In 2002, Star Wars: Bounty Hunter launched on PS2 and GameCube. The third-person action-adventure game let players hop into the bounty-hunting boots of Jango Fett aka Boba Fett’s clone dad from Attack of The Clones. It wasn’t great, but was a fun prequel to Episode II. Now, 20 years later, it’s been remastered, improved, and ported to new consoles, and while it looks and plays better than ever, it’s still mostly the same not-great PS2-era action game, but now with a flashlight.
The remastered Star Wars: Bounty Hunter, out now on Xbox, PlayStation, Switch, and PC, tells the same story as the original version did back in 2002. The game is set about a decade before Attack of the Clones and stars Jango Fett, who is contacted by Count Dooku and told to hunt down a Dark Jedi and criminal leader. If he can take down the leader he’ll collect 5 million credits. What he doesn’t realize is that this is a test orchestrated by Dooku and Palpatine to eliminate a threat to their plans while also finding a strong warrior to be the source of their clone army.
Needless to say, everything that happens in Star Wars: Bounty Hunter isn’t canon anymore. But that’s not a dealbreaker. In fact, it’s nice to go back to a time when Star Wars games got weird and wild with the lore because nobody was worried about all of this connecting and knew that series creator George Lucas could, at any time, retcon everything in his next film.
The same game, for better and mostly worse…
Like Bounty Hunter’s unchanged story and cutscenes, its gameplay and levels are mostly left untouched in this new remaster. Instead, developers Aspyr have focused on improving the visuals, the game’s performance, and making it easier to control Jango Fett. And they’ve succeeded.
Bounty Hunter is easier to play now thanks to a modern control scheme and steady framerate. It also looks about as good as a 20-year-old PS2 game can look thanks to improved textures, lighting, and resolution. And yeah, the developers added a flashlight so you can see in some darker areas, which is nice, and time now slows down when using Jango’s scanner, which is very helpful.
However, it’s time to acknowledge the Bantha in the room: Bounty Hunter was never a great game. In fact, I’d argue that in a lot of ways Bounter Hunter is a bad game.
The levels feel too big and empty. I often found myself wandering around brown and grey hallways wondering when the next group of baddies would appear and break up the mononity. But enemies aren’t much fun to fight and don’t do much to improve the game. That’s partially because enemy AI is horrible, and also because combat is repetitive. Get ready to shoot groups of the same enemies over and over again as they run at you in a straight line or fall off a ledge and die before they even reach you.
And while there are other weapons to find in the various missions you go on, those weapons are never good enough to compete with your standard dual blasters which pack a punch, fire as fast as you can pull the trigger, and have infinite ammo. You never need to swap to anything else!
There is a jetpack in Bounty Hunter, which you get early on in the game, but jetpacking around is more annoying than fun due to how limited it is and a wonky camera that makes it hard to use during a firefight. Worst of all: Bounty hunting in this game is a frustrating chore.
Being a Star Wars bounty hunter isn’t much fun
Every level in Bounty Hunter features a set number of bounty targets that you can optionally hunt down, capture, and collect, either alive or dead. In theory, it’s a neat idea that any NPC or enemy you encounter during a mission could be a wanted criminal. In practice, it sucks so much.
That’s because to find these targets, you have to scan every enemy and NPC you encounter first, mark any that are targets, and then either kill them or tie them up using a wire gun. If you kill a target before you’ve scanned and marked them, you get nothing. So every fight becomes a slog as you take cover and scan each enemy before fighting them.
And sure, you can ignore the bounty targets, but then the game is just a so-so third-person shooter with some wonky platforming bits. The bounty hunting part of Star Wars: Bounty Hunter is the only thing keeping this game from just becoming a dull journey through boring brown rooms. But collecting bounties is so annoying that I wouldn’t blame anyone for just skipping it all. Do that, though, and you’ll quickly discover how little Bounty Hunter has to offer.
For sure, the remaster of Star Wars: Bounty Hunter is the best way to play this old Jango Fett adventure. The additions and tweaks made to the game are smart and I still like the wacky EU story it tells of Jango hunting down a Dark Jedi. But sadly, this just isn’t a good game.
In all honesty, I’d have preferred a full remake of Bounty Hunter that improved the combat, levels, and bounty-hunting mechanics. Instead, this is a mediocre 22-year-old PS2-era Star Wars game that only the most nostalgic fans will likely finish and enjoy.
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