Boltgun is a decent shooter but lacks depth. Many aspects of the game feel under developed, mainly the lore. There is an understanding that this is a retro shooter but that is no excuse to provide a lacking experience otherwise. As someone who know very little about the Warhammer 40k Universe, this game has nearly no lore to offer to get engrosed in the role of being a Marine. There are nearly no cutscenes and the cutscenes that there are very static and short. There is ingame dialog coming from the Sorcerer but it is text only and presented during heated combat especially if you are playing on max difficulty which just means you are going to miss the small bit of lore that is left over beyond the 3 short cutscenes. If this game is supposed to mirror a game like Doom, Doom 2016 and Eternal both had splendid lore delivery via well acted dialogues and extra bits of readings. I also enjoyed the secrets in Doom way more than in this game. I wish the secrets were more elaborate, but I prevailed and I am glad I did. Many were super easy to find while others were hidden insanely well (took me 3 hours for one of them). The secrets and 100% kills is probably what I enjoyed the most even though I almost gave up on them after realizing how shallow the game is, the secrets could have been a lot better in some aspects.
Story aside, there are also combat aspects that feel under developed. The units start feeling repetitive with no new ones ever really showing up. Bosses are also frequently reused. There also is nothing explaining what the secret abilities do, unless you find the main menu 'Help' option which I found after my 100% Kills & Secrets playthrough.
Performance is also terrible for whatever reason in this retro shooter (note: streaming might be a factor but other more demanding games are fine). There are many full frame freezes while playing on my AMD 5800X3D + RTX 4090. Additionally, for having such simple geometry, some of the hitboxes don't line up and your sticky grenades get stuck to them.

None the less, I overall enjoyed the game. It took me around ~40 hours to 100% Kills and secrets at the hardest difficulty. Some of the secret rooms were particularly hard to find.

[h1] 6/10 [/h1] Boltgun is a decent shooter but lacks depth. Many aspects of the game feel under developed, mainly the lore. There is an understanding that this is a retro shooter but that is no excuse to provide a lacking experience otherwise. As someone who know very little about the Warhammer 40k Universe, this game has nearly no lore to offer to get engrosed in the role of being a Marine. There are nearly no cutscenes and the cutscenes that there are very static and short. There is ingame dialog coming from the Sorcerer but it is text only and presented during heated combat especially if you are playing on max difficulty which just means you are going to miss the small bit of lore that is left over beyond the 3 short cutscenes. If this game is supposed to mirror a game like Doom, Doom 2016 and Eternal both had splendid lore delivery via well acted dialogues and extra bits of readings. I also enjoyed the secrets in Doom way more than in this game. I wish the secrets were more elaborate, but I prevailed and I am glad I did. Many were super easy to find while others were hidden insanely well (took me 3 hours for one of them). The secrets and 100% kills is probably what I enjoyed the most even though I almost gave up on them after realizing how shallow the game is, the secrets could have been a lot better in some aspects. Story aside, there are also combat aspects that feel under developed. The units start feeling repetitive with no new ones ever really showing up. Bosses are also frequently reused. There also is nothing explaining what the secret abilities do, unless you find the main menu 'Help' option which I found after my 100% Kills & Secrets playthrough. Performance is also terrible for whatever reason in this retro shooter (note: streaming might be a factor but other more demanding games are fine). There are many full frame freezes while playing on my AMD 5800X3D + RTX 4090. Additionally, for having such simple geometry, some of the hitboxes don't line up and your sticky grenades get stuck to them. None the less, I overall enjoyed the game. It took me around ~40 hours to 100% Kills and secrets at the hardest difficulty. Some of the secret rooms were particularly hard to find.