Long time no reviews, finished some games that I still need to review from the past, like still no Morrowind review, smh. Will be trying to make them more composed, maybe following some structure to make it easier to write and navigate, also faster and hopefully less triggering for my perfectionism.
Warhammer, especially 40k has pretty complicated relationships with videogames, big hit or miss usually and genres are not very diverse, but today we got something relatively unique for WH lately, let’s see if it’s a hit or a miss…
Necromunda is getting second game in its setting, which is a separate Warhammer universe tabletop, first one was more of a “typical” WH game, being tactical turn-based, but that one kinda flopped unfortunately and I wasn’t super interested. Hired Gun is a shooter that looked really interesting and dynamic in trailers, so I was instantly interested, then Focus Home hooked me up with a key and it was 100% settled.
Optimization and tech issues
Game had some issues on start and still has for some people – stutters, crashes, poor performance in general. I changed one setting in config file – texture streaming to off and I think that might be while I didn’t encounter stuttering really. Had two crashes in total I think and couple of areas had pretty bad performance. So overall it wasn’t completely bad, but totally not perfect, they are working on it and patches are coming so we’ll see.
Graphics and design
Game looks great, it’s not anything super impressive, just solid graphics, BUT level design, characters, weapons are amazing – really good Warhammer vibe and for fans of Necromunda it should be even better probably, but even in general being kinda pleb with WH it still looks great and gives the right vibe. Train levels and some other areas are pretty big and detailed, really like that a lot. Music fits pretty well – not anything Doom level or something, but it’s not bad, just decent, don’t feel like listening to OST separately.
Gameplay
This is probably the best part of the game, despite all the jank it’s just satisfying to play it. You get main story and you get a bunch of procedural missions that take place in pieces of main mission maps, so kinda like Nioh approach in a way, but amount of missions is basically unlimited. What’s the point of this side mission grind? You get money that you can spend on upgrading your character, your doge (yeah you have your battle doggo, even though I didn’t really use it much) and your weapons. And also you get a bunch of things dropped from mobs and chests – lots of different weapons by class and by rarity, upgrades for weapons, upgrades for yourself. Customization of your character is pretty good, customization of guns doesn’t feel as important, but it’s there, farming rare guns and upgrades is a pretty satisfying process, so I farmed some side missions on stream just to get rares and money for upgrades, could honestly increase my time even more with that since there are harder side missions too.
Shooting is decent, nothing crazy about it, just good average shooter, but the flow of combat is pretty nice – mechanics want you to be very mobile since it gives you chances to dodge damage based on your passive abilities + avoid getting hit by dodging enemy shots. In the same time you regen hp from your damage for some time after losing hp, so kinda Bloodborne rally mechanic, executions on enemies also give you hp and losing hp is pretty easy, because sometimes game throws a lot of enemies at you and some are pretty tanky/deal a lot of damage to you. These situations also where abilities that you upgrade give you big advantage – slo-mo was probably my most used one and totally MVP, ability that allows you destroy enemy shields in melee is great too, because after that you can also execute them and shields in general can be a pain to deal with. Grappling hook, double jumps, sliding, all mobility and platforming tools at your disposal + you need hook for shield (actual physical shield this time, not energy field) enemies and it makes executing some annoying enemies a lot easier too as gap closer and short stun.
Story
Honestly, it’s very basic and just there, nothing memorable, no crazy twists, would say nothing even “educational” on WH/Necromunda lore, but probably some recognizable things there for tabletop fans. Not completely bad, but I’d say a bit below average, even though you kinda forget about it and think more about rewards and loot you can get, so it didn’t matter to me at all.
Summary
Good game, while I enjoyed Biomutant too, it still was extremely overpriced for what it is, this game totally knows in which price bracket it belongs and in that bracket it’s pretty good purchase, 40$ for 21 hours of fun with some side mission farming seems like a good deal. On sale/gamepass after some patching would be just amazing, so I can recommend if you are into soloing looter shooters with abilities for some time.
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