Went into this one with zero expectations and was pleasantly surprised.

The gameplay loop is really fun and the campaign does not overstay its welcome. Character progression is done well and while there is a loot system, you never feel the need to grind for anything to progress the main story. After doing a handful of side missions, you can pretty much max out your character.

Storywise there's not much going on, most of the plot happens in the first and last cutscenes, the rest is carried out through dialogue in the hub area. It's more of an excuse to move onto the next location than an engaging plot.

You can really feel that despite being a janky game, the developers really cared both about the project and the source material it is based on. It's one of those games where I'd like to see a sequel with the same core mechanics, but just a focus on polishing out all the rough edges.

This game is currently in the Humble Choice for July 2022, this is part of my coverage of the bundle. If you are interested in the game and it's before August 2nd, 2022, consider picking up the game as part of the current monthly bundle.

Necromunda: Hired Gun is based on a Game Workshop game called Necromunda, in the Warhammer 40k universe. You’re on a mechanized planet, and the locations here do not disappoint, whether it’s the furnace locations during the first level, or an epic train that passes in the second, there’s a huge sense of scale and discovery here, that’s impressive.

It’s too bad the rest of the game just doesn’t work as well as the levels and locations. There’s a particularly bad character model that I’ll try to show here of a big brute, but it was a bad enough model that it made me start realizing it’s more visual trickery and filters that made the other enemies acceptable, at least I think so. The gunplay in the first hour is average at best, and there are some weird control choices, such as combining the use, melee, and reload all on a single button, which is awkward for the melee takedowns. Then again some moments reminded me of Ghostrunner for the wall-running that’s rather good, and a few moments were visceral like Doom Eternal, but a weaker form of both if I’m honest.

Pick this up if you love First Person shooters, I liked the environments here and would love to see more, but this is a Games Workshop game that tends to have a decent amount of Jank. As always when it comes to these types of games, I recommend people check out Mandelore’s reviews if they want a more in-depth look at the game, which ultimately is positive though it does mention a lack of polish at launch. Though one last point, there’s a dog you can summon by squeaking a toy and letting him go after enemies. Who's a good boy?

If you enjoyed this review or want to know what I think of other games in the bundle, check out the full review on or subscribe to my Youtube channel: https://youtu.be/gfXm_PEbi4E

I love the Warhammer series a lot. My first introduction was a small figure I was given as a gift in junior high back in 2003. I had a friend who was really into the series and painted the figures and was all in. My parents couldn’t afford the figures so I turned to video games. My first experience was Dawn of War. One of the best RTS games ever made. Then…that was it. I then played Dawn of War II and then Space Marine, but was still fascinated by the lore, art style, and designs. This comes across well in Hired Gun. The game is oozing with style and tons of steampunk design. Weird mutilated bodies everywhere that are full of strange tech, gross underground sewers, and tons of violence and gore. The game looks amazing, but that’s probably the best thing about the game.


It was advertised as Doom set in the Warhammer universe and this it is not. When you start the game you pick your avatar and difficulty and you are off with just a revolver. Right away you take in the amazing art and visual design the series is known for. Then within a few minutes, you can start shooting and moving and that’s when everything falls apart. Now, at first, the gunplay seems fun. It’s fast-paced, punchy, and the guns feel pretty good to shoot. Then at the end of the first level, you are already tired of it because there’s nothing else to do. Every single level is shoot everything that moves through poorly designed levels. Now the art is nice, but the actual design and layout of the levels are terrible. Tons of endless corridors to nowhere, hidden treasure chests that are not interesting enough to find, credits, and places to jump around and wall run on. Yes, it’s fast-paced and feels pretty good, but it’s so boring.

Another issue I have is that enemies spawn at random places and there’s no pattern. You run around an arena shooting everything in sight and when you go pick something up an enemy dropped another is shooting you from behind even though everyone came out of the same door on the opposite side of the room. It can lead to cheap deaths as you get a shield to protect your health and you can buy stims to revive you if you die. There are grenades that can clear crowds, but overall the layout of the levels just doesn’t help. I can jump around everywhere but what’s the point if everyone spawns randomly.


Some levels mix up arenas where you are locked in a room and heavy metal music plays until everything is dead, and then there are just endless linear hallways where you mow down more enemies. Enemies splatter and gib in Unreal Tournament-style glory, but they are not interesting to look at or fight. Everything dies in a few hits and each weapon seemed to do the same damage except for when it came to distance. The game shoehorns an RPG system into the game that feels completely pointless and useless. There are charms, armor, tokens, and various other bits that can be collected, but they can’t be equipped until your next mission. So, why bother with an RPG system if it can only be accessed between missions? Once you finish a mission you’re rated (who cares). You can then complete side missions for greater challenges and better loot, but no thank you. The main missions are drab enough as it is.

Once you complete a mission you can then chose what loot to keep and the rest is sold. Once you arrive at the main hub there are various vendors that allow you to buy and sell weapons and then also bionics on you and your dog. Yes, you get a dog companion that attacks for you, but that’s it. The bionics are bought with credits and you can acquire various powers that kind of help a bit, but mostly you’ll just shoot everything. This is the main gameplay loop. Shoot everything through levels with nothing in between, fight an occasional boss, and build up your arsenal and bionics. The gameplay itself isn’t just boring but so is the story. Now, I’m no Warhammer guru, but with previous games, you kind of get some lore thrown at your real quick to understand your surroundings, but here you just fight this gang and that gang and work for this person. There’s no context. The voice acting is okay, but there’s no reason to care.


Overall, Necromunda had potential and it was squandered with a forced loot system, boring story and gameplay loop, and terribly designed levels. I love the visuals and the lore behind the series, but this game just doesn’t do it justice. If it was a straight-up linear corridor shooter with more thought put into the weapons, enemies, and level design it would have been better. Also, the whole looter shooter thing needs to stop at some point. No one can get it right and it’s widely overused. Sometimes less is more and Necromunda proves that.

I have loved Necromunda as a setting since I was a kid and want to give any game set in it a try, but there's just too much wrong here for me to enjoy Hired Gun.
It clearly takes inspiration from the new Doom games but lacks any of the tightness of control, snappy weapon feel or intuitive mobility of those games, not to mention their confusing not-glory-kill-but-functionally-the-same-thing system where kills after sustaining injury heal you.
The voice acting ranges from mediocre to bad, which is often the case with games from this dev, and the graphics - while normally fine - are occasionally so poor that I actually found myself laughing out loud at them a few times.

https://pressakey.com/game,2028,7140,Necromunda-Hired-Gun-Review,.html

Das stumpfe Gameplay, die immergleichen Kämpfe und der absolute Überfluss von Gegnerwellen hat mir den Spaß an Necromunda: Hired Gun schon relativ früh genommen. Die Prämisse sah gut aus, die Inspiration der Entwickler ist klar, doch die Ausführung lässt deutliche Mängel erkennen. Auch wenn die Arenen und Level schön gestaltet sind und trotz der dauerhaft unterirdischen Lage so stark variieren konnten, ist es insbesondere das Gameplay, was den agilen Shooter ausmacht und ihm damit das Genick bricht.

Gegner sind aufgrund des übermächtigen Nahkampfangriffes absolut kein Hinderniss und die schier unaufhörlichen Massen strecken lediglich die Zeit zum "Mission Accomplished" Bildschirm. Das Erkunden der Umgebung lohnt nur in den seltensten Fällen, kommen doch auch beim stur nach vorne laufen genug Knete und Schießeisen zusammen, ohne das ich mich über verpasste Gelegenheiten ärgern müsste. Die teils im 15-FPS-Bereich kratzende Performance bildet damit das Schlusslicht für ein Spiel, von dem ich mir deutlich mehr erwartet hatte. Schade, dass der Warhammer Fluch auch hier wieder ein Opfer gefunden hat.

Necromunda: Hired Gun is a mess. It has cool looking enviroments fitting into the 40k universe, that are a slog to get through even with additional mobility options. I've found quite a few seemingly flat corridors/arenas with cracks/debris which makes sliding a chore. The zipline, double-jumping & side-dashing work a bit better and using these options make the game a bit more palatable. That said, the so-so gunplay and spongy enemies make combat irritating after a while. At least the gibs are there, so that's nice.

During my story run I ran into a couple of bugs: one (last) enemy falling off of a ramp to lava, but not dying, so I wasn't able to kill him to proceed, my HUD randomly disappeared after loading a save, and got stuck in the 'firing zipline' animation. Usually a reload was enough to fix these. Also for some reason I had some major framerate issues in the last 3 missions during some segments, compared to having 180+ fps in other missions.

Honestly, just play Doom (2016), Doom Eternal, or anything from New Blood Interactive instead.

Honestly quite disapointing, First off the game is buggy and unpolished, I had the game crash multiple times enemies fall through the ground and objectives not trigger.

Animations are super jankey and stiff.

Story is complete crap and poorly fleshed out.

gameplay is good but poorly balanced levels and difficultly

This is the definition of a hot mess. It’s a gorgeous game with really fun gunplay, but is filled with just tons of jank and an overall lack of polish.

The story is honestly pretty boring, it’s not hard to follow or anything but there’s not much to it and is mostly there to just string together the levels. The only interesting characters were the ones outside of the story, like the artificer or the rogue doc. The rest are just boring and the conclusion is just dull and completely unsatisfying.

Now the star of the show is 100% the gameplay. The movement is fun and the guns all feel great. The only thing really lacking are the abilities. There’s plenty of them but I barely ever needed to use them. My main complaint with the gameplay overall is that it’s just too easy. Most of my deaths were to pits not enemies. I barely felt any challenge and when I did it felt unearned, like in the not so great boss fights.

Would I recommend it? Definitely. It’s a fun game with a killer presentation that is marred by a major lack of polish. Would I blame someone for dropping it after a couple hours? Probably not.