Step back into the shoes of the Galaxy’s deadliest bounty hunter, now with shinier armour in our Star Wars Bounty Hunter Remaster review!
Back in the early 2000’s LucasArts was going through a high period, running on the funds generated by making licensed games based on the LucasFilm properties. They did something odd however, with the Attack of the Clones movie adaptions where no game that was based on the movie did a one to one copy of the movie. There were multiple games released that made the Clone Wars into much more of an event. There was one game that took a decidedly more interesting path where it acted as a prequel to the movie.
Is Jango displeased with how soon he was remastered?
Star Wars Bounty Hunter, released in 2002, sought to expand the background of the Sith’s tyrannical plan to overthrow the Galaxy by creating a Clone army. Now it’s back from the dead in full HD on your modern console or PC. Does this remastering revive a long dormant piece of iconic Star Wars media or does it lose its head this time round? Find out in our Star Wars Bounty Hunter Remaster Review!
Star Wars Bounty Hunter Remaster Review – Story
Jango Fett is out on the job, unaware of the machinations of Sith Lord Tyrannus (Jedi Master Count Dooku) and the ever ominous Darth Sidious. Whose plans involve finding the strongest and most dangerous bounty hunter in the galaxy to become the seed DNA for the clone army of the Republic. Cue the first level dropping player right into the midst of a mission where Jango makes some mistakes while trying to catch an alien called Meeko. This ends with him having to battle his way out of an illegal fight arena and track Meeko in the streets. This adventure takes Jango to Coruscant and other new places to the Star Wars galaxy. Players can enjoy fun locations such as a big ol’ space prison and the homes of many Star Wars aliens, as Jango gets embroiled in the Clone Army plot, meets fellow crime associate Zam Wessel (famous for dying in Attack of the Clones) and get his iconic ship the “Slave 1”.
Cutscenes, though looking a little rough, are short and tight, made to set the scene pre and post mission.
As the story progresses players will interact with a small but varied cast of characters unique to the game including Jango’s “handler” Roz. She’s a pink Toydarian who has a great attitude and personality. Her conversations with Jango are a highlight of the writing as she often fills in the silence on missions with little jabs and gabs. Other characters include the bounty targets, who are somewhat less fleshed out but still present as interesting glimpses at the variety of Star Wars denizens. In fact the movie characters like Count Dooku are also great with some decent voice work by their stand-in voice actors. There is a great emphasis on creating fun scenarios for players to try sneaking around looking for bounties to catch. This really helps build the whole persona of Jango in a way that other Star Wars titles really weren’t doing at the time.
Roz giving Jango the stink eye for his attitude.
This rare offshoot is a fun window into a more explorative and risk taking time in gaming where even tie-in titles were willing to break the mold. This game is just oozing character and is surprisingly dark. Despite a little ludo-narrative dissonance, it is possible to take Jango and just flamethrower all of the citizens of Coruscant. It will limit the final score on terms of catching bounties but is otherwise unpunished. Every corner seeps with grease in the seedy backstreets and underbellies of the world players traverse, which is great as this is far from the upper echelon of higher society, giving players a little look behind the veil. With excellent, if ageing, production quality, this is also a prequel to the movie Attack of the Clones, which does its best to give some depth to Jango Fett. It’s an interesting exploration of his character and morals (or lack of) that feels alien to the series these days but it’s more fun that watching The Book of Boba Fett at least.
Star Wars Bounty Hunter Remaster Review – Gameplay
“Waaaaaaaugh!” yet another stumble into the bottomless pits of the warehouse… Sometimes the nostalgia for a game can elicit negative feelings as much as it offers positive ones. With the original Bounty Hunter there were moments of extreme frustration especially with its somewhat iffy camera. It meant that the original release was occasionally unfairly difficult and awkward, which had a knock on effect on the game’s overall coolness. However, players can now take a deep breath as Aspyr have done a decent job of reworking some of these frustrating elements into more bearable sections.
Pew, pew! Die holograms!
This remaster is not purely visual, the dev team has taken particular care to address many of the controls in an attempt to semi-modernise them. The first, and greatest change, is the fluid, stick bound camera. Players can now choose to freely move the camera while undertaking any and all actions in the game, allowing for a far greater amount of environmental awareness. This helps enormously in this 3D vertical platformer as it’s super important. Paired with a decent stickiness to Jango’s, on the gound, movement and there is genuine joy to be had by simply playing through the game.
The lights of the big city. The new colour work is fantastic.
As Jango is a bounty hunter he obviously has loads of tools at his disposal, the most important of which is surprisingly not his guns but instead, his scanner. This puts the players into a first person mode, slows the game down and will report which characters in the level have an active bounty against them. This system is simple and fun to engage with but the in-game instructions fail to explain that players have to essentially pick the targets when scanning with the right trigger before they are able to be captured. Actually capturing them requires players to choose a method, if the target can be caught dead or alive they must balance the approach to make sure they get the bigger bounty. Capturing bounties alive in the midst of a firefight is thrilling, players need to swap to the rope and try to fire it off at the bounty then dodge in and press X to capture them. Capturing bounties contributes to the end of level score players get so it’s optional but well worth doing.
Ah yes, the score screen showing no captured optional bounties. Oops…
The rest of the gameplay is more focused towards combat and platforming. There are some great traversal options including jumping which can be extended with Jango’s iconic jetpack. This has a short burst of fuel that needs to recharge and the original designers nailed the level design so that it leaves just enough gap to cross on a full jetpack charge. Therefore, players will often get caught short and plummet into the depths. It can occasionally be frustrating as Jango is a little slippery and the physics are old fashioned but it’s not usually too big of a deal given how fun it feels to hop around these massive spaces. Shooting is a highlight, the guns auto target if the player doesn’t activate the lock-on feature. Unlike some games the pistols individually aim at targets so taking down a battalion of thugs not only feels cool, it looks it too!
Jango does showboat a bit in his standard animations during the opening battle.
Where things get a little archaic is the life system. Something that could possibly have been tweaked or removed from the game. Lives are a set deal, refills are only done between missions and if the player uses all of their lives they have to go back to the start of the current chapter. It’s a harsh master and it can be frustrating, especially on the more difficult levels. However, careful gameplay is then rewarded with less setbacks, so it does feel quite good to beat the system.
Star Wars Bounty Hunter Remaster Review – Visuals
Most remasters live and die by their visual choices, even if those aren’t the most important aspect of the re-release. Luckily Aspyr has taken a great deal of care in their approach to Bounty Hunter’s new coat of paint. It rides the line between what people will remember how the title looked like and some modern things to top up the graphics tax. First of all, the texture work has been revised offering crisper environmental detailing and some extra lighting effects as well. It really brings out the charming artwork that Lucasarts put into the game all those years ago and lets it sing on a big 4k screen. Next the lighting overhaul adds a bit of depth to areas with new shading and lit laser blasts making firefights more intense and flashy.
The sun dappled morning skyline.
A lot of the game remains fairly untouched however, with many character models and objects being the same as they were in the past, luckily it was quite a spectacle at the time. Jango himself is sporting shinier armour and a decently faithful-to-the-movie look with the helmet covering up the awkward act of rendering his face for the whole game. Alien characters also look decent enough with good variations that are close enough to their franchise counterparts to be pleasing. In some levels where there are bigger crowds, characters repeat often, as do enemies, but they still vary enough that it’s not distracting.
Um… Collateral damage is a bit easy to spread.
User interface screens are all sharp and good looking, though maybe not the most accessible to anyone who can’t differentiate similar colours. They look very close to the original release of the game and they have a lot of character. Even the new bits with the added extras look great and function well. Cutscenes havn’t survived as well with many things looking quite blocky and smeary. It’s far from awful, as players can tell who each character is, but they look a bit like mince meat. Technically the resolution here is great with the game running smoothly at what appears to be a full 4k output so this game will be super crisp on almost all TVs.
Star Wars Bounty Hunter Remaster Review – Audio
Did you grow up during the era of prequel Star Wars movies? If so then a few of the voices here should elicit some excitement with the likes of Temuera Morrison reprising his role as Jango. Most characters use sound alikes but it’s convincing enough with the older recordings. The actual dialogue is delivered well considering the number of unique to the game characters in play. The sound mixing however seems to favour everything else over the voices so there may be some tweaking needed for the story. Musically the game uses a lot of film music as well as a few of its own tracks for atmosphere, this is also true for the sound effects so not only does it look like Star Wars, it sounds it too!
Star Wars Bounty Hunter Remaster Review – What Else?
In the old days of 2002 there were rumours about an unlockable and playable Boba Fett character based on the original trilogy. This turned out to be false however, but the mad people over at Aspyr have made this rumour reality. Complete the game and wham! Boba Fett skin. While it’s just an equipable skin it’s a great extra that they really didn’t need to add. Outside of this new unlockable there are a whole host of extras including the complete Dark Horse comic book in lovely high definition as well as some production extras like art. It’s the full package and a fan’s dream.
The full comic is here and in very high quality!
Star Wars Bounty Hunter Remaster Review – Conclusion
Bounty Hunter is still an incredible bit of Star Wars media, officially part of the canon story it tells a compelling ,if light, story that cements Jango as a badass. Though it can be a bit clunky and old fashioned to actually play, it does have some great depth and naturally puts choices in the players hands. The game is definitively a product of the era in which it released and yet it feels like a breath of fresh air with its tight platforming, focus on actual bounty hunting and frantic combat. Just be aware that it’s not easy to beat with it’s unforgiving life system. A must have for any Star Wars completionist and a fantastic addition to Aspyr’s Star Wars catalogue!
So, why should you play Star Wars Bounty Hunter Remaster?
- The prequel Star Wars era ranks highly in your preferences
- It’s more Jango Fett!
- Temuera Morrison is a cool guy
- Excellent work to alleviate the more awkward bits of the game
But why shouldn’t you play Star Wars Bounty Hunter Remaster?
- Platforming can be a little rough
- The difficulty is still really high
- The game design is quite old fashioned
A review code was kindly provided by Aspyr for the purpose of our Star Wars Bounty Hunter Remaster review. You can check out our other reviews here and if you haven’t already, be sure to join the Qualbert Discord to find out about the latest game and review updates!
