I unload my Boltgun into the shrieking cultist of the traitor legions, a perverse mortal worshipper of the darkish gods of Chaos, and the explosive rounds crack his cranium open like a melon and rip his proper arm from his torso.
Turning, I cost a Chaos House Marine, slamming into the warrior, after which proceed to swing my chainsword down throughout his energy armor, rending it in two and inflicting blood to burst forth in a gory fountain.
Simply because the agent of chaos drops I am charged by a Horror of Tzeentch, a demon despatched forth by Chaos God of Change, with it spitting bile from its deformed maw. I quickly swap to my shotgun and blast the Pink Horror in two, its backbone left uncovered to the wind, after which actually disintegrate the 2 Blue Horrors that spawn forth from its corpse, crushing them beneath the boot of my energy armor right into a bloody chowder.
Severely, if this gameplay appears like one thing that will attraction to you simply as a lot because it has carried out to me over the previous 18 hours, then I counsel studying PC Gamer’s superior Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun evaluation, watching the sport’s trailer under (even when the voice-over is dodgy as hell), earlier than then going and choosing the sport up proper now on Steam. Belief me, you will not remorse it.
And I’d particularly insist you do that if, like me, you spent portion of the Nineties taking part in now basic first-person shooters like DOOM, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, and Hexen. It’s because, from what video games I’ve performed to this point of the latest retro-themed boomer shooter revival, Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun is the very best of the bunch, and by fairly a margin, too.
I feel it has achieved this lofty place thanks to 3 issues. Firstly, it is a sport that completely nails the core boomer shooter gameplay, which feels deliciously easy but stimulating. You play a silent, Doomguy-like Ultramarine who stomps at terrific velocity round ranges wielding an arsenal of loud, lethal weapons, every of which is professional in a wide range of methods in exterminating your foes. There’s some key-to-open-door accumulating (though that is stored to a minimal, fortunately), loads of power-ups to select up, and secret areas in every stage to seek out.
Secondly, aesthetically and tonally, Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun completely nails the transient. The pixelated graphics simply scream ’90s FPS and stored triggering recollections of previous video games in my thoughts as I performed. For instance, after choosing up an improve for the Boltgun so it fires Dragonfire rounds, it produces Quake 2 railgun-like particle results every time a spherical is fired.
Thirdly, and possibly most significantly, the sport is not slavish to retro boomer shooter above all else, embracing extra trendy shooter mechanics. The obvious and helpful of which is the DOOM remake borrowed melee cost pull, the place the Ultramarine can rapidly shut floor on enemies to assault together with his chainsword, snapping to them in a blink. This permits for speedy traversal via enemies in shut fight, and provides further motion and tactical choices on prime of the core boomer shooter strafe-and-fire gameplay. Stage design can also be not restricted to the usually extra claustrophobic worlds present in ’90s shooters, with expansive ranges full of vistas and open battlegrounds in addition to tight corridors and demon-stuffed interiors.
Throw in a nail-on-the-head soundtrack, which is a WH40K-perfect rock-goth combine, a punchy artwork fashion that brings the pixelated ranges, foes and weapons to the fore, and a price ticket that’s beneath twenty {dollars}/kilos, and I really feel we have now obtained a brand new benchmark for brand new retro-style boomer shooters to be judged by. Now, for those who’ll excuse me, there is a Nice Unclean One I have to go purge.
