Video Game Cheap Thrills: Boltgun

In all honesty, this Boltgun was not made for me. I am not a Warhammer 40,000 fan. When I was first made aware of it back in the late 1980s, I thought it looked really interesting. Then I saw how much money it seemed to suck out of its fans.

“Even in debt, I still serve.”

I didn’t have that kind of money to burn back then.

Consequently, when it comes to Warhammer 40K I remain a Flirt.

The reason I’m starting with this caveat is that I am not going to be able to judge if it gets the feel of Warhammerverse right. I am reasonably familiar enough with the aesthetics that I can see why there are a lot of people who insist that Starcraft absolutely started as a Warhammer game. But there is more to a fantasy world than aesthetics. Disney Star Wars looks like Lucas’ Star Wars but absolutely isn’t. Marvel Films looks like what they were making ten years ago but sure as hell aren’t now.

I can comfortably say that Boltgun uses the right names for things and the art design matches the Warhammer 40K universe. I am familiar with the phrases like “For the Emperor!” and they are present, but it would be pretty shocking if they weren’t.

Consequently, I am uncomfortable reviewing this as a Warhammer 40K game.

But what I am comfortable with reviewing is the game as a game.

Boltgun is retro-FPS a Boomer shooter (Glob, I hate that name; it should be Xoomer shooter because Gen-X and Gen-Z are the ones that played them). This game was built with the Unreal 4 engine but tweaked to resemble a Build engine game (albeit an Eduke32 version of the engine). The graphics are appropriately blocky and crispy, the definition is very sharp, and the palette is limited to the required 256 colors. As with any proper Boomer Shooter (sigh), you are a lone Space Marine survivor on a mission to wipe out various forms of evil, or, given that this is Warhammer 40K, worse forms of evil than yourself. Probably.

You start with only a chain sword, which frankly beats just having a knife. LMB puts you into bullet-time, then you pick your target and charge for a one-shot kill or keep sawing away by pressing V if the enemy is higher level. But you won’t need to do that on the training mission. After you familiarize yourself with the controls and saw up some squishes you are presented with your Holy Relic: The Boltgun.

The boltgun itself is by dint of marketing necessity a lot more powerful than the usual FPS first pistol. It gibs everything it can one-shot. It will run as an automatic if you keep the LMB pinned. Otherwise, it will just be a single shot. The game is pretty generous with the ammo for both it and your next weapon: The Shotgun.

The shotgun is nice and punchy, and its sound design is very good. It’s chunky and impactful; truthfully, I can say the same thing for all of the pew-pew in this game.

Next is the Plasma Gun, then the Heavy Bolt, Melta, Grav-Cannon, and Vengence Launcher. There are differences between them, but they are kind of minor, and if you are a Warhammer fan, you are already familiar with them. Each enemy has a health bar, and more importantly, on the right side of it is a number that tells you how tough it is. An Auto-Gun Cultist is level 3 and you can tear-up with the bolt gun, if it’s a Chaos Marine level 5 you are going to need something heavier. There is no Super Shotgun per see, although the Melta pretty much works as one. Minor complaint: Plasma Gun locks you into a cool-down animation, but if you hit taunt, you can switch weapons immediately. It’s minor.

It is not overly generous with the grenades because you get to carry a maximum of three. I suspect in testing they found that more than that was a game-breaker.

It’s worth trying to find secrets because those will contain powerups, and you are going to need them. They are not however, all that secret, there is not much in the way of hidden panels. You just find these “secrets” mostly in the open.

The atmosphere of the game is, in three words, metal as fuck. The music supports the atmosphere, and I can honestly say it could be worth the price of a separate purchase if your taste runs that way. It would be good for game night, depending on the game. The art design is very gothic.

For a price of $20, I was expecting a game with quite a lot less polish. Considering how many people got taken to the cleaners buying Redfall, Boltgun gives you a huge bang for the buck. Any other drawbacks are fairly petty, considering what you’re getting for your money.

Nonetheless, they are present. In a proper FPS, you should be encouraged and rewarded for exploring. This does happen during the training section and first level but nowhere else in the game. After the introduction, it basically follows the guided maze until you reach the arena.

It does the all-important work of making you feel like you are an unstoppable killing machine. You have mass. You have impact. When you charge squishes, you gib them under your heels. If you fall from a height, it has big shockwave damage. You clank and thud when you walk in a very authoritative manner.

It takes around ten hours to get through, and the replay value is pretty decent.

Darklings: Which is a better buy, Boltgun or Dusk?

Dusk, no question.

Dusk goes to 11, and Boltgun hangs around in the 8 to 8.5 area. There were some little things that needed to happen to take the game to the next level, and they didn’t. For instance, each new monster should get a proper build-up. It should be a mini-story arc: introduction (you hear breathing), rising tension (breathing gets louder, and you hear it growl), then climax (the monster attacks). Boltgun doesn’t do that, you just have something new to shoot that pops out immediately.

The art design is kind of repetitive, which can make navigation a pain. It’s not as bad as, say, Wolfenstein 3D, but the problem is the same. You will end up wall-humping for a long time, looking for an Exit. They should have included a map function and didn’t.

Speaking of maps. When you are entering a boss fight, you should know it by the way the map draws you into it. Here you just ran into the boss arena.

And sadly, the boss fights are pretty lame. The bosses are just spongy as hell, also they don’t maneuver very well, so what should be the most exciting part of the game is just a chore to get through.

The difficulty isn’t really a problem, but I was surprised at how easy it was for the level I started playing at. I had started at Medium, got bored, and started a new game on High.

I have no complaints from a technical standpoint. It never crashed once.

At the end of the day, these are just quibbles. If you love Xoomer shooters and have $22 to burn on a game, you won’t regret it. If you think you will regret it, wait for a Steam sale.

I did ask a friend who plays Warhammer 40K to give it a try. He insists that if you are into Warhammer 40,000 it is a must-buy.

At the end of the day…

The Dark Herald Recommends with Confidence (4/5)

NEXT: Cheap Video Game Thrills, Steam Recommendation: Zortch Maxinum: Against the Alien Brainsuckers

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