An interesting use of the Half-Life Engine. (Gunman Chronicles (PC))

Member Name: Mutalisk

Product:	Gunman Chronicles (PC)
Date:	05/09/09 (27 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: entertaining, visceral, customizable weapons, diverse locations, decent graphics, cheap. HL mod,

Disadvantages: Somewhat dated.

Gunman Chronicles (2000) is a massively familiar gaming experience. It is a first person shooter powered by the Half-Life engine, with minimum alterations. The player assumes the role of Major Archer, a gunman marine in the future, with a pretty standard objective - Destroy the alien threat. It is very much a Half-Life clone, to the point where if the windows key is accidentally tapped during gameplay, Gunman Chronicles registers in the taskbar as "Half-Life."

For something calling itself a story-driven game, the plot is pretty thin. A race of genetically-altered alien mutants are attempting to eradicate the human race. You are part of the last bastion of the human resistance and its up to you to destroy them. A war then takes place over a number of planets and colonies, including prehistoric planetoids, strange alien worlds and abandoned desert battlefields.

Much of Gunman: Chronicles' emphasis seems to be on the customizable weaponry. Almost every gun in the player's arsenal (The HUD is identical to that of Half-Life) can be adapted in some way or another. Your laser pistol doubles as a sniper rifle and machinegun, the shotgun spread can be distributed in several ways in order to pack the optimum punch, and then there's the M.U.L.E., the Multiple Unit Launch Engine, essentially a multipurpose explosive launcher. The player can alter the flightpath, proximity, detonation time, cluster size, and payload of the blast. It can even be used to lay tripmines.
Clearly a great deal of time and effort has gone into the design of the weapons system which opens up a lot of new possibilities for the multiplayer aspects of the game, which can already host a great deal of players on any map at any one time, operating again, under the capacity and limitations of the standard Half-Life system.

The player faces quite a wide variety of mechanical and organic human and alien enemies throughout the course if the game, in many diverse environments. These prove a lot of fun to dispatch with the myriad weapons, alien and human. It can be a little bit switch-your-brain off at times, but it isn't a game that pretends to be clever or cerebral. For a light-hearted little throwaway conversion game it's pretty damn visceral and entertaining, but as for longevity, the novelty of it being just different enough from Half-Life to qualify as a standalone game wears off after one or two playthroughs.

Graphics are dated, but still passable and playable in highest-resolution, something which pretty much every PC manufactured in the last 3 years can handle with the greatest of ease. All in all its a fun little Half-life mod that doesn't take itself too seriously, and if you're a fan of HL, its probably worth paying for the retail copy at around £3, or slightly less on the steam servers. Go for it.

Summary: Give it a try if you like Half-Life. It's sure to kill a bit of time.