At long last I can try this classic Bounty Hunter game, originally released only for Gamecube and Playstation 2, now for all modern platforms including PC. The story: The Sith need the right warrior to be the donor for the clone army. He must pass many trials, including defeating the Bando Gora and deranged former Jedi. And so begins the quest of Jango Fett.
I’m playing on PC with a Logitech gamepad. There is a bit of problem-solving (which way to go) and it’s very 3-dimensional as sometimes you have to jump up or down. And having a jetpack to fly isn’t always enough to save you if you miss.
His mission starts with a Todarian female named Roz walking him through his hunts. He’s after a villain at a gladiatorial pit. But that’s just the warmup.
The real quest is to take down Komari Vosa and the Bando Gora, instigated by Dooku at the behest of Sidious.
Bounty Hunter Chapters
Chapter 1 of Bounty Hunter is just a nice starter level to get the hang of it. Battle beasts and thugs, learn to climb, shoot, target, jump, carve open grates to crawl through and, after you find your jetpack, to fly.
Chapter 2 takes you to Nar Shaddaa, to seek out a lower gang, It’s a better place to get the hang of seeking side bounties and more challenging to avoid collateral damage. There are major jumping puzzles here, which leads you to a clue about a corrupt senator.
Chapter 3 means even more jumping, due to that senator being on Coruscant in those skyscrapers surrounded by guards!
The trail leads through a death sticks dealing gang, to a Senator, to a guy who wants someone dealt with in max secure Oovo 4 prison. I’d say it’s about here that it gets tricky. There are guards, turrets, and mobs of prisoners to contend with. Good luck scanning for bounties, marking, catching and collecting without getting killed by the rest of the mob in the meantime!
Chapter 4 leads through Malastare, into a dug stronghold, Sebolto, a death stick gangster kingpin. This adds dug thugs to the usual Gran villains. It also adds the occasional flying beast and more difficult: nexu that pounce (best taken from the air). The nexu often hide goodies in their caves. It’s a beautiful planet, one of the first views of it with its jungles. But it offers many places to hide, platforms high up, and the villains often have repeating tripod blasters and rockets.
Chapter 5 of Bounty Hunter, we returned to good old Tatooine. Jango and Zam separate, with her going ahead to check out Gardulla the Hutt while he goes after a bounty for Jabba. Weaving through city streets, Jango takes on all sorts of thugs. It’s a target rich environment with people with repeating blasters and loads of mobs. There are a great deal of innocent people including Jawas to get caught in the crossfire.
Having successfully taken down the bounty that gets an audience with Jabba, he points the way to Gardulla, who has ties to the Banda Gora. From the start, a contact with Zam gets cut off. Jango weaves through cliffs and the homes of sand people, jet jumping across sand skiffs and pillars with thugs blasting with rifle, missiles and sand people with sniper rifles.
Unfortunately, when he gets to the other side he finds Zam locked up. He doesn’t want to release her and she (understandably) doesn’t trust him to return and rescue her from the Hutt’s plan to toss her to a Krayt. So she yells for the guards. Now Jango is the one who has to face off with the Krayt dragon and or escape. And to start with, he doesn’t have any weapons!
Level 6: Going After Vosa
The moon of Bogden is infamous,it’s a world of the dead, loaded with ancient tombs and terrifying Bando Glora, red glowy eyes but unlike the jawas, not cute, but rather, terrifying. One blow from a sniper rifle causes injury, a punch can kill. There are absolute mobs of them. They aren’t so great at climbing but they are everywhere, in caves, tunnels, in an ancient city, even hard to reach places that take a jet pack. (Which is odd, given they have none and can’t climb.) They guard the way to Vosa.
Finale:
Spoiler
Jango is caught by Vosa, but rescued by Zam Wessell.
Finally, the final race through the catacombs and it’s Bando Gora to an upper level with skylights. Fail, and Jango loses his head long before Geonosis (and someone else presumably must be the clone army.) Obviously he canonically succeeds, and Tyrannus appears with not only the credits, but the offer to become the progenitor of the clone army but to lead in it’s training.
Review:
Bounty Hunter is a winner both as a game and for it’s story. On the whole, this game was a blast and reminded me of playing Jedi Outcast the most.They share jumping (albeit with a jetpack in this one), missiles, snipers, and bare fists, as well as some mazes. The story was great, intertwining well with Attack of the Clones introduction to Boba Fett, and with only a minor hitch (see continuity), with the comics.
There is no way to see Jango Fett quite the same after this. He’s a complicated man in spite of his line “I’m just a simple man, trying to make his way in the universe.”
Tricks.
To get the extra side bounties:
- Target (right thumb push) while wearing the helmet Y brings it right up, though others cycle to it too. Scan with left trigger.
- IF there is a bounty, ACCEPT WITH RIGHT TRIGGER.
- Target and grab with lasso (assuming live capture) or shoot (if dead is preferred) and X to collect.
- Note that there is nothing easy about any of that when a mob is shooting at you!
Bounty Hunter Controls for Logitech F310 that I was using, for instance are slightly different than XBox. Generally, though, you can find the control mapping shown in the game settings.
Target enemies with right thumbstick push. Objects with Left trigger while on blaster.
X for doors and grates. C for crawl. A for jump. right button above trigger cycles through the weapons, as does some of the plus shaped pad. Pushing up on the plus pad turns on a light.
Left button ABOVE the left trigger turns on jetpack (I found this totally not intuitive.)
Left thumbstick steers.
Sadly, there is no way to remap the keys.
The fixed camera angle is downright dangerous in spots, as in tight spaces it can get you literally killed as you can’t fire at enemies when it switches directions unexpectedly.
Also, I read the game has a memory leak, which may explain why sometimes on quitting it hung on me. I just tabbed out to the taskbar and task manager and quit that way. Not sure if it would be an issue if I played longer.
Bounty Hunter Lore and Continuity:
Montross is the main rival in the gang: he and Jango have a personal history, in that Montross betrayed Jaster Mereel, Jango’s mentor.
Jango Fett working with Dooku is an interesting twist if you realize that, as a Jedi, Dooku was involved in the destruction of his clan. This is in the Dark Horse Graphic Novel Jango Fett: Open Seasons. It also reveals Jango was then sold as a slave by the man who tricked them into this, leading extra potency to Vosa’s threat to make him a slave (not that the idea of being turned into a Bando Gora wouldn’t terrify anyone.)
The prison on Oovo 4 has been mentioned in other sources including Ep 1 Racer that took a podrace course through it, Coruscant Nights and Jedi: Aayla Secura, where she sent a certain infamous criminal.
The custom Firespray that Jango steals has a conflicting history, due to the early published, Bounty Hunter trilogy suggesting Boba Fett had them build it from scratch to custom. However, it is plausible that Boba either had it rebuilt for some reason or highly customized later, after retrieving it from the Republic.
Zam Wessel apparently meets Jango here in Bounty Hunter, but they do have shared adventures in comics (Jango Fett & Zam Wesell, 2 graphic novels that are connected), which make his ruthlessness in Attack of the Clones all the more apparent.There is one continuity conflict: in Jango Fett, the January 2002 comic by Tom Munoz, Zam states she’s never seen under Jango’s helmet. But in the game cut scenes it clearly shows his helmet was off when she rescued him from Vosa, and he checked on her injuries. The game was released originally in November 2002.
The moons of Bogden, where Dooku recruits Jango is the final area of Bounty Hunter. We also visit these moons (probably a different one) in the Young Boba Fett series.
Komari Vosa’s curved lightsabers were after this passed on by Tyrannus to Asajj Ventress in the Clone Wars microseries.
