Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun essentially gives us what we never knew we wanted – a boomer shooter that takes place within the confines of Games Workshop’s relentlessly grimdark sci-fi universe. Put simply, if you’re fan of either Warhammer 40,000 or boomer shooters in general, then Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun looks set to tick a whole heap of boxes and we can’t wait for it.
Be sure to keep this guide in your favourites as we go through everything you need to know about Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun including the release date, gameplay details, latest trailer and more besides.
Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun Release Date
The Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun release date has been confirmed as May 23, 2023. Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun will have a full release on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PC through Steam. Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun is not currently scheduled to release on the Epic Games Store, though as with other releases that follow a similar pattern, this would seem to be a matter of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’.
Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun Story
The Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun story isn’t exactly a complicated affair. Set directly after the events of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine, players are cast as a hardened Ultramarine charged with tearing across the galaxy and laying waste to the remnant hordes of Chaos that everyone missed the first time around. See? Dumb and easy to follow. Just how it should be.
Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun Gameplay
Heavily inspired by the hyper-violent shooters of the 1990s, Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun follows many of the same tenets of those halcyon blasters, encouraging players to blast through legion after legion of chaotic demon folk in the most violent way possible and collecting bigger and better weapons along the way (more on that in a bit). Far from being some dunderheaded take on what someone thinks those older shooters used to be like, Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun takes everything that we all loved about those games – namely lots of hyperkinetic, violent combat, hordes of different enemies to do away with, secrets to find and brings it all kicking and screaming into 2023.
Beyond its adherence to the trappings of face-shooting yesteryear, Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun, also brings plenty of the fabulous new to the table as well. For a start, Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun has a button just for taunting where after a quick press, our Space Marine will confidently proclaim how ‘all the heretics must burn’ or something along those lines with the sort of overzealous glee one would normally associate with members of his rank and file.
Likewise in another nice aesthetic touch, if the player doesn’t touch the controller for an extended period of time, he’ll whip out a codex and start idly flipping through the pages to pass the time.
Perhaps the biggest innovation that Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun boasts however, is the way that it keeps players on their toes with the AI of the numerous enemies that they’ll encounter at any one time. Powered by the same ‘Finite State Machine’ AI that bolstered the behaviours of the grunts in Valve’s Half-Life (another 90’s shooter classic), the various enemies of Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun have a range of behavioural states that they can transition to and from. For example, in one situation an enemy Chaos Marine might enter a state of ‘awareness’ if it can’t locate the player, only to immediately switch into an ‘overkill’ state if they sense that the player is in its vicinity and is low on health. It’s clever stuff, certainly.
Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun Weapons
Like any Warhammer 40,000 adaptation worth its salt, Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun absolutely doesn’t skimp on the arsenal that you’ll be able to use to messily wreck the forces of Chaos. The currently known selection of weapons that will be available in Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun is as follows:
- Boltgun (quelle surprise)
- Chainsword
- Meltagun
- Plasmagun
- Space Marine shotgun
Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun Enemies
Of course, there’s not much point having all of those shiny, super devastating weapons if you don’t have a range of gruesome, dastardly enemies to use them on. Thankfully, Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun has no shortage of bad dudes that are just dying to, well, die. Based off of the recent trailers and gameplay demonstrations that we’ve seen, the currently known gallery of villains that you’ll be blasting apart includes:
- Blue Horror
- Chaos Cultist
- Chaos Space Marine
- Chaos Space Marine Terminator
- Flamer of Tzeentch
- Great Unclean One
- Greater plague toad
- Lesser plague toad
- Nurglings
- Pink Horror
- Renegade Guardsman
Does Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun Support Multiplayer?
As of right now, Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun is a single-player effort that does not currently support multiplayer in any shape or form. However, as the game begins to ease itself into a post release phase it’s not inconceivable that developer Auroch Digital could implement some form of multiplayer support in the future. Watch this space, I’d say.
Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun Visual Style
Even though Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun clearly seeks to emulate the flatter and more pixelated look of earlier shooters, it’s also immediately clear that much has also been done to essentially upgrade the retro veneer that the game so brilliantly bleeds out of every pixel. Though Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun embraces the same sprite-based enemy design that defined genre grandfather DOOM when it released all the way back in 1993, it improves upon such classic rendering methods by importing the sprite data into Unreal Engine and allowing Boltgun’s enemies to properly move, shoot and splatter in a fully three dimensional space. This allows Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun to fully enjoy all of the modern rendering benefits that games from the 1990s wouldn’t have had such as real-time lighting, proper particle effects and more. Though it might be somewhat of a cliché, the visual presentation of Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun really does represent a marriage of the old with the new.
Where Can I Watch The Latest Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun Trailer?
The latest trailer for Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun is available to watch right now and serves to not only reinforce the release date for our next foray into the Warhammer 40,000 universe, but also provide us with a rapid-fire look into its furiously frenetic FPS combat. You can catch the latest Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun trailer above.
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