Lucasarts has had its ups and downs with games. Some have won awards for game of the year, others were “OK” and the rest were simply just plain horrible. The recent release of Episode II in the theatres (and onto video and DVD) has warranted a massive amount of lame games and money-making ventures that ride on the fame of the movies. Unfortunately, Bounty Hunter, despite having a really fun concept, falls into this category, snuggling up next to “Super Bombad Racing” and “Battle for Naboo.”

    Bounty Hunter places you in the feet of, of course, Jango Fett. Starting out on a mission that goes awry you must battle a gigantic beast by, get this, jumping out of its way, forcing it to ram into a wall and eventually spring you free. Forget those blasters; you’ll need those lately when capping every other person in the planet. Bounty Hunter is a third-person adventure, not the kind of shooter one might expect. That is good and all, but the insane amount of precise platform jumping that it forces you to do will drive you mad. Jango seems to love jumping from a one platform to the top of the dumpster attempting to chase an invisible bounty more than he enjoys shooting people, and that says a lot. In between extremely annoying, difficult jumping with the “aid” (if that’s what you can call shooting yourself into the area in order to bounce yourself off of the target you were shooting for) of your trusty jetpack, you get to shoot, a lot. Mr. Fett carries double blaster pistols, each of which fire at independent targets if there is more than one. This feature is helpful, but is overlooked after killing about three hundred of the SAME type of henchman in the first hour. The killing becomes extremely monotonous considering their aim is complete crap and there is really no need to dodge out of the way (or for that matter, use any tactics) as you kill them. In addition to the absolutely sinful platforming and repetitive shooting, you get to run around the levels forever, trying to figure out where the game wants you to go next. Everything is very linear and nothing will continue until you stroll onto the next scripted event, making everything less of a challenge. In a nutshell, the gameplay suffers from what every bad game of this genre does: tedium.

    The quality of the gameplay can be compared to how much the team put into the graphics engine. Jango himself is very beautifully rendered and looks realistic, as well as the blaster effects, which are gorgeous. The rest of the game, including the backgrounds and levels, are muddy and ugly, with a fog in the short distance that you would only usually see on games for systems like the original Playstation of Nintendo 64. Expect mediocre, bland visuals on your adventures into the underworld to catch bounties.

    The voice-acting and music is something you can usually count on with Lucasarts. Bounty Hunter, thankfully, stays true to this tradition with top-notch voices. It’s short and simple, you won’t find your ears bleeding from hearing Jango whine about how he ripped a hole in his panty-hose, which would be quite frightening.

    The game itself, in spite of quite monotonous feel, has the feeling of excitement (you are Jango Fett after all, the father of the most famous bounty hunter and source of the DNA that spawned an army) and the game reveals more of the mystery behind such mysteries as “Why was Jango the source of the clone army?” and other need-to-know facts that Star Wars fans suck up. Also, the game rewards you for completing the game with goodies such as comic books and other goodies. Mixed with these small morsels of Star Wars goodness, the game is raised to a level of “I like Star Wars so this is pretty fun.”