Star Wars: Bounty Hunter for the PS2, could've been the first great Star Wars game in years (for consoles). However, the developers screwed up a good premise, and ended up with a game that falls short of other Star Wars games that have recently come out. All because of a few faults that a longer development cycle could've fixed.

The first thing you will notice is that this game is gorgeous. The Character models are truly a sight to behold, and they look like they came straight out of the movie. Characters move with fluidity and grace, and they look like they were designed with George Lucas' thoughts in mind. There are also many graphical effects to stare at, like heat distortion and water waves. The textures are surprisingly well done for PS2, and have great detail in them. You can see scratches and kinks in Jango Fett's armor, and clothes on other characters move like they would in real life. The cutscenes were fully rendered by ILM, and the sound was created by Skywalker Sound.

Control in this game is tight. So tight, that all of the tricks you see Jango pull off in the movie you can do. And more. With a couple of button presses, you can make the bounty hunter jump up, fly with his jetpack, do a somersault in the air, and shoot two guys on the ground while safely landing down on earth. One gripe I have with the controls is that it's very difficult to switch between Jango's two blasters and his helmet to scan for secondary bounties. It would've made more sense if the developers had put in a toggle button so you could've done this easier.

Sound is another area where this game excels. All of the sound was done in house at Skywalker Sound inside the massive Skywalker Ranch. This means that all of the blaster noises and jetpack sounds are correct and sound awesome. The developers even got Temuera Morrison, the actor who played Jango Fett in the movie, to do all of his voice work. Because of Skywalker Sound's expertise on sound, this also means true surround sound during the whole game. This will be a great game to test out your new speakers.

Remember those few faults I mentioned earlier? They're all in the gameplay. You would think with a good license like Star Wars, they'd make a good game, especially with the "Biggest Bad-Ass in the galaxy." Most of the game is spent walking around HUGE levels, in which every couple of minutes you are ambushed by a ton of creatures that want to kill you. The only way to take them out is through blasting, and blasting, and blasting. It's fun at first, then it just gets repetitive and boring. There are some good points, like when you get a new weapon, but once you run out of ammo, you don't save it, you just toss it out. There are some cool parts, like when you have to follow a ship throughout a level, or when you have to climb two, incredibly tall towers, going in and out as you please. Another cool feature that I wish the developers had done better is the extra bounties parts. You can switch to Jango's helmet and scan for people with bounties on their heads, but when you finally find them, they've run away or jumped off a ledge. You can use some of Jango's other abilities, such as his flame thrower, and his whipcord, but these can only be used for a little bit of time, just like his jetpack.

All in all, Star Wars Bounty Hunter is a good, but flawed game, and if you can get over the faults, you just might enjoy it. Just don't go into this thinking that it has a lot of depth, because it doesn't. I did, and I came out of it with a huge disappointment and a loss of five bucks.