I am laying my cards out on the table right now; I have no stakes in the Star Wars franchise as a fan. The closest I got to learning about the series was seeing silly Nintendo parodies of the Star Wars movies and watching a video critique of The Last Jedi. Of course, I’m aware of the plot, but in terms of actually watching the series, that is a blind spot I have. I say this to show that I have no horse in whether the self-proclaimed classic Star Wars: Bounty Hunter for the PS2 is good or not. Reviews at the time said that it was an average game, and even looking at how gamers talk about it today, it seems that today they find the game janky, yet charming. With a surprise-enhanced version being released, I can confidently say that this game is a fun time, even if it isn’t the most straightforward or well-put-together.
A decade before the movie Attack of the Clones, the Bando Gora has been causing too much trouble in the galaxy with corruption. Jango Fett is getting done with another bounty and returns to his informant Rozatta to cash in. However, Darth Tyranus has sent out a bounty of 5,000,000 Republican credits for the Bando Gora crime ring’s leader, Komari Vosa. While Jango is in it for the money, there’s a lot more going on behind the scenes. With Jango’s rival Montross also being involved in trying to hunt down Komari and Darth Tyranus acting on behalf of Darth Sidious, there are plenty of holes and groups for Jango to get trapped by. Alongside going after Komari, he now has to worry about groups going after his head as well as getting to Komari first.
First things first; this is just the same PS2 game that was released back in 2002. This is going to come with the same glitches, graphics, and gameplay that were there when they were first released. This re-release only gives visual improvements, like upgraded textures and new lightning; but even with these improvements it still looks like a PS2 game, and some characters don’t even move their lips when talking in gameplay. Sure, the actual cutscenes look decent with actual lip movement but don’t expect this to look any better than a PS3 game.
The music and sounds are just as good and easily give off the vibes of classic Star Wars films. The sound effects and music feel like they all came out of the sci-fi space series. The music does its job of fitting into the worlds Jango Fett goes through, and with the sound effects also helping with the immersion, the sound team did a good job with working with the world of Star Wars. Story-wise, the game can feel like a solid entry in the Star Wars saga and was able to provide some depth to Jango Fett.
And then we come to the gameplay system, and this is where Star Wars: Bounty Hunter starts to show its age. The game is an adventure game that has you traveling around a map till you reach the end of it. The equipment you have when you start will be the same equipment you have at the end. Unfortunately, it’s not anything that special. You get a lot of different weapons you can unlock by picking them up, from blaster rifles with bigger damage with actual ammo, toxic darts that are small in ammo, but one hit kills regular enemies, and missiles you can aim by just looking at the enemies with your camera controls.
They sound like you have a lot of different ways to attack and eliminate your enemies, but it’s not that in-depth. All you end up doing is just shooting at them and only using the more explosive weapons for groups of enemies. While the sound effects are good, they don’t make the weapons feel strong. It never feels fun or like your weapons are damaging them; more like they just decide to spontaneously give up upon being shot enough. Hearing them let out the stock Wilhelm scream from the stray enemy you kill can easily give off a chuckle, but aside from that, you could easily just avoid them. Unfortunately, the game sometimes requires you to sit down and kill a bunch of enemies or just keep hitting a boss until they go down, and these parts are when the game feels extremely slow and dragged out. And if you end up losing all five lives before the level ends when you are forced to go back to the start, it makes it incredibly hard to continue knowing you’re just replaying the same repetitive combat experiences.
Gameplay gets a literal boost once you get the Jetpack. It’s not unlimited, but you do get just enough to let you make some new jumps that can help you traverse the map. The game has several different ways to have you use your Jetpack; from scaling buildings to traveling across gaps with moving platforms and hanging bars, this is the part that makes you feel like a bounty hunter. If Star Wars: Bounty Hunter expanded off this while ditching 90% of the combat, where instead of just trying to kill someone, you have to platform your way around a giant map and isolate and take your bounty to some sort of drop-off point, it would have been something exciting. Still, the Jetpack and platforming sections are some of the best parts of the game that make it worth going through.
One of the biggest misfires this game has is the fact that its unique bounty system is worthless. When going through the stage you can activate Jango’s scanner to look around and pick up signals from enemies. For enemies with bounties, you have to mark them before engaging to be able to begin claiming. Their bounties. There’s an option to bring them in dead or alive by tying them up with the snare weapon, with the price being bigger or smaller depending on the condition and enemy, so you’re not just going to be doing one option whenever you want to get the biggest bounty. Sadly, the credits you earn do not you anything in the game, aside from concept art. You can’t use them to upgrade your jetpack’s limited range, buy weaponry or more health, increase the number of lives you have, or so on. So, if you don’t care about the concept art, there’s no reason to try and go for even one bounty.
And if you just want to go through from mission to mission while skipping around, the game still has its codes back from the PS2, so you can just put them in and unlock everything if you want to. Honestly, it’s kind of nice to see this old-school feature here. No, not in the “I’m glad I can just skip through this game”, but more of an “oh that’s charming that they kept this feature in” way.
Overall, this blast from the past was more of a flashlight than a full-fledged triumphant return. Star Wars: Bounty Hunter is still a good time; the platforming with the jetpack is fun, and seeing just how far you can use it is challenging. Bounty hunting helps to mix the combat up, even if there is no point in doing so. The world and story would help expand Jango Fett and his cast to give them more respect to any Star Wars fans; however, it’s still weighed down by the monotonous combat, the pointlessness of any game reason to earn credits aside from unlocking concept art, and how annoying the life system can be. It’s by no means a bad game, but it can leave people wishing for a proper remake instead of just this visually enhanced port.
