Necromunda: Hired Gun Reviews
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
There is some merit to how enjoyable the movement is in this game. However, it’s clear there are polish and refinements required if this bounty hunter wants to make bank. Necromunda: Hired Gun is messy and not the game Warhammer 40,000 fans or FPS lovers will be speaking about in years to come.
In sum, Necromunda: Hired Gun is a very mixed offering. It seems that for every pro the game brings, there is a con to match it. I still had fun with Necromunda, but the experience is tainted significantly by the various issues — technical and otherwise — that the game has at the time of this writing.
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 Bounty You Can Safely Skip
Necromunda: Hired Gun is a frenetic fps without a moment of pause, but various technical problems, a forgettable story and a gunplay with too many ups and downs put some excellent ideas in the background
Review in Italian | Read full review
Necromunda: Hired Gun wisely aims high but ultimately flubs the execution on too many fronts to warrant a universal recommendation, but for the most hardcore Warhammer or first-person shooter fans it may be worth a look for the amusing marriage of its ideas.
After spending some intimate time with Necromunda: Hired Gun, I can only describe the game as incredibly average. Its really flawed and fun parts cancel each other out in a near-perfect way leading to one of the most middling experiences I've had this year. However, if you're a Doom loyalist and enjoy the FPS genre, there is some fun to be had with this mixed bag of a game regardless.
Necromunda: Hired Gun features a stunning art direction, but with a garbled story and more technical and design blemishes than you can poke a space stick at, this one's bound to be buried in the under-hive.
It’s probably the most polished game Streum On Studio has made yet, even if it doesn’t quite have the same level of depth and complexity as E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy. It’s both a pretty solid shooter, and a fairly good Warhammer 40k game overall; so long as you go in expecting a somewhat buggy and unpolished experience.
This was a rollercoaster of a review, through no fault on my own. This is the first time I've ever done a complete 180 mid-way through writing, but I suppose that it's only fair if the patches didn't just fix small issues, but rather fundamentally changed the way the game plays. The score has to be indicative of the product the consumer is going to buy, and as of right now, that product is a 6/10 - an average game in every respect, but also one that gets an extra point for being exceedingly faithful to the license it's based upon, and thus likely to please long-term fans of WH40K. It pleased me, at least.
Necromunda: Hired Gun is an enjoyable dive into the grime of Warhammer 40,000's most corrupt city. But all of the incredible atmosphere in the world can't hide its rough edges.
Hired Gun is almost great in its core shooting mechanic and offers nice Warhammer 40K aesthetic, but everything else in this game is mediocre at best.
Review in Russian | Read full review
Necromunda: Hired Gun is a very cool game. A pleasant shooting model, great music and design and a correspondingly long campaign. The PS4 version, however, has a lot of liquidity issues, and a dead zone was forced in aiming, which takes away the pleasure of shooting. If you play it on newer hardware.
Review in Polish | Read full review
