What happens when you make a game that tries so hard to respect the Warhammer 40k license but forget to make a fun game out of it? That's about the case for Warhammer 40k Boltgun, a generic First Person Shooter game that tries too hard to play like a Build Engine game with none of the great level design to go with it. Instead, the game relies to much on being a carbon copy of DOOM 2016 and offers none of the fun gameplay that Classic FPS have done vastly better than this game. Bad weapon balancing, awful level design, bad art design and terrible hit registration. Everything that could've went well ended up going very wrong with another bad Warhammer game to fill in its tired shoes.

Warhammer 40k Boltgun is somewhat a direct sequel to Warhammer 40k Space Marine, taking place about few years after the Ork & Chaos Undivided invasion on the Imperium Forge World: Graia. The Inquisition order an Ultramarine Veteran to clean up the Techpriest mess on doing something again with the Power Source and caused a 2nd Chaos Undivided invasion this time led by the Black Legions. Since the first Space Marine had a Chaos Warband led by Nemeroth. This game is led by a Chaos Sorcerer who aims to bring forth a terrible Warp Rift that will consume the planet. Without hesitation our Ultramarine is sent out to destroy the forces of Chaos with all his might.

The game has 3 episodes total with the 4th one being a paid DLC that I'll deal with later. But I'm going to talk about the core game itself. Episode 1 starts off on a bad foot, the level design is awful as bad fog effects hides so many enemies from your view and the use of bad colors during high action is just pitiful game design. You will get hit a lot as you can't see what is hitting you or what is consider a hit because the hit detection is terrible. They're so many instants that I shouldn't get hit by ended up registering as a direct hit, take those bastard Chaos Warriors that charges at you with their chain axe that always land a direct hit on you and the animation never plays but only after you took the full hit. Yes, getting hit by those guys will allow them to come back stronger should you kill them but if your quick, you can blow up their body to prevent them from getting up as you long you got the heavy weapons in your inventory. Which you'll be stacked with good weapons to deal with many chaos foes in the game. Thankfully theirs no bastard hitscanners to worry about as every gun fight is quite okay to avoid many bolter rounds and daemon projectiles as well. But I should warn you that you'll die a lot in this game and the checkpoint placement is very bad here, thankfully you can quick save with f6 to auto save your progress, even during heavy battle arenas that you'll be doing a lot of. Honestly, these fights gets very repetitive as you move around and shot and blow up everything on sight. There's no real originality to its level design, you just walk to long boring hallways, fight chaos forces, grab keys, climb on to those ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ yellow paint to do a bad platforming sequence and even find awful "Secrets" throughout the game. Those secrets are not worth doing, yes you get get powerups but most of the time they're placed in very obvious spots that you can find and pick up and its not even a good worth of secret. There's no secret level to find, no secret shortcut or secret weapons to find throughout most episodes. Episode 1 continues on to go very bad levels to throwing in boss fights against your first Greater Daemon fight with Lord of Change and this bastard is easy to deal with, just take cover a lot and open fire on him with if your only strong weapon to deal high damage. Each of your weapon has strength scaling and it amazes me that this game tries too hard to be an Action RPG at times with pointless enemy strength rank that are weak to certain weapons. You'll be using the bolter quite a lot as its rocket rounds does better damage than the shotgun and you'll use other weapons to deal with stronger daemons later on. I forgot to mention, you have a chainsword that can lock on and dash into any foe for a devastating damage to inflict but be careful the enemies will dish out greater damage to you too at close range. You also get a strength upgrade by a "secret" that will boast its damage further for the whole level. It's best to use it for the bolter as better damage and ammo round can help you clear a lot big arena fights at times. But as soon you enter the next level, you lose all your powerups and your strength level for your gun is reset to normal, forcing you to do switch between different weapons during the same repetitive fight over and over and over.

The repetition of its combat and level design is so frustrating and it doesn't get much better from there. Episode 2, I'll be honest, its actually the only good episode in the game because you get better art design and actually have good fight encounters, but the repetitive nature of its gameplay still remain unchanged throughout most of the game. The episode throws in the Great Unclean One and he's an absolute bastard. Lord of Change is easy to deal with, the Great Unclean One is basically the Cyberdemon but instead of rockets, he cleaves his sword into a powerful wave that can one hit you or drain all your armor to zero. You can avoid that attack by jumping or seeking cover but that won't work as well as the attack seems to phase through the wall and it will consider as a hit. Episode 2 level design is not bad by any means but you won't like the first half but the 2nd half is where I feel Boltgun gets better from there with proper level design layout and good fight encounters that even if the gameplay is boring, the levels in Episode 2 is an improvement from Episode 1. However, there's Episode 3. This episode is unforgiving, this is mostly the apex chapter for the whole game, as it doesn't waste time but throws all the foes and even respawning the Greater Deamon bosses a lot to deal with so often in the Episode. Its very frustrating at first but then you finally get the BFG for the game, the Grav-Cannon that can literately melt most foes and even bosses for that matter. the only drawback for the BFG is limited ammo, unless you find the secret that gives you all the ammo all your weapons. Hell, even the final boss gives you ♥♥♥♥ load of ammo that you'll be farming a lot in that awful fight. Yeah, the final level is a chore, after going through the same repetitive routine and this episode is more less offer nothing new to its gameplay and level design. The Final Boss against the Chaos Sorcerer is a drag. You fight this guy 3 times throughout all the episodes and each one throws more repetitive gimmick that carries over to the next episode. This fight goes on and on and never gets any better. Worse you'll be fighting a lot of Chaos forces and Daemons to lessen the overwhelming numbers against you. But then you'll be fighting against powerful enemies and Greater Daemons before you get to kill him. Defeating his Greater Daemon will make him vulnerable but as soon you kill him, he'll refresh all his health and its onto 2nd phase where he spawns in a 2nd Greater Daemon and do that again after wasting minutes on finding health, armor, ammo and killing all the enemies over and over. It doesn't stop there, then if you defeat him again the 2nd time, he'll go into his final phase and its a pushover but he'll spawn his ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ shield at random but if you have good enough BFG ammo, you can kill this ♥♥♥♥ once and for all.

So once you kill him, that how the game ends. But then you get ordered by the inquisitor that more Chaos forces are still out there and that where Episode 4 DLC is taking place. That basically the game. Boltgun is a boring, repetitive slog of an action game. Its not an old school shooter game that it was claim to be, the game is a carbon copy of DOOM 2016 with an art that looks bad and doesn't look Warhammer in any way besides its name.