Jango Fett returns 22 years after its release with Star Wars: Bounty Hunter remastered.
Developer Aspyr has rarely been boring in recent years. Sometimes the studio manages to produce really solid ports and remakes, for example the 2021 return of Star Wars: Republic Commando or the 2020 port of Episode 1 Racer.
But sometimes Aspyr gets it completely wrong: In 2023, the remaster of Star Wars: Battlefront 1 and 2 as the Classic Collection caused head-shaking across the board because bugs and problems made one of the best Star Wars games of all time almost unplayable.
Now, Star Wars: Bounty Hunter, the latest remaster from the development team, has just been released – and is doing pretty well on Steam! The Steam ratings are currently with 88 percent positive reviews. The data pool is manageable with just under 300 reviews, but it also corresponds to our own test video from our colleague Fritz:
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Star Wars: Bounty Hunter – Test video for the remaster of the bounty hunter shooter
Was taugt Star Wars: Bounty Hunter?
Let’s first clarify the basics: Star Wars: Bounty Hunter was released 2022 years ago as a companion game to the theatrical release of Star Wars: Episode 2. Because Lucasarts didn’t want to simply retell the plot of the film at the time, this is all about the backstory: How the legendary bounty hunter Jango Fett became a test subject for the Republic’s clone army.
It turns out that Count Dooku and Darth Sidious have found their top candidate through a competition between bounty hunters. Jango Fett and rival industry colleagues are hunting a renegade Jedi. To track her down, you shoot, jump and jetpack your way through numerous varied levels – from the caves of Tatooine to the skyscrapers of Coruscant.
Bounty Hunter was already an absolute top-notch game back then, but it was still a fun genre mix of blaster shooting and a bit of platforming. The remaster brings the game some upgrades:
- Support for modern resolutions.
- Slightly improved graphics.
- An alternative camera control.
- An unlockable Boba Fett outfit.
The restoration work doesn’t make Bounty Hunter a completely new game, but it’s enough to make it the best version of the third-person shooter. Steam user Masterkeys709 sums it up quite representatively for other reviews:
I was skeptical at first after the Battlefront remakes, but I can say that aside from a few glitches, the game has been great so far. Everything feels similar to when I played the game with my brother on the Gamecube. I’m very happy to be able to play it again on Steam. It looks nicer and plays well.
So if you ever fancy a Mandalorian game, there are much worse candidates than Star Wars: Bounty Hunter. Well, strictly speaking, there are no other candidates, but you know what we mean. The important thing is that the remaster does not fix the biggest problems of the original.
Bounty Hunter still has a frustratingly fickle level of difficulty, the shooting and jumping sequences are sometimes fiddly and the level design runs out of steam a bit towards the end. But if you can forgive the rough edges, you’ll get a very atmospheric Star Wars game.
