Review - Necromunda: Hired Gun... A Dog-Eat-Dog World.

 

Image Credit: Streum On & Games Workshop

Well... It's certainly been a minute.

    You'll have to excuse my absence, I was doing a replay of the oh-so-glorious Rogue Trader. It still sits pretty at a solid 8/10, but I think that rating could improve with the addition of all the DLC they have planned for it. It's so damn good.

    But I digress.

    We're not here to discuss Games Workshop at its finest, courtesy of Owlcat. We're here to discuss Games Workshop at its most mediocre. Oops. Did I just tip my hand a little too early? Chances are, if you've already done your research on this 2021 game, you've likely made a conclusion one way or another.

    Necromunda: Hired Gun takes place in the underhive city for which it gets its name. It's dark, gritty, covered in skulls, and everyone wants to kill you. Sound like Warhammer yet? You play as a bounty hunter working in this underground where your main hangout is the local dive bar and your best friend is the cyber mastiff who follows your every move. On the first job of the game, we're shown that a ruthless assassin-type called the Silver Talon has butted their way into Necromunda's seedier scene, and a bounty has been placed on their head that would make anyone instantly rich and famous.

    It's up to you to do your due diligence to make sure you capitalize on it.

    And that's pretty much the story. I'll get to whether its good or bad in a minute here, but I'm sure you can probably take a stab at where my thoughts lie.

The Good

The combat is the best part of the game. There's wall-running mixed with some biotic weaponry that somehow stems from the cerebral and bionic implants you have all over your body. Throughout the game you are able to tool and retool components of yourself, and your mastiff, in order to increase your combat efficiency. This is just adding to the lethality you already possess from the beginning to make the fights even faster and harder hitting. It can feel pretty awesome to tear through all the hive gangs the game throws at you in a matter of minutes. I think my best runtime on a mission was 15 minutes, and no one was left standing at the end.

    The visuals are also pretty solid. Are they the best that I've ever seen? No. They're not going to win any awards. But as Streum On Studio was operating within a AA budget, they look pretty good. There's some stilted moments, but the overall feel and ascetic of the game lends itself to good graphics. This is probably helped by the fact that so much of it is astoundingly dark.

The Bad

Let's just start with the narrative. Get that out of the way. I know that many of these types of games don't feel like a strong story is all that important when fleshing out a game, but I actually think it's fairly imperative to give the gamer a reason to keep going. Our Hired Gun's only motivation to keep going is to make money off the bounties on the board. My only motivation to keep going was the short runtime coupled with my love of all things Warhammer. I already pointed out everyone's lethal intentions while covered head to toe in skulls. That's pretty Warhammer, but the buck stops there. Sure, you have the cameo of Kal Jerico to pull you into that world farther, but it's honestly just not enough. Streum On should have done better, and Games Workshop should have held them to account.

    The audio in the game is awful. Voice acting is janky from time to time, and the times that it's not it actually fluctuates in and out with the volume level. The music is bad. It's basically an attempt at death metal to pump you up for the combat, but it can get distracting with how piss-poor it really is. I turned the music off completely for several missions of the game. Silence coupled with gun blasts was much more enjoyable.

The Question

Should you get it? If you're still wondering at this point it's probably because you also have a love for all things Warhammer. I got it on sale for $7.99 through PSN, so I don't really feel all that ripped off. I got like 8 hours out of it, so a dollar an hour isn't bad. Were all those hours quality? Definitely not, but I did have a good time running through mag-trains with a bolter in one hand and electricity flying out of the other. If you want to just have fun doing a few runs in one of the uglier worlds of Warhammer 40K, then look no further. Hired Gun will fill the void for you, if only for a little bit. Just don't ask questions at the end. Like... what was the point of those random genestealers? Was anyone going to follow up on that? 

    Sigh.

    Guess not.

6/10

Better than Some