Hired Guns (Second Review)

Title		Hired Guns (Second Review)
Publisher	Psygnosis
Developer	Scott Johnston/DMA Design
Game Type	RPG
Players		1-4 (simultaneous, real time)
Compatibility	All
Demo:		Aminet: game/demo/HiredGunsDemo.dms (706K)
Submission	Andy Davidson theworm@team17.com  (Celebrity Reviewer)

Review
Hired Guns is one of the games I admire the most - and easily one of the
best Amiga games of all-time.  It was also the game that held up the
development of Worms in it's Total Wormage days!

Released back in 1993, Hired Guns was a Dungeon Master style RPG set in the
future.  But what made it stand out, even to this day, was the multi-player
elements.  The screen showed the viewpoints of 4 characters - you either
controlled them all yourself, or could have a different person controlling
each one.

The depth of the gameplay is what made it.  With 4 players, nothing could
touch it.  The level of cooperation needed, and using different players to
complete different tasks, is something that all recent 3D games have missed
with their obsession for death-matches.  The abuse someone got when they
messed up their part of a mission, or over-shot a cliff and landed on your
head, was priceless!

Being a multi-player game, it was only a matter of time before you turned
on the person who kept falling off the cliff, and shot him in the back.
This soon turned into a full-scale death-match, even though the game didn't
support them as such.  The lack of levels suited to death-matches was the
only thing that let it down really.  But the 2 Lemming Wars levels played
brilliantly.  The amount of weapons, and setting up traps with moveable
blocks and sentries, made it a much more satisfying game than Doom-style
death-matches.

You could also customise the character graphics - so it wasn't long before
we had Bomberman, an elderly person in one of those car-things, and a small
shrub running around.  Turning a corner to find an old person bearing down
on you with grenades just added to the realism ...

Everything about the game was brilliant really - the gameplay, the
graphics, the sound (which was bloody good on 2meg machines), the
presentation ... it even told you how to butcher Megadrive pads so they
worked properly on Amiga!  And it was basically the work of one person -
Scott Johnston.  "Genius", as Johnny Vaughan would say.

But what happened to the rumoured AGA version and the level-editor? - the
public has a right to know!

(And yes, the banana bombs in Worms are a tribute to Hired Guns ... :)

Alphabetical list.