Hired Guns

Hired Guns takes the player to the far reaches of the Luyten planetary system. Battling through over 20 theaters of engagement, collecting weapons, scanners and food, your team of mercenaries test the limits of their military prowess in this high-tech battle adventure game.

Released: 1993
Platforms: Amiga MS-DOS
Genres: Cyberpunk First-person shooter Role-playing Science
Developers: —
Publishers: SCE Studio Liverpool
Modes: Multiplayer Single-player
Perspective: First person
Themes: Action Science fiction
Country: United Kingdom
Age ratings: ESRB T

About

Hired Guns is a 1993 role-playing video game developed by DMA Design and published by Psygnosis for Amiga and MS-DOS. In the year 2712, players control a team of four outlaw mercenaries, chosen from a pool of twelve, attempting to destroy illegal bio-engineered organisms using a thermonuclear explosion. The game shows four simultaneous first-person perspective viewpoints and allows up to four players to play together. Players must manage their characters' inventory and carrying capacity, and adapt to various environmental challenges like underwater areas.

The game's release was delayed multiple times, leading to a running gag in British magazine Amiga Power. Upon release, Hired Guns received praise for its multiplayer mode, offering moments of surprise and satisfaction, but it faced criticism for its documentation, copy protection, and clumsy inventory management. In 1996, GamesMaster ranked Hired Guns 62nd on their "Top 100 Games of All Time".

Keywords

action-adventure

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

The game uses a system of four simultaneous Dungeon Master-style first-person perspective viewpoints in the world. Each character is individually controllable and occupies their own square, unlike Dungeon Master, in which the entire party occupies the same square. Each character can be made to follow another character, simplifying large group movements when only one player is controlling the party. The gameplay was advanced for its time, allowing up to four players to play simultaneously, using mouse, keyboard or (modified) Sega Mega Drive joypad, with a parallel port adaptor allowing four joypads/joysticks to be used at once.

The game area is in real 3D, and monster/enemy AI have free movement around each level environment. This is unlike other games of its time, in which enemies cannot pursue characters up stairs. An array of light and heavy weapons (including robot sentries), incendiary devices, mines and grenades can be used to take out the enemy (or friends) either on the same level as the player or below.

Story

A team of outlaw mercenaries, led by the character Rorian are hired to destroy all of the illegally bio-engineered organisms on the planet Graveyard via means of a fusion induced thermonuclear explosion, which is to be achieved by collecting four fusion power core rings, and depositing them in the corresponding field coil generator located at Graveyard Central Spaceport. The secondary mission objective is to reconnoitre ground installations.

Reception

Computer Gaming World in 1994 praised Hired Guns's multiplayer mode when playing the campaign or minigames, noting the "fantastic moments of surprise" from friendly fire or nearby allies unintentionally preventing a wounded player from escaping. The magazine criticized the "thorough, but flawed" documentation and "extremely intrusive copy protection", inability for keyboard players to strafe, and clumsy inventory management, but concluded that "Hired Guns is viscerally satisfying". In 1996, GamesMaster ranked Hired Guns 62nd on their "Top 100 Games of All Time".