I am playing on normal difficulty and wonder if its possible to thin out the herds from ranged with guns, and then hit em with melee, or do I have to completely commit to one or the other to be successful?

Gun&Melee, that's what I do in VH1, and I could finish the game.
I guess you can no longer play as you like in the next games, as they divided the classes.

Playing VH1 - glad to hear that. I assume there is no room for magic then?

Very few, IIRC, in the end I had raised 2 spells at level 5 (on the 10): Healing and Protection.