Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun

Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun was provided by Focus Entertainment for review. Thank you!

Get your weapons ready and dive into a boomer shooter you won't forget! Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun is a fast-paced first-person shooter that takes inspiration from 90's retro shooters. With a blend of 3D and pixel visuals, you will unleash your Space Marine arsenal and run, jump, and blast across carefully crafted levels. Utilize these skills in visceral combat and dominate the battlefield in this gorgeous, fluid, and satisfying shooter that will leave you wanting more and ready to get back to fighting.

As I have said countless times, one of the best genres to play on the Steam Deck is boomer shooters and Boltgun is another great example of that. With vibrant, colorful levels, fast movement, and gore flying everywhere, this game sets itself right in the middle of some wonderful experiences the genre has to offer. And with the Warhammer 40K aesthetics, this will be a wonderful addition to your library. And for the most part, it runs really well on the Steam Deck!

I was notified specifically that Boltgun isn't 100% optimized for the Steam Deck. This could change later on with patches, but this review will evaluate if the game is worth playing on the Deck in its current state.

Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun - Steam Deck Performance

Starting off, Boltgun was running quite well without much issue, hitting 60 FPS at around 18W drain on the highest settings. Unfortunately, keeping this at 60 proved to be a bit too much as the game went on. There were major drops that would happen when there was too many projectiles and particles on the screen, more on this below, and some minor stutters as I went through the levels, so with that in mind, I focused on a couple different builds.

For my recommended, I wanted to try finding a nice middle ground with a focus on the smoothest framerate. With this in mind, I settled on a slightly reduced visual build with a TDP limit of 9 and 55 FPS. The new framerate helped stabilize some areas a bit while the visuals still looked fantastic. It still has those drops, but seeing as those are happening regardless, I found this to be a great middle-ground of visual quality mixed with some battery saving (12W - 15W).

I then proceeded to go to a battery saving build, which is very possible and by far the most stable. The problem with this one is the fluidity of the shooter is compromised a bit, going to 40 FPS. It does allow similar visuals, but it doesn't feel nearly as smooth which, in my opinion, can be a big knock against games like this.

From there, I wanted to see if I could find the most stable 60 FPS settings for Boltgun, which was quite hard at times. While some areas performed admirably under 16W drain, others caved with the pressure and needed an increase in power, still not able to fully maintain the 60. I found that, with some settings turned a bit down, it can stabilize in some areas a bit more. It does help, but it isn't the most stable, especially when there's a ton of projectiles.

The game does support 16:10 resolutions and has full controller support, but Boltgun doesn't support cloud saves. The game also supports mixed/simultaneous input, so if you set the gyro to act as a mouse, it will not only work, but gyro will feel incredible.

Projectiles and Particle Drops

As mentioned above, there was one big issue that persisted no matter how settings were configured, and that was the framerate drops that came from large amounts of projectiles coming at you. I tested this with the lowest settings, no caps, and render resolution all the way down, and I was still experiencing drops to the 40s (while aiming for 60).

This does mean that some of the bigger firefights will have slowdowns to some degree. While they will generally stick to around 45 FPS, I have seen some small dips to the 30s and 1 that went to 26 (but I was standing still and not moving/looking around). I was still able to play through these parts, but for those who want a completely flawless experience, you might find some difficulty here.

Conclusion

Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun is a fantastic boomer shooter that not only captures what I love about the genre, but adds in a nice aesthetic with the Warhammer 40K theme. Killing iconic enemies while using the Space Marine arsenal, like the Chainsword, to brutally demolish the foes you encounter. While it does chug in some areas on the Steam Deck, it still feels like an amazing fit for the device. And with gyro support, it is a boomer shooter I can recommend as long as you can deal with some slowdowns here and there.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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