Hired Guns

Game Review by Jeff James



The storyline in Hired Guns -- the latest action game from Psygnosis -- is anything but new. A barren moon has been overrun by bio-engineered monsters, causing an urgent plea for help to be sent out into the cosmos. True to your heroic nature, you and your team of battle-hardened mercenaries is quick to answer the call for aid -- for a fee, of course. After you?ve landed on the moon, (optimistically called ?Graveyard?) you must scour the surface to locate four fusion power rings which you?ll use to blast the moon?s starport into radioactive bits.



To prepare you for this task, Hired Guns provides three sets of increasingly difficult scenarios. The first five are embarrassingly easy training missions that allow you to get the hang of the game controls. Next up are the short action missions, which introduce you to real combat in a variety of situations. After honing your skills in these missions, you?re set to take on the heart of the game -- the campaign scenario. As mentioned previously, this mission requires you to exterminate all hostile xenoforms on Graveyard and save the galaxy. (Or at least a small part of it.)



To aid you in this endeavor is a team of pre-generated characters with their own unique skills and abilities. Up to four can be active at once, chosen from a twelve-member collection that includes a pair of death-dealing combat robots, a cyborg, an assassin and a handful of mercenaries and other deadly characters. Regardless of whom you select, you don?t have to control them all by yourself. Hired Guns allows up to four players to play at the same time on the same computer, each controlling a separate character. This is accomplished by using a variety of mouse, joystick and keyboard combinations, with two players usually using mice or joysticks and the remainder pecking away at the keyboard. 



To accommodate all four players, the game screen is portioned off into four separate quadrants, one for each player. Each of these four sections is broken down into four separate displays, accessed by pointing and clicking on folder-like tabs at their edges. The primary viewscreen provides a three-dimensional view of the player?s surroundings, while an inventory screen keeps track of what valuables the character is currently carrying. A status screen keeps an eye on the character?s health and other statistics, while a mapping screen provides an overhead view of the character?s surroundings -- provided that a Digital Terrain Scanner (DTS) is being used.



While an enjoyable gaming experience for one player, Hired Guns comes into its own when more than two players are involved. Players can compete or work in concert to complete mission goals, each operating independently of one another. Trigger-happy players can easily decimate their cohorts with an ill-timed grenade toss or a too-lengthy burst of cannon fire. If players manage do to avoid killing one another, the motley menagerie of monsters, combat robots and other hostile entities in the game will do their best to finish the job. Hired Guns provides a bewildering array of high-tech gadgetry and weapons players can use to defend themselves, ranging from neutron flux cannons and grenade launchers to 9mm handguns. The entire gaming experience does an admirable job of immersing players in the science fiction genre; gamers familiar with the films Predator, Robocop and Aliens should feel right at home on the barren surface of Graveyard.





Most of that gripping game atmosphere comes from exceptional music and sound effects -- background noises of slithering beasties and dripping water accentuate the gloomy action on-screen.  Amiga owners with at least 1.5 MB of RAM are treated to additional music and sound effects, including the rumble of distant thunder, a wider variety of weapon noises and other ephemeral sound effects. In terms of animation, I found the stop-and-go nature of movement through the Hired Guns gameworld to be somewhat disorienting; each character advances in segmented jumps, not unlike the movement method used with more success in such products as Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder. Graphics are generally clean and detailed, although the small screen area devoted to each player?s viewpoint results in some on-screen objects and monsters appearing rather crude and blocky. If you?re not satisfied with how your characters look on-screen, you can break out any IFF-compatible paint program (such as Deluxe Paint) and edit the character images yourself. Using this method you can easily fashion your on-screen alter ego to resemble anything imaginable, including a self-portrait.



In addition to allowing users to customize character graphics, Hired Guns offers several other unique -- and helpful -- program features. Hard-drive installation is fully supported, complete with a push-button installation program that quickly copies the five game disks to your hard-drive. The original diskettes are not copy protected, although a code must be manually entered into the game to continue play. Hired Guns doesn?t directly support multitasking, although hitting CTRL-W will pause the game and return you to the Amiga workbench, allowing you to put the game on hold when you must perform a task of a less entertaining nature. Clicking on a button inside the resultant pause window will return you to the game. While the game is paused, you can peruse the robust amount of game documentation. Hired Guns is quite possibly the most well documented product ever from Psygnosis. Four hefty booklets comprise the printed documentation of the game, including a 32-page instruction manual, a quick start guide and two manuals that provide background information and fiction for the game. 



As playable as Hired Guns is, a few glitches preclude it from gaming greatness. The inventory system is needlessly cumbersome, painfully so when three or four players are trying to exchange items and supplies during a firefight. As flexible as Hired Guns is in accommodating multiple players at the same computer, the two-player mode only supports two mice, an unusual combination that the vast majority of Amiga owners are unlikely to have access to. Hired Guns also doesn?t support the 256-color AGA chip set, although a sequel is rumored to be in the works which will add this feature. Granted, these are only minor shortcomings that detract little from an otherwise excellent product. If you like eye-opening action, blood-spattering violence and gobs of bug-eyed monsters in your computer games, look no further than Hired Guns.





Hired Guns



Retail Price: $59.95

Requires: 1 MB RAM



Psygnosis Ltd.

675 Massachusetts Ave

Cambridge, MA 02139



Tel: (617) 497-7794







