3.5/5 ★ – FoofDeckman's review of Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun.

I'm someone that's always had a soft spot for boomer shooters, especially ones with a retro aesthetic. As someone that loves the original Doom games, something about this sub-genre just scratches that itch I didn't know I had. Warhammer 40k Boltgun is a fantastic game, between it's perfect sound design, unique art direction and the ability to slow down time in order to slice enemies with a chainsaw creates one of the best boomer shooters of the past couple of years. The art direction really pops, it's one of those things that feels like it wouldn't be as big of a deal as it really ended up being, but it is, and the minimalist animations heavily compliment the game's impeccable sound design. You play a Space Marine, and to those not familiar with Warhammer, are basically unstoppable super solider killing machines that wear suits weighing over 1000 pounds, and you feel that in Boltgun because of it's sound design. Even when you simply walk around, heavy footsteps follow your every move. Every gun has so much weight behind each bullet and while the animations are purposefully minimal, the sound design kicks everything up several notches and makes the gunplay and movement feel all the better. I know it wont happen but this game needs to win every sound design award out there, because I can't sell just how good this game sounds in words. The gameplay itself its clearly inspired by early Doom and Wolfenstein games, tons of smaller corridors with secrets all leading to a big area with tons of enemies, it's not anything groundbreaking but in unison with it's gameplay makes this standout a lot more than it otherwise would. The chainsaw is easily my favorite weapon in the game, and also the first one you acquire, it's obviously a melee weapon, but when you get within a certain range of an enemy you can choose to slow down time and lunge at an enemy to wear down their health with the chainsaw. On paper it sounds like such a simple mechanic, but this really is equivalent in enjoyability to Doom Eternals chain hook and that's a high compliment since that's one of my favorite games of all time. Unfortunately it's not a perfect package, for a game that's only 10 hours long, I kind of wish it was shorter. As much as I enjoyed most of my time with this game, you get to the point where the gameplay starts to become really repetitive as you're basically doing the same thing you've been doing for the entire game. Sure it tries throwing new weapons and enemies into the mix, but unfortunately with how weapon balancing works, you tend to only stick to using a few guns instead of your entire arsenal. The level design is also incredibly confusing sometimes, I know that's typically a par for the course in boomer shooters, but even Doom has a map of some kind of keep track of where you've been. There were several times during Boltgun where I'd just get completely lost and unsure on if I had already been there or not. The bosses in Boltgun aren't great either, there's three main ones but they're repeated several times throughout the game, but they always feel like bullet sponges. There's never a creative way of dealing with them, it's always dump magazine after magazine into them without much thought, and I wish there was a little more depth to them. Overall I really enjoyed my time with Boltgun, It has its flaws but it wasn't enough to stop me from having a good time. If you want a solid boomer shooter in 2023, I highly recommend checking out Warhammer 40k Boltgun.