There is something wonderfully satisfying about a game that understands exactly why people love action movies. You know the type. The hero walks through a doorway, draws a pistol, drops three bad guys before they have time to react, calmly reloads, then casually reaches for a shotgun because things are about to get considerably messier. Gunman Contracts: Stand Alone takes that fantasy and, rather brilliantly, puts the weapons in your hands.
Created by solo developer ANB_Seth, the developer behind the popular Half-Life: Alyx mods Gunman Contracts: Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, this standalone adventure expands those ideas into a much larger experience. Available for both VR and non-VR players, the game puts you in the role of the Gunman, a professional operative working for a mysterious order that dispenses its own particular brand of justice. Your latest contracts involve The Collectors, a ruthless criminal organisation responsible for killing and kidnapping innocent people. Finding out why they are doing it means fighting your way through a series of increasingly dangerous locations.
This is not a game interested in making you feel like an ordinary soldier. It wants you to feel like the action hero who has somehow wandered into the best gunfight of his life.
Welcome To The Contract
The story begins with a wonderfully simple premise. A mysterious criminal organisation is at work, innocent people are disappearing, and someone is willing to take on the job of finding out what is happening. From a safehouse on the outskirts of the city to a syndicate-controlled warehouse district and eventually a mob-run restaurant hiding something considerably darker beneath its surface, the campaign has the ingredients for a proper crime thriller.
There are three connected story contracts available at launch, with three more planned via free updates. That means the current campaign is relatively compact, particularly if you are expecting a lengthy single-player adventure, but there is something refreshing about its focus. Gunman Contracts: Stand Alone does not spend hours wandering around trying to convince you that its world is important. It gets you into the action and gives you a target. And frankly, sometimes that is all you need.
The Joy Of Holding A Gun
The real star of the show is, unsurprisingly, the weapon handling. In VR, Gunman Contracts: Stand Alone makes shooting feel wonderfully physical. Reloading is not simply a button press, because magazines need to be physically ejected and replaced, pistol slides need to be racked, and shotguns require you to manually work through the reload process.
That might sound like a small distinction, but it completely changes how you approach a firefight. When you run dry in the middle of a battle, you cannot simply tap a button and wait for an animation. Your hands have to do the work, and doing that while enemies are shooting at you creates wonderfully frantic moments.
There is also a satisfying weight to the weapons themselves. Pistols, shotguns, submachine guns and assault rifles all have their own character, while aiming down sights and using two-handed stabilisation make lining up a shot feel considerably more involved than simply pointing a controller at an enemy.
It is the sort of gunplay where you start paying attention to your reloads because you genuinely do not want to discover that you have forgotten to chamber the next round while somebody is charging through the door.
Welcome To The Hive
Between contracts, the Gunman’s home base, known as The Hive, provides a place to prepare for the next job. It is more than a simple menu dressed up as an environment, with a surprising number of things to do.
There is a gun range where you can practise your aim, speed-shooting challenges to test your reactions, pop-up targets, and a holographic combat area that lets you practise dealing with enemies. It is a useful addition because the game’s physical weapon mechanics benefit from practice, particularly when you are trying to become faster and more accurate.
Then there is the gun wall. With more than 18 weapons to unlock, the gun wall gives the whole experience a lovely sense of progression. You can admire the collection you have built, choose what you want to take into the next contract, and then head over to the gun bench to make your weapons feel a little more personal.
Being able to customise weapon skins and even modify gun sounds adds another layer of personality. It is not simply about becoming more powerful. There is something inherently satisfying about creating a loadout that feels like your own.
Room By Room
Combat is at its best when you are moving through enclosed environments and clearing rooms. There is a pleasing rhythm to approaching a doorway, checking the angle, peeking around a corner, and deciding whether to enter quickly or take a moment to assess the situation.
Then everything goes wrong. An alarm sounds, enemies appear, and suddenly that careful plan turns into frantic gunplay. The game’s action-movie inspiration becomes obvious here, particularly when you find yourself moving between cover, firing from awkward positions, and switching weapons as enemies close in.
The melee interactions also help sell the fantasy. There is something wonderfully cathartic about getting up close and personal when an enemy slips through your defensive position. The game understands that this is supposed to feel exciting rather than methodical, and the pace of the firefights reflects that.
Choose Your Arsenal
The range of weapons gives you plenty of opportunities to experiment. Different situations naturally call for different approaches, and access to silenced weapons, shotguns, automatic weapons and other specialised equipment means you can build a loadout that suits your preferred style.
The compound bow and knives are particularly welcome additions because they offer an alternative to simply bringing the loudest weapon available. Sometimes there is something satisfying about quietly dealing with a target before the rest of the room realises anything has happened.
Of course, there will also be moments when subtlety goes completely out of the window. When the shooting starts, Gunman Contracts: Stand Alone is perfectly happy to let you embrace the chaos.
Takedown
Once you have completed the story content, the challenge modes give you a reason to keep coming back. Takedown Mode lets you select enemy types and numbers before attempting to clear an area, creating a more customisable combat playground.
It is a simple idea, but it works particularly well because the shooting mechanics are enjoyable enough to stand on their own. You can increase the pressure, experiment with different weapons, and see how efficiently you can clear the area.
Steam leaderboards for contracts, challenges and skill games add another reason to chase better scores. There is a definite arcade quality here, where completing a mission is only the beginning and improving your performance becomes the real challenge.
Last Stand
Last Stand Mode takes that idea even further by throwing waves of enemies at you while also giving you bombs to disarm. It is a wonderfully straightforward test of how well you have learned the game’s mechanics.
The pressure gradually builds as more enemies arrive and the safe spaces around you become harder to hold. Suddenly, weapon choice, positioning and reload speed become crucial. A weapon that felt perfectly comfortable during a controlled story encounter can feel very different when you are surrounded and desperately trying to reload.
It is the kind of mode where you tell yourself you will have one more attempt, only to look at the clock considerably later and realise you have been trying to beat your previous score for far longer than intended.
Making The Action Look Good
Visually, Gunman Contracts: Stand Alone goes for a suitably dark crime-thriller atmosphere. The environments have a gritty quality that suits the subject matter, from industrial locations and warehouses to underground criminal hideouts.
The lighting also works well during combat. Muzzle flashes illuminate dark rooms, smoke hangs in the air, and the contrast between bright weapon fire and shadowy environments gives the firefights a cinematic quality. It is not trying to compete with every huge-budget blockbuster visually, but it understands the aesthetic it is aiming for.
The sound design deserves plenty of credit too. Weapons have a satisfying punch, spent casings hitting the floor provide those little tactile details that VR shooters benefit from, and the soundtrack helps maintain the feeling that you are starring in your own ridiculously violent action movie.
Early Access, Early Days
The biggest caveat is the Early Access status. With three story missions available at launch and another three planned as free updates, there is clearly more to come. That means anyone buying in now needs to accept that the experience is not yet the finished article.
The shorter campaign can also leave you wanting more, particularly once you have become comfortable with the excellent gunplay. There is a risk that the shooting becomes the main attraction while the narrative takes a supporting role, but that is not necessarily a bad thing.
The important thing is that the foundations are extremely solid. If the additional contracts maintain the quality of the existing missions, there is plenty of reason to be optimistic about where the game can go.
A Proper Action Movie In VR
What makes Gunman Contracts: Stand Alone work so well is that it understands the fantasy at its core. This is not really about being the most realistic soldier in a battlefield simulation. It is about feeling like the coolest person in the room when the doors burst open and the shooting starts.
The physical interaction makes that fantasy considerably more convincing. Manually reloading a pistol, leaning around a corner, switching weapons and scrambling for cover create a sense of involvement that traditional shooters simply cannot replicate in quite the same way.
There are moments when the action becomes almost ridiculously entertaining, and those are exactly the moments I suspect players will remember. You finish a firefight, look around at the spent ammunition scattered across the floor and think, “That was bloody brilliant.”
Final Verdict
Gunman Contracts: Stand Alone is a hugely enjoyable action shooter that makes a strong case for tactile, physical gunplay. The three launch contracts offer a compact yet entertaining campaign, while The Hive, the weapon collection, customisation, and Takedown and Last Stand modes give you plenty to do once the main story is complete.
Its Early Access status means there is still considerable room for the game to grow, and the relatively short campaign may leave some players hungry for more. Yet the core experience is already remarkably enjoyable. The weapons feel great, combat has a wonderfully frantic rhythm, and the combination of manual interaction, room clearing and cinematic presentation captures the feeling of an action movie better than many games that have tried to do the same.
For VR players in particular, there is something special about physically reaching for a fresh magazine while an enemy is bearing down on you, or leaning around a doorway before stepping into a room full of targets. Gunman Contracts: Stand Alone takes those little moments and turns them into the reason you keep coming back.
It is loud, violent, occasionally gloriously ridiculous and thoroughly entertaining. More contracts will undoubtedly make the package stronger, but even in Early Access, the Gunman already has a very good job.
