Star Wars Bounty Hunter tells the story of Jengo Fett on his mission to hunt down a dark Jedi. The mission he is charged with is given to him by the republic. The events of the game serve as a prequel to the events of Star Wars Episode II The Clone Wars.
As Jengo Fett, you play the game in a third person perspective. You’re given a series of objectives that you must complete in order to progress the story. These can range from chasing a specific character to get information, gathering a specific item and returning it to a contact, taking out a specific target, or capturing them and returning them alive.
You’re provided a set of blasters as your main weapon, though you can also use your fists. Aside from your main weapon, you also have a series of sub weapons and items at your disposal. These can be grenades, cuffs, or your scanner. The cuffs and scanner are more like support items than offensive. The cuffs are used to capture enemies and objective targets. The scanner is used to scan various individuals and items to either see if they have a bounty or if more information is needed on the item before it can be used to proceed through your objectives.
The game lets you approach each objective in a few different ways as far as enemy engagement. You can go in blasting everything you see with your blasters, or you could sneak around and arrest your enemies as you progress through each area. Aside from your primary objectives, you can scan individuals to see if they have bounties and their bounty conditions. This offers a nice break from the core game, and is completely optional, unless of course scanning and capturing a bounty is part of a mission objective.
Star Wars Bounty Hunter is a remaster of a game that was originally released on the PlayStation 2 and the GameCube. So because of this, the game does look rather dated from a graphical standpoint. Textures and character models look slightly blurry or muddied if you look close enough, but given this is a remaster, it’s not terrible.
The lighting effects are nice as they are definitely overhauled and look great on modern platforms. Aside from the lighting affects and the slight blur on textures, the frame-rate is nice and smooth. This makes for some really good performance with everything feeling like it’s running like a well oiled machine. Dated machine, but well oiled and plays very nicely.
Unlike the graphics, the sound doesn’t seem to have been changed much from the original outside of it sounding like it was cleaned up a bit. What I thought was going to be a complete overhaul of the sound, instead sounds like it was just cleaned up and slightly enhanced.
Considering the graphics of the game, I actually preferred the route they took here. I like the fact that the sound was slightly enhanced and cleaned up from its original recording. This makes it so that the sound doesn’t feel off or out of place. Not to mean the sound doesn’t sound good, because it does. The explosions, blaster fire and the voice acting sound really good.
For some reason I initially thought this game was a complete remake of a classic Star Wars game. This quickly vanished once I got into actually playing the game and realized rather immediately that it’s a remaster. I feel like they should have made this game as a full blown remake instead of a remaster. This way both fans of the original and newcomers could experience the game in a whole new way.
Just because this is a remaster doesn’t mean it’s not a good game. It is good, but it could have been so much better. A lot of games are coming out on current platforms as remasters as opposed to remakes. Now I get why they do this, they want to scratch that nostalgic itch. Give players a classic game with a modern coat of paint; and get these games out much quicker than if they were a complete remake.
This works for a lot of games, but with others, this game included; it would have been a lot better as a remake instead of just a remaster. The game would have looked stunning remade in Unreal Engine 5 or modern Unity. If you have the original release on the original platform, you aren’t missing much with this release. Unless of course you want a very smooth experience with enhanced lighting.
For those that have never got into the original release, then I would definitely suggest picking up this game. With that being said, I would say as much as I would have liked to see this be a remaster, the game is still worth playing for both hardcore fans and those looking for a fun game set in the Star Wars universe.
Disclaimer: A review key was provided
In addition to writing articles, Ryan Byers also creates content for his YouTube channel called "Obscure Games and Consoles", collects video games, and dabbles in video game development.