Star Wars: Bounty Hunter – Jango’s Adventures

Star Wars: Bounty Hunter is a remaster of an old PlayStation 2 game, which I did not play back in the day. This means that my review will be purely based on my experience with the remaster on PC. My first impressions is that this a damn fun game that makes you feel like one of the legendary bounty hunters from the Star Wars universe. However, as with almost every game, fun is only allowed in small quantities mandated by publishers and probably the state. Jokes aside. While Star Wars: Bounty Hunter begins excellently, it starts to show some serious cracks in its design after a few hours of gaming, disappointingly enough that it affects the whole feel of the game in retrospect.

Jango Fett
You play as Jango in a setting that takes place before the second movie in the prequel trilogy. Jango is offered a bounty of a lifetime; five million credits for taking out the leader of the cult/crime syndicate Bando Gora. The mission is offered by Darth Tyranus (Count Dooku) himself with the intervention of good old Palpatine. I found it amusing that a crime organization can be such a pain in the side that it forces the Sith themselves to hire outside help.

Star Wars: Bounty Hunter starts rather small with small-time criminals that need busting, which eventually leads to bigger fish to fry and a deeper trail into the Bando Gora conspiracy. Now, I wouldn’t say the plot was overly interesting, but it explains a few curious aspects of Jango before his demise to Jedi Master Mace Windu. You for example get to know how he got his ship Slave I, and how he became friends with the assassin/bounty hunter Zam Wesell and how she got her cool sniper rifle. Unfortunately, he had to murder her/it in Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones when she failed her mission. It makes their fledgling relationship somewhat bittersweet. From what I read, he had some regret for doing so. Yet, it still comes off as callus, seeing how easily he wastes her in the movie. But I guess that’s mercenary life.

What is cool about Star Wars: Bounty Hunter is the planet hopping, as each boss you need to capture is on a separate planet. You will get to visit Coruscant, both the nicer neighborhoods in the sky, and the dirty cyberpunk-esque criminal infested planetside slums. There was only one planet I disliked, out of aesthetic viewpoint, and frankly, I’m dead tired of that planet and that is Tatooine. Is it mandatory to have that planet in your Star Wars game, or something? Overall, the story was okay. I wouldn’t say it was anything special, but from what the game set out to do, it does.

Dual-wielding blasting
In the beginning of Star Wars: Bounty Hunter, you truly get to feel like a bounty hunter gameplay wise. Sure, you will be blasting a lot of aliens in the face right off the bat, but it’s not as extreme as the middle and the later parts of the game. The somewhat restrained gameplay at the start, and that you actually have areas filled with civilians to scan and check, is great and makes it feel authentic to being a man looking out for criminal scum to capture and credits to earn. It also has small pauses of contemplation, before the chaotic shooting segments starts. However, that is all ditched in the middle. From here on you will be gunning down hundreds of enemies, with it getting worse and worse, until you hit the crescendo in the final two missions where you have literal zombie hordes coming after you to rip your limbs out.

It’s not impossible to overcome in any way, but it becomes very repetitive and a bit silly, since hundreds will lay dead at your feet when each mission is completed. It makes me wonder how Jango even got his head cut off by the slow moving Mace Windu when he dodges attacks like that for breakfast in the game. Another issue with the enemies, which comes into play when they attack by the tens or more, is that they are fairly tanky. Each mook requires plenty of laser shots to go down, so you can imagine how much you have to click when you are constantly attacked by crowds of lunatics hellbent on sacrificing themselves in the hope of dragging you with them into their doom.

You do get other weapons besides the pistol blasters, as being a bounty hunter comes with certain perks. You have a flamethrower, a rocket launcher and grenades. And while these weapons are good at melting ugly aliens, it’s incredibly slow to switch weapons, since you have to go through them all each time. In combination with the hectic gameplay, it makes it much easier just to keep blasting forever with your pistols than to ever try anything else. The only times I switched out my blasters for something else, was when the game required me to do so, like when facing off with a boss. Once in a while, you get to pick up a special weapon, like a blaster rifle. Sadly, these only last as far as the magazine allows for. I probably spent 90% of my time in the game shooting with the twin blasters, which is not that good for variety, or mental sanity.

Bounty hunting
Another aspect of Star Wars: Bounty Hunter that suffers thanks to endless hordes that want your head on a vibroblade, is the bounty hunting. In the beginning, you can scan random citizens to see if they have a bounty on their head, and thereafter mark and capture them, either dead or alive. The first issue is, as said (many times now), the amount of enemies in the final parts. It just sucked the fun out of bounty hunting, as more and more enemies attack you, the fewer civilians there will be for you to scan to pretend to be a bounty hunter, and not a killer or worlds. After a while, I just didn’t care anymore, and mowed them all down like a crazed maniac tired of all the idiots standing in my way. At the start, I genuinely tried to show restraint and not to kill innocents. I would have preferred if the feeling lasted throughout instead.

The second issue is that the bounty hunter means absolutely nothing beyond score points, and who cares about that in a game like this? From a narrative perspective, it makes no sense either. Why bother capturing a guy that gives you a few thousand credits, when you are on a mission that pays out five million? At first, I thought the money would be used for upgrades, and I made sure I took as many bounties as I could alive, since it paid more. When I later learned it meant nothing, and it had no in-game purpose besides points, it made me disappointed. Talk about a major missed opportunity in game design here.

Jetpack fun
If there is something that does not disappoint, it’s the platforming, and the general map design where you are required to use your jetpack to get around. The only sticky magnet feeling (that is common in modern platforming games nowadays) of the platforming is that Jango grabs the ledge of a platform if you get close enough. Otherwise, the platforming is all up to your skill. The jetpack only got so much fuel, so it won’t carry you very far. Thankfully, it refuels automatically after use. But this means you have to time your jumps very carefully, or you might find yourself in a bad spot over a thousand-meter deep crevasse. One slip, and say goodbye to a continue credit. Yes, Star Wars: Bounty Hunter has no save state during missions. You get five continues, and if you spend those continues, you will have to restart the whole mission. Pretty brutal, as some missions can get pretty nasty before you have learned the jumps, and encounters.

Even so, this feature of Star Wars: Bounty Hunter is the absolute best part, giving me great joy navigating the factories or whatever else is presented in front of you. The map design is not entirely realistic, but it’s not overly abstracted to take you out of the game. In general, the structures make sense in a way. What makes the maps cool is the focus on the vertical, showing you vast areas to climb, and pits of doom to avoid. Not to forget, you will have to fight during these segments as well, which adds additional excitement to the platforming. Shooting a guy in the face to make him trip over the edge to fall into an endless hole of darkness and misery never gets old. Sometimes, when the bad guys get particularly eager to kill you, they fall off themselves. Making your life a little easier, while providing some humor to the battles. That’s henchmen dedication!

Looking like Star Wars
Star Wars: Bounty Hunter is a few years old now, so things do not look up to scratch compared to modern titles, even for being a remaster. Still, it looks fine, and very Star Wars. The environments are also pretty large, and diverse. Some planets come off as a bit drab, though, like the swamp area and the dreaded eternal sand planet of Tatooine – that I hope someone in the Sith obliterates from the galaxy soon. The interior areas are stand-out, and it feels the most Star Wars.

Sound and music is also Star Wars, and is of high quality, but what makes the game “sound-wise” is that Temuera Morrison once again returns to voice Jango. His voice is badass, and fits that character, and the clone troopers like a glove. It’s just legendary.

Conclusion
In the beginning, I thought Star Wars: Bounty Hunter was going to be a pleasure ride all the way through. Sadly, the game gets very samey and tedious the further you get by increasing the difficulty in all the wrong ways by spamming health bloated enemies. Beyond the blasting, and platforming, it has little going for it. The game is missing even basic progression, which makes a huge feature of it (bounty hunting) feel utterly pointless. Even so, some parts of Star Wars: Bounty Hunter were great fun, like the platforming. I wouldn’t recommend buying the game for full price (20 euros as of now), but if you can get it cheaper in the future, it does have enough fun in it for a Sunday afternoon. Especially if you like Star Wars.

Thanks for reading.

/Thomas