The more I played Boltgun, the more it reminded me of its in-universe namesake. The Boltgun is loud, built to kill, abrasive, made with old technology to combat a modern age. The only real difference between the game Boltgun and the actual Boltgun is that the actual Boltgun is blessed in a church. Given the circumstance, I believe it’d be hard to get a priest to bless my computer. Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun is the latest method to satisfy your heretic-bloodlust from Auroch Digital, whose last and only previous game was (checks notes) a… beer brewing simulator. Well, that’s quite a leap to go from a beer sim to the ever growing boomer shooter genre. So is DOOM X Warhammer a combo worthy of the Emperor’s praise? We went in and found out for this Boltgun review!
Performance, Optimization and Graphics
This is probably going to be a bit on the shorter side. Boltgun runs great on almost any machine you can imagine, which is good considering that it looks like it was made in ’95. If something that looked like this didn’t run well, we’d have serious issues to consider.
What I do want to spend a bit more time on is the actual look and style of the game. Emulating the original DOOM and Quake games is a brave choice, especially for a Warhammer game. Capturing the scale and size of the Warhammer universe while confined to pixels and sprites is no easy task, but I do believe Auroch Digital have succeeded here with flying colors. The look of this game is very appealing, at least to me; as someone who has a lot of secondhand nostalgia for old shooters and loves Warhammer, this is a near match made in heaven.
That isn’t to say that Boltgun is straight out of the 90s tech wise. Boltgun boasts some impressive particle and sprite work that would probably make your computer explode back then. While the sprites are 2d and do that thing where they rotate as you move around them, blood and particle effects make sure you know that this isn’t COMPLETELY retro. It always came off as a talented artist paying homage, instead of lazy, dated work being passed off as retro.
Some of the animations here are pretty impressive considering the tech level we’re at as well. Enemies have visible reloads and telegraphs, and one time I rounded a corner to get mooned by 2 Nurglings, who promptly caught a Bolter round right up main street for their trouble. Its very fun to see fearsome Chaos Terminators and the all-knowing Lords of Change confined into pixel format.
The Fun Part
Right, now that that’s out of the way, we can talk about the actual game. In Boltgun you take control of Sternguard Veteran of the Ultramarines named Malum Caido. That literally means “I Beat Evil” in Latin. An appropriately Warhammer name. You’ll taking orders from the Ordo Malleus branch of the Inquisition to investigate a Forge World tainted by Chaos.
If that sounded like nonsense, don’t worry. As a Boomer Shooter, the story is pretty light here and, frankly, completely optional to pay attention to. Its thrifty, kinda fun, and offers some fun fan service and in-jokes for Warhammer nerds like me. When I got acquired my first weapon and I got a prompt to “approach with appropriate reverence”, I knew these guys get Warhammer.
Gameplay
Boltgun is a “Boomer Shooter”, that being a game inspired by the shooters of days past such as DOOM, Quake, Duke Nukem, etc. That means its fast, bloody, and has a lot of very big maps where you’ll frequently be key hunting and doing that old dance of entering a room, seeing the doors close and needing to wipe out a horde of enemies for the doors to open up again. While Boltgun’s levels can be maze-like, akin to its ancestors, it never gets too bad. People forget that the original DOOM and games such as Marathon were particularly cruel in their level design. They could throw you for several loops before you even got close to the exit.
That’s not the case here, though you will need to hunt around for required keys and doors. Like so much of Boltgun, it feels like taking inspiration from rather than outright copying what made those old games so good… and thankfully cutting out the frustrating parts that people like to forget about.
Gameplay (Cont.)
Enemies are also wonderfully retro in their design. From the spritework to their behavior, you’ll find something to love– and hate– about near every one of them. You have your classic “run up and smack you” enemies, like Tzzentch’s Blue Horrors and the disgusting children of Nurgle, the Nurglings. A smattering of other Warhammer creatures and characters make an appearance as well. Abominable Great Unclean Ones, Chaos Space Marines and other Daemons block your path as you make your way through Graia. The only really annoying one I found was the Plague Toads, who seem to have a ridiculous amount of health and damage for their size.
One thing I grew to appreciate about Boltgun is its simplicity. In a time where every shooter seems to want to play at being an RPG, with skill trees, statsticks and meaningless loot, its nice to have a game that revels in its simplicity. There is no “progression” beyond finding weapons and moving through the game. Its great to just revel in the chaotic simplicity of being a Space Marine. A Space Marine doesn’t need meaningless loot drops! A Space Marine is the Emperor’s chosen. Emperor be damned, everything he has is already good enough to kill anything that gets in his way.
Weapons
A slew of enemies and the levels you find them in are only as good as the weapons you blow them to pieces with, however. Naming your game after a weapon is one hell of a statement. Thankfully, Boltgun delivers in spades once again. All sorts of weapons from the 40k universe are here. Normal and heavy variant Boltguns, plasma guns, Volkite weapons, Meltas and the ever-present shotgun all make an appearence here, and they all feel incredible to use. True to the game’s name, the Boltgun ended up being my favorite weapon. A brilliant workhorse weapon that is appropriately powerful
One thing I do want to point out is the audio design for these weapons. The old Destiny 2 director, Luke Smith, once said “We can make a weapons feel overpowered just by making it sound powerful”. That statement is put to the test and verified here in Boltgun. All the weapons here sound positively cataclysmic. They’re balanced, but in a game where almost everything explodes into red giblets when you hit it enough, its nice to feel like the weapons you’re using earned the devastation they’re causing.
Conclusion
I enthusiastically give Warhammer 40k: Boltgun my seal of approval, and recommend it to anyone looking for 8-10 hours to kill. Its the perfect purging experience and a great entry into Warhammer’s vast catalogue of games. Even if you aren’t a fan of Warhammer, its still a great retro shooter. It is well worth the $20 entry fee. Thanks for reading my Boltgun Review, I hope you enjoy slaying Heretics as much as I did!
Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun was released on May 23, 2023 on PC, Xbox, Playstation and Nintendo Switch. Want more Warhammer? Check out some of our older Darktide posts and catch up on a bit of lore!
