Star Wars: Bounty Hunter’s remaster is above average, but be prepared for the original’s rough edges

You might think of Star Wars Outlaws as the next stop in a galaxy far, far away, but Star Wars: Bounty Hunters , the Aspyr-developed remaster, is certainly a throwback to the PS2/GC era Star Wars underworld.

I distinctly remember the 2002 PS2 version of Bounty Hunter becoming a personal favorite of mine, mostly because my favorite character in Attack of the Clones was Jango Fett. He’s a guy who wears Mandalorian armor, actually does cool stuff on screen, and has two awesome laser pistols, so of course he’s my favorite. This was sound logic 10 years ago. I actually didn’t get the game until Christmas Eve, but you can bet I was obsessed with it for months after that. Long story short: Anyway, I enjoyed this a lot, so I have high hopes for Aspyr’s latest Star Wars remake.

When the Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection launched earlier this year, it was met with mostly negative reviews for a variety of reasons. While I think the core experience is retained fairly well (and content unique to previous platforms is re-added!), the online portion of the game is a bit confusing, and the bloated install size on most platforms is confusing to say the least. Most of the issues have now been ironed out, but I can’t blame veteran Star Wars players for being cautious not long before the Bounty Hunter remaster was announced.

After replaying half of the game at a surprising rate, considering all the time that has passed since the last time I played it properly, I’m happy to report that Bounty Hunter Remastered is close to Aspyr’s best Star Wars work, and washes it out Say no more about the bad taste of the rear front (even though that series is totally fine now). Jango Fett’s armor has never looked shinier and the scenes are more vibrant than ever, and despite our texture upgrades, Bounty Hunters remains the most exciting ever thanks to the preservation of the original art direction. Moody and one of the most unique Star Wars games.

What’s more, the game is better than its original PS2 (later brought to PS3/4) and GameCube counterparts thanks to an optional (but preset) control scheme that actually makes it behave like you’d expect from a third-person shooter. Much better. The unaffected version has some weird bindings that make certain actions more cumbersome than they need to be, which is probably the biggest quality-of-life change in the entire remaster. On PC, however, I encountered some weird behavior related to trigger sensitivity, causing Jango to randomly move in and out of aim. There is no such issue on the Steam Deck, but the Xbox controller I’m using works perfectly fine in other games, so I’m pretty sure it’s a dead zone issue in this particular game that may or may not have been fixed yet.

Performance is also an issue with these remasters, but it shouldn’t be. Of course, anyone with a powerful modern PC or a PS5 or Series I can’t speak to other platforms, but the PC version is completely locked at 120 FPS (which seems to be the max frame rate), maxing out at 2K on the 4070Ti + 7800X3D version, which… is to be expected. However, there were a few issues right out of the gate that took a while to figure out: Time and time again, Bounty Hunter defaulted to the CPU graphics card instead of that awesome dedicated Nvidia GPU. result? Regardless of my settings, the FPS is below 30 FPS. After doing some investigation in Task Manager I found that the dedicated GPU is not being used not at all. Developers have been notified and a fix may have been abandoned, but keep this in mind if you experience strange framerate drops.

Ultimately, I switched to the Steam Deck because retro games tend to thrive on Valve’s big handheld PC consoles, and I was pleasantly surprised that Bounty Hunter didn’t drop off its top 60 FPS at native resolution. I understand that higher levels may push the already high GPU load past a threshold, causing a performance hit, but other than that, it’s a wonderful portable experience with stunning visuals.

Once you get past the first third or so, Bounty Hunter remains one of the toughest Star Wars games, with the remaining four acts greatly upping the overall combat difficulty and twisting the platforming-like sections (you have a Much of the Jetpack game) was turned into memorable levels that often feel massive for a linear game even by today’s standards. Considering the limitations of hardware, it’s a good reminder of how big of a dream LucasArts had in the early 2000s. Other aspects related to the many Star Wars settings you visit, such as the wide variety of NPCs in certain levels or the wonderful sound design, highlight the company’s attention to detail in all of these games during their greenest and most ambitious era. focus on.

On the other hand, most boss fights haven’t aged well since they can be defeated by holding down the triggers of the twin Westar-34 pistols to straf and boost. Elsewhere, however, there are plenty of great opportunities to make full use of Jango’s various arsenal, and later levels require a degree of planning and safer play to get out alive. Curiosity is rewarded this time around, too, with an unlockable Boba Fett skin and a host of lucrative achievements tailored for the most dedicated players. Yes, it will take a while to get 100% of all secondary bounties.

Overall, Aspyr has managed to pull off the game without falling headlong into the mud, and if you’re the type of player looking for a remaster that’s actually a light remaster, you can only criticize how faithful and Keep this fact under wraps. The latest version of Star Wars: Bounty Hunter is not that, but continues Aspyr’s deeply inspiring tradition of preserving and polishing classics from a place of respect and awe. For around $20, you couldn’t ask for more. Plus: It’s still a pretty good (legendary) prequel to Attack of the Clones, with a much richer storyline than you might first imagine.