Warhammer 40K Shootas: Blood & Teef Switch Review

To quote the games store description Warhammer 40,000: Shootas, Blood & Teef (by Inin Games) is a hand-drawn 2D action-adventure taking you on a wild ride of dakka, gore and explosions.

Never a truer description.

As you know the Warhammer brand is vast. It started for me with the Warhammer club back in high school. Every weekend I would head down to Games Workshop and pick up my latest set of miniatures and paints. I would then take them with me to paint and play with after school with friends who were also collecting the same line as me. For me, it was The Lord of the Rings Miniatures. I had gotten into Warhammer around the time the films came out back in the early 2000s. I was aware of the 40k line of Warhammer as my best friend collected them at the time and by the White Dwarf magazine. Regrettably, I wasn’t into science fiction as much back then as I am now which stopped me from collecting that line, but I enjoyed them non the less vicariously through my friend.

As I said before the Warhammer brand is vast, spanning many different lines of the tabletop game, but also books, graphic novels, audio dramas and of course video games. There seems to have been an influx of Warhammer 40k video games in recent years which is great for the brand as there is more lore to sink your teeth into. I admit I’m not up to speed on the history and lore of 40k, however after playing Blood and Teef I’ve now downloaded a set of audiobooks to listen to.

Now whereas the most recent 40k games have been quite dark in tone and spanning from tactical to 3^rd person I was very intrigued to see a 2D platformer approach to this franchise with a more light-hearted tone. And I have to say, the game did not disappoint. I had an absolute blast playing it.

So let’s delve in!

Blood & Teef focuses on the ongoing war between the Humans and the Orks. The setting is that of the planet Luteus Alpha. A planet is rich in resources that fuel the wars raging in the Armageddon sector of space.

You play as Gargaz, an ork under the command of the Warboss Orguk Gutrekka. Now If you read the short webcomic before playing the game (which I highly recommend as the artwork is brilliant) it gives you a quick backstory of how Gargaz got his hair squig (a trophy piece worn on the head). The story of the game starts where the webcomic left off with Gutrekka deliberately luring Gargaz onto a drop ship to shoot at human soldiers from high above. The main plot of the story kicks off straight away with Gutrekka stealing the hair squig off of Gargaz’s head and then pushing him out of the dropship. All because he wanted the hair squig for his own.

What follows is a quest for revenge both on top of and below the surface of Luteus alpha as you make your way through hordes of Humans, Orks and Genestealers, all the while causing mayhem and destruction in a bloodbath of gore and explosions.

Did I mention this game is fun?

The gameplay is simplistic. If you’ve played Metroid dread I’d say the controls are very similar. The game is essentially a side-scrolling platformer. You climb and make your way across the beautifully drawn and beautifully rendered backdrops to progress forwards.

You use the right trigger and bumper of the Joycons to fire your gun and attack with your melee weapon and the left trigger and bumper to jump/descend and use grenades. B is to dash, press Y to change weapon or hold down to access the weapons wheel. Aim and change direction with the right joystick and move forwards and back with the left and then press both joysticks down once your green meter is full to activate Waargh! Mode, which auto-shoots your gun with higher damage. Kind of like beast mode.

And the controls are that simple. Nothing complicated, just quick and easy to allow you to have the easiest and most enjoyable experience out of the game.

Now at the end of each level, you face a boss in order to progress onwards. I have to say that each boss progressively gets harder and harder to defeat. It’s even a challenge on easy mode to take them down. I spent a good 30 minutes trying to defeat the final boss. So if you like challenging gameplay then this is certainly the one for you.

As you make your way through each level you find dakka to collect which can then be spent at checkpoints to unlock new guns and headgear. Each gun comes with its own unique trait. My personal loadout consisted of a plasma pistol, x4 barrelled shotgun, homing missile, a chainsaw gun and an automatic rifle with explosive rounds. Each gun adds a new dynamic to the gameplay with new and hilarious ways to take out your enemies.

One of my favourite aspects about this game is the hand-drawn art style approach to the visuals. This art style adds to the light-heartedness of the overall tone and humour of the game. The sound design is another plus. The enemy sounds are authentic and each gun sound sounds unique. The voice acting is also hilarious in this game, Gargaz is obviously the stand-out performance, but I have to also hand it out to the voice of the human commander boss with the extremely long list of titles to his name. This scene was brilliantly acted and it had me in fits of laughter.

The game performed really well in handheld mode with only a few hiccups in the framerate dropping and the gameplay slightly lagging due to the number of enemies and explosions happening on the screen all at once. The sound also suffers a bit here becoming a bit crackly while it’s trying to keep up with the carnage on screen.

One drawback of this game is the incredibly long load times. The load time to get to the main menu screen alone takes well over a minute, which is a shame for the day and age of video games we are living in. I would have expected better for a switch game. While it’s not as bad as say Battlefront 2’s load time for the main menu it doesn’t leave a good first impression going into it. You’d expect this in the 360 and PS3 era of gaming, but not now. Luckily the rest of the game makes up for this though.

Overall Warhammer 40,000: Shootas, Blood & Teef is an absolute blast of a game with gorgeous level design and addictive and fun gameplay with a hilarious story to top it all off that makes me want to delve deeper into the lore of 40k. If you’re a fan of games like Mega Man and Metroid or just a fan of Warhammer 40k then I highly recommend that you check this out.