It's a perfectly good boomer shooter that nails both the 90s shooter and 40k esthetics. It does exactly what you'd want it to do. But I wound up having to put it down for a few weeks about halfway through the single player campaign (I was traveling and away from the sole computer I could play it on) and when I returned, I didn't feel compelled to play more of it or finish the campaign. I'm sure there were probably a couple more enemy types to see, maybe a weapon, definitely a boss or two. But I felt like I'd already seen what the game wanted to show me, and understood what the game is about, to the point that I'd prefer to invest time in some other game instead. Certainly the barely-there plot didn't demand resolution.

I don't know if that's a critique of this game in particular, or the boomer shooter thing in general. I think it's worth noting that this game is very clear about what it wants to accomplish, and it really nails that. The developers should be congratulated as far as that goes. But beyond the nostalgia factor, the sensation of playing the shareware Knee Deep in the Dead again, there's just not that much here.

One other, more specific critique: the game gives you a chainsword (classic bit of 40k gear) and attendant melee mechanics, but I don't think they work. I never got a handle on charging up the chainsword and then using it, and it never felt like it did enough extra damage to justify the risk of using it versus a more conservative strategy of firing from behind cover. I think melee combat in this game needed more work to make it easier to use and more powerful.

This game is an odd mix of both surprisingly polished and pretty underbaked. The basics of movement and shooting feel really good - the heavy stomp of your boots, the feedback of each weapon fire, the way you zip to enemies with the chainsaw or charge through them with your dash. It's a great foundation that, unfortunately, doesn't ever really get built upon.

The chainsaw is a good example of this wasted potential. It's a sick melee attack that pauses the flow of combat for a second and allows for some very rapid movement/i-frames, but it rarely feels necessary to utilize those things. It doesn't go full DOOM 2016 glory kill with it, so it ended up being pretty rare that I actually used it.

There are other examples of these kinds of shortcomings. The surfacing of the "strength" stat on weapons is an interesting choice, and feels like it could have led to some strategic decision making if there had been, like, literally one more stat to factor in, but as it is, you're just making the same "stronger enemy = stronger weapon" choice you'd almost certainly be making anyway. Similarly, the level design can be a bit repetitive, with a lot of geometry copy/pasted into sprawling, labyrinthine designs, that ALMOST feels intentional in a dungeon-crawling sort of way that very nearly worked for me, but the lack of a map prevents the levels from daring to be truly massive mazes.

All that said, I didn't have a...bad time with it, overall? Once I accepted its limits, it became a passable game to catch up on some podcasts to for a few hours of mindlessly running around blasting enemies and not bothering to find all the secrets. Unfortunately, it's more just boring than bad, which is maybe my least favorite thing to feel about a piece of art.

I went into boltgun after watching some glowing reviews on Youtube and unfortunately I did not leave this game with the same emotions or thoughts as those youtubers did (No hate though love those fellas, pancreasnowork especially) there were several reasons for this.

First being the level design because my lord is it atrocious at times you don't have a map for this game which just doesn't make sense as a design decision.

There's an emphasis on verticality in the game and tons of backtracking due to you having to get keys and other doohickeys, I think an ideal compromise would have been a realtime updating map as you move around but no map at all makes it super frustating to reach locations you've already seen.

Combat is quite good in the first act. You get new weapons almost exactly when the weapons you already have start getting old but the enemies you fight don't really evolve to compensate for all the weapons you have even accounting for the weapon reset that happens each act as you get all your weapons very quickly. This weapon reset thing is also very annoying as each time it happened it almost felt like you were starting the game AGAIN, this was not only frustrating but made the game last way longer than it should have.

Third was the movement, it was fast which is always cool but honestly in a genre that this game claims to be part of which always has insane movement tech this game lacks...anything of the sort except the dash you get from the chainsaw and the put-myself-into-a-bad-spot charge which is super useless past the first act.

In conclusion, if you ever want a game that you can mindlessly play while some guy on youtube talks to you about how boomer shooters are cool and internally feel confused as to you why you're continuing to play one that would have probably benefited tremendously if it actually straight up copied things from it's betters play this one!