izigame.me

A very cautious recommendation if I may. Overall, WH40k hype aside, it's a 7/10 game at most so if you are not a fan of the setting, it might not be for you
Having finished my walkthrough on Exterminatus, I say Boltgun is one of these games which admittedly get worse the more you play, and the higher difficulty shows all the more cracks in its design. The initial wow factor is great. The first levels feel amazing, and you feel like you have a lot to look forward to. The later parts? Uh, not so great
While it is a positive review, I want to focus mainly on what a person should prepare for going in for the WH40k themed fun
Story:
Simple and to the point. You are a space marine. They are heretics and demons. Do I need to say more? XD
Besides, we aren't here for the story, are we? The game does act as a semi-sequel to Space Marine, but very-very loosely.
General gameplay and mechanics:
- You have almost lore-accurate speed/agility which is good, very good, but it won't save you (more about it later)
- Enemies are not exactly varied but they do their job well enough IMO (more about it later, too)
- Weapon general feel is pretty nice for most guns, with punchy effects, good accuracy, and enemy bits flying around after kills. The initial wow factor is great! Weapon variety could use some love, however, especially in mid and long-range department, such as lascannons, stalker bolters, plasma cannons or the like. Or a short-range flamer/heavy flamer.
- Ammo capacity is very limited for certain weapons for whatever reason, plasma and volkite can carry whole 2 extra mags, and melta has about 6 spare shots. You could say it's for balance, but ammo for these things is lying everywhere to the point I think I left like 60% of the pickups behind, so it's not like there's a massive shortage or anything. It's just inconvenient mid-battle really
- Generally, the level structure reminds me a lot of Doom Eternal - arenas connected through corridors. The open zones are wide enough to warrant some exploration, but don't expect a branching maze. Getting lost, however, is easier than you'd think due to somewhat similar textures and objects making levels blend in to a degree, so you might end up looping.
- Damage feedback has greatly improved since release, however directional indicators are still often misleading. Say, I got hit from front-right, but the arrows pointed up and left instead.
Animations and visuals:
There are several glaring issues with this part of the game
- Could be nice if gun casings were physical objects like in Brutal Doom. Currently, they are part of the held weapon sprite and are drawn into the attack animation
- Low amount of frames makes it harder to keep track of hostiles behavior
- Enemy melee animations are completely desynced from when damage is applied to you. In fact, from my experience, melee enemies straight up have instant touch damage which is then followed by them doing an attack animation. Very noticeable for aspiring champions which hit you the moment they get within striking range, yet visually their model at that point would only prepare to take a swing
- Heretic plasma gunners (100 DMG per hit) are pitch black with no glow. The orange bit on their gun completely disappears when they aim and charge their weapon. All in a game which isn't exactly bright most of the time.
General enemy behavior:
- Enemies have highly accurate predictive aiming. They don't just lead the shots adjusting their aim over time to prevent lame single button strafing. No, they instantly know by how much EXACTLY they need to lead the shots to hit you, from the moment you pressed the movement button. To dodge you either need to switch directions between the animation start and projectile firing or to bunnyhop around to confuse their aimbot on Z-axis
- Because of predictive aiming for ranged enemies and insta-touch-damage for melee ones, running around, like, say in Doom Eternal, let alone trying to engage in melee is extremely ill-adviced.
I'd even go as far as to say that, in this game you don't feel like an Ultramarine. In fact, I'm willing to believe that you are actually a Fire Warrior, a Tau who put on a gue'la super soldier papier-mache cosplay on top of his old Crisis suit and went on to fight off a Chaos invasion. Why? Because you are very good at shooting, you have to be tactical: stick to cover or die, and you get absolutely demolished in hand-to-hand combat against even moderate threats.
Can you block or parry an aspiring champion? Nope. Can you quick-stagger away a bunch of blue horrors or nurglings to give yourself some breathing room? Nope. Your chainsword behaves like it's 1993 again, and Doom has just dropped, except Doom 1993 chainsaw is actually somehow MORE ergonomic and easier to use because I don't have to mash the button to keep sawing
Lore and balance:
A lot, and I mean A LOT of very strange choices were made here. As someone well familiar with WH40k and its factions, I was baffled to no end by several things I've ran into here
Let's start with the elephant, or rather the ambull, in the room. It's so weird to see Nurgle and Tzeentch working together somehow. No Slaanesh or Khorne anywhere though, so it's not exactly Chaos Undivided either
Tzeentch faction was made melee heavy to a ridiculous degree. Blue horrors have completely lost their ranged capabilities. Flamers are weaksauce with easily avoidable slow fireballs. No flame waves, no AOE, nothing. The only airborne unit is a melee charging screamer. Speaking of ambulls, on Tzeentch's levels, the strongest non-boss units aren't even Tzeentch! Those are melee charging ambulls.
The Lord of Change has potential to be scary, but in my experience he'd just teleport into some obscure little room or corner of the map and cease all activity. One time he just stood there in the open and let me kill him. I guess he'd rather not be a part of it all. Can't blame him, really
Nurgle on the other hand maintained his trademark tankiness which is to be expected yet somehow... he's now a range-heavy faction? Even little shayts aka nurglings have a ranged attack, and per projectile it hits harder than a Chaos Terminator! Little toads are as tanky as CSM and more more damaging and mobile. Big toads hit as hard as a plasma cannon with their predictive targeting tongue licks while being more durable than a Terminator. Mid-range attacks of the Great Unclean One seriously put the Lord of Change to shame, especially the exalted blade he stole from Excalibur in Warframe (2x120 DMG wide waves). Nurgle flyers are also ranged and tanky - Plague Drones, but they are not very dangerous.
The icing on this brown-green snoot cake? All the bile and slime (and tongues) Nurgle units launch travel faster than enemy bullets or Tzeentch's magic
Sound and music:
Overall sound design is decent. The guns and hit effects give you all the right feedback.
Some of the enemies don't have footsteps sounds or ambient voices. Sneaky sneak.
Could be nice if cultists and CSMs actually had voicelines instead of whatever mouth-hole sounds they produce. I mean if I can taunt them, it's only fair if they can taunt back, right?
Music turned out not to be my cup of tea. Ended up just running 10h WH40k soundtrack in background instead
Servoskull:
Well, for me it provided a weird comic relief which I'm not sure was intentional. Props to devs if it was
- Captain obvious to the rescue. Yes, that pile of gore which used to be a heretic is indeed dead
- Pointing at a single little red health pickup and calling it "Medicaments"
- Pointing to a single bolter mag "Ammunition discovered. Praise the Omnissiah!"
- "Path revealed. Proceed." It says floating in a dark corner
- Random ramblings about cogitation failed
- Random ramblings about accessing memories and screaming
Overall, the game was fun, but all the little frustrating things mentioned above severely spoiled the experience for me bringing the enjoyment down by a few notches.