outside of that, which makes deciding which one to use for a given situation a matter of which one do I have the most ammo for. The enemies are also just as blunt as the weapons, they only exist to do damage and offer no other way of inconveniencing the player; the only real determining factors on which enemy should be dealt with first is how big their health bar is and how fast they can take yours. Compare this to the likes of Doom Eternal where the game constantly asks to understand the abilities of your guns beyond just damage and to apply them to dynamic combat encounters where enemies are designated to affect the players actions and train of thought in different ways, serving almost like a puzzle that is repeatedly un-solving itself.
Warhammer 40k: Boltgun is still a good game, don't get me wrong, and it will certainly make a name for itself in the ever growing pantheon of retro boomer shooters. But I still feel like it doesn’t fully understand what makes for engaging design in this genre, and instead decides to fully engross itself with a lot of the surface level concepts that people think about when discussing the retro first person shooter scene.
The weapons appropriately match this sentiment; the guns are blunt, with disregard to any sense of utility in exchange for raw fire power. Not to say they all do the same thing though; there are of course situations where the shotgun is going to be better than the titular boltgun, and the plasma guns splash damage is particularly handy in some scenarios, but really just holding down the trigger and letting bullets and blood fly is often the best way to approach encounters. As well, the sound design of the guns play into this play style; all the weapons just have a punch and power that makes them unendingly satisfying to fire in long bursts, to the point where I would often use a gun because I just wanted hear the sound of the projectile shooting out of the barrel and the shell hitting the floor. The game also provides copious amounts of ammo to ensure that you can fulfill this desire, there was never a single time where I didn’t have a sufficient amount of ammo, say for the game's BFG equivalent. The level design also encourages this run and gun strategy. The levels vary from being linear hallways where enemies are lined up like bowling pins for the marine to knock down in absurdly bloody fashion, and gigantic open maps where, to open the exit door, you run around and kill everything in sight, and sometimes then some. As well, health packs, armor (called contempt here), ammo, and secret power ups are all scattered around these arenas; so if you want to live you are going to have to run, jump, and pile drive through the environment.
However, as fun and cathartic as running through enemies with the force of god, it inevitably loses its luster after a while; and that is where the core flaw of this game lies. The game has no nuance. Like I mentioned, the guns only exist to do damage, they have no utility outside of that, which makes deciding which one to use for a given situation a matter of which one do I have the most ammo for. The enemies are also just as blunt as the weapons, they only exist to do damage and offer no other way of inconveniencing the player; the only real determining factors on which enemy should be dealt with first is how big their health bar is and how fast they can take yours. Compare this to the likes of Doom Eternal where the game constantly asks to understand the abilities of your guns beyond just damage and to apply them to dynamic combat encounters where enemies are designated to affect the players actions and train of thought in different ways, serving almost like a puzzle that is repeatedly un-solving itself.
Warhammer 40k: Boltgun is still a good game, don't get me wrong, and it will certainly make a name for itself in the ever growing pantheon of retro boomer shooters. But I still feel like it doesn’t fully understand what makes for engaging design in this genre, and instead decides to fully engross itself with a lot of the surface level concepts that people think about when discussing the retro first person shooter scene.