Review: Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun

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In the grimdark future there is only war. No hope, no joy, no phones, no lights, no motorcars, not a single luxury. Just war neverending, albeit set inside a heavy metal album cover universe of military cathedral-gothic design. Warhammer 40,000 would be a truly wretched place to live, but for gaming it's hard to beat. There are no good guys, just bad guys who are a little less bad than other bad guys, making all factions’ urge to do nothing more than kill each other much easier to deal with. Winning or losing only matters so long as it's your faction coming out on top, and for humanity that's the Space Marines. The warriors of this superhuman faction are further augmented by gigantic stompy armor, and combined with their fanatic loyalty to the throne of the Emperor of Mankind, they’re a force that's almost impossible to overestimate. Even just a single Space Marine should be a match for the aliens and agents of Chaos infesting the universe, and that theory is being put to the test in Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun.

Somewhere in the galaxy is a sign that something has gone wrong, and Earth has seriously underestimated the potential problem. As a lone warrior with no backup and little in the way of armaments aside from a vicious chainsword, the odds feel like they should be heavily stacked against you, but Space Marines don't know fear, will never back down and it doesn't hurt that the planet is littered with guns and ammo. Granted, that's not much of a plot, but Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun is a pure action retro-FPS and it's not here to tell a story. The Chaos Marines are building a stronghold and that's all the motivation necessary to tear through three chapters of eight levels apiece to cleanse a planet of its sins.

Boltgun is a relatively simple shooter by design: you’ve got guns, there's lots of enemies, use the one on the other and try not to get hit. It's not a lot more complicated than Doom, aside from running on a true 3D engine, but honestly it's surprising it's taken so long to adapt Warhammer 40,000 to this type of gameplay. The two are a perfect match for each other, and while Boltgun doesn't aspire to be much more than DoomHammer 40,000, it's still got some good firefights scattered across its impressive levels.

It does take a while to build up to the good stuff, though. Starting off with just a chainsword, the first few encounters are all about the melee action. Targeting an enemy and triggering the melee attack (right-click on PC) sees the marine dash towards them and start cutting, with the earliest enemies going down almost instantly. Tougher enemies require more sawing, needing a constant series of taps on the melee until either they go down or break free, and on defeat they drop a couple of small health or shield icons. It actually takes a bit to get the initial boltgun because the game is doing its best to hammer the idea of the melee attack into the player's head, primarily because it's going to be useful throughout the entire game.

The marine also has two other abilities before guns come into play. The first is a short-range dash that can knock enemies aside and stun them for a second, and is also used to build speed for an extra-long jump. While the standard jump doesn't have a lot of height, the marine is fast even before running and doesn't take fall damage. The arenas are designed with this in mind, featuring a good amount of verticality to take advantage of his weight. That armor is gigantic and heavy, and when landing from a height the marine lets out a small shockwave that squishes any enemy unfortunate enough to be underneath his giant metal boots. It's a risky move if you miss, but gorily satisfying to pull off.

While the Space Marine isn't short on melee options, Boltgun is an FPS and needs a good arsenal, and with the power of the Space Marine it can't go small. The very first weapon is the boltgun of the title, which is basically a high-powered rifle that feels like it would be the fourth of fifth gun found in any other FPS. It's soon joined by the shotgun, a plasma rifle that fires exploding energy balls with a strong area of effect, the slightly slower but powerful heavy bolter, and more exotic weapons in chapters 2 and 3. It doesn't take more than a few firefights to come up with a favorite weapon for every situation, and while you can technically use any gun on any creature, there's a power scale that means you’ll want to match the gun to the enemy unless you really want to chew through the ammo while giving it all the time needed to get in a few good hits. Even so, the starting enemies show up constantly throughout the game, so there's always a good reason to pull out the old reliable boltgun, and one of Boltgun‘s strengths as an FPS is how each weapon feels good to use and none of them end up neglected.

Even so, it would be nice to have tougher enemies to use them on. I played Boltgun on Normal difficulty and finally figured out well into the game that it wasn't ever going to throw up much of a challenge. Standard enemies go down in a single shot from the initial boltgun, while bigger ones go down from a few hits of the more powerful guns. Ammo, health and armor are everywhere, so even after a big set-piece fight it's easy to get back up to full strength. I can't say for sure I’ve left behind more ammo than I collected but it seems likely, and while it's nice to know the guns are meant to be used, that still feels generous overall. Even a lot of the secrets are easy, with discovery being nothing more complex than "I looked around a corner and there it was." Good combat powerups are nice, but if it's a secret it feels like there should be more effort involved than not being completely oblivious.

Closing Comments:

Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun is a solid throwback FPS that makes up for being too generous with the resources by its excellent weapon, monster and level design. The world of Warhammer 40,000 translates fantastically well to this type of game, with decades of lore and design to draw from to create a fully-realized backdrop. The enemies come in a variety of styles from various normal humans to huge and deadly aliens, and they all mix together well to create firefights that need just enough in the way of tactics to keep the brain a little bit active. The only real challenge, though, comes from the game encouraging sloppy play in its frequent less intense sections, so when it's time to pay attention it can be easy to get caught off guard using bad habits. Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun is an oddly slow burn, but when it finally fires up in the latter half, the action feels worthy of the righteous might of a Space Marine.

Version Reviewed: PC