ECTS: Gunman Chronicles

Gunman Chronicles was first shown last year during Sierra's Half-Life Mod Expo in San Francisco, California. Gunman, which is a standalone single-player game built entirely from the ground up using the Half-Life engine, was easily the most impressive game at the event. What's even more impressive is that the game is being developed by Rewolf Software, a group of game designers from all around the world, most of whom have never actually met in person.

The game takes place in the western spiral of the Milky Way galaxy ten years after Half-Life's turn of events at the Black Mesa Research facility. You assume the role of Gunman, a hero fighting off the same race of aliens that infested the planet Earth five years prior. To help you do so, your arsenal of eight weapons is completely customizable, which allows for up to 32 variations in all. For example, the game's rocket launcher has a wide variety of different settings that affect everything from the rocket's trajectory, to the lock-on speed, to the rate of fire. Gunman Chronicles also has five different vehicles that you can pilot, which include a heavy tank and a sort of gyrocopter.

The development teams at Rewolf and Valve are currently piecing together Gunman Chronicles' levels to form a cohesive single-player campaign that'll span four unique worlds. The level design looks impressive, and seems at least as good as something that would be produced by a professional design team, rather than a group of hobbyists working in their spare time. The levels have a lot of the same sort of scripted sequences that made Half-Life so popular: In one of the earlier levels, your character starts off in a courtyard that breaks apart to give way to lava and hot gases when an earthquake suddenly hits. During another scene, Gunman will find himself under attack by a massive brontosaurus-like creature, which has a similar attack to the tentacle creature in Half-Life.

In addition, Gunman Chronicles will have LAN and Internet multiplayer support for up to 32 players. This is great news for fans of the mod, as nothing beyond a single-player mode was planned when Gunman was originally unveiled last year. Gunman Chronicles will ship as a stand-alone game in early November.