As probably any fan of the Necromunda table war game of Games Workshop can tell you, place a first-person shooting game in the dark and gravelful world of Underhive seems to be an obvious proposal. Located in a society without law led by rival gangs and with an atmosphere that the Metro series seems positively optimistic, Necromunda: Hired Gun is a title full of action and Run-and-Gun who is played like a salad of Recent shooting mechanisms. It does a good work of building the world from the tradition of the table game, but forget that even action game stories (and players) need places to breathe.

In a Warhammer 40k universe already dark and oppressive, Necromunda (the game of board and the decor) carries both the action and the atmosphere to a new lower. It takes place on a planet similar to the land, the necromunda holder, a world whose previously habitable surface has been ravaged by pollution and industrial exploitation and whose population of several billion people has moved to vast cities. Hive extending to kilometers under and above the surface of the planet. In the lowest depths of the termitary of humanity, the fresh air and the sky are the stuff of a barely raw mythology. Instead of being a laws company, UNDERHIVE is a collection of rival clans, each with a specific role and territory.

The table game has a large list of clans, but Hired Gun focuses on three: House Goliath, House Orlock and House Escher. You play a mercenary, which means you have no loyalty to any of the houses and that you can freely exploit the natural animosity between them, take the party of the house that brings you the most money, and sometimes their Allow fighting while you look. The history of rivalry and retaliation from Hired Gun is a disorder confident with names and motivations without a certain familiarity with the table game and its machinations. Yet it takes a rear seat away from the action.

Over the years, first-person shooting games and action games have added to the shooting game several mechanisms such as grapples and grapples. Hired Gun also adds them to the mixture, as well as just about all other standard shooting mechanisms: weapons, armor and evolving capacities, biotechnological implants that provide passive and active special movements, an evolutionary companion (in this case, a dog Mastiff cybernetic), and a central city, martyr s end, with sellers NPCs and a mission chart. If Metro, Doom, Serious Sam, CyberPunk 2077 and the previous 40K game of the Developer Streum on Space Hulk Deathwing had a child (more than possible given the twisted nature of Necromunda), their offspring would be Hired Gun.

But derived or borrowed mechanisms in games are not new; In fact, they offer a shorter learning curve and a feeling of familiarity. There is almost nothing wrong with action in Necromunda: Hired Gun. It is certainly fast, and there are many fun weapons and fun capabilities with which to play. Thanks to the vanity of the clan at war, a wide variety of types of enemies can mix in an area, offering a simultaneous challenge of human, mechanical and supernatural enemies. No weapon or capacity is controlled, and cyber mastiff is an excellent combat tool. What is wrong with the action of Hired Gun is that it s almost all that s in the game, and each main or secondary mission ends up coming alike. The repetition is interrupted only by the rather forgotten time in the central city to upgrade and get the next mission mission or choose the next secondary quest for bonuses. What Hired Gun desperately needed, it s variety, and the fact that the upgrade system is fully motivated by making money means that replay chapters or finish premiums and face more fights is a necessity and adds to fatigue. Although it is not as a buggy as the previous shooting game of the studio, many audio and plant problems have ruined the progression of a mission.

It s a shame because although character models are not amazing, the environments and design of Hired Gun levels do a generally effective job to achieve the dark and depressing world suggested by the table game and the tentacular underhift and filled with machines. As the huge underground train that feeds the second chapter, some sets are impressive, while other areas look like a collection of empty and repetitive pieces in search of a goal and generic stacks of abandoned scrap. The same mixture of inspiration and repetition is true for enemy design, which is inspired by the three opposite houses (and miniatures of games workshop). While the combat music is by default of the standard Heavy Metal, some of the characters are expressed (if not always written) with energy and flair, especially the character of the Scottish player infused from Brogue.

As much of the world of Warhammer 40k, Necromunda is a richly imagined world filled with potential for conflict and narration. Use it as a frame for a full action game of action is completely logical. Although its mechanisms are essentially a collection of ideas of the greatest success of other shooters, Necromunda: Hired Gun is a competent introduction to this particular tranche of Warhammer 40k. At one point, however, repetition and fatigue with the approach to a note of the rhythm and the implacably desperate nature of the world settle. You are desperately starting to hope for a little humanity, emotional depth, humor or variety … which, I suppose, is finally the fate of the inhabitants of Underhive. It just should not be that of the player.