Necromanda Hired Gun is a shooter on the verge of a mid-life crisis, a linear single-player FPS set for release in 2021 that looks in the mirror and sees gray temples and crow's feet before scurrying off in a panic to appeal to the cool Zoomer streamer, the trendy new I bought into the mechanics; it's the FPS that desperately fears its unique late 90's identity.

It's a shame, because Hired Gun would be a pretty badass grandpa if only he'd stop embarrassing himself in the skate park. [He plays a nameless bounty hunter who roams the undergrounds of Necromunda, the largest hive city in Warhammer 40k's Imperium and one of the major manufacturers of weapons. When one of Necromunda's most famous guilders is murdered and you are hired to avenge his death, you find yourself caught up in the war between the gangs that control Hive City.

Hired Gun's plot is disjointed and bare-bones, with 13 loosely connected missions, mostly involving Necromunda. These missions (and the places they explore) are the best part of Hired Gun. Necromunda is like a million Mos Eisley's crammed together and left under a lamp: a noisy, filthy, impossibly vast industrial hell. It is a factory, a landfill, a scrap yard, and a battlefield. It makes the dystopia of cyberpunk 2077 look a bit like a holiday.

Hired Gun captures the corrupt essence of Necromanda perfectly. In the beginning, you and two bounty hunters ride an elevator down the man-made strata of Hive City. You see crumbling concrete, flaking steel, and wavy piping in the matted formations. Each mission revolves around a specific location in the hive. The second mission, for example, involves jumping aboard the Koloss-44, a city-sized freight train equipped with metal skulls and a cattle catcher rather than a monster catcher.

Elsewhere, you fly between cyberpunk skyscrapers, past junkyards, and into the massive iron walls of the Imperial Generatum. My favorite mission, titled "Cold Black," takes you down to the oldest part of Hive City to encounter one of 40k's most notorious enemies.

Everything else in Necromunda is problematic or unfinished. The central problem is that the core combat is not very good, but there are many reasons for this.

Let's start with the weapons. In and of itself, there is no problem. The classic 40K bolters and heavy bolters sit alongside the more familiar assault rifles and shotguns, as well as a few more eclectic weapons, such as plasma rifles and guns that shoot exploding gravity vortices. It would be a fine arsenal to collect over the course of the game, especially if they have distinctive effects and are useful in a variety of situations.

Instead, "Hired Gun" features a Destiny-style loot system that will have you picking up dozens of these guns with slightly improved stats. However, there is not a large enough variety of weapons to make the loot system work. It only diminishes the joy of acquiring a new gun and the functional differences between the weapons themselves; there is no point in having three different chain guns if they do essentially the same thing.

The weapons at least feel good to shoot, but most of the time there is little need to shoot. The combination of levitating physics and a frenetic jib system means that most enemies will disintegrate with a sneeze, their gut trails hanging in the air like wedding streamers. And that's only if you shoot on purpose. A standard enemy can be killed instantly by getting close and pressing the E button.

By default, the enemy heals when killed, so virtually the entire battlefield can be cleared with melee kills. Larger enemies, such as Shrek-like oglins and robots similar to BioShock's Big Daddy, require pulling out guns. But these absorb bullets like Kevlar sponges, leaning too far in the other direction.

If Streum On had simply fixed all these one-liners and done nothing else at all, it would have been a perfectly decent shooter. Instead, "Hired Gun" throws in a garbage truckload of auxiliary mechanics that add little to the experience. The worst of these is Mastiff, a dog companion that is amusingly summoned by a squealing toy. Mastiff can highlight nearby enemies and eliminate them with a "quick attack". Shooting enemies is even quicker, meaning I used Mastiff perhaps five times in the entire game.

Other features I rarely used include wallrunning, which sounds cool but is basically useless; the entire submenu of special abilities, including Bullet Time and Perfect Aim; weapon crafting and modifications, which I don't think I touched even once; and side missions. The gadget I used most often was the grappling hook. It adds great maneuverability to the Hired Gun and would work great if the enemy was even remotely interesting and worth fighting. However, it won't, because the enemy isn't.

It is clear that Hired Gun was released too soon, and the version number on the menu screen is now "Ver 0.58333". From annoying glitches like texture flickering to hard screen locks and CTDS, the game is full of bugs and the general balance of the game simply feels off. It's a real shame. Despite all the bad, the core premise is appealing. The art and level design are great, and the weapons are promising when paired with interesting enemies.

Give Streum On Studio time to polish, refine, and remove the terrible concessions to modernity (FPS loot systems can go in the trash can). If they sort them out, "Hired Gun" could be one of those games that the industry will look back on in five years and deem "underrated." But it's not underrated now. It just kinda sucks.