I feel mixed on this game but I'm leaning positive. The weapon roster is kind of awkward, some weapons seem pretty obviously geared towards particular enemies but then other weapons kind of overlap in a strange way. So you cant' just use any weapon for any enemy, but you also don't always have obvious answers to whatever situation you're in. This feels more awkward than being intentionally complex.

And while Boltgun tries to have this veneer of being "Oldschool," it just ends up not feeling like a genuine old FPS game. Really, this game is probably closest to kind of a mix between Doom 3, Doom 2016, and most obviously, Doom Eternal, along with certain gameplay and design aesthetics taken from the first two Doom titles alongside plenty of others in the Boom Shooter genre. I think that a more genuinely oldschool approach would have helped. The grenades are cool, but don't feel right for what this is trying to be. An equipment system similar to what's present in Duke Nukem 3d or Blood would have been more interesting and cohesive.

One of my biggest issues with Boltgun though is the maps and level design. Some of the most boring and forgettable levels in all of FPS history. Seriously, they didn't even bother including a map because the levels don't lend themselves to any kind of memorability. Consider that pretty much every level of the first Episode of the original Doom is completely and utterly memorable. Same thing with many of the other FPS games released in the 90s. Doom 3 is where you started to get this kind of design thinking, where it's just endless corridors, and maybe you remember the general theme of a level or a certain sequence of events, maybe a particular room, but most of it is just monocolor industrial walls that bend and blend into nothing. Like, if you were to ask someone what the most "memorable," level of Blood 3D is you would get maybe a variety of answers, however the train mission is such an obvious answer. It's pretty easy to remember and it's totally distinct from any other level in the game. Really it's totally distinct from any other level in any other FPS game ever! Let me put it like this, Boltgun has no train level! There's little things that you'll remember, sure. The level where the lava goes up, kind of like that level in the first Sly Cooper game. Or the level with the floating cathedrals in the big room, and you leap across them. And now try and remember anything else that happened in those levels. They both could have been in the same level potentially! I don't even know! Because everything inbetween the game's very few neat set pieces is totally boring.

And the enemy variety is so utterly dull. They're animated very well and they're fun to shoot, but they get boring before the end of the first chapter. Another thing that I noticed is that from even a medium distance a lot of the enemy sprites look messy and lacking in detail. I don't know what it is, but this doesn't happen in other boomer shooters. It might be that the sprites are really detailed but also smaller than in most other games, so from a distance their finer details blur together.

All I can say in the end is that it's moderately fun to shoot stuff and that there are worse ways to waste your time. I just hope that the next entry in this series is something that I can genuinely and enthusiastically recommend to other people, because this game is kind of fun but also sort of boring.

And it has no story. I get that these kinds of games aren't meant to really have a story but I dunno, maybe I'm weird but like, I want my games to have some kind of story or narrative or something. The cutscenes here were pretty but it felt like you weren't even meant to be paying attention to any of the words, honestly.

I feel mixed on this game but I'm leaning positive. The weapon roster is kind of awkward, some weapons seem pretty obviously geared towards particular enemies but then other weapons kind of overlap in a strange way. So you cant' just use any weapon for any enemy, but you also don't always have obvious answers to whatever situation you're in. This feels more awkward than being intentionally complex. And while Boltgun tries to have this veneer of being "Oldschool," it just ends up not feeling like a genuine old FPS game. Really, this game is probably closest to kind of a mix between Doom 3, Doom 2016, and most obviously, Doom Eternal, along with certain gameplay and design aesthetics taken from the first two Doom titles alongside plenty of others in the Boom Shooter genre. I think that a more genuinely oldschool approach would have helped. The grenades are cool, but don't feel right for what this is trying to be. An equipment system similar to what's present in Duke Nukem 3d or Blood would have been more interesting and cohesive. One of my biggest issues with Boltgun though is the maps and level design. Some of the most boring and forgettable levels in all of FPS history. Seriously, they didn't even bother including a map because the levels don't lend themselves to any kind of memorability. Consider that pretty much every level of the first Episode of the original Doom is completely and utterly memorable. Same thing with many of the other FPS games released in the 90s. Doom 3 is where you started to get this kind of design thinking, where it's just endless corridors, and maybe you remember the general theme of a level or a certain sequence of events, maybe a particular room, but most of it is just monocolor industrial walls that bend and blend into nothing. Like, if you were to ask someone what the most "memorable," level of Blood 3D is you would get maybe a variety of answers, however the train mission is such an obvious answer. It's pretty easy to remember and it's totally distinct from any other level in the game. Really it's totally distinct from any other level in any other FPS game ever! Let me put it like this, Boltgun has no train level! There's little things that you'll remember, sure. The level where the lava goes up, kind of like that level in the first Sly Cooper game. Or the level with the floating cathedrals in the big room, and you leap across them. And now try and remember anything else that happened in those levels. They both could have been in the same level potentially! I don't even know! Because everything inbetween the game's very few neat set pieces is totally boring. And the enemy variety is so utterly dull. They're animated very well and they're fun to shoot, but they get boring before the end of the first chapter. Another thing that I noticed is that from even a medium distance a lot of the enemy sprites look messy and lacking in detail. I don't know what it is, but this doesn't happen in other boomer shooters. It might be that the sprites are really detailed but also smaller than in most other games, so from a distance their finer details blur together. All I can say in the end is that it's moderately fun to shoot stuff and that there are worse ways to waste your time. I just hope that the next entry in this series is something that I can genuinely and enthusiastically recommend to other people, because this game is kind of fun but also sort of boring. And it has no story. I get that these kinds of games aren't meant to really have a story but I dunno, maybe I'm weird but like, I want my games to have some kind of story or narrative or something. The cutscenes here were pretty but it felt like you weren't even meant to be paying attention to any of the words, honestly.