MERCHANT: “It’s not Cadia, but this gang war is providing me with more material than usual.” MERCHANT: “Ahh, Cadia…” [*BOOM*] Streum On Studio is back, with another 40K game. While “Space Hulk: Deathwing” did have some amazing art direction, I thought the gameplay was too restrictive. Especially with how great the freedom was in “E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy” (along with whatever the hell else was going on). I remember going “Man, I wish they just made “E.Y.E: 40K”…” After playing “Necromunda: Hired Gun”, I think they thought so too. Now, first and foremost, this is a review copy of the game. I typically don’t do these videos before launch. So I first wanna answer questions that I would have, especially with how “Deathwing” first came out. The fidelity isn’t quite as sharp as “Deathwing”, but it runs a hell of a lot better to compensate. My PC is still in 1080 land, because I don’t wanna give scalpers any money, but it ran smoothly overall, and this is before special drivers or anything like that. When things got very busy, the game could slow down at times, but it was never, like, PowerPoint tier. Usually, it was from something like a bunch of explosion particles, and it would be brief. I ran the game at 1440, with everything maxed out, so that all seems like a good sign. I’d guess on newer hardware you might not have any issues, but I don’t know. If you saw the trailers and were annoyed with the flashing critical hit text, or the loot icons, or anything similar, you CAN turn it all off. The font, loot outlines – everything. Very welcome. As for bugs, make no mistake – this is a janky game. DOG: "AAHH!!"
As for bugs, make no mistake – this is a janky game. As for bugs, make no mistake – this is a janky game. The good news is that it’s not a “Deathwing” launch. The main campaign has 13 missions, and the whole thing took me about a dozen hours, and there was only one show-stopping bug in there. You need to find a container and do a “put the coordinates in” mini-game for it, and the first time this flat out did not work. The container is random on each run, and there is a checkpoint right before this, and on that run, it worked fine. There is a side mission I thought was completely broken, since the last man in a wave wouldn’t come out and fight, but there was an area to snipe him, so… still bad, but I can deal with it. The vast majority of the bugs I saw weren’t game-breaking, but they were silly. Enemies not reacting to you if you’re just far away enough at the right angle, getting stuck in the Superman mode for a bit, some lights going through walls – these were still rare for me. More than anything, you’ll see witchcraft when performing a takedown (which I’ll talk more about later). The last thing you expect when trying to saw a man’s head off is to go flying into the stratosphere. Unless you live in LA, with some bad PCP, where you’re used to that. The animation flight tickets do always put you back, but it’s jarring. Finally, some of the cutscenes have some really bad audio mixing. The voices are way too muffled behind everything else, where it sounds like- Ith thoundth like they’re talking like thith. But when they sent the review copy, they did say that’s an issue they’re aware of. I’m aware something’s wrong with my fridge, too, but that doesn’t mean I’ll go fix it. So, hopefully, that will be cleared up in a Day 1 patch. [muffled conversation] Alright, with that all done, I’ll get back into the regular swing. Once again, their art team knows Warhammer. [train horn] You call that a train? [deep rumbling] Now that’s a train! On the technical level, “Hired Gun” looks like a AAA game from a few years ago. Most of the lighting and particle effects are great, but the textures can be a flip of a coin. Sometimes, they’re fantastic, and sometimes, they’re very muddy. The biggest shortcomings show up when the scene is bathed in light (which does happen more often than it probably should). However, it’s not priced like a AAA game, so it’s still hitting far above its weight. I do think it’s a great-looking game, but it’s hard to separate things out. See, in the lore of 40K, Necromunda is a horrible factory planet. It’s been pumping out weapons and pollution for thousands of years. Gangs the size of small countries wage wars over piles of trash. So, when something is muddy and ugly, it at least fits the theme, I guess… What definitely sticks out as poor is some of the enemy animations – specifically, the bigger dudes. They can be stiff, and sometimes, they glitch out. So that sucks, but overall, combat feedback is good. [Cyberpunk 2077 OST - The Rebel Path] The weapon animations are solid, and you see debris and limbs fly off your enemies. All is right in the world here. Though, I admit, seeing a Picatinny rail on so many Warhammer guns is surreal. Though, once again, the environment art ends up being the real star. The ridiculous 40K scale you’d expect is here and perfect. The kind of scale where a moving train can reasonably be a city. What I especially like is that they try not to re-tread 40K environments you’ve seen before. Playing “Deathwing”, you spend a lot of time inside of these cathedral-like structures. “Necromunda’s” opening visually shows you going BENEATH a cathedral. We’re not in “Space Marine” land – this is the grimy underworld. You have levels that are clearly influenced by classic cyberpunk, but they keep it Warhammer. Sometimes, you’re loitering outside the Tyrell building, sometimes, you’re inside the alien death cult. These are big levels, too, and sometimes, they shift into something new. There is a lot of creativity on display, and it goes down to the smallest detail. And again, they understand that this Warhammer shit is pretty silly. I think just about everybody expected them to deliver here, and they do, and more. Not only is it good atmosphere, but now you can get around and properly explore it. It’s not an immersive sim or anything, but now you have a much longer leash for freedom. Speaking of which, I think they gave the composer some leeway too! The music is done by the same guy who did it for “E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy” – Olivier Zuccaro. Zakkaro? Well, however you say it, this man went to work. Some of the combat music does have some clear Mick Gordon “Doom” influence, but it’s not a pure metal soundtrack. Some is more synth, and reminds me of 80’s action music, and that will get mixed in with some Old West “on the frontier” kind of tracks. There’s also a ton of music, so I’m only gonna show some bits. [Necromunda: Hired Gun OST - The Shadow]
THE SHADOW: “Don’t move!” [Necromunda: Hired Gun OST - The Shadow]
PC: “Who are you?!” [Necromunda: Hired Gun OST - The Shadow]
THE SHADOW: “The last person you’ll ever see, if you’re not careful!” [Necromunda: Hired Gun OST - The Shadow]
PC: “You’re not gonna take me down!” [Necromunda: Hired Gun OST - The Shadow]
THE SHADOW: “I will, if I have to! I killed those friends of yours, and I’ll take you in dead, if I have to!” [Necromunda: Hired Gun OST - The Last Stand] [Necromunda: Hired Gun OST - Blowing up the Lab] [Necromunda: Hired Gun OST - Fated Showdown] [synth-y music pass] The genres and choices made here are perfect for this game. There are some Warhammer fans who just want the epic choir “Dawn of War” music, but that would not fit in at all in “Necromunda”. The ambient soundscape is good, and the weapons sound great too! Of course, every time a new 40K game comes out, people want to know how the Bolter sounds. The one in the trailer did not sound good. Now it’s good. [punchy shots] It’s punchy and makes people explode sometimes. I’m happy with that. I know some people want a Bolter to sound like a semi hitting their front door. I would want that one to be the Heavy Bolter, and sadly, I do think that underdelivers. [reserved thumping] One can only hope. Anyway, onto the gameplay. “Necromunda’s” premise is simple: you’re a bounty hunter, out to make fat stacks. At the start, you only choose your character model and the difficulty. You can change this at any time in the options menu. The first thing I noticed about the game is how good the movement feels. You move fast and jump high. You can dash in any direction on ground or in the air, and you have good air control without that. But this is only the first room. A brief tutorial introduces you to other mechanics, like wall-running. It’s an easy way to clear gaps, avoid dangers and fight. But you are falling down the wall, so no staying up there forever. You can also slide around from the get go, but later, you’ll receive a grappling hook. This gives you more options for keeping range, or getting close into the fight. Combine it with an unlockable double jump, and you have a hell of a lot of mobility. The game doesn’t test you often on mastering this movement, and when it does, it’s pretty easy. “Necromunda” isn’t trying to be something like “Ghostrunner”. It’s mainly used as a fun tool to give you more options in a fight. You’ll have a better time with the game, especially later on, if you do master it, but it’s not crucial. At least, when it comes to environmental hazards. You could walk around “Call of Duty”-style, just blasting gangsters, but this becomes less and less viable the more the difficulty goes up. So it is a movement shooter, but don’t expect “Titanfall 2”. A grapple takes you directly to a point – you can’t go swinging off it, or anything cool like that. I’ll talk more in-depth about the combat in a bit, but for now, I want to focus on the game’s structure. The story starts with the “job gone bad” approach, and you don’t need to know anything about Warhammer for it. Knowing about Warhammer also doesn’t add a lot. The cutscenes are very awkward, with these constant fadeouts, and it becomes clear they’re desperately trying not to show the characters’ lips, talking. The story itself doesn’t matter, but it’s a good framework to hang the campaign’s levels on. Between these missions, you go to Martyr’s End. It’s a neutral zone, that’s like a bar, church and armory, combined into one. If you grew up in the American south, this is actually pretty normal. Here, you can buy and sell items, customize yourself, customize your weapons, and upgrade your bionics. Bionic powers can drastically change how you play the game. You have active abilities, like an eye scanner, a temporary auto-aim function, and the ability to slow down time. These all cool down independently, so you can combine them, and the game becomes very silly. But it is a glorious “Warhammer silly”. The dragon ability from “E.Y.E.” and “Space Hulk” does make a return, but now it has an AoE. So between that and upgrading cyber-legs, I feel right at home. Other upgrades are simple passives. Many give extra protection while strafing, wall-running or jumping. It gives you that much more incentive to stay moving during the fights. Bionics won’t come cheap, so when you beat main missions, you unlock new side missions. There are three ranks of them that you also unlock, and they’ll be given out by various factions. It could be destroying ammo, hunting people down, poisoning the air supply, releasing genestealers – the usual special mission shenanigans. Actually, that last one is a bad fucking idea…! There are various kinds to browse, and you can always refresh it if you don’t see anything you like. Main missions, and some side missions, will also have loot chests to find. You can equip these weapons during the mission, but you won’t know their stats, since, strangely, you can’t look at the menu until the end of it. They’re cryptic about these menus, but this area on the right is your entire inventory. Your loadout is what you bring into mission – this is everything you own. You may think that’s a lack of space, and we’ll come to that. As for no menu in the mission, it seems to be a way to try and cut down on inventory management. It assumes you wanna sell everything, unless you pick something out. I get the intention, but it’s weird not to be able to look at anything while playing the game. I suspect there will be a lot of confused players at their first chest. There is a gamer joke there somewhere… But that’s the main loop of the game. Did I need to talk about anything that- Right! The dog! THE DOG: “Woof!” If little Timmy fell down the well in there, he can go to hell. To aid you on your journey, you get a big cyber mastiff. That’s a nice idea – most people love dogs. Though, from the marketing, I really wasn’t sure what to make of it. I wasn’t sure how the dog could be a constant companion, and it’s not. Think of the mastiff less like a dog, and more like… a cruise missile. RAT TOY: "Squeak-squeak!" THE DOG: "Ruff!" ENEMY: (sad decapitation noizes) You summon him with a squeaky toy, where he’ll then appear next to you. This is where your dog meter starts decreasing. He’ll fight until his health or meter goes to zero, then you can summon him again after a cooldown. He highlights enemies, and you can sick him on them, to either distract or kill them. He gets better at this over time, because the dog also has upgradeable bionics. Compared to yourself, when more powerful enemies appear, the dog becomes less viable in combat over time, so you need to keep upgrading him, if you don’t want him to stay trapped as glorified radar. There is some strangeness to this. For example, when you upgrade all of your own bionics, you unlock the S-class rank. It’s just a mega buff. Fully upgrading the dog has nothing like that. I didn’t think it would digivolve into a pit bull, but I thought there would be something. It’s odd, because the dog needs a big final buff way more than you do. It’s also kind of funny that you can name all your guns, but you can’t name your dog. Okay, I’ll get real now. The biggest issue with the dog is how dumb his AI is. You can spam the squeaky toy at someone right by you, and he won’t go for it, until he just does it on his own. Sometimes, you sick him on the bad men, and all seems well, but then he misses you and he runs back. He’ll often refuse to cross over a tiny ledge. At the same time, I’ve regularly seen him Air Bud his way out of material plain. It’s a janky experience. Even the fact that, when you summon him, he just, kind of, appears next to you is odd. You could at least have a teleporter effect. I know these are expensive in 40K, but the bounty hunter loves their dog – like, who cares? It is fortunate that you can easily play the game without ever using the dog, but if that’s the big feature you were looking forward to, it’s in a ruff state. So, to tackle the bigger issues: combat. Overall, the combat feels fantastic, and is wonderful to play. If it wasn’t obvious by now, the game is clearly influenced by the “Doom” reboot. Now, that is a solid pick to draw from. I mean, better than “40Quake”… Do you remember “40Quake”? "Hu!" "Hu!" "Hurghogh!" No one remembers “40Quake”. Okay, this is a case where they would have done a lot better by taking more from “Doom”. “Necromunda” also has these glory kill takedowns, and they’re cool-looking, but here’s the thing: in “Doom”, you have to stun them first. This isn’t the case here. [sounds of wild carnage] You can just run up on people and press a button to kill them. There’s a lot attached to this. You have your shields and health. Your shields are effectively armor in any other game. They don’t regenerate on their own, and you have to pick more up. With health, you can regenerate it with a medkit, but you only get 3 per level. You can also heal through a passive bionic. Shortly after you’ve taken damage, you can deal damage to heal, but only for a few seconds. Again, this is encouraging you to keep moving, and stay in the fight. You wanna keep the pace up, but the takedown slows down all of that. You’ll always heal from it, and you’re invincible while you do it. The easiest solution would be “don’t be invincible while doing this”. There are areas to use it in a sneakier way, because the game is not non-stop arena combat. However, this system itself existing is a detriment to melee. See, you do have a power knife, but it’s a bionic ability – it’s not an equipable weapon. You go into a light speed “CS:GO” mode, and can cut anything apart. So, to hit someone up close, you either go into knife mode, or perform a takedown. I think, the game would have benefitted from melee weapons, especially with how limited the current roster is. They are very customizable, and can be tuned for different roles, but you’re on the same frame. All of these here are the same two heavy weapons. There are three special weapons, so your inventory can only hold… three. This limitation applies to all the loot you find in the game. You’d think you’d be unlocking stuff until the very end, but you taper out pretty fast. You’re finding slightly better versions of the same stuff. It seems like there should be more. Like, for example, armor is always a light undersuit. I would expect variations here, like heavy armor that slows you down, and trade-offs similar to that. Instead, it’s almost always a straight upgrade, with some minor effects. So why have 4 inventory slots for that, but only 3 for the heavily customizable special weapons up here? I even maxed out rewards for three different factions, just to see if there might be something new. It’s the same stuff, and not even guaranteed to be particularly good. This seems like the kind of game where you’d wanna be hunting for the special effect items, but there just aren’t any. Having new weapons, and especially proper melee ones, would improve both, the flow of combat and the game’s lifespan. It’s a really solid base game, but without multiplayer, or itemization like that, you don’t have much of an endgame. Now, that’s perfectly okay, if having a 15-20 hour one-and-done game was their intention, but I get the feeling they wanted you to be playing it more. If they do properly support it, the sky is the limit with a bounty hunter game. You could bring in new factions, new bigger enemies, besides robot, ogrin and 5G ogrin. Bring in the rest of the genestealers from “Space Hulk” – that’d be fun. For now though, maybe don’t be immortal when doing takedowns. Maybe on higher difficulties. Still, to give a quote to take wildly out of context: this is the best Warhammer 40K shooter I’ve ever played. We are operating on one hell of a scale, but even with the jank and bugs, I stand by that. Franchise aside, I had a lot of fun with “Necromunda”. It’s a good FPS with a lot of creativity, and the only thing that worries me about it is the polish. It’s 15% off on GOG until June 10th in the pinned link, and I think Steam is doing the same thing. I would still advise not pre-ordering the game. It will be discounted over a week, you don’t need the DLC skin – just take a while to wait and look at some other reviews. This could be a bug jungle, and I just got lucky. Make sure some other people say it’s stable for them too. Okay, so that was very short notice, but back to the regular schedule! Come back next time for the Tim Curry discussion. matrix_909: “KOTOR 1 or 2? Which do you prefer?” Definitely “2”. “1” is really good on its own merits, where it goes “Hey, do you like “Star Wars”? Here’s more “Star Wars”!” “2” does try to tackle some issues in this setting, but it does go up its own ass sometimes, which… what can you do? Designated Red: “What game sound bothers you the most?” And someone else guessed “Fire Warrior” guardsmen, but no – it’s cliff racers in “Morrowind”. “Fire Warrior” was a few hours. “Morrowind” was… several years. Little Jack: “What’s your favorite piece of decoration you own?” Well, I have what I call “an unblockable conversation piece”. I have an animation cel from 93’s “Stardust Crusaders” OVA. It’s in the guest bathroom, above the toilet. Everyone who goes in there for the first time, has questions when they come out. Ivan: “Have [you] played any of the “Anno 1404” sequels?” Yeah, I did. I played “2070”, and then I had, like, a Uplay issue that wiped out my save. I haven’t really checked up on the new ones that much, since I heard the space one was kind of lackluster, but the 1800s one – I’ve heard that’s good. It seems like there’s some cool city builder kind of games coming out recently. I should check those out. I am still waiting for “E.Y.E. 2”, but this was pretty fun. Alright, that’s it for now! Stay safe. GEH!
"Janky but good" was my most reasonably optimistic hope for this game. Looking forward to seeing it for myself.
Interesting he notes as if the game is meant to be played longer despite being mostly one-and-done. Makes me curious what's planned, and if we're going to see it at that Warhammer event.
Did not expect to find out the game's already out by seeing a Mandalore review pop up, that's for sure
Hired Gun has really surprised me so far. I’ve only done the first mission, however I am amazed at how well made it is, especially considering the last Warhammer game these guys did was DeathWing: Space Hulk. The only problems I’ve had are some janky animation glitches during takedowns, and the annoyingly slow Aim down sight movement.
It’s interesting we seem to have another cyberpunk type event going on: Some people have no problems running the game, while others are having awful problems such as stuttering, extremely low FPS, etc.
Looks exactly like what I wanted and expected. A great 40K shooter (by those standards), the expected Streum jank and bugginess that'll get ironed out over time and a fun romp. Hopefully they provide support to it over time to give it more replayability and options, there's a lot they could do with it.
The best 40K shooter we've gotten... until Darktide later this year. So it will, at least, tide 40K fans over.
This game looks like the equivalent of W40K Space Marine, i.e. a solid 7/10 with a very satisfying combat and movement that I am going to love, and with a cool and interesting universe that I'll nerd about for a while.
And it came out from nowhere, so I never had big expectations about the game. I hope this one get a sequel unlike Space Marine.
Was really excited watching this trailer earlier today because I hadn't heard of it up until today. At $33, looks like a fun ride. Tbh, Titan Fall movement with a dog, some RPG aspects, and the 40K universe sounds like a interesting mix.
Did Fuller Auto make it into this one?
So wait for some patches but should be good?
Just to add to Mandalore's "make sure some other people say it's stable for them too" comment, it's almost unplayable for me. I've got a 3080, was running it on pretty much the same settings as Mandalore (all Epic at 1440p, but with DLSS switching between Auto-Detect, and Balanced (no change) and DX12 on and off (no change)) and it was consistently dropping below 20fps. If I moved the camera at any sort of speed, which you kind of need to in a game like this, the frames would just disappear, and any time an explosion of any sort popped up it dropped as well. There are a few steam reviews saying the same thing (one with a 3090 even), so it doesn't seem localised just to me.
Definitely a bit disappointed since I was kind of excited for this game, the reviews I've seen say it's fun if a bit janky, and it plays sort of like Doom which I enjoyed, but I just can't play it with the performance issues I'm getting.