Reviewed: February 10, 2003
Reviewed by: Mark Smith

Publisher
Lucasarts

Developer
Lucasarts

Released: December 5, 2002
Genre: Action
Players: 1
ESRB: Teen

8
8
10
9
8.9

Supported Features

Star Wars Bounty Hunter is based on the character, Jango Fett who appears in Episode II Attack of the Clones, yet the events of the game take place prior to this movie, giving us a great deal of background for this mysterious bounty hunter that the movie simple didn’t have time to cover.

Bounty Hunter features:

• Third-person 3D action-adventure spanning 18 levels on 6 planets, including Coruscant, Tatooine, and a maximum-security asteroid prison
• Compelling and original story that explains how Jango Fett was chosen to “father” the clone army seen in Attack of the Clones, told through gameplay and stunning cinematic cutscenes created by Industrial Light & Magic
• Overpower enemies with Jango's deadly arsenal including his trademark dual blaster pistols, missile-equipped jetpack, flamethrower, toxic darts, sniper rifle, and more
• Door's locked? Burn through with your wrist-mounted cutting laser and kick it down!
• Use your scanner to identify, mark, and track down bounties, then snare them with your wrist cable and collect your fee. Dead or alive…no one escapes the Fett!
• Encounter over 100 characters, including familiar Star Wars aliens, droids and creatures, plus a fearsome Krayt Dragon and plenty of new additions to the Star Wars Universe
• Inspiring orchestra soundtrack using John Williams' Attack of the Clones score, as well as original music composed exclusively for the game
• An amazing sound design by Skywalker Sound presented in Dolby Pro Logic II including superb voice acting featuring the original voice actors, Temuera Morrison as Jango Fett and Leeanna Walsman as Zam Wesell and TV/film star Clancy Brown as Jango's brutal arch-nemesis Montross

After getting caught up in the excellent opening movie you my feel a bit helpless when you are finally put in control of Jango, considering you are in a pit-fight with a giant gladiator beast. Thankfully, the game pop-ups various command hints that serve as a nice tutorial while you play game. As you get new items or have the opportunity to use new skills you will be briefed on how these functions work. I’m never a big fan of reading the manual, so this is a great way to ease into the controls while actually playing the game.

There are several levels of gameplay objectives that can be viewed from the pause screen. These often include several primary objectives that drive the game and advance the story, plus secondary missions that include nabbing several bounties on each level. Bounty hunting is totally optional, but I seriously doubt anyone playing a game called Bounty Hunter will be passing up the opportunity to earn some credits and unlock all the cool bonus goodies in the gallery.

Jango controls like a dream. The analog stick moves our hero at a variable rate while the B button jumps, the A button fires, and the X button rolls. The Y button is a multipurpose action button that may open a door, operate a control panel or use Jango’s cutting torch on a metal grate or hatch. The C-Stick rotates the camera giving you an unlimited view of your surroundings.

My one and only complaint with controls is the complicated inventory management. I realize that we don’t have the luxury of a keyboard and number keys for each weapon and gadget, and there simply aren’t enough buttons on the controller to allow for assigning favorites, but cycling through the lengthy item strip can get cumbersome.

There are two modes for switching items. You can use the left/right on the D-pad to cycle weapons and gadgets during the game or you can press Down to bring up the inventory strip and pause the game. At least the designers assigned the ID Scanner to the Up direction on the D-pad. This makes the process of flagging bounties a bit easier, but it is still a process that is more complicated than it should be.

Bounty hunting goes something like this. You enter a new area and hold down the Z button for the first-person view. Then you activate your ID scanner, which turns the screen green, and a crosshair moves around scanning the people you center your view on. If they are wanted their information will be posted along with the reward that may vary based on their life signs when captured. Once you mark “wanted” targets with the A button, you can track them at any time wherever they may run and hide. You then need to arm your wrist cable and fire it to bind them then approach and collect your bounty using the Y button. The entire process can be a bit laborious if you are doing one bounty at a time, as you will be switching between ID scanner and wrist cable and marking and collecting.

There are anywhere from 5-15 bounties per level and they can range from a casual bystander leaning against a wall to an innocent looking droid. Some offer no resistance an others will attack and even bring along henchmen. The trick is to mark your bounties early before the laser bolts start flying. Many bounties still count even if they are dead, usually for less cash, but unless they are marked prior to termination you will not get credit towards unlocking those bonuses.

Bounty hunting is just a part of the game, and Jango will find himself exploring huge and creative levels engaging in plenty of non-profit combat and figuring out a few minor puzzles. The combat system for this game is great. You can lock onto targets with the right trigger as long as they are within range of your weapon. In a brilliant and realistic design move, Jango can lock onto two targets at once. Not only is this very useful when you are outnumbered, it just plain looks cool in a Robocop kind of way.

Puzzles are generally of the environmental variety such as a locked door or hidden passage, or a force field that can be destroyed by shooting an exploding container. These often lead to secret areas with ammo, health, or one of the hidden feather icons (more about those in a minute). Bounty Hunter is primarily an action game, and you can blast your way through most of this game with pure instinct and reflexes.

There aren’t a lot of “jumping puzzles”, but there are plenty of areas that require creative and thoughtful use of your jetpack. With limited thrust capabilities you have to just distance and height very carefully to make your way through many of the later levels. One missed rooftop or ledge and you might be backtracking a good distance to try again.

Perhaps one of the things that surprised me the most about Bounty Hunter was the excellent camera angles that worked about 95% of the time. There were only a few occasions where I had to use the C-Stick to survey the area in a way the default camera didn’t allow. Once you are target-locked you can circle strafe an enemy and never lose sight. There were a few clipping problems if you back Jango into a corner or force the camera into a wall, but these are fewer and no worse than those in other games. I never died because of a camera problem, and that is something I rarely get to say about a 3D action game these days.

You get to explore 18 huge levels in six unique environments. You will recognize a few from the movies such as Tatooine, and Coruscant’s entertainment district with all its neon-glow, and there are several new locations such as a murky swamp, or a cold and depressing prison asteroid. All of these levels are created with tons of details and architectural complexity that makes them truly unique; almost a game within a game. They sprawl to the horizon without the slightest hint of pop-up or unnatural fogging.

A lot of this is possible due to the powerful graphics engine in the GameCube, but there are plenty of programmer tricks at work here too. You won’t see a lot of fancy explosions or gratuitous particle effects. The textures don’t offer a lot of detail or bump-mapping but none of this really matters. What you do see is great overall presentation that runs smooth and looks amazing.

The cutscenes are breathtaking and come right from the wizards at ILM. There is a mix of high-resolution CG movies that could easily be mistaken for film quality and there are plenty of mid-mission movies that use the game engine to progress the story without breaking the flow or visual style of the gameplay.

The menu interface is simple and easy to navigate and the pause screen displays an overall mission background with a list of objectives that are marked off as they are completed, as well as a bounty count for that level. The in-game interface/HUD is very unobtrusive, showing only your health and current weapon or item. When you use the jetpack the thrust meter appears briefly around your health bar but vanishes as soon as it recharges. It’s a very clean interface that works very well while giving you maximum enjoyment of the game environments.

The voice acting in Bounty Hunter is perhaps some of the finest in quality and content of any game in the Star Wars legacy. While only a few of the original actors lent their voices to the project, there were plenty of convincing sound-alikes, and every speaking part is delivered with a professionalism you just don’t find in most games. There is plenty of subtle dialog that adds an ambient quality to the environment. It was amusing to fly around with Jango’s jetpack and listen to the crowd yell out things like “Look at that!” or “I need to get one of those!”

Nobody has a larger library of original sound effects than the wizards at Skywalker Sound and you will certainly recognize your favorites effects from the movie when you play this game. Every blaster, beeping droid, alien mumble, and explosion is perfect. It’s all delivered in a Dolby Pro Logic II mix that will surround you in Star Wars goodness.

As you complete the various levels you will unlock new pages of the Dark Horse comic book, Jango Fett: Open Season, and CGI outtakes are unlocked with each completed chapter. As you mark, capture, and collect your bounties you will earn credits that can be used to unlock images in the concept art gallery, and collecting those hidden feather icons will reward you with pictures of the trading card series from Wizards of the Coast.