Necromunda: Hired Gun

Great shooter from the universe of Warhammer 40K. Dark, rough and with unfinished work. If you are looking to fill the time and you don´t mind a new crazy action, give it a chance. But there is still work to be done and things to improve.

Necromunda: Hired Gun is a fantastic FPS set in the 40k universe. Doom Eternal influence is prominent throughout the game like in the gunplay, verticality, and mobility, but with a much lower budget – and that shows. However, Hired gun is a competent FPS that delivers on fast-paced shooting but is marred with technical problems.

Is the Warhammer 40k world completely alien to you? It doesn’t matter. This is still a great, hectic shooter in which you’ll feel as if you’re dancing when you’re actually killing hordes of enemies. You just have to endure the stiff story opening.

Necromunda: Hired Gun is a fast-paced FPS that makes the most of the Warhammer 40K license. The attention to even the smallest detail by the developers and the excellent level design are the setting for a dynamic and frenetic shooter. Unfortunately, just like Streum On Studio’s previous titles, this latest video game by the French team is plagued by a number of technical problems and issues in the AI department.

Necromunda: Hired Gun has some jank and some odd qualities, but when tearing your way through hordes of cyborgs is this much fun, I don't really mind so much.

Fast-paced AA-shooter-action with an impressive level design and a great setting, however, its story and presentation cannot keep up.

An undeniable passion project with incredible world design, addictive gunplay, and a great soundtrack, let down by jank, weak storytelling, and half-baked systems. I could see this getting rave reviews if it had been released in Early Access, though. Give it six months. It’s got the makings of a corpse-grinder cult classic.

Like so much of the Warhammer 40K universe, Necromunda is a richly imagined world filled with the potential for conflict and storytelling. Using it as the setting for an action-filled shooter makes total sense. Although its mechanics are essentially a greatest-hits collection of ideas from other shooters, Necromunda: Hired Gun is a competent introduction to this particular slice of the Warhammer 40K-verse. At some point, however, repetition and fatigue with the one-note approach to pacing and the relentlessly hopeless nature of the world set in. You begin to desperately hope for some humanity, emotional depth, humor, or variety…which I guess ultimately is the plight of the Underhive’s residents. It just shouldn’t be that of the gamer.

Necromunda had every chance to become a sudden summer hit. Great gunplay, nice parkour, gory finishing moves. But it lacks one crucial thing: good enemies. As it is, they’re basically training dummies. [Issue#254, p.60]

Hired Gun seems to have unique problems on every platform – I personally suffered from a memory management issue that crashed the game multiple times – but I’m past the point of focusing criticism for small games on technical infidelities that’ll likely get fixed over time anyway. I’m more concerned with Streumon honing their craft. They have the right attitude and the perfect setting — they just need to ditch the baggage.

A game that will please every Warhammer 40K fan with its narrative and gameplay mechanics, but can be a bit shallow for everyone else. And the team still has to do plenty of optimization to make the game work well on most on the platforms where it's available.

Necromunda: Hired Gun throws the player into a series of fast-paced, noisy shootouts, but it’s never lavish on highlights, and the lack of emotion devolves the gameplay into a purely mechanical process. This poor man's Doom Eternal is utterly forgettable.

Thanks to its Warhammer 40,000 setting you won't confuse Necromunda with any other FPS and the design and scale of the environments are impressive. For a simple, old-school shooter, it also offers surprisingly deep and fun character development and weapon customization options. It’s a game of contrasts though, and I can't hide my disappointment with terrible enemy AI, mediocre bonus missions, poor character models, rough animations, crude visuals, and god-awful equipment screen. [08/2021, p.36]

In a world where Doom Eternal is regularly on sale for $20, I can’t recommend paying twice that to play an inferior knock-off, even if it is fun with great environmental design. It might be worth picking up right away if you’re a Warhammer 40K fanatic or desperate for more Doom Eternal style action, otherwise wait for a sale, a bundle, or a price cut.

Painkiller's nutso violence meets Titanfall's nutso nimbleness meets Doom's nutso pacing, all in a grimfuture Warhammer world cobbled together by a nutso French studio.

Necromunda: Hired Gun does have redeeming qualities. The movement is great, the gunplay feels good, and the environmental design is stellar. There's simply a legion of issues on both the design and technical fronts working overtime to hold it back. If you are willing to overlook Hired Gun's many problems and massive amounts of jank you'll likely have a great time blasting gangers to bloody bits. But, I won't fault you for waiting on a sale or sequel instead.

Hired Gun is far from being a good game. But with its massive Warhammer vibe you find yourself having fun here and there.

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.

Necromunda seems to be a game still in development with a graphical quality that lacks polish and technical aspects that are unfinished. Nevertheless, the FPS has interesting combat mechanics and customization, and players who are not too fussy about the flaws in the scenery, cinematics, cutscenes or the interface will enjoy this game that is meant to be a good, big, fun way to let off steam.

Necromunda: Hired Gun fails to exploit the full potential of the fascinating universe of Warhammer 40K. It’s a fun action game that is heavily inspired by Doom Eternal but lacks attention to detail and there are several problems in its gameplay structure.

Necromunda often oscillates between a brilliant indie gem and a frustrating mid-tier game. Some moments, it’s the best Warhammer 40,000 action game – as you mow down enemies and watch their skulls explode to its rocking tunes, and look stylish doing it as you chain grappling hook shots and double-jumps. Other times, you miss a major story beat because an important character’s audio mix was too low, or feel like you’re pixel-hunting for enemies like it’s Warzone.

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 unfortunately suffers from several bugs that make it a too immature game to be enjoyed properly. Underneath these issues, however, there is a far from trivial FPS.

Necromunda Hired Gun rests its foot on the accelerator of dynamism and violence, yet it has an imprecise aim. Many of its problems derive from strictly technical stumbles, some of which can be solved with special updates (such as bugs or application crashes), while others are innate in its playful DNA, and have to do with feedback from the shots almost totally absent, with an artificial intelligence crude beyond belief, and with a general flatness of the shootings. The always timeless charisma of Warhammer takes care of everything, but with a license of this value available, we are convinced that Streum Studio could have done more to honor the Imperium.

Necromunda: Hired Gun is a searing disappointment, a conceptually and technically dated shooter that doesn't shine in any way.

Despite some brisk and occasionally satisfying combat, Necromunda: Hired Gun is a boring and clunky foray into a deep dark hole within the WH40K universe.

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.

Despite his promising beginnings, impressive artistic direction and sincere good ideas, Necromunda Hired Gun proves to be an experience far too fragile on the rest to bring true playing pleasure.

Necromunda: Hired Gun has an iconic setting, lots of gore, and great mobility and gunplay, but it keeps giving you reasons to not play it. Whether it's the technical issues, the hopelessly dim AI, or a story that’s as bland as a barn door and comically short, you have to be willing to overlook a towering pile of aggravating problems in order to appreciate what this RPG shooter does well.

The versatility of wall-running and jumping with the agility of Spider-Man with machine guns is undeniably entertaining. Traversing the excellent dark and brutal world with these abilities makes it all that much more fun. 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.

Necromunda: Hired Gun checks all the boxes that should make a single-player first-person shooter tick, but its flawed execution and an ugly Warhammer 40K paint job give you few reasons to stick with it until the end. It’s functional and has a grappling hook that’s alright to use. But its tedious, unsatisfying combat, janky animations, and AI that’s prone to mess up all test your patience without offering any tangible reward. It misses out on making you feel like a bounty hunter – badass or otherwise – and all you’re left with, in case you do play through its campaign, is a sense that you could have spent that time playing something better.