Gunman Chronicles

The Good
Gunman Chronicles is basically one of the various fan made mods which uses the Half-Life engine and in turn it takes advantage of it's powerful scripting abilities. Although Gunman Chronicles is not as long as Half-Life and it's environments aren't as varied, it retains that same feeling of suspence the Black Mesa facilities embodied. You'll never know when the floor will give away or the ceiling will collapse and it's surprising that more FPS games haven't taken advantage of such situations.

For the most part Gunman Chronicles is a mixed bag of sorts, many of it's textures are extremely clear and detailed, most of it's sound effects are of a high quality, the enemies are well animated, there's a lot of good level design, etc. but this isn't consistant throughout the entire game.

The Bad
Gunman's inconsistancy is it's biggest flaw and it really does end up feeling like a fan made game rather than a commercial one. The textures become too colorful and unrealistic, the sound effects become repetitive as do the enemies, the maps lose their charm and just seem bland, etc.

Also, Rewolf's premier title holds too many similarities to Half-Life. Being based on the same engine is one thing but using practically identical intro screen, intro sequences and SFX (and the list doesn't end here) just goes overboard for a commercial game.

The Bottom Line
Gunman Chronicles tries to introduce various new gameplay ideas but those quickly become cumbersome, instead of enhancing the game, leaving it as just another average entry in the crowded genre.

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.

The Good
I've never been much into the "modding" scene. Maybe I've been missing out, but being the Israeli low-bandwidth no-multiplayer gamer that I am, I could never justify downloading dozens of megabytes for more potential fun. Basically, mods never thrilled me.
They still don't. Gunman may technically be a mod, but (a) it's retail and (b) it's basically a completely new game from Half Life, so I've played it as such.

That being said, Gunman Chronicles is FUN. In essence, it is a typical no-frills first person shooter, no pretense. It gives you weapons, it gives you levels and it fills those levels with people and monsters you kill. For me, that's a major thumbs up - I hate pretentious games that presume to give you a whole new level of gameplay. On the other hand, I just love "anonymous" games that focus on gameplay instead of marketing, where story is just a bonus and sheer fun comes first.

Serious Sam was such a game. Gunman Chronicles is another. For me, where Max Payne failed, GC delivered. I first played and completed it today, in one 7-hour sitting. It's a short game, and it's fun! It has all the elements of a classic B grade action movie: lone surviving member of a military organization as the protagonist, evil ex-military freaks trying to take over the universe, genetic experiments gone bad, rampant computer AI... everything. And the beauty is, you get to shoot each and every one of these elements. That's gameplay!

Seriously though, Gunman Chronicles takes decent advantage of the Half Life engine. Graphics aren't stunning but are, for the most part, at least adequate (though slightly bland at first). Like a fellow reviewer mentioned, GC borrows Half Life's tendency to make you jump out of your seat when things crash around you spontaneously. GC features an actual story, which certainly isn't anything to call home about but is decent never-the-less.

With quite a few well-designed levels and overall sheer FUN FACTOR, GC is basically a very solid shooter.

The Bad
Graphics occasionally look really amateur, but I suppose that's to be expected from a mod. Like I said, they're adequate for the most part. Audio is mediocre at best.

The game is absolutely linear, but unlike Max Payne, here it is done with a certain finesse that doesn't frustrate. Also, seeing that most of the game takes place on a solitary moon or a base somewhere, the claustrophobia is actually atmospheric.

Also, the Rampant AI I mentioned is sometimes absolutely ridiculous, but personally I think it adds to its personality, with stupid sentences like "Hi, I'm the AI running this facility. And you are... DEAD!"

The Bottom Line
I'd say GC is an excellent game to play once or twice, enjoy it like it is, and just avoid approaching it with expectations in mind. If you love mindless shooters, you'll enjoy it.

The Good
There are really some nice landscapes in the game and the weapons have any kinds of firing modes

The Bad
Some sound effect are just like in Half-Life a bit crummy. This is nothing against Half-Life of course. AI could have been better

The Bottom Line
Well first of all this should have been a free TC for download, but that's not a reason to hate it. I thinks it's pretty good, only if it had some improvements like the sound and AI for example, then it could have been much better.