Necromunda: Hired Gun Review (PS4)

Heavy metal soundtrack, gore, and non-stop shooting; no, this is not the description of a new iteration of the infamous Doom, it's Streum's Necromunda: Hired Gun. After a seemingly never-ending flood of Warhammer games with questionable quality, the action built around a ruthless bounty hunter who hunts down his marks accompanied only by their loyal mastiff did show promise. Is this the Warhammer 40k game you have been waiting for or just another hit and miss?

For a while now almost all games built on the Warhammer universe have been forgettable at best. Games Workshop seems careless when it comes to licensing, "quantity" being the keyword instead of "quality." After seeing the first trailers of Necromunda: Hired Gun I was hoping to see the first non-strategy game to hit the mark and offer an engaging action-packed experience.

Developed by Streum On Studio the game at first seems like a crazy fun gorefest taking place on the industrial planet of Necromunda. The deeper you go under the ground, the more brutal and more desperate the situation gets, up to the point where your life is nothing else but just another commodity. In this struggle, you will meet our main character, a bounty hunter whose luck turns from bad to worse when they accept a simple job.

Trying to figure out what went wrong and who tried to end your existence you will wreak havoc in an FPS that trades sophistication for fun. The pace is very fast, the enemies are plenty and your moves are lethal. The control scheme is cool and fluid, very well adapted to the idea to rain down death on everything that moves. You can wall-jump, slide around, wall-run, and double jump. Combined with a well-thought-out control scheme the result is extremely satisfying, turning mowing down enemies into an oddly satisfying show.

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In order to do so, you will also need an arsenal to keep up with all the craziness, and the developers got you covered. From oversized revolvers to huge canons you are sure to find something to your liking. The best part is that all weapons are upgradable through the mods you find, which will modify not just the stats of the guns, but also the way they look. If you invest time and effort you can achieve some spectacular combinations with devastating power.

You can also upgrade yourself with various implants if you can afford them. Taking on main missions and side jobs you can save up to modify your active abilities and passive stats. Structured in a skill tree you can purchase different gimmicks more or less useful, like slowing downtime or increasing your shields and health. This is the motivation behind looking in every nook and cranny of the levels to make sure you don’t leave any loot behind.

Especially because you have another mouth to feed, your loyal Cyber Mastiff. Just like your character, your companion can be upgraded as well and its look will change accordingly. He will prove invaluable to sniff out your enemies, making them visible on the screen even if they hide behind various objects on the map. He can also take them apart, without the risk of being hurt. All you need to pay attention to is the cooldown timer because no matter how much of a good boy he is, your faithful Mastiff can be summoned only for a limited time.

You will need all the advantages you can get because the levels are packed full with opposition. The AI might be lacking, but the number of enemies surrounding you can be overwhelming. There is no point in complaining about the spawning conditions because even if they appear behind you, your opponents will get stuck in the first column or any other obstacle they encounter. Later in the game, you will face more challenging opponents that can really hurt you, but if you take advantage of the game mechanics and kill enemies fast enough you can recharge your life.

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Unfortunately at this point, the list of good ideas stops. Although promising and full of potential, Necromunda Hired Gun sinks to the level of any other Warhammer 40k game very quickly. The side missions are repetitive and boring, the close combat is chunky, the executions have horrible animations, and there are countless issues that in the long run convince you that this a budget game trying to masquerade as a AAA.

The worst part is the bugs, which turn the roughly 8-10 hours of fun into frustration and dismay. Because there is no save feature if the game crashes, you lose all your progress in a level and you have to start again. And yes, the game will crash even after the patches.

Although looking good and having a peculiar atmosphere, the visuals never reach a level to explain the random framerate drops. The visual style is spot on, but the graphics are lacking. Also, a total opposite of the brilliant control scheme is the menu system, which is just plain and simply a pain in the butt. Hard to navigate and hard to understand it makes it overcomplicated to manage your equipment and abilities.

The sound part will not save the game either, despite the atmospheric tracks selected by the developers. The music is full of adrenaline-increasing guitar riffs and metal tunes, still there will be portions of the levels you will explore in complete silence. The volume levels are all over the place, especially when it comes to dialogues, sometimes the voice acting being almost completely muted.

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The Good

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