Spend your time playing something else.
Written: Jan 02 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Some funny (and cheesy) moments of dialogue.
Cons: Can get locked in place in some levels, terrible voice acting, very short game (under 8 hours).
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| JamesWong's Full Review: Gunman Chronicles for Windows |
Gunman Chronicles by Rewolf Software has the strangest mix of artistic elements I've seen this year and is a title that I can best describe as just another game you probably don't want to spend your hard-earned money on.
You play the role of Archer, a gunman (soldier/cowboy hybrid) who returns to a science facility on "Banzure Prime". It was about five years since you'd been there, when you ordered all the gunmen to retreat after being ambushed by aliens known as Xenomes. Though it was assumed that your General died while trying to fight off the Xenomes in his personal attack craft, he didn't. Your order to retreat (and to leave the General behind) is not forgotten, and it's going to haunt you when you return to the planet.
The game has its inspirations from movies such as Jurassic Park and Starship Troopers. You have your hungry dinosaurs and man eating plants in addition to the General's gunmen, who are armed with lasers, rockets or the occasionally lethal machine gun. The places you'll get a chance to romp through, among others, include a science facility, canyon and alien caves. There's nothing quite original (the canyon, for instance, will remind you of Half Life's "escape from the Apache helicopter" scenario) as far as the locations go, though.
Chances are, if you are stuck in this game, just shoot at something remotely significant nearby. It might be a vent near the ceiling, a subtle crack in a cargo crate, or an energy core. There's a good probability that it'll explode and lead you to your next goal. When I usually shot at things, I didn't expect them to trigger events - they did. As with Half Life, you'll want to avoid rather large enemies. I let ePinionator Alkaiser borrow the game, and at one point in time he wanted to kill one of huge bots in the game. "Don't bother", I told him. "Just run from the thing!".
The game tries to set itself apart from other first-person shooters allowing you to 'customize' your weapons. Each weapon has special settings. For instance, the shotgun can be modified to fire 1 to 4 bullets, or your lightning gun can be set to fire a beam or guided "spheres" of energy (naturally, one consumes more energy/ammo than the other). Although this was helpful, I rarely changed settings for most weapons while playing. I usually had most weapons on some sort of rapid fire setting (yes, GC-designers, most of us do like firing as fast as possible when trying to kill an enemy running towards us at mass speed).
Another little extra in the game is the tank. Some levels will let you commandeer a tank and unleash hell. Once you're in you get to run over enemies, blow up houses (watch all the wood fly) and destroy aggressive gun turrets that you wouldn't normally be able to run from if you were on foot. There is hardly a chance that you'll die while in the tank, so it's more of a breather in between the rest of the game. It's too bad it wasn't very challenging though, which makes it feel more like filler material than any real addition to the game as a whole.
Gunman is easily a candidate for the corniest release of the year. Once I found myself trying to kill a few enemies in order to save a scientist's life. When I finally finished them off, the guy looked over to me and said, "Thank you for saving my... Xenome! HAHAHAHA!" and ran off, leaving me to shoot down the monster. It did make for a good laugh.
All the entertaining moments, though, cannot save the game from its many, many flaws.
One of the most unsettling flaws are the textures. Whereas in other games the textures on walls and the ground work well together, the textures in Gunman Chronicles often appear to be completely non-complementary. Rather than appear as a coherent structure, the textures make buildings, mountains and even forests look horrible. You'll be two hours into the game and you'll swear something doesn't look "right".
Not only are the visuals "off", but the sound is pretty haunting too. Most of the non-stock Half Life sound effects are reminiscent of sounds from episodes of the A-Team. Listen to some of the explosions when you launch a rocket and you'll hear what I mean. Other sounds, like spaceships in the intro sequence, sound like they've used the engine noise from those little flying vehicles in "The Jetsons". It's pretty bad.
GC mimics events from Half Life that will make veteran players groan. For instance, after the intro movie passes, you'll find yourself sitting in an elevator listening to recent happenings with Gunman high command while watching various happenings outside a window, much like Half Life's Gordon Freeman in the tram. I think those of us who have played Half Life have already experienced this. It's nostalgic, sure, but it's not very fresh the second time around.
Gunman Chronicles is fun at times, but it's also very short and has one bug that's pretty evil. I was able to complete it in under 8 hours on the 'Medium' difficulty but, in several spots in the game, I found myself stuck, literally (I jumped into a box once to pick up a rocket launcher and I literally could not jump or move out of that box - that's one huge bug, especially if you forget to save or even save in that spot). I'm surprised that Rewolf's or Sierra's playtesters didn't come across these issues and fix them. Even Alkaiser came across it at another portion of the game.
You won't want to spend more than 20 dollars on this title because of its short length and nil replay value. Because it was designed as a single player game, the multiplayer feature turns out to be excess baggage. Online, I noticed maybe ten or so servers running a basic deathmatch on variations of the game's single player levels.
If you really want a good single player experience and you haven't played the Half Life yet, do yourself a favor and buy it. It's definitely a better purchase not only for its single player experience but also because of all the available add-ons you can download online or buy (take the ever so popular Half Life: Counter Strike, for example). Additionally, Monolith's "No One Lives Forever" is also another recent title that I'd wholeheartedly recommend.
I'm really surprised at the good ratings that other people and magazines are giving Gunman Chronicles. It IS a fun game, but it's too short and it's not worth the 40 dollars that most stores are selling it for. Let Gunman Chronicles sit until it's in the bargain bin before even thinking about spending your time with it. You're better off spending your time with other, better and less frustrating first person games.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
JamesWong
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Location: California
Reviews written: 60
Trusted by: 40 members
About Me:
Video/PC gamer, video editor.
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