Necromunda: Hired Gun Review (PS5)

Right from the first mission in Necromunda, it had my interest. You are on some sort of mission with two others and things go south (as they tend to do) and you are left alone and broken. From there you are saved by a “friend” and begin playing your part as a ruthless gun navigating through the numerous factions in the underbelly of this universe. With gameplay that reminded me of Wolfenstein meets Doom meets some light RPG elements, it’s a crazy (but not always great) ride.

The game takes you through a series of missions (takes about 7-8 hours to complete) as you explore a varied and troubled landscape of Necromunda. The level design in this game is probably one of the most interesting aspects of the game. While much of the landscape looks similar, dark, rusty, industrial, they do a great job of making each area feel different and unique. You have the ability to grapple, rappel, and wall run which makes traversal through the levels pretty much however you want it to be. While the game is definitely linear in nature, how you choose to tackle things are not. Combat is quick but sometimes uninspired due to the weaponry. The game features a Destiny-like loop in the sense that you are obtaining slightly better versions of what you have over and over again throughout the game. There is a range in weaponry from shotguns and pistols to automatics and snipers, but it all gets a bit muddled in the delivery and usage of the weapons.

The story unfortunately seems to suffer a bit in this game as well. It is very convoluted and confusing to follow and is basically used more as an excuse to visit the different levels vs telling an actual tale. The voice acting however is very good in my opinion, I just wish more of the characters served a bigger purpose or were more memorable all in all.

The game is ultra violent as you blow enemies up in a gorey explosion in most instances ala Doom. You also have the ability to do upclose melee finishers to enemies which are often fun to watch for awhile at the beginning of the game. Unfortunately sometimes I did have animation issues and was unable to tell really what was going on due to a weird camera angle or speed of what was going on. I did experience one hard crash during my gameplay as well in during a boss battle which was frustrating. Combat overall though does feel good and keeps you having to move. Many of the base enemies are not difficult to take down as long as you keep moving to avoid being teamed up on, many of the bosses and mini bosses are VERY big bullet sponges and you may have to empty a lot of your weapons in the process. But overall the game isn’t too difficult.  As inspiring and fun as some of the levels are throughout the game, I did sometimes have difficulty understanding what I needed to do or where to go, again this is more of a problem with the narrative more than the gameplay.

The game does offer some replay value in the form of additional side quests and contracts you can take on outside of the main mission, so there is a lot more than the 8 hours worth of game if you dig in deep enough. Unfortunately it never delivers on the gang turf war feel that the narrative was really trying to nail down. All and All it’s a good, not great game.

Add this to the pile of Warhammer Games that are good not great that have good intentions put poor execution at times.