So, we have here once again the forty-first millennium. The main character, or heroine – we are not limited in the choice of gender – begins her career as an unremarkable cyber hunter for cyber heads (and simple ones too!) In Necromunda. For a moment, this is a planet known for its off-scale crime rate, as well as the eponymous hive city of the Imperium (F95zone). A deadly place for anyone unable to load a previously saved game or use a resurrection stimulant.
At the very beginning of the game, our character is ambushed, seriously injured, but thanks to the timely intervention of an underground tech-priest without a license, he still remains alive. Our first employer and part-time rich man to donate a precious implant to save the hero’s life is Cal Jericho. The one about which the trilogy of novels in the genre of “battle fiction” has been written. And now the hero has to find out what kind of setup this is, and who would benefit from sending him and his two companions to the next world.
The creators of Necromunda:
Hired Gun have previously been noted not to be the loudest indie shooters – their portfolio includes Space Hulk: Deathwing and EYE: Divine Cybermancy . From the first they took the setting, lore and weapons, from the second they borrowed the emphasis on sophisticated gadgets, augmentation and implants. This is certainly not Cyberpunk 2077 , but Streum On Studio honestly tried to make the gameplay of the indie shooter a little more varied thanks to sci-fi rattles.
From the very first minutes, the main problem of Necromunda is exposed: the Hired Gun . It tries hard to be like all the popular action games, but its elements don’t work well together or just feel cheap. The French wanted to combine the hurricane gameplay of DOOM Eternal with its dashes, double jumps and improved control of the hero in the air, shooting while running along the walls from Ghostrunner and customizing weapons with chips, trackers and other amplifiers in the spirit of Borderlands . And at the same time generously sprinkled “Wahoi” imitator of all popular titles.
On basic difficulty Necromunda:
Hired Gun looks and plays like an inexpensive but vigorous shooting range – guts and limbs fly in all directions, cartridges never run out, and shields fall out of enemies. Well, and health is restored thanks to the techno blood perk, which converts part of the damage done into the restored HP indicator.
Gameplay Hired Gun provides several tools to prolong the fun: there is a grappling hook that pulls our protégé to enemies or hard-to-reach places. There are special animations for finishing moves, after which additional resources pour out of enemies to continue the fight. There is a trained cyber mastiff with his own leveling branch – he highlights enemies in the nearest zone of action, and after a few financial investments he learns to kill them no less effectively than a firearm at our disposal. And there is even the ability to customize each gun with more bells and whistles than any Rainbow Six: Siege.
But at the same time, there seems to be no game balance. On medium difficulty, even armored enemies are killed by a couple of shots from a heavy rifle or a volley from an automatic shotgun. When the difficulty increases to “hard”, the bullet sponge effect begins – literally all enemies turn into sponges that are capable of absorbing cartridges and grenades for a long time. Without pumping the guns, any enemies will be too tenacious. And pumping is expensive and forces us to take the so-called “side” and rather the same type of tasks in already cleaned locations.
The direction of the cutscenes is constantly reminiscent of some shooters from the 90s, and the visual part is the HuniePop 2. Locations in the game suffer from gigantism, just like the technology of the Third Reich. By the way, already in the second mission, we capture a huge steam locomotive the size of a metropolis, which is taking the hero to the bandits’ den. Towards the middle, you will upgrade most of the required skills and you’re cyber to boot. New tricks by this time end, and Necromunda: Hired Gun begins to pall and rolls into self-repetition.
But the worst is the bugs. There were no fewer of them in the pre-release version than in Cyberpunk 2077 at the start. Among the most annoying I will note the disappearing mouse cursor when choosing dialog options or missions in the menu. It was not possible to scroll through these missions from the keyboard. In one of the missions, the switches for the release of the hostages refused to work: there is a camera with a prisoner, there is a lever, but the game simply does not allow pressing it.
Conclusion:
And the worst – in one of the locations right along the road of the only corridor, the character fell under the textures of the level and, falling down, died. Three times in a row, because in Necromunda: Hired Gun there is an analog of “lives”, and if the character dies, he can continue the game from the same place. After three deaths, they are forced to start the level from the very beginning. And what do you think? The character resurrected at the “leaky” point and fell down again. Errors like this greatly reduce the desire to play Eldritch Blast 5e in its current form. Moreover, replayability is tight: there is no co-op, no multiplayer game, no additional modes. Campaign and Campaign Only.
