Necromunda: Hired Gun Reviews
At the end of the day, Hired Gun is a mediocre first person shooter where the cons far outweigh the things that make it fun. You would do best waiting for it to go on a deep sale if you really feel the need to explore this part of the Warhammer universe.
A fairly fun bullet-hell shooter frustrated by under-realised features and missed narrative opportunities. Ultimately, Hired Gun falls into a pitfall all too common to Warhammer adaptations: that of only ever feeling skin deep.
Necromunda Hired Gun rests its foot on the accelerator of dynamism and violence, however it has an inaccurate aim. Many of its problems stem from strictly technical stumbles, some of which can be filed with special updates (such as bugs or application crashes), while others are inherent in its playful DNA, and have to do with almost completely absent feedback from shots, with a coarse artificial intelligence to the far-fetched, and with a general flatness of shootings.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Throughout Hired Gun, you very much feel its desire to emulate elements of genre-defining hits like the Half-Life and BioShock games, as well as its failure to understand how they utilized their systems and mechanics to engage and immerse players. Worse, Hired Gun turns its back to all that’s promising about Games Workshop’s fiction, such as the various spinoff novels that offer insights into a demented upper-class nobility as well as life in the Underhive, choosing instead to tell a meaningless, mostly incoherent story about archetypal characters who are unmemorable at best. Late in the game, a momentary detour featuring an iconic Warhammer 40,000 monster, one that’s wildly out of place and acting against its bestial nature, serves as a baffling example of how unmoored this game is to its own property.
In spite of these flaws, the chaotic level of excess is also why it's still worth giving Necromunda: Hired Gun a chance at some point if the bugs and crashing end up fixed. Firing off giant green energy spheres and grenades before teleporting into a huge enemy and making them explode is fun even if it's not challenging. This is the type of design that's overflowing with ideas, mixing and matching concepts from other titles just to see what sticks. Even if the game doesn't come together as a cohesive whole, there's enough fun here to keep fans of FPS and 40K happy. Combine all that with the beautifully realized environments of Warhammer's darkest underground city and Necromunda: Hired Gun gives off a great vibe and ends up enjoyable despite itself.
The most obvious conclusion of Necromunda Hired Gun is that it's a shame. The technical difficulties are easily solvable, but they discourage any player from starting a game, being the most advisable to wait for a first patch that fixes the aiming and the strange ghosting. Since the gameplay is directly affected and the title bases its fun on it, the reasons for recommending it decrease to insalvables levels.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Necromunda: Hired Gun has some jank and some odd qualities, but when tearing your way through hordes of cyborgs is this much fun, I don't really mind so much.
Necromunda: Hired Gun is a fast paced FPS that makes the most of the Warhammer 40K license. The attention to even the smallest detail by the developers and the excellent level design are the setting for a dynamic and frenetic shooter. Unfortunately, just like Streum On Studio's previous titles, this latest video game by the French team is plagued by a number of technical problems and issues in the AI department.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Like so much of the Warhammer 40K universe, Necromunda is a richly imagined world filled with the potential for conflict and storytelling. Using it as the setting for an action-filled shooter makes total sense. Although its mechanics are essentially a greatest-hits collection of ideas from other shooters, Necromunda: Hired Gun is a competent introduction to this particular slice of the Warhammer 40K-verse.
Necromunda: Hired Gun will need a lot of work to get it into a state anywhere close to one we could recommend playing. Actually activating aim assist shouldn't be a tall order, but the same cannot be said of the abysmal frame rate and long list of glitches and issues. Without them, the game could be considered somewhat average. With them, we question how Necromunda: Hired Gun was allowed to ship on PS5 in the first place.
Necromunda: Hired Gun has a certain grungy charm and offers up some clever ideas, but unrefined core mechanics, messy level design, and a shameful lack of polish ultimately add up to Necro-no-fun-da. Hardcore Games Workshop fanatics might still find something to enjoy here, but I recommend you don't hire this gun at anything but a steep discount.
Fast-paced action and combat is the heart of Necromunda: Hired Gun. A great variety of skills allow you to string moves together while taken on dozens of foes at once. The world of Necromunda is a horrible dystopian underbelly of the 40K universe and it shows in Hired Gun. It's just a shame that the story, and characters are so barebones that the 40K license almost feels wasted.
Instead of focusing on key design aspects, the dev team created a whole mess of conflicted ideas and decisions. And the quality of console port is just unacceptable.
Review in Russian | Read full review
Necromunda: Hired Gun is a perfect example of a game that does the Warhammer 40k license justice. If it had the time to hammer out the bugs and issues it could have easily been a sleeper hit of 2021. As it stands it remains a forgettable release that launched with too many issues to keep players’ attention. Even well after launch the game remains in a bad state that makes it hard for me to recommend checking it out. I hope the game gets ironed out at some point, but by then it may be far too late to return to.
Some good warhammer 40k vibes can be found here but there's just a bit too much going on in Necromunda: Hired Gun. The fast-paced FPS gameplay needs refining and is constantly slowed down by the RPG elements which in turn are not allowed to shine through the FPS aspect. I actually think this setting would lend itself more to a Skyrim style RPG more so than a first person shooter but this is what we got and I am actually a bit gutted that I can't like it more than I do.
Necromunda: Hired Gun does have redeeming qualities. The movement is great, the gunplay feels good, and the environmental design is stellar. There's simply a legion of issues on both the design and technical fronts working overtime to hold it back. If you are willing to overlook Hired Gun's many problems and massive amounts of jank you'll likely have a great time blasting gangers to bloody bits. But, I won't fault you for waiting on a sale or sequel instead.
Fast-paced, loud, and unashamedly grim, Necromunda: Hired Gun is a competent, fun shooter when it all works.
And so, Necromunda often oscillates between a brilliant indie gem and a frustrating mid-tier game.