Necromunda: Hired Gun Reviews
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 the end, the Hired Gun could be a pleasant surprise, but the development team's choices are what keep it from shining.
Review in Greek | Read full review
The dull gameplay, the same old fights, and the absolute overabundance of enemy waves took the fun out of Necromunda: Hired Gun for me relatively early on. The premise looked good, the inspiration of the developers is clear, but the execution leaves obvious flaws. Even though the arenas and levels are beautifully designed and could vary so much despite being permanently underground, it's the gameplay in particular that makes the agile shooter and thus breaks its neck.
Review in German | Read full review
The game's story never captures an ever-shifting gang war landscape of assassinations, ambushes, and back-stabbings. Instead, it leans into the worst aspects of Warhammer storytelling, throwing too many proper nouns at the player while also being too grim-dark for a setting that pretty much coined that term. You could skip most of the dialogue sections and the story could still be told with its visuals; in fact, that might even be more effective. Even though a lot of the levels look similar, there is still a history and sense of massive scale and character in each area you jump, shoot, and sprint through.
