While there’s never been an official connection between 1993’s DOOM and Warhammer 40,000, it’s hard not to see the parallels between the iconic Doomguy and the Space Marines. Both wear power armor, become one-man armies on the battlefield, and have a particular penchant for delivering some of the most brutal deaths a demon can imagine.
Boltgun, the upcoming FPS for Auroch Digital and Focus Entertainment, feels as if it’s a game destined to exist. The Warhammer 40,000 setting, with its plethora of daemons and space marines, seemed like a perfect fit for a stylized baby boomer shooter full of guts, gore, and guns. This seems like a good game setup for fans of the Warhammer 40,000 IP, and we’ve managed to sit down and play for a few hours and get some first impressions of the Boltgun.
As you might have expected from the boomer shooting tag Boltgun wears so proudly, you don’t get or need much in terms of narrative setting. As expected, you’re a space marine, and you’re thrown into a world full of chaos worshipers, enemy marines, and demon spawns from Warhammer 40,000’s own version of hell called Warp hostile planet.
As much as I might hate to type it, after this sentence has been slaughtered and belittled by notorious comments in the past, you do “feel” like a space marine, or you control one, in the Boltgun probably better than except in 2011 More than any Warhammer 40,000 game I’ve played outside of Space Marines in 2010. Every footstep feels heavy, and you look like a walking tank amid deadly enemies, but not entirely immune to some of the deadlier foes’ shots. Once you get to the first few levels in Boltgun, everything clicks right away.
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That satisfaction goes beyond feeling like you’re in control of a space marine while playing the game. Gameplay is fast, tight, and absolutely hectic when you want it to be. Both melee and gunplay feel engaging, though the latter gets a lot of attention. However, the former gets you the most gore onscreen, so if you’re after gore, no more, you’ll have a lot of fun shredding your enemies with chainswords.
Despite the aforementioned shredding of enemies, you won’t find combat to be a piece of cake in Boltgun. At least, not always. If power fantasies are what you’re after, there are plenty of cultists out there that pop like red grapes when you hit them with a bullet, but it’s a pleasant surprise that the Boltgun isn’t just there to give players a chance before moving on to other things. Hours of violent fun for them. Difficulty ramps up at times, and you’ll have to be smart and quick if you want to avoid the onslaught from the larger Chaos Demons. Similar to the popular Ultrakill, Boltgun seems to have a lot of potential for those looking to beat the hardest difficulties with the fastest time. There’s a lot of replayability in these levels, only enhanced by the secrets you can find within them.
While the visuals are all carefully crafted to evoke boomer shooter nostalgia while representing the creation of Warhammer 40,000, what else shouldn’t be underestimated is how powerful Boltgun’s sound design is. From the sound of every footstep to the satisfying thunder of the game’s named weapon, the sound design in Boltgun elevates the violence in the gameplay and visuals, making everything more visceral.
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Even with just a few levels, Boltgun is impressive. It’s filled with all the gore and glory you’d expect from a Warhammer 40,000 boomer shooter, but sometimes meeting expectations is enough to make a game stand out. As a game that could possibly fly under the radar, even for fans of the murky, far-flung future, it must be stressed that as long as the rest of it lives up to this preview’s massive enemy variety, gameplay, and sound design, it’s worth it focus on.
