Boltgun 2 Review
Mindless in the best possible way.
Boltgun 2 is the second entry in a sub-series that takes the Warhammer 40k universe and squeezes it into a retro-style 3D FPS with the same DNA as the classic Doom games. If you played the first one, you already know the deal. If you didn’t, the pitch is about as simple as it gets: these are fast, loud, uncomplicated shooters where you go from the start of a level to the end of it while killing an absurd number of enemies along the way. And that is basically it. There are no side quests and no side objectives to worry about. At most you will need to track down coloured keys to open the matching coloured doors, and if you are a completionist there are some very well hidden collectibles to sniff out along the way.
This is the kind of mindless fun that anyone can sit down with and enjoy, blowing through a bunch of demons without having to think too hard about any of it. Now, if you are into the Warhammer 40k universe and its lore, I am sure there is an extra layer here for you. But I am going to be honest: I have zero knowledge of Warhammer and its universe, so I am not even going to pretend I know who is who or what exactly is going on. This is just my humble opinion on the game as a game. What I can tell you is that you play as Malum Caedo, a legendary Space Marine, who is now joined by a Sister of Battle named Nyra Veyrath, and together they tear through hordes of Chaos forces to stop a demonic tech-god called Vashtorr the Arkifane. Beyond that basic setup, the game doesn’t weigh you down with heavy exposition. It knows exactly what it wants to be: a loud, bloody, fast-paced boomer shooter where the adrenaline-pumping gameplay takes centre stage over complex storytelling. If anything, that works in its favour, because you really don’t need to know a single thing about the lore to enjoy pulling the trigger.
As a sequel, it doesn’t try to reinvent anything either. It takes what already worked and gives you more of it, and the biggest addition is that there are now two characters to choose from when you start the campaign, each with their own playstyle and their own collection of weapons. Nyra is the faster, squishier option. She carries a sword and has slightly lower DPS, so playing as her is all about staying on the move. Malum is the tankier of the two. He is slower, though never to the point of feeling sluggish, and his weapons hit a little harder. Neither one feels like the wrong choice. It really just comes down to whether you prefer to zip around the arena or stand your ground a bit more and soak up some punishment.
The campaign itself is exactly the same for both characters, so picking one over the other doesn’t mean you miss out on anything the other would have seen. However, as you progress you will have to choose between multiple paths, which means a single playthrough won’t be enough to see every level the campaign has to offer. I actually think this is a smart bit of design. Since you need at least two playthroughs anyway, you get a natural reason to try both characters without having to replay the exact same set of levels purely for the sake of testing out the other one. Your second run gives you new levels and a new playstyle at the same time, which makes going back in feel a lot less like a chore.
Now for the levels themselves. The gameplay loop is extremely simple: get to the end, sometimes find a key or two, and blast through everything that moves. On paper that sounds like something that would get old pretty quickly, but the level design is on point and does a lot of the heavy lifting to stop that from happening. Each location is vastly different from the last. You go from deep, lush jungles to oil rigs out on the ocean, then on to lava-filled volcanoes and frozen mountains. Every new area does a great job of keeping things fresh, and it is all wrapped up in some very well recreated retro-style graphics. That old-school look is clearly a big part of the charm here, and it never felt like it was only there as a gimmick.
Boltgun 2 also brings in plenty of new enemy types and bosses, though how much you notice them depends a lot on the difficulty you are playing on. On the easier settings the enemies can all kind of blend into one, since most things die before they get a chance to show you what makes them different. On the harder ones you will need to pay attention to what each enemy type does and how it behaves. In fact, the difficulty you pick changes the whole experience more than I expected. The game can go from “brainless fun blowing up demons” to “frustrating if you are not patient” depending on where you set it. On the higher difficulties you are going to die quite a lot, and you will have to learn enemy patterns and attacks to make any real progress. Even then, there isn’t really a dodge button. All you have is the already very fast movement and a slide, so sometimes you are going to get hit whether you like it or not. That is especially true in some of the later areas, where the sheer number of enemies means you can get swarmed very easily.
Luckily, there is also an accessibility option that gives you unlimited ammo and invulnerability, and you can switch it on at any difficulty. So if you just want to turn your brain off and have a good time, the game lets you. I always like seeing this kind of thing. Nobody is forced to use it, and it means anyone can see the whole campaign regardless of skill or patience.
All of this also plays into how long the game lasts. If you run through it on the easiest difficulties it can feel short, since the campaign can be done in less than 3 hours even on your first run. However, if you are playing on some of the harder difficulties, or hunting for the secrets by yourself with no guide, it is going to take you a lot longer. Add in the second playthrough you need to see every level, and there is more here than that first number suggests.
On a personal note, I have never really been a huge fan of these types of games. I don’t hate them, and I completely understand the “pure fun” element people get from them, but most of the fun I had here actually came from hunting down the collectibles. There are over 200 of them, and some are VERY well hidden. Even though the levels are fairly linear, some collectibles will have you shooting hard-to-spot skulls that trigger a mechanism or open a door, while others will make you feel like you are borderline going out of bounds to reach them. It turns what could have been a straight sprint to the exit into something where you are constantly checking corners, looking up, and questioning every suspicious-looking wall. I really enjoy it when games do this, though I may be slightly biased since guides are what I do haha.
Another thing I couldn’t stop thinking about while playing is how much fun this would be with even a simple PvP multiplayer mode. The movement and the feel of the controls were the highlight for me, and they are what kept the moment-to-moment gameplay enjoyable even as someone who isn’t usually into the genre. Everything is fast, responsive and satisfying, and it feels like it was made for chasing other players around an arena. It is a single-player game through and through, and that is fine, but it is hard not to imagine how good it could be with a few friends thrown into the mix.
All in all, Boltgun 2 is a very easy game to sum up. If you enjoy other games in this sub-genre, like Doom and everything it inspired, you are 100% going to have a blast here. It is fast, it is bloody, it looks the part, and the two characters and branching paths give you a good reason to go back for more. If you are looking for something a little more complex and not quite as mindless, this isn’t the game for you, and it was never trying to be.
