Well Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, be prepared to experience the "tinglies" again! What the hell are we on about you say? It's that whole NZ connection thing we're talking about; that sense of ownership you get from knowing a New Zealander played a major role in bringing something special to the rest of the world. Yes, Star Wars: Bounty Hunter has that special ingredient for the main character, the star of this game, is modelled on and completely voiced by our very own Star Wars star, Temuera Morrison. Ok, so Dr. Ropata was your least favourite Shortland Street character (and you hate Shortland Street anyway!) but there's no denying the special feeling you get hearing Tem's distinctive kiwi accent and seeing his uncanny CG likeness all throughout Bounty Hunter! It just rocks and we had to gloat :).

Exit cult of personality ("we love you Tem!"), enter review reality. Star Wars: Bounty Hunter is LucasArts' latest console videogame foray into the Star Wars universe and takes a distinctly different approach which both impresses and disappoints in ways at the same time. At the time of picking up the review copy of Bounty Hunter we had almost no idea, bar some early sparse preview notes and screenshots, what it was going to look or play like throughout. Indeed early impressions from E3 reports were of a third-person action title oozing potential with it's sheer scale and subject matter but suffering heavily from massive framerate problems, some camera glitches and a few AI issues to the point where early code was virtually unplayable. Cue release time and LucasArts have done an absolutely commendable job of improving the code from that seen at E3 albeit with a few annoyances hanging over (more on that as we progress).

Jumping straight into the storyline, Bounty Hunter is set at a time soon after the Phantom Menace movie and prior to Episode II. Now we don't know about you but if there was ever a Star Wars character that we wanted to play in a videogame, nay goddamned deserved his own videogame, it was Jango Fett the Bounty Hunter from Attack Of The Clones! Well in Star Wars: Bounty Hunter you get to play Jango AND do all the cool moves and use all the weapons and gadgets seen in the movie. Stuff being a goody-two-shoes Jedi Knight, we wanna be the bad guy with the snazzy looking body armour and blast everyone in sight! Anyway, in the game you'll be recruited by Darth Tyrranus, or Count Dooku as he was otherwise known when he was a budding Jedi, to eradicate the Bando Gora who are a deadly cult led by rogue Jedi Komari Vosa. The Bando Gora have been responsible for sabotaging industrial facilities throughout the Universe and are seen as a threat to the evil empire led by the Sith Lord, Darth Sidious. Although this is your main goal you must first prove your worth as a superior bounty hunter by carrying out a series of missions to bring in a host of the Galaxy's scumbag criminals.

The only problem with this is that you have competition. Jango's toughest rival Montross and young upstart Zam Wesell also want the job and you'll encounter them along the way competing with you for Tyrannus's favour. It's up to you then to do the best job possible carrying out your various missions and collecting on all the extra bounties along the way in order to score points and win the contract to take out the Bando Gora. In doing so you will prove that you are the Galaxy's most resourceful, fearless and relentless bounty hunter alive. This, unbeknownst to you at this stage, will play into Tyrannus's hands as Darth Sidious seeks such a fine specimen from whom he can clone a powerful army of super-soldiers!

The storyline is quite deep and well-constructed and the whole Star Wars universe is well-represented with a strong tie-in to events, characters and environments seen thus far in the movies. But what of the actual gameplay? Well we must say that there are quite a few elements here that are surprisingly good too. Essentially Bounty Hunter is a third-person adventure/action combat game with a decent dose of puzzles thrown in for good measure but with the added side quest of capturing various criminals all through the missions as you find them. The combat itself is really straightforward but the really cool thing here is the way in which you can engage enemies. Using the default Westar-34 Twin Dual Dallorian Alloy Blasters Jango can run, jump, somersault and jetpack around whilst firing at two different opponents simultaneously. The auto-aim feature really allows this to be as much fun as it sounds even if it does make things a little easy in places and with the sheer number of enemies you'll face in some areas it can be a real blast!