Despite the love I and many others hold for Star Wars, Bounty Hunter just doesn't cut it.
User Rating: 6.2 | Star Wars: Bounty Hunter GC
When Lucasarts gets a stranglehold on something, they never, ever let it go. The love for the Star Wars franchise's bounty hunters Boba Fett and Jango Fett were something a lot of Star Wars fans held pretty dear to them. It was only natural that they make an action-packed game about one of those ruthless fellows. Star Wars: Bounty Hunter starts you off as Jango Fett, father of Boba Fett, and follows Jango through a large lump of missions where you're sent to several different Star Wars locales to do battle, dual-blaster style, with loads of scummy, low-life mercenaries, while tagging them and making the kill (Or the capture), resulting in some big bucks. Unfortunately, the game just isn't as fun in practice as it is in theory. A lot of gameplay mechanics are very, very shallow and in the end, you feel like your thumb is going to snap right off, because you'll always be slamming on the "A" (Fire) button. Jango's moves include a series of high-flying jumps and combat rolls, for the most part, and while you have an enemy targeted, it's very simple to pull off dashing little maneuvers such as cartwheel-flipping to the left or right, front-flipping, or back-flipping. In addition, you can also do rolls on the ground, but these serve little purpose except making you feel like you're doing something other than pounding the fire button. Which is the main problem with Bounty Hunter, in the first place. While in the beginning levels you learn all these neat little tricks, such as jumping, grabbing onto ledges, even throwing yourself from one ledge to a ledge parallel and right next to it, which feels pretty darn good. Unfortunately, you'll find that you never actually use any of these cool maneuvers, because a majority of the game is comprised of very linear, "point A to point B, kill objective 1" sort of gameplay. There's very little, if any, area to explore, and you'll never be allowed to go anywhere that isn't vital to the mission at hand. If being Jango Fett and beating down lots of lowly criminals tantalizes your gaming thumbs, don't get your hopes up. Unfortunately combat consists of running in, and in blazing glory, firing as many rounds as fast as your fingers can tap, and then hope everything dies. The melee combat is laughable as well, featuring nothing more than a single, solitary 3-hit combo that seldom serves any purpose, since your dual pistols have infinite ammo. There's just no reason to ever go hand-to-hand. The game also attempts to implement some sort of stealth, by allowing you to crouch and walk, and perform an instant "kill" by hitting a foe from behind when in melee mode. Again, in theory it sounds pretty good, but in practice this basically isn't possible, because if you've bothered to shoot at any enemy, the rest in a huge radius will have already been alerted. And even rarer still is to find an enemy who isn't facing you when you walk into a room. Most rooms are set up so there's always one guy facing the door, to alert his buddies. Collecting bounties is a bit of a drag, and isn't fun at all. In fact, it's just plain frustrating, and you'll come to realize that there's really no point in collecting bounties because the rewards nowhere near make up for the annoyances you need to go through to collect the bounties. In order to even begin to collect a bounty, you for some reason need to "mark" an enemy you intend to capture/kill. You have a handy little device that, when activated using the "Z" button, lets you scan all the enemies in your sights and see which ones have bounties. If one has a bounty on his head, you can try going for it by "firing" the gadget, which will tag the enemy targeted. This in itself is a problem, because by the time you can see these enemies, they can see you, and while you're goofily fumbling with your scanner and looking at everyone in the room, they're shooting at you and killing you. And to be honest, losing half of your life bar isn't worth 5,000 credits. It just isn't. However, if you're a lucky soul and manage to tag one of those suckers, you'll have one of two choices (If they apply). You can either kill them and collect a smaller bounty, or capture them alive and collect a bigger one. However, some bounties are specific. Some only want them alive. Some only want them dead. The ones wanted alive have to be tied up using your little energy whip which will wrap around them and hold them still. Then, once you walk over and press "Y", the enemy just disappears and you'll "claim your bounty". Unfortunately, the trouble of trying to collect a bounty isn't worth it, especially when your reward is some pretty useless credits and not even an animation of you grabbing him and having to take him back to a ship or anything. They just disappear. The game's graphics hold up pretty well, but the GameCube is capable of much better, and to be honest a lot of the game's graphics are just cloned NPC models and bad textures. Jango looks pretty good, and features some nice shiny effects and smooth animation. Which, for all models, seems to be the highlight. Most of the NPC's all animate very well, and the game does keep a smooth, consistent frame rate. Unfortunately the graphics lack the Star Wars "big picture", and you never are allowed to see a large sprawling world. In Tatooine's missions, for instance, you can never explore the vast desert, you're instead pressed into smaller "outdoor corridors", with the walls really being a bunch of Tatooine homes stuck together to prevent you from exploring. While there isn't much to complain about in terms of sound, there is something to be desired. The repetetive battle music doesn't sound snappy, catchy, or even any good, but you can be rest assured that you'll hear it each and every time you even get near an enemy. And you'll hate it so much you'll want to grate your teeth to drown out the sound. The laser rifles, blasters, and other weapons sound true to the movies, and you'll obviously notice a lot of movie music in the game. Jango's voice is done by the actor that plays him in the movie, and it was pretty well done overall. His voice in-game though consists mainly of grunts from jumping and rolling, which can get about as tired and overused as one could expect it to get. Fortunately, the cutscenes are much better, where you'll hear Jango actually speaking, which is a nice plus. Luckily Bounty Hunter isn't far from the bargain bin, and when it gets there, only then could I ever recommend buying it. In terms of getting a good bang for your buck, do yourself a favor and if you're really curious about exactly how it plays out, just rent it and beat it over the weekend, which is a rather accurate time frame, but it really depends how fast or slow you are at beating games. It could very well take you 40 hours of solid time, and that's really only if you get stuck or repeatedly die in one of the few areas in the game that seem a little broken in terms of difficulty. Unless you're the biggest Star Wars fanatic ever to grace Earth, Bounty Hunter probably won't be worth your time. Despite the love I and many others hold for Star Wars, Bounty Hunter just doesn't cut it.
