Countless are the hordes of gamers who have stumbled upon Gunman Chronicles as it lay peacefully upon the shelves of their local store, and wondered at why they've heard so little about it. Many more are those who believe Gunman Chronicles to be a Half-Life Mod (like Team Fortress Classic/1.5, Counter Strike etc). Endless are the masses who are certain it is the third part in the Half-Life saga. Well, they are partially right on all counts. Let me first say that the only point which Gunman Chronicles shares with Half-Life is that it uses the same game engine, and that is where the technical consistancies end. You don't even need a copy of Half-Life as Gunman Chronicles is a stand-alone game. Let's take a closer look then.

Gunman Chronicles

Developed by Rewolf Software, it plays just like Half-Life and Opposing Forces and you could be easily forgiven for believing that it was made by the same team and could be the third part. So why did they do this? A whole array of reasons, the main ones being that Valve are too busy working on various Mods at the moment (ie Counter Strike: Condition Zero, Counter Strike 2 and Team Fortress 2) to make a game like this, and with the game engine already in place it gives Rewolf a nice headstart on the actual development of Gunman Chronicles. Besides, why not make a game so similar to Half-Life in most respects, surely the more the merrier. After all, no one is ever forced to buy such games, and as the variety and competition grows, so the quality raises and the prices fall.

The best way to compare it would probably have to be alongside Half-Life and Half-Life: Opposing Forces. There will be a large mix of people who prefer one or the other as they have various differences throughout which make them individual and unique, but because of the many similarities they share, it's almost impossible not to compare the main assets of each. Gunman Chronicles is definately more consistant than Half-Life in particular as far as levels are concerned. Could be good or could be bad, depending on how you like the levels in question. There are advantages to the variety of level designs in Half-Life and Opposing Forces in that it prevents boredom and tests a wider variety of FPS-type skills. On the other hand, if you like the level design of Gunman Chronicles, you'll like the game all the way through, and it is quite likely as the levels are definately well made. I wouldn't say they are groundbreaking or immortal in memory after playing, but they are way above an average game's levels.

One other point which is immediately noticed upon completion of Gunman Chronicles is that it isn't a long game in comparison to it's main equivalents. There are four worlds in total, and depending on your style of play, expertise and the chosen difficulty level, could mean each only taking a few hours. If you want to play the game fully and not aim to fly through it like there's money at the end, it should take a good few nights of solid play. To put it in perspective, it is somewhat shorter in gameplay time than Half-Life, Half-Life: Opposing Forces, Quake, Quake's individual mission packs and Unreal. That might seem like a real downer on the game, but I am being completely straight up. The game itself isn't small in reality; the reasons it's faster to complete are because it isn't a maze-type game where you spend hours trying to find your way around, but instead you can generally tell where you have to go next quite easily. Secondly enemies are either clustered in certain areas or spread apart. When clustered they may be fighting each other, which can save you ammo or you might decide to charge in with guns-a-blazing. This means more birds with fewer stones, but then when they are spread out it is alot easier to kill them before moving on to the next with no downtime. Finally I found Gunman Chronicles to be perhaps a little easy on the most difficult level. There are a few parts later on where situations can be a bit tough against the Colonel's Rebels, but you can get through most of the game without taking any real damage as well as ammo never being an issue. There is always plenty around, so you can feel free to concentrate on fighting rather than thinking 'Should I reload from the last save? I wasted way too much good ammo on that guy.'

They Came in Metal Monsters

Yes, the screenshot to the left is of your character in everyone's best friend, the Tank. A true beauty it is too, it has a main cannon which is very powerful (as you see it's making short work of that building along with the two guys who were standing outside it), and it also has two machine guns on the front. The cannon turrent is completely 360 rotatable and independant of the main tank's other functions and mobility. Also, try as I might, I could not destroy my tank once inside no matter how much I rammed it into the wall or fired point-blank. That's not to say it cannot be destroyed through, for when you're up against tanks there is always a way of destroying them, particularly with some well placed rockets, but the creators of the game obviously felt that you should enjoy being in the tank rather than overly worrying about if it's going to blow up. During the main area where you get to use the tank for quite a long way, you will need to complete small tasks/puzzles in order to give your tank access along roads etc. but should you find yourself unable to get past a particular part, you can always continue on foot, though it will be more difficult.

Saddle Up, Lock and Load

A nice feature that Rewolf worked on (apart from the continual storyline which takes you throughout the game), is found in the arsenal of weaponary. Ranging from the good ol' hunting knife (which you should never need to use unless you like to spray ammo all over the place in a fight and find yourself short), through to a sophisticated Rocket/Grenade Launcher called a M.U.L.E. (Multiple Unit Launch Engine) and even a Chem Gun which has a very wide range of possible settings, the end products being a little too many in variety to name without sending you to sleep with memories or your Chemistry lessons. Don't worry though, it's all explained in detail in the manual should you need to find a good mix. Ultimately the best part about the weaponary is that they have a wide variety of possible customisations. The Shotgum for example has the choice of firing 2, 3 or 4 shells at once (which increase kickback and reload as you fire more at a time) and also allows you to choose the spread from Riot Gun (Wide spread), Shotgun (Medium spread) and Rifle (Small spread). Then you have the M.U.L.E. with it's 11 options for the hand-held weapon or 5 options if you wish to place/throw it's ammo by hand. There are 7 weapons in total, and with the massive variety of options available to them you will always be finding a better way of taking out that pesky enemy. Oh and one last thing.. no game would be complete without the trusty Sniper Rifle, though this one has been revamped a little and wins points for originality, even if you don't get to put a red dot on an enemy's forehead.

Give Me the News Doc

Did you love Half-Life and/or Opposing Forces and are thinking about getting Gunman? Let me ease your concerns; get it. Using the same game Engine means that movement, graphic quality, controlling and combat are almost identical. It doesn't cost much and has been out for awhile now, It manages to keep par with the above mentioned classics and even add it's own elements. There is also a Multiplayer option of up to 32 players to keep longevity going, and with lightning fast dinosaurs and quick-shooting rebels in one-player, it'll keep your FPS skills honed on a variety of weapons and combat situations. With the majority of games in this Genre now being released aimed at the Multiplayer market, it's nice to see one which aims primarily at single-player. /me sniffles and wipes a tear from eye. It's a beautiful thing :)

Performance

Blessed be the Half-Life engine! Rewolf made a wise choice in using it. This engine is by far the best FPS one out there, the Quake III one might look more realistic and modern, but unless you plan on hooking it up on Nasa's mainframe, you're out of luck playing it on anything higher than 200x150 resolution if you want to keep a frame rate smoother than the 10-page flip book you recently made in an idle half-minute.

Playing Gunman Chronicles on a PIII 700 with 128Mb RAM and a Voodoo 3 PCI on a resolution of 1024x768 in OpenGL mode it ran like a dream. It was destined to. I never experienced any slowdown even on the most demanding areas and would have glady cranked up the resolution another notch if I felt my monitor could handle it.

Minimum System Requirements

• Windows 95/98/2000/ME/NT 4.0
• Pentium 233
• 32Mb RAM
• 4x speed CD-Rom
• 400 Mb Hard Disk Space
• 640x480 SVGA High Colour (16-bit) display
• Gunman Chronicles does not require Half-Life to play

Finally, I've put together a page of screenshots for Gunman Chronicles which can be found here.

If you have any comments or questions about this review or Gunman Chronicles in general, please E-Mail me at reltrethan@hotmail.com.

-Andrew (Starfire21 / Reltrethan)