Undercooked
Necromunda: Hired Gun is a perfect example of a game that could have been a contender for sleeper hit of the year. The concept mashes several great concepts together. Take the unique and interesting world of Warhammer 40k and combine it with fast-paced Doom-like gunplay. Then toss in the dirty-yet-gorgeous design of the characters and world and you have a game that is not just neat to look at, but also extremely fun to play. Sadly, the lack of polish and bugs at launch really pushed the game out of the public’s eye and until it was patched and patched again it really had issues that were hard to look past. In the world of gaming this can be a death sentence as most people have already moved on to the next big thing.
The core concept of the game is right in the title. Players take on the role of a hired gun. There are several characters to choose from with little differences between them. For anyone hoping for a deep narrative set in the Warhammer 40k universe, this is not the game for you. The universe only serves as a backdrop as the story mostly involves inconsequential dialogue. There just isn’t much here to get invested in. The game is a mindless shooter focusing on fast gunplay and mechanics. There just isn’t any meat here to take advantage of the lore.
MSRP: $39.99
Platforms: Xbox, PlayStation, PC
Price I’d Pay: $29.99
The game play in Hired Gun is a mix of Doom with the mobility design of the on-foot sections of Titanfall 2. Players can leap and run on walls taking down enemies. It feels good at first as I felt like a powerhouse moving through the seedy levels. Then the seams start to show. Enemy AI is just brainless and melee attacks are extremely overpowered. I could just run up and start the animation (which left me invulnerable) then move on to the next one without issue. Bosses show up and I could easily avoid their attacks while laying waste to them. I like a good mindless shooter, but once I found the exploits here, it was just a mindless progression.
There are plenty of weapons and upgrades to acquire. Each character also has a dog at their command that can show enemies through walls or distract them. It is a neat mechanic that like everything else in the game feels underutilized. I rarely needed to use the dog and when I remembered I had it, it never made a difference in the combat scenario.
It all feels like wasted potential. The game is so much fun to play until the cracks start to show. This review is also extremely late as the game launched in a state that I was unable to even play it. On Xbox the game supported Series X, but when moving through the world the judder was so bad, I couldn’t play for more than 15 minutes. It took weeks to get a patch out to fix it. Even after that was nailed down the game suffered from issues of characters glitching through walls and just all-around lack of polish. Still to this day the game suffers lots of problems making it feel like it was just sent out the door long before it was done. This is what makes me appreciate games getting time to be complete before launch as I really think this title had potential.
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.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
