There have been a lot of bad Warhammer 40k video games over the years and only a very small number of good ones. The first two Dawn of War games were excellent RTS games while Space Marine was a great third person shooter but Necromunda: Hired Gun is the first 4k based first person shooter I can remember actually enjoying.
The game pits you as a soldier of fortune undertaking missions on the gang ruled munitions factory planet of Necromunda. There is an overarching plot which sets you up on the trail of a shadowy figure who is stirring up trouble but the story is utterly secondary to the gun play and the gun play is quite good. Movement is fluid and controls are tight. There is a good selection of appropriately powerful weapons and bionic powers available. The missions are set in large open levels which allow plenty of opportunity for parkouring around with grappling hook, wall running and sliding. The maps do feel a but repetitive by the end of the game but there is enough variety within each level to allow for a lot of fun tactics.
The loot based weapon upgrade system is key to game progression and is surprisingly comprehensive. The upgrade system allows you to fundamentally change the role of many weapons. This is quite engaging once you figure it out but sadly the upgrade interface and the entire inventory system in general are ludicrously unintuitive. You have separate inventories for each type of item with a limited number of slots in each and a smaller limit for the number that can be equipped at any one time. So for example you can hold five pistols in inventory but only three can be equipped at one time. Just to confuse things further Basic weapons (long guns), special weapons and heavy weapons all share the same three equip slots even though they have their own individual inventory slots. Even though you have very limited inventory slots you can actually carry anything you pick up during a mission. At the end of a mission you have to go through all your loot and choose which items to keep in one of your precious inventory slots and which items to sell for cash. The game doesn't give you a list of all the loot items to speed this up. Instead you have to go into each of the eight different categories of inventory one at a time and then drag any items you want to keep to a vacant inventory slot. None of this is properly explained in game and it took me quite a while to get familiar with it.
The fast paced combat is a highlight. The game is clearly influenced by Doom 2016 and rewards a fast paced aggressive playstyle with health and ammo pickup on kills. In fact the game repeatedly tells you to play aggressively if you want to stay alive. The game enforces this by giving you a generous health replenishment if you kill enemies within a short while after taking damage. Playing the game as intended you are constantly moving and constantly killing enemies all the while your health yoyos up and down wildly. If you don't do this your health will just constantly go down to chip damage and you are unlikely to survive the mission. You can bring three health packs on every mission but once they are gone they are gone. There are no health pickups aside from killing enemies. You can buy up to three revive shots (called stims) for each mission but using them will result in a poor score for the mission. Although this system works as intended and enforces fast paced aggressive play it is not as good as the system in Doom 2016 which probably inspired it. In fact playing this game has opened my eyes as to just how brilliant Doom 2016's combat is. Doom 2016 has three combat resources: Health, Armour and Ammunition and there is a separate kill mechanic available to replenish each of them: Glory kills replenish health, Chainsaw kills replenish ammo and Flamethrower damage replenishes armour. These mechanisms make fast paced aggressive play very enjoyable and self sustaining. The faster you kill the faster you replenish allowing you to keep fighting. However they still leave a great deal of agency with the player. You have to keep an eye on your resources and decide which type of kill to prioritise at any given time. There are no real time limits on replenishment so you can choose your own pace. Hired gun has three very similar resources (A refractor field takes the role of armour) and they are replenished by killing enemies. You can't choose which resource to replenish however other than the fact that in order to replenish health you need to kill quickly after taking damage. This removes the sense of agency and simply forces you to keep running and keep shooting. It doesn't matter which resource is being depleted because the only action in every case is to just keep killing things quickly.
Overall I would say that hired gun has flaws but is nevertheless very enjoyable. It is certainly one of the better Warhammer 40k video games. Recommended.
Edit: I somehow forgot to mention that you get a cute doggo to help you on your missions. It acts as spotter, crowd control and can actually kills enemies. To be honest I found it most useful in the early missions when my own skills and equipment were a bit lacking but by the end of the game I was so focussed on quickly killing enemies myself that I forgot about the dog most of the time.
Comments