Necromunda: Hired Gun is a First-Person Shooter set in the Warhammer 40K universe, developed by Streum On Studio (who had previously made Space Hulk: Deathwing) and published by Focus Home Interactive.
The player takes the role of a bounty hunter as they and their cyber-mastiff brave the bowels of the wretched underhive of Necromunda in search for cash and loot. The main plot is kicked off as a member of the Merchant Guild, normally deemed untouchable, is killed. The main suspect is the Silver Talon, a mysterious outlaw, and the bounty hunter's attempt at tracking them down causes a gang war breaking out.
The game was released on June 1, 2021 for PC and Consoles.
This game provides examples of the following:
- Adaptational Wimp: Just like in Space Hulk: Deathwing, a melee hit from a genestealer isn't the One-Hit Kill it is in the tabletop games, for obvious balancing reasons.
- Aggressive Play Incentive: Not only does the game not have Regenerating Health, but executions refund a portion of recently lost health rather than healing you a set amount. This strongly incentivizes a very aggressive playstyle, as you get much more health back by quickly executing enemies after taking damage than you do hanging back and waiting for an opening.
- Amazon Brigade: The Escher gangs are entirely female, barring the occasional Ogryn.
- Back-Alley Doctor: The cybernetics surgeon in the hub area is competent. He just makes no effort to hide that his stock seems to come from Robbing the Dead.
- Big Bad: The Silver Talon. Aka Yelena Catallus, who seems to be an Expy of Yolanda Catallus, Kal Jericho's partner, from the tabletop game. Oddly, Jericho himself actually mentions Yolanda separately in some ambient dialogue.
- Big Good: Bounty hunter Kal Jericho, a character from the tabletop game, serves as your character's benefactor in the game. The player character is extremely slow to trust him, however, because nothing in Necromunda ever comes for free. Subverted in the end, as after the Silver Talon is taken down he leaves the bounty hunter to the Enforcers who place the same bounty on their head.
- Body Horror: The Cyber-Mastiff starts the game off as a normal looking dog. However, the more cybernetic upgrades it gets, the more gruesomely mechanical it becomes. The same is not true of your character, presumably because you were already pretty heavily cybered up to begin with.
- Bragging Rights Reward: Maxing out your cybernetics gives your Blast and Crush abilities a One-Hit Kill status against anything not bosses or elites. By then, you'll likely already be capable of stabbing enemies through their shields or spamming slo-mo to wipe out entire rooms.
- Butt-Monkey: The Orlocks. Most enemies in missions are drawn from Orlock, Escher or Goliath gangs but of the three the Orlocks get targeted far more often.
- Canine Companion: The bounty hunter's cyber-mastiff, who can show you the position of enemies and attack individual enemies on command.
- Character Customization: To a limited degree. The player can choose a number of preset character designs for their bounty hunter, with the only noticeable changes being the voice and gender.
- Cool Train: One of the early levels takes place on the Koloss, a Titan-class transport. The giant engine and carriages are all closer in size to a cargo ship than a cargo train.
- Deflector Shields: Refractor fields are worn by yourself and the Elite Mooks. They're pretty standard energy shields, but don't recharge by themselves (you need to pick up energy cells to refill your shield). Psykers have a psychic shield that gives them some damage resistance, though it doesn't protect them from melee executions.
- Duel Boss: While most of the game's boss fights are Flunky Boss fights, your Climax Boss duel with The Shadow is a straight one-on-one fight (which can actually increase the difficulty of the fight, since you can't restore health by executing mooks). Your final fight against the Silver Talon is also one-vs-one for the first two phases, although in the 3rd phase multiple minions and Elite Mooks will swarm in to fight you alongside the boss.
- Elite Mooks:
- Champions and Leaders are equipped with refractor fields that can absorb decent damage and also make them immune to your melee executions (though the Shock upgrade lets you damage them with executions), as well as jump jets that let them leap long distances. They're also armed with plasma weapons, with Leaders often having lingering elemental damage effects on their guns.
- Ambots and Ogyrns soak up all kinds of damage, even from armor-piercing rounds, and are tough and fast. Later, electricity-spewing Ogryns show up in the endgame, which give the already hard-hitting Ogryns a ranged attack for the formerly melee-only enemy.
- The Faceless: Over 95% of the game's characters wear facemasks, leaving at most only their eyes and hair exposed. This is a common fashion choice in the source material.
- Finishing Move: Getting close to an enemy prompts you to perform an execution move, instantly killing the weaker enemies. It can't be performed on shielded enemies or big enemies like Ogryn, but you can buy a power to circumvent that. Instead of instantly killing them however, it simply deals massive damage without it being a guaranteed finisher.
- Fragile Speedster: Genestealers aren't much more durable than basic mooks, but they're by far the fastest enemies in the game, able to easily outrun you even if your cybernetic legs are fully upgraded. On top of this, they almost always spawn very close to you.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: The Silver Talon's 250,000 credit bounty is frequently described as a life changing potential profit. It is a pretty hefty amount of money, but chances are, you've run enough missions that you've easily gotten triple that amount. Heck, there's even an achievement — specifically, "Banker" — for getting 100,000 credits in missions, just under half that amount.
- Giant Mook: The Goliath feudal house on Necromunda employs a genetically-engineered workforce, which is why you have quite a lot of 7-to-8 foot tall characters hanging around who aren't either Ogryn or Space Marines. You also fight a fair share of Ogryn, who in this game behave like the Hell Knights of Doom (2016), throwing flaming boulders and being able to tank about 50-60 rounds of assault rifle fire before dropping.
- Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: Upon visiting the Cold Black the Bounty Hunter encounters a Genestealer cult including a large number of pure-breed Genestealers. They are not involved with the Silver Talon plot and nothing in the Cold Black advances the plot, it's just a strange thing the bounty hunter has to deal with.
- Hub Level: "Martyr's End" is the main hub of the game, being an In-Universe Truce Zone established between the various underhive gangs around the ruins of an Imperial Shrine. Here, the Bounty Hunter can upgrade the bionics of both themselves and their Cyber-Mastiff, upgrade and/or sell their weapons, armor and other consumables, test out their weapons at both a firing range and Gladitorium, alter their clothing options, and select missions (both those that are part of the main storyline and "side missions" that the Bounty Hunter can undertake for various factions so as to level up their various skills).
- Improbable Aiming Skills: Invoked with the Perfect Aim power, which makes your gun auto-aim at anything in a broad area in the center of the screen.
- Kaiju: One mission takes place below a massive, multi-tentacled monster known as a Sump Horror. Thankfully it's too high up to attack and you fry it with a power generator rather than having to plink it to death with your personal combat weaponry.
- King Mook: Other than the final two bosses, all unique boss enemies (the Goliath, Orlock, and Escher top gang bosses who all get cutscenes before you fight them) are just regular Leaders with stronger shields, more health, and multiple phases to their battle (most will be restored to full health and shields and change to a different attack pattern the first time you deplete their health).
- Lightning Bruiser: The Mercenary you play as is this, thanks to his extensive cybernetic augmentations (and the game's gameplay influences from Doom Eternal and E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy). Once you spend some money on decent upgrades you'll be zooming around the map insta-killing hordes of enemies left and right. Even fully upgraded you can't take a lot of damage, though, so that speed and killing efficiency is vital for your survival.
- Mob War: In your search for the Silver Talon, you regularly find yourself in the middle of two warring gangs. Often times it's one gang attacking another that you are also attacking, but as there's no such thing as "the enemy of my enemy" here, it will become a Mêlée à Trois as soon as you arrive.
- Nominal Hero: Given this is Warhammer 40K, nobody was expecting a saint as a main character and the bounty hunter doesn't break any such assumptions. The massive capacity for violence is to be expected in the Underhive but, depending on player choice, they may also be ruthless enough to take secondary work from Chaos worshippers and Genestealer Cults.
- No Name Given: The player character bounty hunter never gives or is referred to by their name.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: The Bounty Hunter is generally impossible to scare, only getting angry when ambushed or threated. However, after they encounter the Genestealers they are notably subdued, needing to buy the good booze at the bar in Martyr's End to help them forget.
- Overt Operative: The local Genestealer Cult is advertising openly on bulletin boards.
- Pet the Dog:
- The Bounty Hunter might be a ruthless, self-interested Professional Killer but they are quite fond of their Cyber-Mastiff. In fact if you approach the dog in the hub area you can literally pet him or throw him treats.
- You can choose to free a gang leader held captive by your targets instead of doing the typical Warhammer thing by putting lead in his face.
- Powered Armor: Mini-Mecha-type suits appear as a mini-boss type of enemy; they're heavily armed, can leap long distances, and require over 150 rounds of assault rifle fire to bring down. Taking moderate damage does cause their guns to explode, forcing them into melee combat. They're actually Ambots, mining robots using the brain of the deadly omnivorous Ambull for a Wetware CPU, which the gangs have stolen and repurposed for gang warfare.
- Pre-Final Boss: You have a Duel Boss fight against the Shadow just immediately prior to your final confrontation with the Silver Talon.
- Purely Aesthetic Gender: Your character's gender does affect the pronouns enemies use when calling out your position in combat, but otherwise has no other effect on the game. Notably, the game's intro movie and opening cutscene uses the default female player character while the box art and marketing use the default male player character.
- Refuge in Audacity: Of the factions that offer secondary missions, there's Chaos Cults and even a Genestealer Cult. Of course, since the setting is a hive world slum, and as one particular mission shows, no one in the game has any clue what Genestealers are, let alone Tyranid. It stands to reason that the same applies for the Chaos cults, and the locals just think it's a cool name.
- Renegade Splinter Faction: The local Orlocks, Escher and Goliaths have gone rather off the reservation from the main house, working with the outlaw Silver Talon. It's likely for this reason that constantly slaughtering them does no damage to your reputation with their Houses. Although eventually the Bounty Hunter disrupts the main House Orlock's operations enough that they set a bounty on them.
- RPG Elements: You upgrade your character's stats with cybernetic implants, and also get stat bonuses from equipment. Equipment is also randomly generated loot, using the classic Grey-Blue-Purple-Orange rarity system, and can be customised to some degree.
- Super-Reflexes: Combined with Super-Speed, this is the Heightened Senses power. It slows down the world to a crawl, but you still move, shoot and reload at normal speed.
- Wall Run: A gameplay mechanic is the ability to wall-run in order to navigate through treacherous environments and shoot enemies on the move.
- Wetware CPU: Because CPUs, let alone A.I., are banned in the 40k universe (punishable by torture then death), people who have been reduced to a torso and have wires jammed into their skull are used to operate all mechanical devices, including doors and barges. Also, the Mini-Mecha Ambots use the brain of an Umber Hulk-like beetle (a.k.a. an "Ambull") as a control mechanism.
- Wretched Hive: The entire planet, of course, but there are "safe zones" such as the bar you use as the Hub Level, full of interesting scumbags.
- X-Ray Vision: Your Cyber-Mastiff can highlight the position of enemies through walls and other obstacles for you.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: The ending of the game has the Bounty Hunter find out that Kal Jericho put out a bounty for them.
