Gunman Contracts Quick Verdict: Is Three Story Contracts Enough for Early Access?
Yes, with one enormous asterisk shaped like the number three. Gunman Contracts - Stand Alone already looks worth buying if what you want is a compact, violent hitman fantasy with excellent VR gunplay and reasons to replay it. But Early Access currently gives you only three story contracts. If you're buying primarily for a substantial campaign, keep your wallet holstered for now.
That tiny campaign is the entire argument surrounding Gunman Contracts at launch. The foundations appear remarkably good. Steam has already passed 600 user reviews at roughly 76% positive, the combat has earned strong praise, and the criminal fantasy isn't hiding behind a store tag wearing a fake moustache. You are The Gunman, an extra-legal professional sent into warehouses, restaurants and other deeply unhealthy workplaces to kill members of The Collectors.
The problem is that just as this starts sounding like the John Wick game we've spent years constructing inside our heads, somebody turns the lights on and tells us there are three missions.
Three.
I've had restaurant menus with longer campaigns.
Three contracts left you hungry? Our Best Crime Games picks have considerably more ways to make the local police commissioner develop a drinking problem.
Three contracts, but quite a lot stuffed around them
The current story takes you through three connected contracts, beginning from The Hive, your home base where weapons and training facilities live. There are 18 unlockable firearms with attachments, alongside knives and a bow, and the campaign isn't the only thing available.
Takedown lets you configure fights against up to 30 enemies. Last Stand goes in the opposite direction and apparently decides the sensible solution to insufficient murder is an endless supply of people requiring murder, mixed with bomb-disarming. There are leaderboards, achievements, skill games and cheats too.
That matters because judging Gunman Contracts purely by counting campaign missions is slightly unfair. It's also completely understandable.
Three is a terrifying number to put next to "story contracts" when asking people for money. Six sounds like a game. Ten sounds reassuring. Three sounds like you've accidentally bought the starter course and the waiter has vanished.
The question becomes whether you'll actually want to replay those locations.
Early evidence suggests you might.
The shooting appears to be the reason this works
Gunman Contracts started life around VR, and that's where the strongest evidence currently sits.
Weapons require physical handling. Reloading, chambering rounds, aiming and holstering are actions rather than animations politely performed on your behalf while you watch. You can dual wield, use slow motion, grab improvised weapons and deal with enemies who actually pressure you.
That last bit may be the secret sauce.
A professional-killer fantasy collapses rather quickly when every armed criminal behaves like a cardboard target waiting for Gary from Marketing to rotate him into view. Here, enemies reportedly push the player aggressively enough that combat becomes improvisational. Reloading isn't downtime.
It's the moment when the firearm in your hand becomes an expensive metal banana and several furious men remain unconvinced that you deserve another magazine.
That's exactly where physical VR gun handling becomes interesting.
A reload animation in a conventional shooter is a timer. A manual reload under pressure is suddenly a small administrative emergency involving your hands, ammunition and the increasingly urgent gentleman approaching from the left.
Slow motion and improvised violence then give you tools for turning that panic back into competence. That's the fantasy Gunman Contracts needs to sell. You aren't merely deleting health bars while dressed as an assassin. The combat asks you to behave like somebody frighteningly comfortable around firearms.
And apparently, it feels bloody good.
Prefer stealing the valuables before everybody starts shooting? Head into Best Heist Games, where criminal ambition occasionally survives long enough to develop a business plan.
You are a hitman, although the game has given you moral bubble wrap
For CRIMENET purposes, the criminal fantasy is unusually clean.
The Gunman operates outside conventional law. His work involves contracts, killings and a criminal underworld. The locations include a syndicate warehouse district and a mob-run restaurant. Nobody has invited you there to inspect the fire extinguishers.
But the game is also extremely interested in making sure you don't feel too evil about any of this.
The Collectors are kidnappers and murderers. Your targets are established as terrible people. The game essentially hands you a firearm, points toward a building full of bastards and provides enough moral paperwork that you can start blasting without needing to ring your priest afterwards.
That's fine. It simply makes The Gunman closer to a murderous vigilante than Agent 47 having an unusually entrepreneurial Tuesday.
The important part is that the fantasy survives contact with the game. Contract killing isn't narrative wallpaper surrounding an ordinary shooter. Picking weapons, entering hostile criminal spaces and professionally converting their occupants into vacancies is the activity.
There's something wonderfully blunt about that.
No crafting twelve wolf pelts so your assassin can carry another magazine. No saving the kingdom because apparently every open-world protagonist eventually becomes unpaid regional government. Here is your contract. Here are the criminals.
Off you fuck.
Early Access still looks like Early Access
There are reasons that Steam rating is sitting in the mid-70s rather than receiving the sort of universal adoration normally reserved for games where you can pet the dog.
VR reports mention collision jank, occasional problems with holstering and reloading, and repeated enemy models. More importantly, content remains the elephant standing in the safehouse wearing a tactical vest.
The developer plans at least three additional story contracts as free updates. Great.
They don't exist yet.
Never buy an Early Access game because Future Game sounds excellent. Future Game is a magnificent product. Future Game has infinite content, flawless performance and personally delivers a birthday cake to your house. Unfortunately, Steam sells Current Game.
Current Game has three story contracts.
There is also one limitation worth making explicit: the strongest detailed assessment currently available concerns VR. Gunman Contracts supports conventional flat-screen play, but there isn't enough mature evidence yet to confidently tell you that the non-VR version delivers exactly the same quality of experience.
So if you're buying specifically for flatscreen, I'd be more cautious.
The Gunman has the body count, but the game keeps wrapping his conscience in bubble wrap. See who actually lets you embrace being the bastard in our Playable Villains hub.
So, is Gunman Contracts worth buying now?
For VR players who love physical gunplay, replaying combat encounters and chasing the professional-killer fantasy: yes.
There appears to be enough around those three contracts to make Gunman Contracts more than a two-hour novelty that evaporates the moment the credits discover where you live. Takedown, Last Stand, weapon unlocks, difficulty and replayability give the combat somewhere to go, and the shooting itself appears strong enough to justify going there.
For somebody wanting a meaty Hitman-style campaign: no, not yet.
Three story contracts are three story contracts. No amount of waving 18 firearms around the room changes basic arithmetic.
And that's why Gunman Contracts is such an interesting Early Access proposition. The usual concern with a tiny indie shooter is whether there's a decent game buried somewhere inside the limited content.
Here, the evidence increasingly points the other way.
The game is already here.
We're waiting for more of the bastard.
Comments