Star Wars: Bounty Hunter
Star Wars: Bounty Hunter gives you the chance to take control of Jango Fett, one of the most intrigueing characters of Star Wars: Episode II, and while doing so get some more background information on the happenings which preceded his recruitment for the Dark Side.
Boba Fett was already a very popular character in episodes 5 and 6 of the original Star Wars movies, and since Lucas probably didn’t feel like creating all new characters, having the possibility of loosing the old fanbase with the new movies, he created the Jango Fett, the “father” of the clone Boba.
In Bounty Hunter we get to play this ruthless assassin who’s almost got more weapons packed in his armor than all the middle east armies together. Through third person view, you’ll get answers to some of the many questions which posed themselves in Episode II like how he got involved with Count Dooku and how he became the model for the complete clone armies.
You start off right after the Battle for Naboo, doing your job as bounty hunter and tracking down people for money. Throughout the storyline, you’ll have 18 levels of following and shooting people while proving Darth Tyranus that you’re the best bounty hunter in the galaxy without knowing that ultimately you’ll be chosen to become the model of the Clone Army.
Gameplay is pretty standard with you running around and shooting almost everything that moves, going from several different alien races who don’t seem to like you to rival bounty hunters who don’t like you either. You’re really a lovable person in this game…
The graphics are not spectacular with baddies being split up into just a couple of different types and surroundings being almost always in the same color palettes going from taints of grey over brown to even plain white while the textures don’t even seem to change.
The fun comes to the part of Jango himself. His character is really flashy and loaded with weapons and armory ranging from the double-blasters, thermal grenades, dart and tether gun, sniper rifle, grenade launcher, heavier blasters and of course the very popular jetpack. Jango is really a feast to control, especially if you see how simple the controls of all the different weapons and possibilities of your character are. Flying around with your jetpack while shooting with the double blasters at your enemies isn’t a problem at all and really cool to see.
Also the auto-aim system works very good and it makes the game a lot easier than if you start turning around Jango towards your enemies yourself as you’ll soon notice that the camera viewpoint isn’t always optimal for targeting.
Next to the pretty straight-forward objectives of the main storyline you have secondary objectives which most of the time mean capturing bounties which will unlock hidden extra’s. These extra’s (including a comic book) are nice, but overall these secundary tasks don’t give much extra gameplay over the normal gameplay.
Also the fact that for capturing a bounty you have to perform a pretty stupidly complicated action (press button, target, press other button, shoot, press again another button) isn’t really helping in giving extra joy to the game and you’ll soon just quit trying.
Overall, Bounty Hunter is a pretty straight-forward game which consists of little more than blasting and running in an environment which doesn’t really inspire you to do great things. A missed chance to make Bounty Hunter the best Star Wars game ever.
8.0
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