Recently, I was struck by an overwhelming urge to play Gunman Chronicles, the 2000 FPS developed by Valve and Rewolf Software. There was no real trigger for it—this sort of thing happens when you're nearing 40 and grew up on a diet of nineties' shooters. But if I had to identify the origin of this yearning, it would be dinosaurs.
Gunman Chronicles is an ambitious shooter, a gunslinging sci-fi adventure that transports you to a variety of locations and features programmable weapons—a fairly unique gimmick 25 years on. But my favourite thing about it are the dinosaurs. Appearing early in the game, Gunman's terrible lizards have this wonderful, plasticine look that could have come straight from the workshop of Ray Harryhausen. Also, when you shoot the velociraptors with a shotgun, their heads occasionally explode, and exploding heads of any kind will always endear a game to me.
