Gunman Chronicles started life as a Half-Life mod, but impressed Valve & Sierra so much it became a full retail game. The international group of modders behind it formed a studio, Rewolf, just for this singular release.
Gunman Chronicles is an interesting mix but the end result is flavorful. The game takes you through levels with a variety of themes, including ancient mayan buildings, Jupiter's moons, space bases, and earthly canyons. The opponents are also a mish mash of ingredients; space cowboys, soldiers, aliens, robots, even dinosaurs.
The game doesn't have a special story, but it is structured and paced well enough to keep me engaged. There are elements like a reluctant hero, humans exploring space, revenge, a rogue AI realizing itself, and an ending that sets up for what could have been an interesting series.
The game's most interesting element would be the weapon system. The game gives you a few guns and a few ammo types, but each gun has modes that can be customized. In some cases, this just allows switching between a bunch of firing modes, explosion types, or a scope. But in other cases you can customize how many shells you shoot, trajectories, damage, activation mode for projectiles, and more. It makes for some interesting moments in the game.
Since the game is based on a Half-Life engine build before Steam existed, it can feel a bit unrefined in places since it did not receive the updates that Half-Life and related games received. The difference is minor though, I guess it's something I notice because of the long time I've been around. And this game definitely has the best ladders/climbing mechanics thus far! Quake 2 and HL came before, Red Faction came later, all of them had awkward climbing.
Apart from some environmental puzzles, the game has interesting moments during gameplay, adding to some of the hectic moments and the chase of the antagonist, making you feel so close yet so far. The game also has elements derivative of Half-Life like: small aliens that jump and bite you, enemies that shoot current, wall panels that recharge health, but they feel like they belong here. There's even a cliffside combat sequence with a helicopter.
The game doesn't overstay it's welcome and maintains a good pace, and it might not be a great game but I definitely came out of my playthrough with a feeling of time well spent. If you're looking for an FPS and are open to something old, I can recommend Gunman Chronicles. Nowadays it might be difficult to
... keep reading on reddit ➡Does anyone remember playing this? It started as a Half Life mod, I think, but got a full, independent release. I remember picking it up on disc on a whim and I hugely enjoyed it. Easily as good as the main Half Life expansions, and full of far more personality. The setting is equal parts space opera and wild west, which I know sounds weird, but it worked really well. It had some great characters, including a mad Ahab-like former leader of the Gunmen obsessed with the alien super-worm that destroyed his platoon in the backstory, and an AI who was clearly a very strong influence on the writing for Glaados a decade later, but is in my opinion much more fun. The story goes through some real rollercoaster loops.
The weapons were really well designed, with all of them having multiple different settings that result in an array of different effects, like a chemical gun that has three different inputs, and tweaking the values could convert it from a caustic spraygun to a slow-fuse grenade launcher.
There was even a tank level where you charge through a canyon taking on enemies that attack from all directions.
It's not on Steam and it might never get a modern release, but damn, I would like to play that game again. I did some googling and someone on Reddit shared a link to a version that works as a HL mod - it's not quite a legitimate link but the company who made it don't exist any more.
I never see anyone talking about this game, which is surreal, because it made a huge impression on me.
I know it won’t work as-is because it has too many modifications, but it would be really cool to get this running on the Quest. It has a xash3D port, so maybeee it wouldn’t be too difficult. Is this something you’ve considered or scoped out, /u/DrBeef_ldn?
Can we just get a little praise for this more obscure Half-Life game? I remember playing it a ton after I beat Half-Life 1, the guns were so cool! That is all.
(HL1,TF,CS,etc) Have they stopped doing that?
Drakan was an old school action rpg type of game. You're a girl who fights with swords and flies dragons. Weopons break just like Breath of the Wild, yet you find weapons on dead enemies. The enemy design was amazing.
Gunman Chronicles was an FPS built in the half life 1 engine. It's basically cowboys vs. dinosaurs and aliens in a crazy sort of techno outer spacey universe. I remember there was this tank section of the game that blew my mind back in the day.
