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Hired Guns

Original Version: Amiga

Hired Guns is a sci-fi RPG developed by DMA Design and published by Psygnosis in 1993 for DOS and Amiga.

Year	1993
Genre	Role Playing - dungeon crawler
Rating	86/100 based on 8 Editorial reviews. Add your vote
Publisher	Psygnosis
Developer	DMA Design
OS supported	Win7 64 bit, Win8 64bit, Windows 10, MacOS 10.6+
Updated	22 February 2021

Game Review

Hired Guns is a sci-fi RPG developed by DMA Design and published by Psygnosis in 1993 for DOS and Amiga.

The game allows you to control 4 mercenaries, with a split-screen that shows the point of view of the different characters that can move in the 4 directions (Eye of the Beholder-style).

The gameplay was highly innovative, with monsters that can move freely around levels and pursue the characters, many different armies with different effects, underwater areas, inventory management that will change depending on the character, and much more. But what made the game unique was the possibility to move the mercenaries independently and have them interact in different ways. The game was also supporting multiplayer, with up to 4 players controlling the heroes.

Hired Guns is considered by many of the best games ever released on the Amiga.

Review by: GN Team
Published: 19 September 2016 12:43 am

Users Reviews

I love the settings, the atmosphere and the great Amiga music.
Together with 4 of my friends we spent countless hours playing the training missions as PvP deadmatch and having a blast.

But IMHO playing the campaign was a bad experience.
Starting with having to choose blindly from 12 characters with no *relevant* info available about them (even in any of the 4! manuals).
Then clunky controls; horrible inventory management system; unfun and needless gear destruction system (remember constantly dreading the water ?); confusing nonsensical level designs (at that time already outdated staple of dungeon crawler genre) with a map that actually confused you more :); and on top of all that very high difficulty with, again needless, hidden time limit.
I only know a single person who got further than 2nd level without giving up, and I don't know anybody who actually finished the campaign.

The sci-fi setting for dungeon crawler was original.
The idea of up to 4 players co-op dungeon crawler game was great and groundbreaking.
But the game design to support it was not there. The in-game tools to make it bearable were not there.
Many mechanics actually felt like they were there to help with co-op play, but were artificially limited to the point of uselessness. Like the whole auto-map system.

Plus the atmosphere seemed great when you were reading the backstory booklets and launched the campaign for the 1st time. But for me quickly faded away when I was repeatedly attacked by weird fantasy drake, skeleton with saber and a deadly pack of hamsters :). In a seemingly hardcore sci-fi game. Indeed.
(The game started development as classic fantasy dungeon. Later explained by some of the dev. And the SF re-do was clearly quite half-hearted :)

Review by: Ri va
Published: 22 April 2024 8:08 pm

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Screenshots

Amiga (32)

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Download Hired Guns - Amiga Version

Download for PC

Amiga version 1.0 - Language: English - Size: 9.50 Mb

Download for Mac

Amiga version 1.0 - Language: English - Size: 10.76 Mb

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Latest Comments

markegiani - 2020-08-02 - Reply
WOW ! This one is a real jewel ... Very spooky, with up to 4 players playing on one computer and with loads of content. The game where tactics are VERY important. BEWARE !!! Not for the fainthearted ...

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