Necromunda: Hired Gun Review Summary

Customizable weapons, abilities, movement: The game offers a wide array of weapons, abilities, and customization options, allowing players to tailor their playstyle. Movement mechanics like grappling hooks, wall-running, and double jumps enhance the fast-paced action. Upgrading weapons, skills, and the character provides a satisfying sense of progression and power.

Stunning, atmospheric level design: The game excels in its environmental and level design, faithfully recreating the grim, industrial atmosphere of the Warhammer 40k universe, particularly the underhive of Necromunda. Reviewers praise the detailed and atmospheric environments, noting the sense of scale and the effective use of gothic architecture and gritty details. The environments are visually stunning and a highlight of the game.

Excellent graphics and art style: The game features impressive graphics and a distinct art style that captures the essence of the Warhammer 40k universe. The visuals are often described as stunning and graphically impressive, contributing significantly to the game's immersive atmosphere. The art direction is a major strength.

Good enemy and weapon variety: The game features a variety of enemies and weapons, with different ways to defeat them. The game allows you to handle situations in a variety of ways. The ability to continuously improve weapons and skills allows for adaptation to different combat styles.

Fitting, energetic metal soundtrack: The game features a well-suited metal soundtrack that enhances the action and atmosphere. Reviewers find the music energetic and fitting for the fast-paced combat. The sound design, including weapon effects, is also well-received.

Numerous glitches and bugs: The game is plagued by numerous technical issues, including glitches, bugs, crashes, and unpolished animations. Reviewers frequently mentioned getting stuck in the environment, experiencing frame rate drops, and encountering broken scripts, significantly detracting from the overall experience and immersion.

Unbalanced, bullet-spongey enemies: The game suffers from poor balance, with enemies being bullet sponges that deal excessive damage, even on lower difficulties. This is exacerbated by poor AI, limited tactical options, and inconsistent feedback, leading to frustrating and tedious combat encounters. Many reviewers felt the game relied on attrition rather than skillful gameplay.

Repetitive gameplay and missions: The game becomes repetitive due to limited enemy variety, uninspired level design, and repetitive mission objectives. Side missions often reuse main story maps and feature endless enemy spawns, leading to a monotonous gameplay loop with little sense of progression.

Poor and confusing level design: Level design is flawed, featuring confusing layouts, cramped corridors, and uninspired environments. Movement mechanics like wall-running are poorly implemented and underutilized, and players frequently encounter invisible walls and level-breaking bugs that hinder exploration and progression.

Unsatisfying and weak gunplay: The gunplay feels weak and unsatisfying, with weapons lacking impact and failing to provide distinct feedback. Many weapons feel ineffective, requiring excessive farming and upgrades to become viable, and the weapon variety is limited, leading players to stick to a few preferred options.

Fast-paced, movement-focused combat: The game features fast-paced, movement-based combat with abilities, a grappling hook, wall-running, double jumps, and executions. Many reviewers compare the gameplay loop to that of Doom or Titanfall, emphasizing constant movement and aggressive play. However, some find the gunplay and traversal functional but unexceptional, and the core loop repetitive.

Customization lacks meaningful impact: The game offers weapon and character customization, but the impact of these customizations is often minimal. While the weapons themselves feel good to use, the upgrades and attachments provide only slight stat boosts or cosmetic changes. This makes the customization system feel somewhat superficial.

Repetitive, grindy side missions: The game includes side missions that are often repetitive and involve simple objectives within the same environments as the main campaign. These missions primarily serve as a means to grind for credits and upgrades, with little variation in their design or objectives.

Central hub for upgrades/missions: The game features a hub area where players can buy/upgrade/sell items, start missions, and interact with characters. This hub serves as a central location for managing character progression and accessing both story and side content.

Short, linear, vertical levels: The game features short, linear levels with a focus on verticality. These levels often involve fighting waves of enemies in smaller areas, with multiple paths for flanking and strategic movement.

Inconsistent performance and bugs: The game exhibits a range of technical issues, including crashes, frame rate drops, stuttering, and general bugginess. Some players report smooth performance on high-end systems, while others struggle even with lower settings. Optimization appears inconsistent, and some bugs may be hardware-dependent.

Stuttering during loading/compilation: Several reviews mention stuttering, particularly when loading new areas, during shader compilation, or due to texture popping. This can disrupt the flow of gameplay and negatively impact the overall experience.

Enemies stuck in environment: Enemies sometimes get stuck in walls or other parts of the environment, which can halt player progress. This issue is reported for regular enemies and bosses.

Excessive loading times: The game suffers from long loading times, especially when installed on a mechanical hard drive or when retrying after death. This can lead to frustration and disrupt the pacing of the game.

Animation and physics glitches: Several reviews mention animation and physics glitches, such as movement bugs, texture issues, and synchronization problems between sound and animation. These issues detract from the overall polish of the game.

Buy only on deep sale: A common sentiment is that the game isn't worth its full price due to various flaws, lack of content, or short length. Reviewers suggest waiting for a significant sale before considering a purchase. This point is mentioned very frequently.

Inferior to other shooters: Many reviewers compare the game to other shooters, especially Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal, often unfavorably. Some suggest playing those games instead. This point highlights the game's lack of originality and its failure to meet the standards set by its competitors.

Short length, low replayability: Several reviewers mention that the game is short, with limited replay value. This makes it difficult to recommend at full price. This point is often coupled with the recommendation to buy only on sale.

Questionable design choices/balance: Some reviewers point out specific design flaws, such as unnecessary elements or unbalanced systems. These issues detract from the overall experience. This point highlights the need for further refinement of the game's mechanics.

Feels unfinished, underdeveloped: Several reviewers mention that the game feels unfinished or underdeveloped. This is reflected in the bugs, lack of polish, and unfulfilled potential. This point is a major reason for the negative reviews.

Warhammer setting: immersive but flawed: The game is set in the Warhammer 40K universe, specifically the grim and dystopian Hive Primus of Necromunda. The setting is a key element, with awesome lore and set pieces, but some found the story uninteresting or confusing, especially without prior knowledge of the universe.

AA title with limited budget: Many reviewers consider the game to be a AA or 'in-between' title, reflecting a smaller budget and scope compared to AAA releases. While not terrible, it doesn't reach the level of polish or depth of higher-budget competitors like DOOM, but the developers are active and engaged.

Unremarkable and poorly explained story: The story is present but generally considered unremarkable, mediocre, or even nonsensical by some reviewers. Cutscenes explain very little, and some UI functionality is never explained, suggesting a lack of focus on narrative depth.

Gameplay inspired by other titles: The game borrows elements from other games like Cyberpunk 2077, Doom Eternal, Wolfenstein, Borderlands, Titanfall 2, and especially E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy. This creates a familiar but unique gameplay experience.

Incomplete language support: The game lacks complete language support for some regions, including Brazilian Portuguese and Japanese. This can make understanding objectives and skills difficult for non-English speakers.