A long time ago, in a California far far away, the world was blessed with the greatest and farthest-reaching entertainment franchise ever. Star Wars – the brainchild of George Lucas, the plucky and young writer/director at the time – has taken over the world not slowly, but like ൲the plague. A great plague.
Among the EIGHT currently-canon movies, the two television shows, the thousands of comic books, hundreds of books, and merchandise up to your ears, is a veritable trough of Star Wars videos games. Considering this is TheGamer, it behooves us to speak about this particular sect of Star Wars branded goodness.
Through the years, plenty of extremely talented developers – and some not so talented – have had their opportunity to discover for themselves the wrath of a rabid fanbase, and attempt to pluck their place on the list of quality Star Wars games. This list isn’t necessarily the definitive list of Star Wars games (though we strongly suggest you play the top 10 at the very least), but it is a selection of some of the worst, and some of the best games ever to grace the universe we were first introduced to back in the latꦗe 1970’s.
Today, Star Wars continues to gain notoriety, and consistently remains the hottest intellectual property ever. People 🔥are soaking it up, and the video games developed around the franchise continue to get playtime (and even airtime – see , or ).
Here is🌌 a list of some notable Star Wars video games ranked from worst to best.
20 K𒐪inect Star Wars ♈
There was a lot of hype surrounding Microsoft and Xbox’s entry into motion capture and player controller. It had long since been something on Nintendo was really trying out in the consumer market (to much success in꧒ fact). So when the Kinect was announced at E3 the year prior to the launch of the peripheral in 2010, the world was intrigued. You see, Kinect technology was brilliant in concept. It created a virtual dot-mapping (or motion capture studio)ౠ in your living room – virtually mapping your movement as a human figure. That gets translated into control schemes designed by developers.
The world got even more excited when Star Wars announced a Kinect game that would allow you to traverse known locations, swing lightsabers, and use force powers. What they didn’t want (almost everything they got) was poorly optimized inputs – it turns out that the Kinect sensor is spotty at best – that don’t function, a horrible dancing mini-game, and a lifetime of meme-worthy content. If you’re willing to put yourself through it, Kinect Star Wars is the absolute bottom of the barrel when it comes to games attach♚ed to this mega-franchise. There’s no beating around the bush. If there were, the Kinect sensor probably would be able to tell what you were doing anyway.
19 Battlefront II (EA) 💯 🥀
To say that this game caused a wave in the gaming community, the gaming industry, and legislation, would be a gross understatement. You can thank Electronic Arts and their continue franchise of Battlefront games for the future landscape of gaming. There has been a widely adopted trend in gaming recently – involving smaller buy-in prices for games, but a collect-a-thon loot box system to unlock things. As console and PC games continue to attempt adapting to a Free To Play market that was unlocked by the boom of mobile gaming, there are going to be some missteps. There’s no denying that. With Battlefront II, a game already criticized for the apparent attempt at erasing a really great game (in the original Battlefront II), Electronic Art♈s too🧔k a swing for the fences and struck out.
Their loot box system was so sketchy and geared towards making money (and they had the audacity to try and sell players on it with terms like “pride & accomplishments”) that the gamers who played the game quickly turned to the internet to voice their discomfort.
So many things have come from the backlash of EA’s Battlefront II – including multiple countries the world over actually making in-game loot boxes illegal – but the biggest takeaway is that loot boxes, e💟specially those that are pay to open or pay to acquire, are officially considered gambling. The game itself? Well, it’s not a standout product. Made far worse by the sinister development.
18 Galactic Battlegrounds 🌳
There was a time when everything needed to have a turn-based real-time strategy title in their franchise (a StarCraft clone) and it turned out great for the most part. Most generations have that one particular game-type that everyone attempts to ape, and there’s no escaping it. You either get on your board and ride the wave – enjoying yourself – or you can get washed and play something that’s less popular. For example, the current mega-trend is battle royale games. But you didn’t need me to tell you that, did you? You’re probably playing Fortnite or Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds right now.
The Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds might sound like a royale game, but its RTS roots are the inspiration that epic set pieces like the battle of Naboo or the Battle of Yevin deserve. In theory, Galactic Battlegrounds was ripe. No franchise has more iconic soldiers, vehicles, cities, or people than Star Wars does. But it’s perhaps the lack of resources that can be directly linked to a not-so-stellar final product. There’s some good things to unpack here as Galactic Battlegrounds does good on its promise of letting you be the general in some classic Star Wars battles. There are better Star Wars games out there, and much bettཧer RTS experiences.
17 Bounty Hunter ඣ
There’s no arguing that Boba Fett is often considered the coolest character in all of Star Wars canon. With the amount of action in the prequels and the new films, it’s odd to go back and realize that this character with roughly seven minutes of screen time has such a large fanbase. It’s kind of nutty. But it’s true. The Mandalorian bounty hunters of lore quickly became loved, and to coincide with the popularity of Star Wars Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace, and Star Wars Episode 2 – The Clone Wars, LucasArts (who at the time were at the top of their game) released this third-person action shooter starring Boba’s father, the newly revealed (in the films) J🌌ango Fett. The graphics here are rudimentary, as this was 2002 of course.
Released on the PlayStation 2 and GameCube, Bounty Hunters was hailed far more for its backstory-defining cutscenes rather than its monotonous gameplay and general snooze-fest of a campaign. This is why, when you search for footage of the game from the early aughts, you’ll be more likely to find fan-made cuts of all the cinematics stitched together, than any actual gameplay from the title. There’s no sense in denying the place that Bounty Hunters holds in the catalog of Star Wars games, but it’s not ranked highly for a reason. There’s too much missing here and, to be brutal, thi♛s was the most lackluster era for things like graphics and contro⭕ls.
16 ꦰ Galaxy of Her🐭oes
All hail the mobile revolution, right? If you’re not playing some sort of game on your mobile device then you most likely have a phone that closes. But even those had Snake on them. The majority of smartphone owners have at least one (if not a handful) of games installed on their device at any given time, so there is no blaming Electronic Arts for branching out its control of the Star Wars franchise to better fit the consumer's everyday life, and their pockets. Galaxy of Heroes is actually my favorite mobile game to date. Across any app store. Much like Galactic Battlegrounds, Galaxy of Heroes takes an established and popular genre – the Squad-Battler in this scenario – and wrapped a Star Wars skin on it. But they took it a few steps further and made one of the most rewarding, and grind-ไwo꧅rthy experiences on mobile.
There’s a lot to unpack in Galaxy of Heroes, with a veritable million different team combinations, consistent upgrading of your favorite squad members, and even ranked player vs player game types.
The bea𒁏uty of mobile game development is the real access to a “living game” in which you can consistently (if you care to) breathe new and fresh life into your titles. Quickly adapting to fan feedback, franchise shifts, and even monetary gain, makes gaming on mobile platforms an ever-evolving proce𝓰ss for both those making the games, and those playing them.
15 Lego👍 Star Wars: The Video Game
Lego games became the bread and butter for those with children in their lives. Or those with spouses that don’t really play games as seriously. There’s something charismatic and hectic about running around a Lego version of your favorite universe, exploding things into bits and attempting to collect as much as you can. All while enjoying actually well-written stories, hilarious cutscenes, and phenomenal voice acting. Lego Star Wars: The Video Game is the first of two Lego Star Wars games on this list, because if you’re considering a list of Star Wars games, you have to include the one that started a never-ending waterꦦfa𝕴ll of great titles. Even if you rank it sort of low, like I have here. But hey, fifteen is nothing to complain about.
Lego Star Wars: The Video Game came to PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Pc in 2005 and spanned the story of the prequel trilogy. Being the biggest thing to hit cinemas at the time, you can’t really blame the developers at Traveller’s Tales and Griptonite for banking on the prequels rather than make a game for fans of the original trilogy. Considering the Lego games tend to all kind of look similar, it’s surprising to look back and see just how rough this title looks when you compare it to Lego games of today – like the recently released Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
14 The Force Unleashed ꦬ
At the height of action adventure games like God of War and Tomb Raider, and near the start of the end to the legacy of LucasArts as a studio, Star Wars fans were thrilled when Star Wars: The Force Unleashed was announced. Using some of the most epic and new facial recognition technology in motion capture, The Force Unleashed really shone (at the time) within its cutscenes. You can truly recognize facial emotions, and the actors that portrayed them. Fun fact: the actor that played the lead character, Starkiller, went on to voice Darth Maul in both Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels television shows.
The story in The Force Unleashed is considered one of the greatest non-canon story arcs in Star Wars video games. You play as a secret assassin and Darth Vader’s apprentice. After finding you as a young boy, you are trained to kill Jedi, but kept secret from the emperor and the Sith. You are both rogue, and arrogant. The gameplay can become tedious easily, which is a direct influence on the games less-than-amazing performance sales-wise. But there is enough here that we can safely suggest you not skip out on The Force Unleashed if you get the chance.
13 ꦅ Star Wars: The Old Republic ꦺ
There are two Star Wars themes Massively Multiplayer Online games in this list. Both for good reason. Here we have the more recent, BioWare Austin developed Star Wars: The Old Republic. A direct product of the influence World of Warcraft had on the gaming world, SWTOR did two things absolutely flawlessly. It made you feel like you were apart of the Star Wars world, and it told an amazingly well-crafted story, regardless of which of the initial eight paths you chose to go along. In a world that has a handful of extremely integral and important MMOs, not one of them has replay value. The overarching goal of an MMO is to continue along with a single character for as long as you can, hence the never-ending content updates. However, the story in SWTOR is so strong that you’re going to want to play through the game in its entirety with at least a handful of different toons (characters). This amazing feat is the sole reason for the success of the game, and with BioWare (one of the greatest Role-Playing Game developers) at the helm, who can argue with that? SWTOR is currently winding down, but a slower🌳-paced experience system i⭕s free to play right now and you should give it a try.
12 🃏 Dark Forces
A relic compared to many of the games on this list, Star Wars: Dark Forces is one of the only titles in this article that pre-dates the prequel trilogy. Released in 1995 for MS-DOS, and 1996 for the original PlayStation, Dark Forces puts you in the boots of a mercenary named Kyle Katarn. This first-person shooter took what made games like Doom, Heretic, and Duke Nukem and made Star Wars fans worldwide quake in ♉t𒀰heir Stormrtrooper armor.
Dark Forces as a stand-alone experience isn’t really something to write home about. Your parents aren’t going to care that you’re playing it, but what is truly great was the adaptation of the franchise to fit a previously unsuspecting gameplay type. No one wanted a Star Wars first-person shooter, yet Dark Forces took the gaming and Star Wars communities by storm. What we truly owe Dark Forces for is that it became the first in a fantastic series that followed. What began with Dark Forces, soon became the Jedi Knight series, giving us games like Jedi Academy, and Jedi Outcast. After all this time, Dark Forces still redefined the way developers around the world look at the Star Wars ip, and if you take into consideration the number of things that this universe has been applied to, it’s astounding that LucasArts took the chance on Dark Forces when it did.
11 Star Wars Chess 💖
If you’ve ever watched a Star Wars movie – and let’s be honest, if you’re eleven points into a list about Star Wars games you’ve probably seen at least one of the movies – then you know there is a universe canon chess-like game called Dejarik. It was commonly assumed that it was the chess replacement in this version of the universe. So it’s extra confusing when a studio like Software Toolworks (known for their tabletop chess simulation games) creates a Star Wars Chess game that’s inspired by real-life chess, and not the canonical chess equivalent. Inspired by amazing chess simulators like Battle Chess, The Software Toolkwork’s Star Wars Chess (man𓆏, what a mouthful of a𝐆 game title) sees Light Side vs Dark in an epic chess showdown.
Scripted, animated battles are shown when one piece takes another piece, and quite honestly, it’s the better version of Battle Chess (yes, because it’s Star Wars themed … if you haven’t noticed, everything is better with a Star Wars skin … don’t quote me on that).
Dark Side featured pieces li𓂃ke Emperor Palpatine as the King, Darth Vader as the Queen, Boba Fett as bishops, and Tusken Raiders as Knights. The Light Side featured pieces like Lule Skywalker as King🌠, Princess Leia as Queen, 3PO as Bishops, Yoda as Rooks, and Chewbacca as Knights.