As a Star Wars fan, I can say with pretty good confidence that we “eat” well. There’s a steady stream of games that come out on a yearly basis to immerse fans in that universe. And during yearly fandom celebration events, we get a look at one or two of them that are on the horizon. But all that pales in comparison to the output of Warhammer 40K. For a long time, I have admired the series from afar, reading press releases for upcoming games and reviews for newly released ones. It seemed that every few months there was some update on a Warhammer game hitting the headlines. Last week, I jumped head-first into the 40K universe with Boltgun, a first-person shooter from Auroch Digital that puts you in the shoes of a battle-hardened Space Marine. This was my first foray into the operatic space series and what I experienced was everything I expected and then some.
The story of Warhammer 40K: Boltgun is delivered primarily through lore-heavy cutscenes at the start of each chapter. Watching the hyper-stylized segues made me feel like I was picking up the tenth novel in a thirteen-book fantasy series without any prior context for what has happened or what is to come. But in that way, I suppose playing any Warhammer game will have the same effect. Either way, most of the story you get past that is in paragraph-long mission summaries before each level. There are three chapters in Boltgun with eight levels in each. This totals to an average 10-hour playtime, though the hunt for secrets and better run times will definitely boost that number.
The retro first-person shooter DNA is reflected in more than just Boltgun‘s visuals. (Which I’ll get to later.) The gameplay loop is straightforward; you spawn into a level and must navigate its numerous color-coded doors by finding their respective color-coded keys and slaughtering anything that moves along the way. Once or twice per level, you will walk out into a wide-open area where your Servo Skull will initiate the purge. This locks all exits and you have to kill wave after wave of ugly monsters and Chaos Space Marines until the purge is over. You don’t have to kill every enemy you see (even in the purge areas) but doing so does reflect in your Kills statistic at the end of each level where you will also see your total time, secrets found, and the difficulty.
The difficulty is also a big point in retro shooters (though not the biggest in my opinion) and so I should mention that I beat the game on Medium difficulty. I have played a lot of first-person shooters and I consider myself an average player so I went with the second lowest (or third hardest) of the four difficulties. For me, this was the perfect sweet spot as I would often dance between “oh I got this” to “damn this is tough” without too much of either. On more than one occasion I would finish a purge or leave an area with my health in single digits, finally letting out that breath I have been holding in as I search for med packs. I do want to mention here that even on console, Boltgun has a handy quick save and quick load feature that I would very much so recommend you take advantage of. The game does have autosaves but they aren’t as frequent as I would like and one death can really set you back.
There are a total of nine weapons in Boltgun and they range from simple rifles like the titular boltgun to big f**king guns that fire off proportionate energy beams. One thing I wasn’t a big fan of is that your weapons disappear at the start of each chapter so you will have to find them all again as you play but within a chapter, once you pick up a weapon, it’s yours until the end. I liked the weapon variety and finding ammo for a certain gun usually inspired me to switch to it for a bit. Damage is damage, so any gun can bring down any enemy, but I found that certain weapons are better for certain enemies. For example, from my experience, Aspiring Champions, who can sometimes come back to life stronger when you kill them as Chosen ones, are best handled with explosives or high-caliber weapons that leave little of the champion behind to resurrect.
Okay, so I keep talking about what I think is the most important aspect of a retro shooter and it’s one that I think Boltgun absolutely nails: level design. The sprawling and often maze-like levels overlap in interesting ways and sections where you might think you need to retrace your steps are often skipped. Which greatly improves pacing. While there is no map in the game (something that I had to get used to as you’ll see in my first impressions video below) I started to notice environmental clues that helped queue me on where to go next. Each area of the game felt purposeful, offering the right sense of openness or crampedness for a given enemy encounter. I did get lost a few times, (another thing you’ll see in my first impressions video) but I was able to find the right path by getting to a familiar spot and running through it with my eyes and ears open.
Even though you play as a giant lumbering Space Marine in armor that makes Gears of War characters self-conscious, you move with surprising agility in Boltgun. You can run (a feature I recommend you toggle in the menus) and jump but timing both together lets you bunny-jump around the map. Boltgun offers a great sense of speed while not sacrificing scale. Your character still stomps around like he’s your upstairs neighbor at two in the morning but when it comes time to fight for the God Emperor, he floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee. He also has a dash ability that recharges every few seconds but I often forgot about it entirely because the rest of the movement was so good that I rarely had the need for it.
There are also on average five to six secrets tucked away in each level. (Click here to look at my Mission List.) These can sometimes be stumbled upon randomly as you run around the level trying not to get cornered. But the cool ones are hidden in hard-to-reach areas that take a bit of experimentation to reach. This ties back to the movement as your Space Marine can prove to be an armored ballerina, carefully balancing on top of slanting cathedral roofs as you parkour around the level, and it’s always rewarding to go explore an area on a hunch and find a surprise waiting for you.
The last weapon in your arsenal (and possibly the most fun) is the iconic chainsword. This weapon is always by your side and doesn’t need to be reloaded. At any given moment, you can hold down the left trigger and select an enemy in your surrounding area to rush to and chainsaw to pieces. The reason I am mentioning it here and not above is that this weapon offers a lot of freedom of movement. In some of the more vertical levels, you can jump off a high point, and right before you hit the ground, take out your chainsaw sword and lock on to an enemy to soften your landing. (Though I am not sure if fall damage is a thing in this game, to be honest.) These sorts of WWE finishers were very fun and, combined with all the other weapons at play, prevented the game from getting stale.
I do want to touch briefly on repetitiveness, however. I played the game in a few sessions spread out across three days and I never felt bored of the game. However, the game is very rinse and repeat as I said earlier. If you’re someone who likes to binge games, you may feel differently at the end of Boltgun than I did. There is enough visual difference between areas to not have it all blur together but the gameplay loop gets predictable. By the second chapter, you can walk into an area and immediately know that a purge is incoming. Again, I didn’t feel this way, but you might be based on your playstyle so keep that in mind.
Now let’s talk about those visuals. Boltgun has a fitting pixelated art style that still manages to add a good amount of detail to weapons and environments. If you’ve heard about Warhammer before, you might know that the series is known for having a strong blend of sci-fi and fantasy and Boltgun does not disappoint. There are large oppressive environments that combine the vast land spaces of science fiction with the architecture of medieval churches to really bring a great sense of scale to the game. As an added bonus to the already retro visuals is a retro option in the settings that lets you fine-tune the game to your liking. You can make the game even more pixelated and retro palette or clean it up to your liking. Though it does not have performance or FOV options as most modern shooters on consoles seem to be shipping with, this was a welcome addition that I enjoyed messing around with.
The audio for Boltgun is just as good as everything else so I don’t have much to say. The voice acting is mostly reserved for the four cutscenes but the addition of the taunt button (Y on Xbox) lets you hear Warhammer superfan (and frequent guest on Funhaus) Rahul Kholi as much as you want. Taunting does nothing of value but I appreciated the sheer amount of voice lines your character can shout while pointing aggressively or cracking his knuckles. The sound design gives each weapon its own unique feel and (as gross as it might sound) the effects of exploding enemies is oddly satisfying during gameplay.
The last point I want to make is on performance and this is Boltgun‘s biggest drawback for me. I played the game on both Xbox Series X (as is seen in the gameplay below) and the Series S. While performance is fine for the most part, I experienced a sum total of nine major freezes in the game. That’s nearly one per hour and that also doesn’t include the smaller stutters. In these moments, the fast-paced action comes to a halt and you stare helplessly wondering how much damage the Plague Toad you see frozen in front of you will deal because you just noticed you have five health. For an otherwise polished experience, these stutters were really unfortunate.
With all that said, Warhammer 40K: Boltgun is a great retro shooter. It combines fun gunplay with fast movement and impressive level design to make a game for both longtime Warhammer fans and newbies like me. It can be hard, and at times overwhelming due to the sheer number of enemies that the game throws at you, but it still manages to be fair in the end, and earning the victory is always satisfying. Warhammer 40K: Boltgun is available now on PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and PC. A review code was provided by the publisher. You can find me playing through the first hour of the game in the video below.
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