I never liked STAR WARS™. To me, it was always played out and overexposed corporate-approved junk. Most of the games were generic movie tie-in fodder. Once in a while, there was something that stood out, like some of the Rogue One games on Gamecube. For me, I have nostalgic memories of Shadows of the Empire on Nintendo 64. Back in the day, it was the definitive third-person shooter that also happened to have vehicle sections.
Eventually, George Lucas drained the potential of his original trilogy media. Throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, he released the STAR WARS™ prequels. By the time Episode II was released, Lucas had the foresight to introduce midquel media in the form of comics and video games. Since Boba Fett was so popular in the original trilogy, George cunningly reverse-engineered the character into the canon by introducing his genetic parent.
Taking place before Episode II, STAR WARS™: Bounty Hunter™ is an action game following the exploits of a space bounty hunter who is elected to be cloned for a clone army. This game was originally released in 2002 on sixth-gen consoles, and Aspyr has taken steps to polish it up to modern standards. Considered a rough and tough game in 2002 due to its control scheme, it is a miracle Aspry is taking a chance on it. Can STAR WARS™ be cool? Find out in our STAR WARS™: Bounty Hunter™ review!
STAR WARS™: Bounty Hunter™
Developer: LucasArts, Aspyr
Publisher: Aspyr, Disney Interactive Studios, Sony Interactive Entertainment
Platforms: Windows PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Gamecube, Nintendo Switch PlayStation 2, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 (reviewed)
Release Date: July 1, 2024 / November 17, 2016 / November 19, 2002
Price: $19.99
The only STAR WARS™ product I admire is the 1977 film. George Lucas busted his ass making it and the result is a charmingly scrappy and sleazy 70s movie full of weird monsters and robots, with a simple, yet effective story. The setting was filthy and there was a palpable sense of personal danger. It was a gritty 70s movie where characters got brutally killed and there was a sense that a monster might rip off your face. It was quaint, but that made people connect with it so long ago.
The prequels are overproduced, glossy, and designed to sell junk to kids, so it is shocking that STAR WARS™: Bounty Hunter™ feels a lot more in line with the risky, yet scrappy original movie. Jango is a merciless bounty hunter who is trying to get by in the galaxy. Apart from getting to the next week, he has no goals, and his day job has him doing risky assignments.
Jango gets contacted by Tyranus, an evil Jedi who works for a guy who looks like death and is working to build an army for an uprising that occurs in Episode II: Attack of the Clones. Tyranus makes Jango an offer he can’t refuse and he sets out to assassinate Vosa. His only lead is a drug dealer who might know someone connected to Vosa.
It turns out Vosa is affiliated with a creepy drug cult. Jango quickly realizes that there’s more to this job than meets the eye and that he wasn’t the only bounty hunter assigned to kill Vosa. Montross, a vicious and brutal bounty hunter with a grudge against Jango, enters the scene, and their story unfolds like a Sam Peckinpah western.
The story is impressively epic where the cast travels to multiple locations, backs get stabbed, people get stranded, great escapes, and characters die. Pre-rendered cutscenes are cinematic and have the thoughtful framing and editing one would hope for from a game studio founded by George Lucas. They may not look like much today, but LucasArts in the 2000s was the cutting-edge in CGI and it’s hard not to appreciate what they were able to do with the limitations at the time.
Jango leads a brutal life full of shoot-outs through bizarre industrial alien settings, and he will have to jet-pack his way through lengthy levels. The original release of Bounty Hunter came out before third-person shooters figured out a standard control scheme. It had a very unconventional layout, making it more frustrating to play than necessary.
Thankfully, Aspyr took the time to have Jango’s playability modified to human sensibilities. The original control scheme is still available, but after a few seconds of using the new layout, there will be no going back. The right analog stick moves the camera like every third-person game today, and firing weapons is mapped to the right trigger instead of the face buttons. Other noticeable tweaks are the aiming mode no longer locks Jango’s feet to the floor; players are free to free-aim and move like a first-person shooter.
Jango has quick access to his tools like his lasso and flame-thrower, but the cycling does feel a bit slow. It would have been preferable if some of the tools and weapons could be mapped to the face buttons or L3 or R3. It is especially questionable that Jango has to cycle to his bare hands to punch when it should have been a quick action mapped to pressing in the right stick or pressing square.
The lock-on targeting system is a bit unreliable since it also swings the camera behind Jango. When facing a swarm of thuggish alien guys with guns you need to be able to start blasting foes while staying mobile while standing on rafters above a bottomless pit, expect to change targets quickly. The problem is the lock-on rarely ever targets the foes that you intend and Jango ends up taking a lot of unfair sucker-punches while trying to get his bearings.
The most questionable feature that persists from the original game is how Jango collects bounties. While exploring and getting into gun battles, there will be enemies or harmless NPCs who might have a bounty on their heads. Jango will have to first scan for targets and mark them before he can collect them, dead or alive.
The problem is that Jango has to use his scanner to mark his targets first. He can’t incapacitate them nonlethally or kill them before scanning, or else that bounty is lost, which makes no sense. Another issue is that scanning requires players to fumble through the inventory screen to equip the scanner and this can often happen during a shoot-out while getting rushed by a gang of aliens or vicious monsters.
The final problem with bounty hunting is that there is no incentive to go through the effort to collect them. The reward is money that Jango cannot spend on anything. All bounty money is for unlocking concept art in the extras. There is no upgrading Jango’s jetpack fuel capacity or no fire rate increase, the only unlockable STAR WARS™ nerds will care about is the green armor you get for beating the game which is restored content that the original release was meant to get.
Anyone who wants to go for the bounties will find that it does paint the STAR WARS™ world differently than how Disney depicts it. Jango’s optional quest does sometimes have bounties that are worth more dead and Jango is armed to the teeth with many ways to kill and it feels in-character.
There is an impressive amount of detail in this 2002 game. Jango can tie up innocent people and set them on fire and they will roast like pork in an oven. In the aiming mode, Jango can shoot the guns out of the hands of his enemies which causes them to flee in terror and the game expects players to relish the brutal revenge as it is very easy to punch guys to death because Jango has a right hook that hits like an 18-wheeler.
STAR WARS™: Bounty Hunter™’s graphics are still the same as they were in 2002, but presented in HD. Thankfully, Bounty Hunter™’s art style leaned heavily on gross-looking monsters for a majority of the cast and most human-like characters are masked or are hyper expressive, like the indomitable Montross, played by the always entertaining Clancy Brown.
By today’s standards, the models are simplistic, but there is enough style and creativity that make this game a cult classic for a reason. Some graphical enhancements are mostly applied to some new textures that look more detailed than anything else in the game. Jango’s armor is also impressively shiny and reflective now and laser shots light up areas in a believable way.
The lighting can look a bit flat like it did back in 2002. Dark areas are abnormally evenly lit. It would have been nice if this port took the shadows further and gave Jango’s newly added headlamp some utility. Some of the sound quality does sound a bit light, but the most egregious issue is the way voice comms are tied to the PlayStation 5’s controller speaker and there is no way to disable it.
STAR WARS™: Bounty Hunter™ won’t change my mind that STAR WARS™ is lame. As much as I admire Bounty Hunter™, the time for it has long gone when Disney acquired the brand. There will never be another STAR WARS™ game like Bounty Hunter™ ever again. It came out at a special time in the industry. This is the edgiest and coolest that STAR WARS™ has ever been and could pass for an M-rated game if you squint.
I like STAR WARS™: Bounty Hunter™ because it felt like a successor to Nintendo 64’s Shadows of the Empire; a similarly gritty, hardcore third-person action game. There is a focus on challenging scenarios and instances of exploration where Jango has to make full use of his jetpack while fighting fun and gimmicky bosses. It helped that the entire cast of characters were all greedy and untrustworthy killers who would fit in a 1970s western.
STAR WARS™: Bounty Hunter™ was never a great game and while this new port does address many of its issues, it still isn’t the best it could be. Despite its flaws, this is still a very enjoyable action game and a lot of that has to do with its sensibilities being tied to the early 2000s when games could let players indulge in their inner sadist and didn’t morally grandstand about their actions. STAR WARS™ might be lame and gay today, but Bounty Hunter™ will always be the cool edgy kid that smoked behind the school.
STAR WARS™: Bounty Hunter™ was reviewed on a PlayStation 5 using a code provided by Aspyr. You can find additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy here. STAR WARS™: Bounty Hunter™ is now available for PC (via Steam), Nintendo Gamecube, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5.
