Game Gush Gamer
Gamer Gushing About Video Games
Hello friends and gamers, we are day three into Star Wars week, and I’m still chock full of Star Wars games! I am gushing about a different Star Wars video […]
Hello friends and gamers, we are day three into Star Wars week, and I’m still chock full of Star Wars games! I am gushing about a different Star Wars video game everyday up until the end of May the 4th Be with you! To celebrate the Star Wars universe, I created some fan polls that you can access by clicking here or by clicking on the image below.
For many hours today, I debated with myself if I wanted to talk about Star Wars: Episode 1: Racer, Battlefront II, or Bounty Hunter… Then, I came up with a brilliant idea—I’ll just talk about all three!
This 1999 video game sold over 3 million copies, so I would be surprised if you are older than 25 and haven’t heard of it. Instead of racing sports cars, we sat in the cockpit of a podracer, zooming around race tracks at top speeds of around 500 MPH, and hoping we would remember to flip sideways between the canyon or risk exploding to bits and pieces! Racer featured a variety of tracks across several different planets in the Star Wars universe. It includes all of the racers featured in the Phantom Menace movie and even additional competitors exclusive to the game.
The boost mechanic was fun because the vehicle’s temperature would rise when used, and if the player boosts for too long, the engines will literally explode! The podracer will also be destroyed if one or both engines sustain severe damage from colliding into too many walls or obstacles, requiring the player to steer carefully to avoid falling behind. The player can also actively repair the podracer while competing, but doing so slows the podracer until repairs are either complete or stopped. These mechanics are very similar to Nascar games regarding damage and repairs.
Since I didn’t own the game and only rarely played it at a friend’s house, I don’t recall many things from the game other than crashing a lot on the Tatooine race track that’s from the movie. Racing games are my least-played genre, so unfortunately for racing fans, I am only excited about Forza Horizon’s and certain Need for Speed titles. Still, I respect the team who worked on Episode 1: Racer for their creativity and innovation to put Star Wars into the racing genre.
Star Wars Battlefront II may have a bad reputation from the early loot box debacle when it first came out in 2017, but the developers have made great strides in the single-player campaign, gameplay features, a series of free updated content, and massive multiplayer madness! In my opinion, the Battlefront II that’s available right now couldn’t be any better.
The campaign introduced an original female protagonist, Iden Versio, the commander of Inferno Squad, which was a group of elite Imperial soldiers. Starting the game just before the Death Star II is destroyed in Return of the Jedi, Inferno Squad learns of Emperor Palatine’s hidden operation: Cinder. This was an operation to rebuild the Empire in the Unknown Regions of space, and events throughout the game lead Iden to defect to the side of the Rebellion. The game and added campaign DLC (downloadable content) comes to an end 30 years after Return of the Jedi, and explains a lot of the events that unfolded and led into The Force Awakens. Pretty cool!
Multiplayer is the main reason people play Battlefront II. Maps are spread through all three movie trilogies, making up for a large variety of terrain, lore, and replayability. After all the free and paid content, there’s a total of 23 multiplayer maps and 22 special heroes/villains that you can play alongside the 4 main class setups. Supremacy and Galactic Assault are the most popular modes, both allowing 20 players on each side to battle it out for a true test of attrition.
Additional Game Gush Gamers on Game Gush Gamer:
I fondly remember Bounty Hunter because it explained Jango Fett’s backstory that led into the Attack of the Clones movie. It’s true that the campaign is forgettable (I’m sorry), but it does show how Jango gets his iconic ship, Slave I, and how his DNA was chosen to be the genetic template for the clone troopers.
There’s two reasons why Star Wars: Bounty Hunter is memorable to me:
1. You don’t wield a lightsaber! Just you, the jetpack, the flamethrower, and the iconic blaster pistols against a world of bounties. The jetpack added dynamic heighth to both combat and exploration, but the camera angles added a huge problem because half the time you couldn’t really see what was going on.
2. Wanted: Dead or Alive! In true bounty hunter fashion, your helmet had a scanner that would tell you if anyone had a bounty on their head. The game allowed players to use the whipcord thrower to capture bounties alive to obtain more credits! Sadly, the credits were only used to unlock concept art and nothing gameplay-related like upgrades or more powerful weapons, but the non-lethal aspect was a nice touch that I think a lot of people enjoyed.
We seriously need a complete rendition of this game on next-gen consoles! LucasArts was actually putting together another bounty hunter game to release around 2012/2013, but the acquisition from Disney at that time buried the development until it was closed down. It’s 2021, I think it’s about time we get another chance at patrolling the Star Wars universe as a bounty hunter. Don’t you?
