Fun fact: the origin of the term ‘grimdark’ can be directly traced back to the original Warhammer 40k board game. Suffice it to say, the cynical and nihilistic world of Warhammer 40k shit. Despite the highly advanced and amazing intergalactic society humanity has built, living in this universe means living in a bleak place where humanity exists in a state of total war as it hopelessly struggles to delay its inevitable demise at the hands of all manner of eldritch space gods and aliens. No one is ‘good’ in this universe and no one is going to do well, which makes Warhammer 40k and the boomer shooter genre seem like a match made in hell. Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun may not be the best game in the genre, but it’s good enough that we’d recommend it to anyone looking for a solid retro FPS.
Boltgun is set after the events of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine. You are a marine sent by the empire to pacify a group of tech priests who are experimenting with a dangerous energy source on a distant planet. You’re initially sent out with a squad, but your drop pod rather conveniently crashes and burns on the planet’s surface, violently killing everyone but you. With no other choice and armed only with a sick chainsaw saber, you enter a heretic’s lair to complete a mission on behalf of the glorious Emperor.
As you can probably guess, narrative doesn’t play a huge role in Boltgun, which is a bit disappointing given the absolutely cavernous depth of existing lore. Even so, the relative absence of story here doesn’t really detract from the overall experience, as the sugar rush of killing an arena full of heretics quickly erases any confusion about how and why it happens.
The game follows the classic boomer shooter design where you explore the winding corridors of maze-like levels, collecting upgrades and ammo as you rip and tear through an alarming amount of baddies in the bloodiest ways possible. You start out with just your titular, trusty rifle, an automatic weapon that packs a punch, and as you progress, you’ll pick up more weapons, like a plasma rifle or a shotgun. They each have key strengths that make them shine even more in certain situations, and while you’re encouraged to use your full arsenal, you can reasonably stick to your favorites and not worry too much about how you’ll perform—this isn’t DOOM Eternal where you need specific weapons for specific enemies.
No matter which gun you use, everything has a beautifully crisp and brutal feel as the screen and controller shake with every bullet you fire, covering the surrounding area with guts as your hapless enemy erupts on impact. Blasting yet another cultist or plague frog into a fine pink mist with your shotgun remains incredibly satisfying right up until the end, and the challenge quickly increases as you get deeper into the campaign. Given the base weight, the Boltgun never feels like it heavy game, but we ran into more than a few scenarios where we had to run away from hordes of enemies to pick up armor and health before finishing them off. It seems mostly balanced, but the main thing that turns it off is the somewhat finicky controls.
The problem is that you never feel like you’re in full control of your space marine; sometimes it doesn’t spin fast enough and other times it spins too fast. Adjusting the sensitivity in the settings can help reduce the sharpness, but this seems to be more due to the Switch’s hardware. The Joy-Con sticks don’t have enough travel to give you that sense of precision with your inputs, and the lack of an option to compensate with aim assist or gyro control means it can be difficult to get mid-range or distant enemies in your sights consistently, especially when running and shoot like crazy. Thankfully most of your weapons are more like hammers than scalpels, shooting ‘close enough’ usually means you’re still shredding your enemy’s face, but we’re still hoping gyro controls will be added at some point in the future Update. At this stage they should be standard for any FPS on Switch.
With finicky controls, the level design really needs some work. The shooting action itself remains electrifying and exciting every time it pulls you into yet another skirmish, but the environments in which those battles take place are often vast and confusing. There’s nothing wrong with expansive levels full of secrets—recent Doom games have used them to great effect—yet we found ourselves quite often lost in some of Boltgun’s larger stages. Corridors tend to meander on their own, and there’s a general lack of significant landmarks to help with wayfinding, which can make it quite difficult to determine the way forward when all the damp stone walls and rooms look almost exactly the same. There’s no map either, so you’re really left to fumble around in the dark until you happen to find an unsightly door to go through.
Graphically, Boltgun uses a fascinating visual style that blends modern 3D with the old 2D spritework of games like the original Doom. Everything has a lovely pixelated look, from the many terrifying enemies you face to the equally terrifying weapons you use to destroy them, but you can tell most of the environment is 3D ‘under’ the pixel filter. The locales themselves lend themselves perfectly to the characteristically dark aesthetic, with all sorts of bleak, vaguely religious settings perfectly blending sci-fi and fantasy.
All of this is paired with a collection of scrappy but apt industrial tracks that hit hard and punctuate the frenzied action quite well. The soundtrack may seem a bit disposable, but it fits well enough with the gleeful and unadulterated violence on display. The sound effects also deserve special praise. Everything from the shotgun reload to the thunder to the ground after a three-story jump sounds crisp and reliable, adding a crunchy, satisfying extra layer to the stimulating combat.
Conclusion
It may be confusing to navigate, but Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun has definitely hit the spot where it counts. When you’re not busy trying to remember how many times you’ve been through a certain room, the comically violent fight sequences offer consistently exciting fights with just the right amount of difficulty. We wish it had a little better control, but it’s impossible to deny that Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun is just ordinary fun game break through. We’d recommend this to anyone looking for a solid boomer shooter to add to their library; it’s not a game you have to rush out and play right away, but you’ll probably be satisfied once you start playing it.
