Pretty solid "boomer shooter". Boltgun doesn't reinvent the wheel but it does a good job at being a solid entry into an ever so growing list of throwback 90s fps games. The gun sounds and weapon feedback are all great and does a great job at making the combat feel viseral and satisfying.
The level design is solid and handles the maze like key hunts pretty well. I have seen people complaing about the game lacking a map but I feel if you ever played a 90s fps game before, level design like this is expected and if you are familar with the genre, they are easy to follow. Basically, find colored keys and each door will have a specific color key to find, once you find the first colored key for the level the rest is basically just an a simple process of elimination. For example, find the red key, then the door the red key is behind will have the purple key and then purple key door will have the yellow key and the yellow key door has the level exit. I find this level design to be timeless and fuffilling since it actively makes the player look around and be observant with the enviroment plus I always love how this kind of level design will have the level loop back at the start and it feels so satisfying playing the levels without ever needing a guide since it felt like I solved the exploration puzzle on my own. My only issue with the level design are the levels that don't involve keys and can have weird gimmicks, well actually I mainly just dislike the level with the chaos gate at around the end of chapter 1 since I find the layout really confusing on where the gates will teleport you and which order you have to go into each gate. And also, like other 90s fps, when the levels do weird stuff like in the "No Truth in Flesh" level where activating a switch and I kill a boss to progress the switch I activated the door to was on the right left rather than where I was directly looking at when I activated the switch. The elevator level was also kind of like this but was more tolerable by comparison since the landmarks are more clear. The platforming also does a decent job at making the levels feel bigger and more vertical since you will be moving up and jumping more compared to something like classic Doom. It's very inspired by the newer Doom games with colored ledges indicating the player where to go.
Level design aside, what was some other gripes with the game? The plasma gun is really awkward to use since it can cause splash damage when it hurts you when in close proxmity.
The health system while deriative of the kind of game it is, can annoy me with how health doesn't partially regenerate or let me carry medkits since there will be moments where I want a health pack and I look everywhere in a level and I can't find it, I think everyone has this issue at least once when playing a game with finite health. To this game's credit however and something not games of this type has, you get health refills in between levels which is a big point to the game's favor all though any addition health and armor pick ups in the previous level won't carry over, which is kind of a bummer, but I get why the devs did it since they didn't want the player to be too "overpowered" at the start of a level.
Some enemies can be a bit too damage sponger for my tastes, which isn't too bad, and the game does a good job at making the player prioritize which foe to kill, but I also feel the shotgun takes a few too many blasts to kill enemies and an fps shotgun just needs to have that "oomfph".
The ressurected chaos knights can be annoying since I thought I killed them just for me to get jumped from behind and lose a lot of my health, they also hit way too hard in general and can tear your health bar in half in a few hits if you aren't careful.
I do like how this game does have that enemy from Shadow Warrior 1997 where you need to blow their bodies to bits in order to prevent another enemy from spawning which is an aspect I did like, and it made me gues the heavier weapons to blow up their bodies to bits and pieces.
Melee I also found to be useless since I would often use health whenever I would try to take down an enemy with it and then die. Grenades however are great and I actively used them to takedown hordes of enemies or just really tough enemies in general, out of all the Halo mechanics that made into this game grenades easily fared better.
It's also quite nice that most if not all the enemies in the game use projecticle attacks and I don't recall their being a single hitscan enemy all though some of the level design can box you in and have it be hard to avoid enemies especially when those acid spewing monsters are involved.
Overall, a solid boomer shooter and a good Warhammer game, I don't much about the franchise outside of the games, but this is up there with Space Marine, Necromunda Hired Gun and Blood, Shootas and Teef. Warhammer games tend to be derivative but the ones I have played and liked are solid imitations.
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