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Warhammer 40,000: Shootas, Blood & Teef Review

It’s easy bein’ green

Warhammer 40,000 is a universe that is best known for being depressingly dark. Grim dark, if you will. At times it is almost satirically so, when you start thinking about how any denizen of this timeline would openly accept death at the hand of a firearm compared to the drooling, slavering horrors that are lurking in every pitch black crevice.

Then, you have the Orks – who just may be the most joyful vendors of violence to ever exist. A galaxy of never-ending conflict sounds like a right ol’ party to them, and Warhammer 40,000: Shootas, Blood & Teef is here to provide glorious insight into why they love it so.

Call me the Cap’n because I am makin’ the zap’n happen

The premise is simple – a side-scrolling shooter with a generous helping of verticality, wherein you play as a gleeful greenskin who was wronged by his boss and must now stomp a path of carnage back to his smug git face to exact revenge. It is a tale of a bad hair day turned up to eleven, where your single, almost jocular need to smack his head in turns you into an unstoppable juggernaut of punishment upon all who get in your way.

You’ll trek across the surface of Luteus prime, a poor schmuck of a planet that was in the Orks’ sights as a brilliant resource for pinching fuel for their trukks and buggies prior to you being wronged. You’ll slam through war-torn landscapes, military barracks and even the seedy underbelly of a hive city – encountering all of the native dorks who live there and who are not happy to see you invading their space. And though they will protest, you will happily cut through them on your mission with all manner of ramshackle munitions at your disposal.

Trying to get my crocs off

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The game is generous with checkpoints, and every checkpoint will allow you access to the gun store. Find Teeth (teef) within the game world, and spend them to create alternate options for each weapon slot at your disposal. You can then amend your loadout at any checkpoint should you feel you need the right tool for the job at hand. I personally found myself dropping my blistering hail of lead loadout, which was blasting bazillions of bullets at batches of bad guys, for something a bit more direct and hard hitting when I was faced with heavy armour. The ease and accessibility was exactly what the doctor ordered once I was faced with mechanical menaces that were slapping my green bottom. 

If you find yourself with a surplus of teeth dollars, you can also buy some fancy hats for your brutal bonce – for a little added flair while you are blasting baddies. In true Ork fashion I managed to drop my very first glut of Ork cash on a fancy hat for the sake of looking neat-o, not realising I could have easily bought a stronger pistol. I’d call it a mistake on my part, but that really isn’t the orky way.

And brilliantly, the game has a great variety of bullet-hungry dipsticks waiting around every corner. Each level and biome will have its own native variety of denizens to oppose you, and at some point you may even encounter areas where these losers are actually locked in conflict with an opposing faction, where you can breeze through as an unhinged third wheel with zero regard for their particular squabble. Got places to be, y’know?

That’s a big stompy boi

Levels are often punctuated with awesomely scaled boss fights, with towering monoliths lifted straight from the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Each colossal combatant represents a model that I have seen in person, brought to glorious life in gorgeous 2D animation space. Seeing these things move and attack me was like seeing my mind’s eye brought to life – and the heaped helping of humour that bookended each encounter’s cutscenes was just icing on an already generous cake.

This humour is a huge part of what makes Shootaz such a joy to play. The grim darkness of the far future is often something difficult to portray in games, without needlessly stifling any joy that might creep into the world being showcased to you. It makes Warhammer 40,000 a difficult setting to do justice to, because it feels like that same downtrodden nature of its narrative has to be present in the player’s view also. But the almost satirical nature of this game’s enemies actually captures the feel better than most other titles I have been privy to. A massive, ambulatory mechanical enemy – the size of a building, I might add – has spent nearly 30 seconds introducing itself with a litany of its achievements, and how crushing you will just be another accolade for it, only for you to reply with a yawn, and an invitation to get krumped. THIS is what Orky Warhammer is all about. Who cares, let’s get to fighting.

I’d be remiss not to mention that the game itself is overwhelmingly short. My completed time, even with a generous portion of ‘pause to go to the bathroom’ moments only clocked in at a little over two hours. But this is complemented well with the options for replayability in the form of different Ork class options and warbands. You can mix and match unique abilities and passive bonuses to change your gameplay experience, with some wilder than others if you want to really blow the arse out of your regular run ’n’ gun expectations. Mix this with the fact the game has up to four players in its co-op space, the greenskin chaos suddenly ratchets the experience up further. Plus, its price point does wonders for forgiving that it isn’t an 18-hour epic adventure.

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Hardly a fair fight – this dude should have brought TWO shields

There is also a note to be made about the game’s abundant loadscreens – even mid level. Though they were rapid, it was actually odd seeing them pop up at times during a period I can only describe as the slow death of loading assets in games. I have grown addicted to seamless experiences, I can really only attribute this to the developers focusing on making sure every important aspect of their gameplay experience was tight as a drum, with five-second loading interruptions clearly considered unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

I also had a terrible time trying to play with a controller. Bafflingly the game looks like it would be an awesome experience with one in my hand, but after struggling with a weird amount of snap-to targeting having me shoot away from enemies, I dumped it and resorted to mouse and keyboard. The experience was like night and day, so I really am unsure if it was an issue with my controller in particular or just bugginess. I really only mention this as a warning to any who might write the game off as unfun to play – if you are playing on PC, please give your other peripherals a red hot go before giving up.

I thought that was a tiny little man on his shoulder – but was disappointed it’s just a hat

The aesthetic of the game is brilliantly straight forward, with a stylised look that very easily conveys the brutal action on screen. Characters are animated in a very straightforward, almost shadow-puppet way – with joints and parts pinned together to flex and move as if they were cut from paper. It’s a very effective method of keeping characters on-model, and really has its place in history as a memorable style seen in early web animations. Within Shootaz, it keeps everything super readable amongst the carnage, doing a fantastic job of portraying the poor mooks as they enter the stage only to be vapourised by your barrage of dakka. Rarely, the nature of these on-screen models appearing as puppets would mean that a visual bug could appear where a body part may clip or move where it shouldn’t – mostly on corpses or freshly deceased nerds falling into a pile – and perform a hilarious physics-based crumple or fold that was more hilarious than concerning. At one point, I noticed my Ork was loading his gun’s magazine into his wrist rather than the actual firearm – again, more of a giggle than a gaff.

Finally, the game’s music is a banger. Hard rock blasts through your speakers as effortlessly as you blast through the dorks of Luteus, with riffs and lyrics that all elevate the fact that your main means of communication are via your armaments. At times I would find myself questioning if a particular riff loop may have been a little short, but honestly this would work to encourage me to move on to a new area so the track would shift. Like having music play off a celebrity giving a long-winded speech, it had a similar effect on me to try to maybe wrap up my current bloodshed and work on finding new targets.

That sign can’t stop me because I can’t read

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Final Thoughts

Shootaz is a game that just ‘gets’ it. The same simple joy that can attract people to the odd and incalculable tabletop game of Warhammer 40,000 is distilled into a fine form, and emerges as an energetic romp through the backyards of planetbound wieners who likely have never really had to deal with an angry Ork before. And the best part? You get to be the Ork. The development team at Rogueside have showcased that they know exactly what people like about Warhammer 40,000 – thank God they took the time to share it with us.

Reviewed on PC // Review code supplied by publisher

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Warhammer 40,000: Shootas, Blood & Teef Review
Get Krumpin’
Warhammer 40,000: Shootas, Blood & Teef is a title that revels in the simple joy of carnage for carnage sake – with a story exactly as shallow as it needs to be, it breathes refreshing life into a dark, dystopian future that we’d rather visit than live in.
The Good
Truly captures the joy of being an Ork
Huge amount of replayability
Soundtrack fits brilliantly
An incredibly fitting look at the Warhammer 40,000 universe
Brutally balanced to stay fun but challenging
The Bad
Good lord, the load screens
Rather short
Probably skip the controller option?
9
BLOODY RIPPER
  • Rogueside
  • Rogueside
  • PS5 / PS4 / Xbox Series X|S / Xbox One / Switch / PC
  • October 20, 2022

Warhammer 40,000: Shootas, Blood & Teef Review
Get Krumpin’
Warhammer 40,000: Shootas, Blood & Teef is a title that revels in the simple joy of carnage for carnage sake – with a story exactly as shallow as it needs to be, it breathes refreshing life into a dark, dystopian future that we’d rather visit than live in.
The Good
Truly captures the joy of being an Ork
Huge amount of replayability
Soundtrack fits brilliantly
An incredibly fitting look at the Warhammer 40,000 universe
Brutally balanced to stay fun but challenging
The Bad
Good lord, the load screens
Rather short
Probably skip the controller option?
9
BLOODY RIPPER
Written By Ash Wayling

Known throughout the interwebs simply as M0D3Rn, Ash is bad at video games. An old guard gamer who suffers from being generally opinionated, it comes as no surprise that he is both brutally loyal and yet, fiercely whimsical about all things electronic. On occasion will make a youtube video that actually gets views. Follow him on YouTube @Bad at Video Games

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