It's been a few years since Half-Life gave the First Person Shooter
genre a much-needed kick in the pants. Since then multiplayer
games like Unreal Tournament and Quake III have taken over the
market, with the a lot of help from Half-Life mod turned retail
product, Counter-Strike. But the single player FPS is far from dead.
No One Lives Forever recently earned our Gamers Choice Award
with its '60 style, wry humor, and deeply enjoyable gameplay. And
fast on its heels is Gunman Chronicles, another Half-Life mod
come of age, this one with an emphasis on the single player
experience. Developed by Rewolf Software and scooped up by
Sierra for commercial release, Gunman is a futuristic
alien-blasting tale with Wild West sensibilities. Though it lacks
much of the innovation and polish of its sire, Gunman Chronicles
makes good enough use of the slightly aged Half-Life tech and is a
pretty fair showing for Rewolf's début.
The story starts out five years after humanity's first encounter with
a race of hostile aliens known as the Xenomes. You are Major
Archer of the Gunman, a force that passes for the law in the
backwater country that is the Western Spiral of the Galaxy. For
five years the Gunman have fought against wave after wave of
Xenomes, each one meaner and nastier than the last. Hints of
genetic manipulation lead to the speculation that someone or
something may be behind the Xenomes, intentionally breading an
army of aliens. Three guesses who gets to head the team sent to
investigate, and the first two don't count. Grab your trusty laser
pistol and strap on your combat armor, it's time for you to get to
the bottom of this mystery once and for all. To do it you'll have to
head back to the place you first encountered the Xenomes, a
planet where you gave the order to pull out and leave your
commanding officer for dead. Put aside those thoughts, there's no
time to be troubled by the past, because if you don't get the job
done this time, there might not be a future.
What you get with Gunman from the gameplay end of things is a
pretty standard First Person Shooter. The game starts with a quick
tutorial, put together in a slightly more interesting way by having
you run around a space station during an accident to learn the
control scheme. There's nothing here that veterans of FPS will
have any trouble with. Following that is a trip to the firing range
where players will learn about Gunman's configurable weapons.
Once you've got a little target practice under your belt, it's time for
action. There are four different worlds that you'll fight your way
through, each with different styles. The first world is covered with
jungles and Mayan-looking temples, while a later world's grand
canyons will make you feel like you're back outside the Black
Mesa compound. The game has something of a Half-Life feel
throughout, from the fairly linear areas and minor puzzle solving,
to the outlaw gunmen who roll around for cover. Though Rewolf
was definitely paying attention to Valve's mood setting tricks, they
don't quite have the flair for it. It is possible to overuse the
exploding console, and I had had about enough of screen shaking
earthquakes and explosions by the end of the game.
One of Gunman's best features, and likely the one it will be best
remembered for, is it's configurable weapons. We're all
accustomed to the primary and secondary weapon modes that
many shooters feature these days, but Gunman takes it one step
further. All of the weapons, with the exception of the knife you
start the game with, are configurable in a number of different
ways. Right clicking brings up an easy to navigate menu that lets
you customize your weapons on the fly. The shotgun, for example,
can be set to fire from one to four shells at a time, and has three
different spread settings. There is an energy weapon called the
Polaris Blade that can be set to various different ranges and
powers, the consequences being variable accuracy and a nasty
habit of overheating at higher power settings, damaging you with
a vicious shock. All in all, it's a great idea, but the execution could
have been better. The Mecha Gun, their version of your basic
machine gun, can only be set to fire slightly faster, and the Polaris
Blade has a pause before it works which makes it just plain hard to
use. Don't be too surprised to see someone else run with this idea
of customizable weapons and do a better job, but remember that
Gunman was the first.
Polish is a word that I find myself using a lot to describe what's
wrong with some games, and Gunman suffers from a large dose of
lack of polish. It starts with the graphics and sounds, and seeps
down into the gameplay. Part of the problem with the way the
game looks is the Quake based Half-Life engine just plain showing
its age. But this goes a step beyond just that. Some of the textures
are grainy, and not all that attractive to look at in places. The skins
for the gunmen and outlaws are pretty good, and the robots were
nicely done, but the Xenomes themselves are less alien and
frightening than they are just weird and strangely boring. The
sounds in the game are fuzzy at times, and the background sounds
used in an attempt to add that feel to the setting become repetitive
and annoying after just a short sitting. Voice acting, as usual, is hit
and miss. The music, what there was of it, picked up at supposedly
dramatic moments, but was mostly a non-factor.
But still, when all is said and done, Gunman Chronicles is a pretty
fun ride. At times it really does feel like a mod, and it may have
been a stretch to release this as a commercial product, but it's not
a bad bet for fans of FPS. Though there is a multiplayer mode, it's
only deathmatch (until someone decides to tack on something else
as a mod or later release) and even that isn't really that well put
together. There are only a few maps, and while playing with the
customizable weapons is fun, the overall balance isn't that good. If
you've been playing Q3, UT, or CS, you're not going to be terribly
amused by Gunman's deathmatch. This is first and foremost a
single player game. And at a reasonably low price ($20 after a $10
mail in rebate), it's probably a worthy go for those looking for
another shooter to spend some time on. If you only buy one action
game this month, check out No One Lives Forever. But if you're a
fan of this type of game, Gunman Chronicles is worth looking at. It
has some great ideas and some genuinely fun moments if you can
get past its unpolished aspects.
By: 
