Star Wars: Hunters

Genre: Third-Person Shooter

Players: 8 Team Competitive (Online)

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Review:

WARNING: THIS GAME HEAVILY PUSHES MICROTRANSACTIONS AND BATTLE PASSES

Star Wars: Hunters is an online-only multiplayer-focused team-based Third-Person Shooter released on mobile devices and Nintendo Switch in 2024, with a port of the game releasing a few months later in the year on PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5. This game is similar to other “Hero Shooters” like Overwatch and Paladins.

While set in the Star Wars universe, this game features an all-original cast of characters so no one will be fighting over who gets to play Darth Vader, with the pretext for the game seeming to be that this is some sort of competitive sport or something in the Star Wars universe. It’s a flimsy premise, but it’s about as much as you could hope for in a sensible plot for a Star Wars Hero Shooter.

The presentation here is decent, with good 3D models for the characters and battle arenas. Both of these are given an absolute ton of personality, with each character having their own fun animations both in battle and menus, and with the arenas themselves creatively representing a section of Death Star with an X-Wing crashed on the surface, or an Ewok forest at night with bounce pads to project you from tree to tree.

The sound is similarly great, with authentic Star Wars sounds, and a soundtrack that takes a little inspiration from John Williams’ score but mostly takes things in a more “produced” direction to reflect this being a sorta’-sport.

When it comes to the gameplay, this game doesn’t do anything truly original for Hero Shooters beyond its license, but at the same time it doesn’t really have to, because I feel it hits a sweet spot with its gameplay, giving players a pretty diverse range of characters, all of whom are enjoyable to play in their own right.

Grozz the wookiee is a particular favorite of mine, being a melee-focused tank who stuns enemies and can heal himself, but other players might prefer Sentinel the stormtrooper, who has a laser equivalent of a chain gun with a laser shield. There’s a rebel girl who supports others with healing, a Boba Fett-style bounty hunter, and various other characters that evoke Star Wars races and characters without being so close that they seem like a substitute.

The problem here, sadly, is all the monetization this game shoves onto players. At first it doesn’t seem too cumbersome – making players take their time with each character to learn the ins and outs before unlocking the next one. However, these take progressively longer and longer to unlock, and by the time you’ve unlocked your fourth or fifth character, you’ll be looking at hours upon hours of playtime to unlock the next.

“Or,” the game gestures suggestively, “you could drop a bit of cash and unlock them now…”

Running the numbers, skipping the grinding to do so will cost you over $100, and that’s including one character you can only unlock by paying for them. I understand that the game has to make money somehow, but this is gross.

These characters level up and grow more powerful the more you use them, though thankfully it doesn’t seem like you can power them up faster using paid upgrades. However, simply being able to unlock the characters early so you can level them up sooner could in a roundabout way be considered pay-to-win.

Clearly, I have some frustrations with the monetization of Star Wars: Hunters. But perhaps my biggest frustration is that they mar a really fun game, a Hero Shooter I think I’d actually rather play than Overwatch right now (well, at least since the forced “upgrade” to Overwatch 2). But with large portions of the game essentially locked away until I either grind for hours on end or fork over large sums of cash, I’m left with a bad taste in my mouth, and it’s not from the blue milk.

tl;dr – Star Wars: Hunters is an online-only multiplayer-focused team-based Third-Person Shooter similar to other “Hero Shooters” like Overwatch. The presentation here is good, and the gameplay is great, but it’s marred by nasty monetization that locks away most of the game unless you grind for countless hours or fork over massive amounts of cash. It’s a shame that an otherwise great game had to be tarnished in this way.

Grade: B

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2024 Game Awards:

Winner:

Most Underrated (57) – Let’s make this clear – they asked for this. The “Hero Shooter” genre is highly competitive, as other games like Sony’s Concord found out the hard way this year. And if you push sleazy monetization in a Hero Shooter, you’ll turn off everyone, and hoo boy did Star Wars: Hunters push sleazy monetization. Yet, despite all of that, the core game underneath all the sleaze and cynicism was actually quite good, and while I absolutely agree that this game deserved to get dinged for its exploitative practices, I think a 57 on Metacritic is absurdly harsh for what is still an enjoyable Hero Shooter. Maybe if this game wasn’t so disgusting in its eagerness to gouge its players, it would have been easier for reviewers to see the good in this game.

Worst Monetization/Scam – There are all kinds of terrible things ugly monetization can do to a game, preying on children and those with addictive personalities, turning the game into a grindy slog to push players to spend money to skip to the good parts, injecting pay-to-win elements into the gameplay so winning and losing could come down to who spent the most. Star Wars: Hunters is guilty of most of these, as well as the cumulative sin they all contribute to: They take a good game and twist it into something far worse. Star Wars: Hunters could have been a solid addition to the Hero Shooter genre, but instead it’s yet another cautionary tale that greedy publishers likely won’t pay attention to when they pull this same thing yet again in another game they ruin in their pursuit of an easy buck. Meanwhile, we see exactly the opposite unfolding on other platforms with another Disney property in the far better game Marvel Rivals. Why oh why couldn’t Nintendo Switch have gotten that Hero Shooter?

Runner-Up: Best Multiplayer, Best New Free-To-Play Game

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