Warhammer 40000: Boltgun Review (Steam)

by Jim Smale · Published August 17, 2023 · Updated May 30, 2025

For this Warhammer 40000: Boltgun Review, where we Load up our Boltgun and unleash the awesome Space Marine arsenal to blast our way through an explosion of sprites, pixels, and blood in a perfect blend of Warhammer 40,000, frenetic gameplay and the stylish visuals of 90’s retro shooters.

Warhammer 40,000 Boltgun Review

Warhammer 40000: Boltgun Review Pros:

Stunning pixel art graphics.
Download size.
Steam achievements.
Steam trading cards.
Full controller support including the Dualsense (PlayStation 5).
Graphics settings – resolution, fullscreen, resolution scale, v-sync, framerate cap, horizontal field of view slider, gore pool size, anisotropic filtering, post-processing, ambient occlusion, and material quality.
Controller settings – six layouts, swap sticks, and swap bumpers and triggers.
Crosshair settings – size and opacity.
Can rebind controls for the keyboard.
First-person shooter gameplay.
Safe zone setting for the screen.
Retro settings – bloom, retro palette, and pixelation.
Accessibility options – invulnerability, give all weapons, infinite ammo, head bobbing, screen shake, controller rumble, disable damage screen splash, disable charge impact pausing, disable Chainsword pausing, unlock all levels, disable Warp parallax effects, and servo skull display time.
Horde mode is a newly added mode – it has four types to unlock and play and is highly replayable.
Three special ammo types – Dragon fire (wider area of damage), Kraken rounds (faster shooting), and vengeance rounds (penetrating walls and turrets). All are color-coded.
The dualsense controller uses the touch pad, one side is select and the other side is pause.
Strength vs toughness modifier is in play and this dictates how much damage you do and receive.
Officially licensed game.
Excellent soundtrack.
Secrets in the game will give you a temporary boost or the different types of ammo.
Familiar easy to learn controls.
Three chapters to unlock.
Each level shows a completion time, the highest difficulty completed, and how many of the secrets you found.
The whole game moves at a very fast pace.
Akin to Doom in its style and movement.
Eight weapons to collect and use from Boltgun, to shotguns and meltaguns.
The Chainsword allows you to do badass melee attacks where you cut the enemy up and the camera slows down.
So much attention to detail.
A modern retro-feeling game in all ways.
Each weapon will show it’s strength.
Four difficulties – low, medium, hard, and exterminatus.
Many environmental hazards to use like exploding barrels.
Fast loading times.
Beautiful 90s-style animated cutscenes.
Excellent voice work.
Opening and ongoing tutorial pop-ups.
Save when you want.
On the pause screen, you can see the time played, secrets found, and the percentage of how many enemies you have killed in the whole level.
One for the fans of Warhammer 40k.
Has Purge areas of the level where you have to hold down the level from waves of enemies.
Puzzle elements in terms of level navigation and finding the secrets.
Handy new navigation tool can be toggle with a button press, this will take you to the objective.
Massive huge boss fight arenas.
Radial dial for gun changing.
You can taunt the enemy.
I suffer with severe motion sickness but I managed to play it by turning off the pixelation slider to zero and turning off head bobbing and even vibration on the controller helped, no idea why but now I’m all good.
You can grab and climb up ledges.
Pick up shields and health and in fact the game uses the small versions of these to help guide you.
For maximum fun put the difficulty down, aim assist on high amd just run and gun fools down, it’s so therapeutic.

Warhammer 40,000 Boltgun Review

Warhammer 40000: Boltgun Review Cons:

Cannot rebind controls for the controller.
Due to the nature of the game, it can make you feel nauseous, could be the view, speed, or anything. Tinkering with the settings can help but it’s a slow process.
Takes a bit of getting used to the game loop.
No online leaderboards for scoring or anything.
There isn’t a huge draw to replay the game multiple times.
The game is quite short.
Grenades always feel in short supply.
Difficulty spikes can happen at any time.
Hitting airborne enemies is a real pain.
The game relies on the purge sections way too often and it’s a tedious process when it repeats.
Health feedback is not great, I’ve died a fair few times because I didn’t realise how low it was.
Level design is generally good but when they are bad they are real bad, confusing, unclear and not great.
The level loop does feel the same in each one.
Swapping weapons is not as quick as you would like.

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Warhammer 40,000 Boltgun Review