Summary
Better than you think, but only at a certain price.
The Good
Gunman Chronicles is a surprisingly fun experience. There are a few things that it aspires to do better than any other shooter, the best example of which is the extensively-modifyable weapons. Every single weapon has alternate configurations; for example, there's at least 6 different ways to blow up enemies: The explosives can explode on a timer, on impact, or when triggered; they can detonate all at once or split up into clusters which then detonate. The shotgun has three spreads and can use from 1 to 4 shells. (Using all four shells in a single trigger pull can usually waste any enemy, but the recoil pushes you back a few feet.) A chemical weapon can be configured to mix a certain amount of acid, base, and neutralizer for dissolving organic material, metal, or a combination of both.
While it sounds like a few of the voices were the mod-creators themselves, at least two professional voice actors (that I could count) lend a touch of polish. In true Half-Life fashion, the scientist is the most prolific and the most well-acted. Occaisionally you'll come across dialog like this:
"Help! The robot sentries are out of control!"
(You destroy the robot sentries.)
"Oh, thank you, thank you.... for helping me save my xenome! Muhaahhahaa!!"
(Xenome crashes out of a nearby box and attacks at blinding speed!)
A bad voice actor would ruin this, but the voice actor they hired pulled it off perfectly and the scene really works. And there are many exchanges like this, which help keep it fresh.
The Bad
Gunman Chronicles
reeks of user-mod-ness. It's made up of three distinctly separate parts -- so different, in fact, that the seque between all three of them is a space shuttle ride between planets.
The extensive weapons modification is a neat gimmick, but it feels like they spent so much time creating the weapons that they forgot to come up with reasons to use each weapon type. I only found a few instances in the game where configurations other than the default config was necessary to best proceed through an area.
While the voice actor for the scientist types is great, the voice actress playing the part of the mainframe is weaker. (Just my personal opinion; you may find her performance just fine.)
Finally, the price at the time it came out was way overpriced, especially given that the total playtime was about 12-15 hours.
The Bottom Line
Gunman Chronicles is definitely worth playing if you're a fan of Half-Life and everything it brought to the shooter genre. But its length and varying levels of quality make it best for a $9 to $14 purchase, no more.
