Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun Image
Metascore
74

Mixed or average reviews - based on 36 Critic Reviews What's this?

User Score
8.5

Generally favorable reviews- based on 32 Ratings

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  • Summary: Load up your Boltgun and plunge into battle headfirst! Experience a perfect blend of Warhammer 40,000, classic, frenetic FPS gameplay and the stylish visuals of your favourite 90's retro shooters.

    Play a battle-hardened Space Marine on a perilous mission across the galaxy, as they battle
    Load up your Boltgun and plunge into battle headfirst! Experience a perfect blend of Warhammer 40,000, classic, frenetic FPS gameplay and the stylish visuals of your favourite 90's retro shooters.

    Play a battle-hardened Space Marine on a perilous mission across the galaxy, as they battle against the Chaos Space Marines and daemons of Chaos.

    In glorious boomer shooter style, unleash your devastating Space Marine arsenal as you blast through an explosion of sprites, pixels and blood. Run, jump and charge across huge levels to shoot, shred and slice the worst heretics across the galaxy!
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Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun — Preorder Gameplay Trailer
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 26 out of 36
  2. Negative: 1 out of 36
  1. May 23, 2023
    90
    Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun is an absolute treat for fans of the grim, dark future of the 41st Millennium and a superb shooter in its own right.
  2. May 23, 2023
    85
    Boltgun is stupendously fun—a treat for Warhammer players and a worthy member of the growing legion of retro shooters.
  3. May 23, 2023
    80
    Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun is a brisk, brutal boomer shooter and another great reason for a visit to Games Workshop’s science fiction theatre.
  4. May 24, 2023
    80
    Boltgun is a great blend of old and new and of a Dark SciFi franchise thats widely beloved. It has its flaws and minor issues concerning gun balancing and map design but it is a great game for boomer shooter lovers and Warhammer fans alike. It bathes in Emperor's light!
  5. May 23, 2023
    75
    Drenched in retro nostalgia, Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun is a straightforward boomer shooter with a 40K skin. Its minimal story is as bog-standard as Warhammer gets, but is enough to justify the on-screen slaughter, while allowing for a pure focus on satisfying action. Crunchy weapon sounds and plenty of pixelated gore make turning enemies into giblets something that doesn’t get old. Its main drawbacks come in the shape of how easy it is to get lost in some of its levels, a handful of frustrating encounters, and its decision to introduce most enemy types during the first part of its campaign. Yet, even so, Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun delivers enough awesome action to keep you engaged and eager to make sure the Emperor has a thousand or two fewer Chaos servants to worry about.
  6. May 25, 2023
    70
    Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun offers an epic cleansing in the name of the God-Emperor. It offers a beautifully realized Warhammer universe, including its famous antagonists and weapons. It’s not perfect by any means, not even judging by the standards of the boomer shooter genre, but it’s a bloody good piece of fan service.
  7. 40
    Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun belongs in every game dev's syllabus, filed under "why encounter design is a pillar of any retro shooter.

See all 39 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 12 out of 16
  2. Negative: 1 out of 16
  1. May 25, 2023
    10
    It is truly a great shooter, up there with the best of the best boomer shooters. Fun, fast, violent and charming.
  2. May 26, 2023
    10
    Movement is good, sprites are very Project Warlocky, I like the enemy variety and the fact there's more than one type of Chaos god to purge,Movement is good, sprites are very Project Warlocky, I like the enemy variety and the fact there's more than one type of Chaos god to purge, lately everything has been Nurgle or nothing. After dashing through episode I think my biggest complaint is the chainsword, the sprite is not great if you're holding it as a primary weapon(admittedly almost never happens) and the mashing input for the should be hold which I actually made a macro for.

    Why isn't auto-run on by default? Having to turn it on every level is weird, level design is very clear, I would not complain if we had an auto map but it's really not necessary(so far) and the red tint on the arena sections is god awfully bad. All that said I'm loving it.

    The arsenal's very 40k accurate and the weapons are a blast to use, though the bolter feels a tad underpowered after getting the other weapons. I highly recommend it if you like 40k and I recommend it if you want a Doomy shooter with jumps
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  3. Jun 1, 2023
    10
    Really fun I have only played for couple of hours now but the graphics and gunplay looks great and feel great. I'm not even a 40k fan but thisReally fun I have only played for couple of hours now but the graphics and gunplay looks great and feel great. I'm not even a 40k fan but this seemed fun and it was. Expand
  4. May 28, 2023
    10
    Not really a big fan of boomer shooters, but this is a absolute killer, exactly how i wanted a modern doom. no quicktime event **** or otherNot really a big fan of boomer shooters, but this is a absolute killer, exactly how i wanted a modern doom. no quicktime event **** or other stuff, just pure fun. Expand
  5. Jun 2, 2023
    8
    It's a very good title, very good boomer-shooter with lot of love.
    Weapons are good, you can also hear and feel the heavy armor of the space
    It's a very good title, very good boomer-shooter with lot of love.
    Weapons are good, you can also hear and feel the heavy armor of the space marine witch is pretty good.
    Enemies are good and varied, but tend to be exhausted by the end of chapter one, so after that you will encounter the same enemies with some exceptions.
    Levels are ok, you most probably will lose yourself trying to find the way, in that regard devs could have spent some more time trying to make doors and wayouts stand out a bit more from the background.
    Overall a very good warhammer title and boomer-shooter!
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  6. May 24, 2023
    6
    What a disappointment.

    Boltgun is the perfect example of the intricacies that take in conforming an actual worthwhile shooter; mechanics
    What a disappointment.

    Boltgun is the perfect example of the intricacies that take in conforming an actual worthwhile shooter; mechanics and systems that go beyond the superficial, because Boltgun has everything going for it, except for the gears going behind it.

    This is a title with serviceable combat at first, that slowly turns into a grind and a repetitive one at that, you fight numerous enemies but not much that change in their actual mechanics, they all just kind of shoot at you, or charge at you, there’s no reason to change your strategy in how you tackle the obstacles the game presents. There is a system tackled on, one that involves some weapons hurting enemies more than others, but the issue with this mechanic is that for the most part, you’re relegated to using the plasma cannon as the universal weapon in the game that causes the most damage to enemies, the issue? This weapon has poor rate of fire and is extremely inaccurate, it truly is as if the crosshair and your shots are desynced while using it.

    Then there’s the level design, or lack thereof, the game developers took it to heart to create arenas in which to pin enemies against the player, but none of these spaces feel well throughout or rationally designed. Is as if the developers thought, “why don’t we just throw enemies of random quantities and types to the player”. It becomes a pain after a while when you’re getting swarmed by a number of enemies that take too much damage and seemingly appear out of nowhere without any sort of order, thought or rhyme or reason to their existence other than to just overwhelm the player.

    The game has multiple difficulty settings but they’re all poorly balanced, easy is fairly easy but sometimes it can get challenging, normal is fairly easy at the beginning and then becomes an extremely challenging difficulty, and this issue changes between levels, independently on what chapter you’re in -of the three-, the game has.

    And the levels are also fairly generic, and there’s never a sense that you’re progressing through a plot of anything, there’s not a sense of progression or purpose in this game, some might say that the strength of boomer shooters doesn’t lie in the story, but I digress. Most boomer shooters tell incredible stories, but they don’t use cutscenes, instead they use environmental storytelling, or notes at times -as it was in the most recent and incredible Cultic-, that came out a few months ago.

    The game seemingly progresses at random intervals and without that much thought as to why you’re doing what you’re doing, at one point you’re at a snowy mountain, then in some sort of massive castle, eventually in a desert, but it never explains to you how you got there, the loading screens give a vague idea as to why you’re there, but for the most part these descriptions only mentioned you’re there to “investigate” they hardly elaborate on why or what are you looking for?

    This is a shame too, because the game starts with a really well animated cutscene that sets the game as a link between the original Space Marine game that came out in 2011, and its sequel -supposedly- coming out this year. It’s a shame because they could’ve done so much in the way of elaborating this link and retracing the cliff-hanger that that game presented, yet beyond this initial setup, the game never really elaborates it in any way. There’s exactly three chapters in the game and there’s exactly four cutscenes in the entire game… which eventually are also so badly written and directed that they hardly press for an idea as to why you’re even heading to different directions in the planet you’re in.

    It's just a really poor excuse of an experience that after a while becomes a shallow mess of repetitiveness, and after a while I just didn’t want to play it, I wasn’t interested in the repetitive and empty gameplay, nor in the nonsensical or non-existent story. It was just a shell of what could’ve been a much, much better game.
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  7. May 27, 2023
    0
    The game is poorly optimized!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

See all 16 User Reviews