Gunman Chronicles

Rating:
Summary: Half-life...............Half-length
Review: This is a great game and I say that shot time is fine with me, Mostly because all of the ACTION PACKED into one game.........

GUNMAN CHRONICLES!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rating:
Summary: Disappointed
Review: This is definetly a step back for Sierra. This game seemed to have all the annoying parts of half-life plus a few of it's own. Half Life is a great game, but it's engine does have some problems. This game seemed to be incomplete or like corners were cut to get it out for Christmas.

I finished this game in less than a week and I didn't really spend that much time on it.

Rating:
Summary: Way too short, but still well done
Review: This is obviously a mod for Half-Life. But it's a really good one, and i have no problem paying for it. The wierd, flexible weapons they add are really nice. Level design, though linear, is nice. The dinosaur models turned out really nice, although they only appear at the very begining - wish they had been in there more. Driving the tank was pretty cool too. And i even liked the plot.

Still, it hit some of my pet peeves. i despise annoyance monsters, the ones with only one hit point that serve only to waste ammo. i don't mind that the game was pretty short (not Hitman short, but still pretty short).

Rating:
Summary: Go away, Half-Life wannabe.
Review: This, simply put, is a COMPLETE RIP-OFF. The engine is of course Half-Life's, and "Gunman" does very little to modify the original product. Same sounds. Same coding. Nothing new here. The level design is some of the most basic i've ever seen since the original Nintendo came out, the AI (artificial intelligence) is so buggy i could literally stand and shoot an ememy wthout the slightest of stealth, and they still wouldn't act as if i'm there (and this is on the "HARD" setting). How could such a bad game be published by Sierra? There's PLENTY of modifications better than this on the web for free, and they actually are fun to play (Wasteland HL, for example)! In other words, this is a game that some kids in their basement made and tried to sell. I could make better maps and models than thoughs featured in this game (and in some instances, I have). The texturing is awfull, at least compared to Half-Life's. The sound, as mentioned before, is mainly just the original recordings. The character animation is cartoonish, with the plot going along the same line.

Your probably wondering about my system specs, right? Well, I can promise you that I wouldn't rate this game down based upon some crappy 3D card. Throughout the whole game I played it on a Geforce 2 Ultra on a resolution of 1024 by 768.

The controls are weak compared to HL's, and are very annoying. In "Gunman," each weapon has a secondary, or perhaps more, fireing option. To activate each one, you must go through a serious of buttons to push, which may seem like alot when your being crowded by a bunch of enemies.

OVERALL: Do not buy this game. It is very buggy, and should have had a patched released by now. And besides, theres more heavily modified games on the web for free (... should have a number of links to them). The story line is humorously cartoonish, and not at all original. The characters are unbelievable. The sound is the same. This should have stayed on the web.

Rating:
Summary: Gunman
Review: To start off, the game uses the Half-Life engine and the HL AI. Which is not a bad thing since HL put the gaming community on it's ear a few years back, with it's great game. So pretty much this is HL just with different story and setting, like I said that is the good thing. There are some points about the game that no one else has pointed out. The biggest to me is the game is just to short. HL took me 3 weeks to complete, Gunman 8 hours. This has happened to me twice now with add ons to HL, and that is pretty much what Gunman is, an add on. The other problem with the game is a texture problem. This does not affect the game, but do expect a patch in the near future. The last complaint is the fact that the story seems a little weak. You really never get to know who you are in the game, or who the Gunman really are. Once again this does not affect the game play, but does affect the way you feel about the character. What I did like about the game was the gun layout. You have a good array of weapons that can be configured to your liking. This is a good idea because of the fact of only being able to carry so many things. This way your laser gun can become a sniper riffle with the right model add on. Now you can use the right weapon for the right job and do it on the fly with just the click of the mouse. I also like the fact of being able to drive a tank from time to time in the game. This gives you a nice brake from running and shooting all the time. Okay so I gave it 3 stars, will mostly because it was so short. I do not like the thought of game companies throwing a few levels into a game and just not taking the time to make a fun experience, just to make money. If you have not played Half Life, GO now and buy it and see for yourself what Gunman should have been. Also if you want a great game try Deus Ex, loads and loads of fun and game play there.

Rating:
Summary: More is Needed
Review: Watching the opening movie to Gunman Chronicles makes it out to seem very impressive. Unfortunately, I found the game to be somewhat too easy. I have been gaming for some time now and even on the hard setting I felt unchallenged. Of the four levels you encounter the first and third were too short and predictable. I also felt I was playing Half Life only with new characters and a slightly different plot. If however you are new to gaming, I recommend this game. You will find yourself well challenged and spending many hours investagating four worlds all with their own characteristics.

Rating:
Summary: Worth buying cheap
Review: When I won a copy of this game (along with some others) in a Sierra contest, I had never heard of it, and I didn't know what it meant to be a "Half-Life mod." I had never even played a first-person shooter before --- not Doom, not Quake, not Half-Life (I play mostly strategy and adventure games). So when I started playing, I was delighted: I loved the way that the story and the in-game tutorial were smoothly integrated into one continuous narrative, and the way different factions of bad guys would fight around me as I snuck through the different locations, and the way the different weapons could be applied to different situations. When I looked the game up here on Amazon[.com], I wondered what all these Half-Life fans could possibly be complaining about. I played the game through twice (the second time set to "difficult").

But now I've played Half-Life myself, and I'm here to tell you that the preceding reviewers are correct: this is a thin repackaging of the truly great original game. All the little details that wowed me in Gunman --- glimpsing the archvillain from a distance and not being able to reach him, having to get giant machines working in order to blast an invulnerable creature, listening in on enemy radio transmissions --- are simpler, clumsier versions of events in Half-Life, and, compared with Half-Life's creepy uncertainty, the atmosphere of Gunman is like a bad cartoon. I'm glad I played Gunman first, because I wouldn't have enjoyed it much otherwise. All it really adds is configurable weapons, exploding heads (which I don't think is much of an enhancement), and one alien that turns itself invisible.

Multiplayer is pretty fun: simple deathmatch, but with well-designed maps and the chance to set that rocket launcher to "spiral." But unless Gunman is on sale, I'd cut straight to Half-Life and its more closely-related mods if I were you.

Rating:
Summary: Half Life, in another form - but not as good!
Review: When this game was first introduced by ReWolf Software, I admit I was excited about the possibilities this game possessed. When Valve took over the project, I pretty much lost any interest in the game. I was really hoping that the game would actually be in the Half Life universe, rather than only using the antiquated graphics engine. Sadly, I was incorrect. The unfortunate part of the game is...well, the game. Turok was bad enough on the N64. Why would I want to play it on the PC? If the game was still offered as a free download like several other Half Life modifications (Team Fortress Classic, Front Line Force, etc.), I would have given the game a higher rating. Otherwise, the game is not worth the $30. And that is my two cents.

Rating:
Summary: Download the demo version first.
Review: While extremely impressive as a user-made modification using the Half-Life engine, Gunman Chronicles falls short as a retail game. As I've made countless attempts in the past to make my own modifications and conversions for games like Half-Life and Quake 2, I appreciate (perhaps sympathize with) the huge amount of work (maps, textures, models, skins, sounds, programming) that goes into a game like this. For this reason, as I played through the demo, I found myself quick to forgive the authors for things in the game I found to be confusing, annoying, or simply of poor quality. Then I remembered that someone actually wanted money for it, and I felt somewhat insulted.

For a commercial product sharing store shelves with great games like Half-life and System Shock 2, Gunman doesn't really come up to par. The game is not nearly as visually pleasing as Half-Life. In fact, sometimes it's borderline ugly. I decided this was partially due to weird architecture (the space station you start in looks like something from a bad sci-fi movie), but mostly because of the grainy-looking wall textures. The configurable weapons were a nice idea, but instead of simply having a few different fire modes the player could cycle through with a single key, the guns use a menu system that's difficlt to navigate and becomes frustrating, especially when you're getting shot because of it. As far as the actual gameplay, I felt bored many times when nothing was happenning and frustrated other times when too much was going on at once. Also, it often seemed unclear where to go and what to do in many areas of the game. I found myself wandering around in circles for ten minutes at a time before I'd realize there was some lever I was supposed to pull or a button I was supposed to press. Oh yeah, and the voice acting is terrible to the point of having a nails-on-chalkboard effect.

I'm not saying this is a horrible game and that you shouldn't at least try it, because you should (especially if you really liked Half-Life single player). The configurable weapons are fun to mess around with and it is, after all, the Half-Life engine. It's definitely worth downloading the demo, but if I had extra cash to spare, I'd spend it on a different game.

Rating:
Summary: The hottest first person shooter game I've ever played!!
Review: Wow! This is a wholly original super fun game. The weapons are awesome and totally progammable. There's even a programmable tank you get to drive on one of the levels. The enemies run the gauntlet from human snipers to robotic monsters to dinosaurs and more. Though it it utilizes the Half-Life architecture, it is not a exactly the sequel to Half-Life but it's own game, with it's own awesome worlds at the far end of the galaxy. Graphics are great, fully realistic. Though it has a story line, it does not get in the way of the non-stop awesome action.