For context, a little history lesson is in store before we can properly talk about Necromunda: Hired Gun, starting with its developer Streum On Studio.

This French indie group was also responsible for Space Hulk: Deathwing in 2017, a game that really impressed when it came to recreating elements of the Warhammer 40K universe, but failed in just about every other aspect. with the gameplay, audio, performance, and stability all undercooked and the game a chore to get through.

Necromunda: Hired Gun is another flaw in things as it’s also based on a Warhammer 40K property, this time the titular Necromunda, a Beehive World. For those new to 40K (and don’t want to read the wiki entry we linked to), a Beehive World is a planet-sized factory whose primary exports are items for the Eternal. dark dark universe war and misery. Think of it as all the uplifting sci-fi tales of dystopian, crime-filled mega-cities in one.

With a new setting and promising trailers showing improvements across the board, did Streum On impress with a second chance? As you may have breathed by the title… not really.

Loading Necromunda: Hired Gun for the first time and it’s very clear that it’s the same developer as Space Hulk: Deathwing. The visuals are improved from the previous entry, but there is an artistic continuity that is familiar, as is the rather brutal nature of how things look, feel, and sound.

Even in the opening cutscene, there is choppy sound, weird cuts, erratic animation, and a general sense of instability in the way things are presented – all portents of things to come.

Out of the cutscene and into the gameplay and things get a little smoother. The player character will shame Doomguy for how fast this boy reaches while walking around. Character movement and shooting go pretty well when you’re being tutored and introduced to movement as well as combat and your companion the Cyber-Mastiff, an augmented dog that can spot and attack enemies.

After that, we come back to the cutscenes and storytelling which, again, like Deathwing, is completely rocky. We’re huge fans of Warhammer and Warhammer 40K here, so we’re used to the utter absurdity of this universe, but Necromunda: Hired Gun takes it to the next level of “oh my god, we don’t care”.

Between all the presentation issues combined with bad writing and even worse voice acting, and the story is so bad we only mention it so people can feel free to skip the cutscenes. Something Gang War Something Betrayal Something MacGuffins Something Something.

Just load up the levels and kill anything that moves.

Then you are bound to learn more about the loot mechanics in the game as there is only very little that is actually explained to you with just loading screen tips giving you an idea.

To simplify the killing: the enemies drop money and loot but the great source of the latter is in the chests that the player will have to access off the beaten track. The levels in this game are hilarious to make up for the fact that the player can climb the highest mountain in a second with their combination of speed and tools like a grappling hook.

The problem is, the loot is not only boring, it’s not surprising. You will see and be able to use all the weapons in the game within 30 minutes and the as you go are just the smallest upgrades in this limited pool.

Things are a bit mixed up with customization with guns, the player and cyber mastiff can all be upgraded. Firearms are given extra love because their individual parts can be replaced.

We are not paying per word to host this review, but we could write another 1K article about this weird weapon system and why it doesn’t work at all. To save you time, it’s best to say that there are some great ideas here – the devs have obviously added a lot of gun stats to allow players to experiment and choose how they want to play.

The problem is, some things are broken, like how you can specify hip shots with high damage, but the animation is so vicious it becomes visually unplayable.

It is also broken because there is very clearly an optimal way to play the game. Because a lot of the combat in this game is to heal by damaging enemies, the best way to play is to simply choose the gun with the larger charger size. This is because you can continue to shoot – and heal – for longer.

Other weapons with smaller mags and / or lower rates of fire are almost useless due to how quickly you lose health when reloading.

When your Loot Shooter resolves and becomes obsolete within a few hours of operation, you know something is wrong.

Speaking of hours, Steam says we spent about 10 hours in Necromunda: Hired Gun, but we’d say about a quarter of that is optional side missions to earn some extra cash so we can experiment with wagers. at the level.

Except we don’t recommend anyone to do this, as the side missions are copied segments of the main story with minor edits. Farming for credits or loot is high level, especially since loot boxes, enemies, and other factors stay the same every time you play.

And that assumes you can play without crashing. We played on PC where performance was decent on our aging platform, an 8GB RX580, 16GB RAM, and a Ryzen 5 3600 with mostly average settings. Rather, the problem stems from crashes. In 10 hours, we had eight accidents. Eight! Four of them were hardware freezes while loading and four were crashes on the desktop with Unreal Engine pop-ups prompting us to submit crash reports.

This game is not without merit. The artistic design, like Deathwing, is amazing and it’s clear that these developers have a deep love and respect for Warhammer 40K. There’s some insane fun activating the auto-aim upgrade and taking out an entire team of baddies before our 80-round battery magazine runs out, and if you like your fast-paced FPS games, this has to be. one of the fastest on the market.

But that’s just not enough. Deathwing’s mistakes have been repeated along with countless other news. Love or hate Gearbox but they cracked the looter shooter code over a decade ago with the original Borderlands in 2009. Seeing a new game, even from a much smaller studio, not grasping its fundamentals is a real shame.

Even if you’re a 40K dead, drop this one.