I’m gonna start this review with a hot-take: I don’t think Episode II: Attack Of The Clones is a bad Star Wars movie. In fact, out of all three prequels, it’s actually my favorite of the three films. Yes, some parts do drag but they weren’t enough to soil my enjoyment of the movie. I loved how it expanded on Coruscant in the beginning (Yes, I liked the diner scene and, yes, I’m OK with something like that existing in Star Wars) and the entire Geonosis battle sequence is a visual spectacle of sheer beauty. However, I never played any of the games based on Episode II growing up as they were on systems I didn’t own, like the Gamecube and Xbox as I still had a N64. Thankfully, thanks to the folks over at Aspyr, one of the games I missed out on has got a second chance at life with the remastering of 2002’s ‘Star Wars Bounty Hunter’ and, I gotta say, this game is a mixed bag.
Taking place before the events of Attack Of The Clones, the game sees c Fett taking a job from Count Dooku to capture a rogue Jedi, along the way meeting up with familiar faces such as Zam Wessel. The story is pretty decent and the voice acting is spot-on, with Temura Morrison reprising his role as the titular bounty hunter, though the ending is eye-brow raising. Not to spoil anything but if you recall how the intro to Attack Of The Clones played out, then the last cutscene in this game will come off as a bit confusing. Of course, because it’s Star Wars, you do get to hear the Wilhelm Scream in here. All three variants, to be precise, and that brought a smile to my face. Even the humor, which seems people either love or hate when it comes to Star Wars, is strong here as well, with even the achievement names getting in on the act, including one that references one of the funnier lines from Rise Of Skywalker. Graphically, even for a 2002 game, this is still a good looking game and Aspyr did do a great job with the remastering, even though some of the in-game cutscenes still show some last-gen holdovers, like some NPC’s mouths not moving when they’re speaking. The CGI cutscenes surprisingly still hold up and could almost pass as an unreleased animated Star Wars movie. To be honest, I kinda miss this era of CG cutscenes as there was something charming about it that modern cutscenes lack and I would love to see a game have these types of cutscenes again. I also really enjoyed the soundtrack and, yeah, it is mostly songs from the movies again, there are some original tracks and some that reminded me a lot of Shadows Of The Empire, the later of which is awesome cause that’s one of my favorite Star Wars games of all time.
Gameplay wise, it’s a basic third-person shooter with the unique, yet underused, premise of scanning and capturing bounties. I say underused as it’s only used to get that coveted 100% completion rating and nothing else. In terms of the actual combat? If I had to compare it to anything, I’d say and this is a weird comparison but here me out: I’d say it reminds me of Drake & The 99 Dragons. Whenever you’re not aiming and are just running and gunning, Jango will, on his own, aim at enemies with his dual blasters while you’re shooting and that’s actually a pretty cool idea and it’s this that reminds me of how Drake And The 99 Dragons did it’s combat and you didn’t think you hear a good thing about that game now, did you?
Unfortunately, I do have some problems with this game that prevents me from fully enjoying what could’ve been another fun Star Wars game for me and those issues start with the camera. I have never seen a game with such a wild and, at times, picky camera system before. Moving the camera is fine and behaves as it should, but it’s when you’re trying to lock-on to an enemy where the bantha poodoo hits the fan. So, the game offers two styles of aiming; First Person and Lock-On. First-Person is easy enough and feels more than adequate for taking out enemies, but the Lock-On camera feels clunky and, at times, doesn’t work properly. In theory, when you press the button on your controller to lock-on, the camera snaps to said enemy and you can focus your fire on them. Problem is that, most of the time, when I tried to lock-on to an enemy, it never worked and the camera went all over the place or Jango would shoot in the opposite direction at another enemy that I wasn’t even targeting at that point.
But my biggest problem with this game is the difficulty. The game starts out easy enough, with the first chapter easing you into the game and getting you used to the controls, though the level after you get the jetpack is a bit of a pain. It’s the following chapters, though, where the difficulty suddenly skyrockets. Most of my deaths in the game resulted from either one of the many turret emplacements just melting my guy or, in one chapter in particular, being surrounded by melee focused enemies and not being able to attack (Those damned Nexu’s being the biggest source) at all. Even when I was able to successfully dodge and avoid the enemy attacks long enough to start blasting, it still felt like a chore as these enemies are laser-sponges, being able to soak up plenty of clean hits from Jango’s blasters. Now, you can circumvent this by either using his toxic darts or any acquired weapons you pick up, which are of limited use and don’t stay with you from level to level. However, while the blaster rifle and heavy blaster are able to do a lot of damage and make short work of various enemies, the sniper rifle is a mixed bag and I wonder if it’s bugged or something cause, most of the time when I had a clean shot at an enemy, it never looked like the shot even connected and I ended up wasting a few extra rounds just to headshot someone.
The rest of my issues are more minor but I feel are still big enough to bring up, like how some areas it’s hard to figure out exactly where to go or what the game wants you to do. For example, there’s one level where I had to get across a large chasm and I see ledges on both sides of said chasm. Instinctively, I’m thinking I need to jetpack across these ledges but, despite my best efforts, I never could make the ledges on the other side. That is, until I randomly entered a building that was near said chasm and found a switch that, when activated, brought a speeder over for me to ride over to the other side. First of all, leading up to this section, all the buildings only had health packs and ammo for my jetpack’s rocket and sniper rifle, thus I was trained to think that these buildings would only hold such items and nothing more. Second, why have those ledges there if the main way to get over to the area was by hitting a switch inside a building? I know this one sounds like a nitpick but it actually did annoy me enough to get on my nerves.
Truth be told, Star Wars: Bounty Hunter is a mixed bag. On the one hand, it’s a fun Star Wars game and being able to play as not only a bounty hunter, but the legendary Mandalorian Jango Fett himself, is enough to get anyone excited. But, on the other hand, the finicky camera and the insane difficulty spike after the first chapter did hurt my overall enjoyment of this title. It’s not a bad Star Wars game and it’s far from being a terrible one, but it is a disappointing one, to say the least. Truth be told, this is one of those games I think would benefit greatly from a remake more than a remastering.
