Shooter released yesterday on PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X | S, PS4 and PS5 Necromunda: Hired Gun… A French studio was responsible for the development of the project Streum Onknown for games E.Y.E .: Divine Cybermancy and Space Hulk: Deathwing…
Necromunda: Hired Gun takes place in the universe Warhammer 40,000… The central location has become the world-hive of Necromunda, where local houses are fighting for power, for which many gangs work. The gamer will have to take control of a mercenary who, together with his faithful cybermastiff, will have to unravel the conspiracy.
The game is an alloy of DOOM, Titanfall, Metro 2033 and E.Y.E .: Divine Cybermancy… The emphasis is on increased character agility (wall run, double jump, tackle) and flexible pumping.
In words, the project looked interesting, but the alarm bell rang quickly. The fact is that GameMAG edition received a review version of the console version of the shooter (for PS4) only on June 1, and before the release, journalists and bloggers were given only the PC version.
By launching Hired Gun, we quickly understood the reasons for this maneuver. The fact is that the console version is not just poorly optimized – it is also unpleasant to play.
Already on the start screen, it is striking that one of the three places for menu items is empty (apparently, the titles should have been placed there). Then it turns out that when moving through the settings, the control constantly freezes, and it is impossible to turn on the aiming assistance on the gamepad (the parameter change is not saved). But you can turn on the frame counter, which will not hang in the upper corner, but in the center of the right side of the screen, which greatly interferes.
After the launch of Necromunda: Hired Gun made us happy with selected soap in style “Armies of the Dead” Zach Snyder… Because of this, in battle it is extremely problematic to catch enemies who literally merge with the environment.
Fights usually take place in arenas – you have to fight off several waves of enemies that can appear literally out of thin air. They also love to respawn behind the player’s back – just like in old-school Polish and Russian shooters. There are also problems with aiming, because due to the lack of assistance in aiming, the player will constantly shoot past.
On PS4 Pro, the shooter gives out somewhere between 30-31 frames per second (judging by the counter), however, when new enemies respawn, the game freezes, and in intense battles, strong drawdowns are possible.
But the main problem is broken control. Necromunda: The Hired Gun was clearly sharpened for the keyboard and mouse (hence the problems with aiming), and everyone forgot about the optimization for the gamepad. As a result, in battle, you will constantly accidentally turn on first-aid kits (the character is healed by pressing the right stick) or spontaneously make dodges / rolls (by pressing the left stick). In addition, to squat you have to hold down the button (the last time we saw this in Halowhere the squats were for show).
You can try to solve the problem by remapping the buttons, but the space for experimentation is limited, since the developers have hung several commands on many buttons that do not mix well with each other.
The worst is when moving. From Titanfall, the developers borrowed the mechanics of running along the walls, but forgot about inertia. In Necromunda, the character runs by default, and you don’t need a run-up to run along the walls and slide – just take a couple of steps. In this case, the character can spontaneously “stick” to the wall.
The tutorial says that you need to hold down the jump button to run on walls. In reality, the animation can turn on after a single click. The nightmare begins when the character gains a double jump, which the game perceives as holding a button.
The worst thing is that the main character runs on absolutely any surface. In one case, it will ignore various protrusions – in the other, it will fall. The character can try to “stick” even to wires and pipes … or start running along the wall with his back.
Bugs became the cherry on top. So, when loading the game, the entire interface may turn off, in the cutscenes the character falls through textures, constant friezes and crashes when trying to restart missions. In addition, the shooter has absolutely terrible work with sound, which makes the characters hard to hear, and the sounds of the shooting turned out to be inexpressive.
Review on Necromunda: Hired Gun will be published later, but the editors of GameMAG.ru recommend their readers to stay away from the console version of the shooter for now.
According to reviews, there are problems on the next generation consoles. So, on Xbox Series S, the game produces a maximum of 40 frames per second.
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