izigame.me

It's hard to put my finger on exactly what makes me not like Boltgun, since on paper it should be something I'd love: a high-paced boomer shooter with tons of gore and iconic enemy designs from a lore-heavy setting with a stylized art direction.
But I think the issue is that everything about it is *almost* good.
The guns feel punchy and make enemies explode... except that some of them are useless(plasma gun, calling you out) and that even on medium difficulty enemies rapidly develop tiresomely large health pools. The game flows at its best when there are more, smaller enemies.
The areas are fun and enemies are easy to spot... until you move indoors, where the game then gets stuck for a long while, and everything is the same anthracite gray as most of the human mooks. The game should've just stuck to the ourdoor snowy areas, the contrast makes enemies easier to spot and it just looks *better*.
The arena battles are a hype way to change things up, kind of like Doom 2016's arenas, after the standard gameplay... until they just get *too large*. Several times I've had arenas where I and the enemies genuinely couldn't find each other for several minutes, and then when I got done I had to spend first another two minutes harvesting all the ammo and health(maybe automate that, please) and then to find the grey door in the grey all that had opened in a grey corridor under the grey stairs.
The areas look pretty good... until you start noticing how many copypasted assets there are. It's all the same containers and doors and hallways to the point where I ended up going *backwards* in one area for a while until I found all the gibs that *weren't* pre-placed. As a sub-point to this, this game also has the worst secrets ever. Most of them aren't *secret* as much as they are "go both left and right when offered the T-intersection" or "look behind the box." And most of the secrets are just "more armor and health!!!!" after the first two levels, and even when they *aren't* that, when they're stuff like equipment upgrades, those upgrades only stick for the duration of the level, they aren't cumulative.
It'd also help if the game explained how the Mechanicus upgrade worked, because it upgrades the weapon you're holding when you pick it up, and doesn't JUST make it stronger, it also adds a cool bonus, like turning the mediocre shotgun into a great flak cannon(projectiles bouncing off walls and floors). But with there being only one per level, and the game not deigning to tell me what it does for weapons ahead of time anywhere I could find... there was never really any reason to risk it with another gun. Because the upgrade would probably suck.
The game has a cool and moody intro that really sets the tone... and then you never hear another human voice for as far as I got in the game before I got bored of it. Cultists and renegades don't go "oh no it's a space marine blargh." Chaos Marines don't go "har har you dog of the false emperor, time for u 2 die 2 day, hur hur" before you crunch them. You don't have anyone on comms offering commentary. You don't have human survivors. You don't have an Eldar or something that you have witty banter with where he calls you an ape and you call him a FOUL XENOS. All there is, is the occasional little five-word text pop-up about how "THIS IS THE POOPIUM RECYCYLIOS." or "SHOOT A BAD GUY."
What really broke the back for me, though, was the Lord of Change. Huge, cool boss, the sort of thing I'd really look forward to fighting in Cultic. But as far as I could tell his mechanics involved:
No weak spots
No special abilities
Shooting fireballs at me(like every other enemy)
Occasionally teleporting
Getting stuck on the geometry because he was wildly oversized for the arena he was in
A health pool big enough to drown a herd of cows in. It took so much tiresome, mindless shooting to kill him.
I'm genuinely sad that I don't like this game, but I just don't. And not in some sort of visceral, hateful way, but just in a sort of dull, disappointed way because it has all of the parts I should love, and so many glimmerings of talent, but... it just screws up the landing on every single part.