Gunman Chronicles is a futuristic first-person shooter computer game using the Half-Life game engine. It was originally planned as a total conversion for Quake; it then switched games to Quake II, followed by another switch to Half-Life, before being spotted by Valve Software and released as a stand-alone retail product in 2000.
The best GoldSrc engine game with a fantastic weapon system. Gunman Chronicles is indeed a classic and even if linear is still refreshing to play.
Gunman Chronicles is a forgotten gem of GoldSrc era developed by Rewolf. It is an abandonware that never makes it to Steam, but now it rests here on ModDB.
The game puts you in the shoes of Major Archer, a Gunman veteran and survivor of a battle on Banzer Prime. On the 5th anniversary of said event, you are called to investigate a strange signal on a planet. Then, you meet with the General, who’s supposed to be dead in the event Archer went through, and now he’s leading some sort of an army of men and aliens to earn their revenge because Archer allegedly left them behind, then it goes from there. Throughout the game, you’ll be battling your way through a planet filled with dinosaurs, a lunar station populated by drones and an AI who is not far from resembling GLaDOS and Shodan, a desert planet, and then a high-tech base.
Your enemies are the robots, the General’s men, and the Xenomes, an alien race. Most of them are more than just mere reskins of Half-Life enemies and they will keep you on your toes. One that I particularly like is the peacock-like Xenome that will shoot homing projectiles like the Alien Grunt but will also explode into multiple projectiles occasionally when killed.
There are a few bosses in this game, two out of three of them are fun to fight against. The one that isn’t fun is the final boss. During the first phase, you are forced to hit him rapidly in a very confined space and his projectiles will one-hit kill you. The second phase is more manageable but it’s still a problem. Your ally arrives to fight the final boss, but you are tasked to cover the ally from the stream of Xenomes. It is a defense mission for the final boss. If the Xenomes got to your ally, the ally will focus on the aliens and thus distracting them from the fight altogether, resulting in a stalemate.
Major Archer’s extremely customizable weapons are the highlight of this game. Each weapon can be switched and assigned to your preferred lineup. The pistol can fire laser, rapid-firing energy balls, charged energy balls, and it can be assembled into a sniper rifle. You can control how many shells the shotgun fires each shot and its range. The rocket launcher can become a homing missile launcher, a guided tripmine launcher, or direct-fire clusterbomb launcher.
You also get to drive a tank in this game, but sadly it is the lowest point of this game. Instead of going on a rampage, you are forced to stop every 2 minutes and most of the enemies here are stationary turrets. So, you pretty much spend a very small amount of time actually in the tank on that section.
Gunman Chronicles gives you a fun 6-hours-long romp and its extremely wide variety of arsenal is very unique.
Gunman Chronicles is basically the ultimate loveletter to Goldsource and the Half-Life creation scene. Just like other classics like Day of Defeat or Counter Strike it started out as a humble modification and blossomed into a full fledged release.
What makes Gunman so notable is just how big and ambitious it feels, I never really felt like I was playing a modification turned into small budget game. I really felt instead like I was playing the end of an era in terms of Half-Life. The maps are richly detailed with cool interactive elements, lots of enemies ranging from alien lifeforms, human soldiers and rampant AI, a ton of visual variety of both entire landscapes and smaller zones within an area. Honestly I was impressed with what they pushed with the engine in terms of how big and how varied everything felt, it really pulls off a sense of scale in terms of its outdoor environments that I don't see in other Goldsource games or modifications, which is honestly a testament to the developers' skill of world/level crafting.
The gunplay is solid, just as anyone should expect from a Goldsource based game with frantic action that rewards various playstyles from the cover based shooter to the jumpy quaker. But what really elevates it is the incredible depth of its weapon system. You can finetune your weapons to perform in a number of roles, the shotgun can be modified to work like a slugbased rifle or a multi-shot crowd control killer! But just when you think it couldn't get any cooler, you have the ability to operate tanks and for an engine so old, they honestly perform beautifully, giving an awesome spice to an already solid FPS experience.
You take some of the best this engine can offer, give it incredibly satisfying and solid gameplay with amazing weapon customization and the ability to drive vehicles and then tie it all together in a compelling highly cinematic story set in a unique universe that can best be described as "proto-firefly" and you got one hell of a game.
My only complaint is that Gunman has sadly been forgotten.
fair old shooter with original idea
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A hidden gem from Ritual Entertainment (the maker of SIN: Episode, if I'm correct) the game is amazing and wished it would've have a lot of recognition and a sequel..
A forgotten gem. I only learned of this game's existence a few mounts ago. It runs on the GoldSrc engine also known as the Half-Life engine, and in many ways feels like a Half-Life mod.
Some aspects of the game feel ahead of their time. For example, the weapon customization. However, some aspects of the game feel a bit lacking, such as the level design, especially the second planet you visit.
Overall, a pretty good game. Not one of the greatest, but worth trying out.
Goldsource masterpiece
Greate sky fi game as it should be.
Gunman Chronicles is still a fantastic game with amazing gunplay. Definitely a must play.