Hired Guns

Hired Guns takes place in the 21st century. A mass exodus from Earth has lead humanity to the Luyten system, where the power has settled onto three warring corporate factions and civilians live under constant threat of violence.

If ever a game deserved a second chance, it was Hired Guns.

It's about to get one.

Six years ago, Psygnosis released DMA Design's first-person action/strategy game on the Amiga. It was ahead of its time not only for that celebrated multimedia computer, but for the computer-gaming industry at large. Each of its four mercenaries had its own screen with a 3D view on a bleak sci-fi environment. It gave you a wide array of mercenaries to choose from. It had phenomenal graphics for its time, and its use of tactical, squad-based gameplay had been unmatched until recently.

Hired Guns did acquire a cult following-there was even a disappointing conversion to the PC-but the game remained largely unknown in the U.S. at a time when Wolfenstein 3-D was heralded as the height of gaming technology.

Devil's Thumb Entertainment and Psygnosis are bringing the game back in style early next year, and all we can say is: It's about time. We visited Devil's Thumb's Boulder, CO offices to look at the work-in-progress, and came away feeling that Hired Guns will be one of the most distinctive entries in the next generation of first-person shooters.

It's not a sequel so much as an update. The game still revolves around the same basic concept-four windows, each for a different character, all of which the player controls in real-time. But this time, only four characters are included, and they're the center of the game world. Each has special abilities and the levels are designed to make use of them-meaning all four characters are vital to the success of each mission.

Hired Guns takes place in the 21st century. A mass exodus from Earth has lead humanity to the Luyten system, where the power has settled onto three warring corporate factions and civilians live under constant threat of violence. As corporate war raged on, the civilian population, sick of being stepped on, began forming their own security militias and the three companies, Tesseract, Betelov and Grenworld, found themselves forced to hire mercenaries to carry out their war undercover.

Enter the "Hired Guns," a merc group lead by a mysterious man named Kircher, a gruff Rastafarian with a shady past and a questionable future.

The game starts you off with only two team members-Kircher and a cyborg named Myriel. (The other two members of the group, Osverger and Rorian, are introduced as the game progresses.) Myriel can jack into computer terminals, contort her body to access small tunnels and enter cyberspace. (This is similar to the cyberspace sequences in System Shock-but much more sophisticated graphically, thanks to the game's use of the Unreal engine.) Kircher can regenerate his health and resist toxic environments, making him a very tough hombre. Osverger has chemically-enhanced strength, and a genetically-enhanced constitution, while Rorian has cyberoptic eye replacements with nightvision capabilities-and he's got a Class I sniper rating.

All told, Hired Guns will have 17 different weapons, some with multiple firing modes. The armament in the game is divided between offensive (most of them) and defensive, and look for some non-lethal weapons that will slow opponents down. The default weapon will be the Plasma Hacksaw--good only for hacking at close range-but also look for assault and sniper rifles, a hover mine launcher, a "Fusion Launcher" and other sci-fi tinged weapons of destruction.

In some sections, you'll even be able to get guns from dispenser machines.

The game centers around Kircher and his crew as they move from one mission to the next, hiring themselves out to all three corporations in an effort to stay in business. The mission structure is linear, however. You can't pick the jobs you take, but instead follow the pre-set missions (currently 18) that play out as the story progresses.

Yes, there is a story. Playing all sides proves to be a dangerous game and Kircher finds himself in a deeper, darker and more bizarre web than he could have imagined. He'll come to realize he was set up on various jobs, and, at length, discovers a sinister character. Ominous Von Glominous is a vile genetic engineer who isn't afraid to make horrific things and some of the levels reflect this in their bizarre, disturbing design and look.

Hired Guns will take gamers through a vast array of different environments. There are cities, ruins, prison planets, futuristic mass transit stations, research labs, military bunker complexes, massive water transport facilities, underground caves, space stations, low-temperature storage facilities, fusion reactor stations, and more. The first thing that strikes the viewer is the vast scope of some of the levels, conjuring memories of the vast, vertigo-inducing levels of Jedi Knight more than anything in Epic's game.

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