The 10 Star Wars PC Games Every Fan Should Have Played

The Force has long been with fans of the Star Wars movies. To celebrate the launch of the series’ second massively multiplayer online game, we’re recapping the top ten titles that had the biggest impact on the Star Wars genre at large. And, no, you don’t have to let the Wookiee win in these if you don’t want to.

Star Wars: TIE Fighter

Many who have come before us have dubbed Star Wars: TIE Fighter – the space sim that puts you right in the cockpit for everyone’s favorite Galactic Empire – as one of the greatest Star Wars games in existence, if not one of the greatest games of all time. Why’s that? It’s simultaneously challenging and geektastic to fly alongside star destroyers (and even Darth Vader himself) in a variety of the Empire’s best and worst ships, set to a soundtrack that shifts based on combat actions. Toss in a great plot, a host of secret bonus goals, and the sheer joy of chasing down Y-Wings in a TIE Defender, and you have one of the defining games of the Star Wars franchise. Can has brand-new sequel?

Star Wars: X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter

While Star Wars: X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter lacked a definitive storyline until the game’s expansion pack, Balance of Power, the original title introduced the big feature that fans had been anticipating since their first joyride in a TIE Fighter: multiplayer. No longer were you constrained to blowing up legions of the Empire’s (or Alliance’s) dumbest computer-controlled pilots. You could now exact your revenge on your friends via customized space deathmatches or objective-driven missions. And we also love that this was the first of the Star Wars space sims to introduce a destroyable Super Star Destroyer. Those things must cost a fortune.

Star Wars: Rebel Assault

Don’t judge this game based on modern-day standards. Time travel back to November of 1993, a time when owning an optical drive (let alone a game designed for its use) was much more of a rare occurrence than it is now. Star Wars: Rebel Assault was LucasArts’ first such title, and it allowed a player to perform a crude, movie-enhanced run through of most of the major events of Star Wars: A New Hope – complete with a canon-breaking save of Luke Skywalker right before he blew that thing and went home.

Star Wars: Dark Forces/Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II

This one’s a toughie. We give massive historical points to Star Wars: Dark Forces, the very beginning of the Star Wars first-person-shooter landscape. However, it wasn’t until the game’s sequel, Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, that players were finally given the option to swing a lightsaber around and ruin the careers of many of the Empire’s finest stormtroopers. The game also included the addition of Force powers, which left plenty of geeks cackling with glee as they Force-choked everything they could get their hands on.

Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy

A quasi-customizable plot line? First person combat? New Force powers? Double-bladed lightsabers? Crazy multiplayer, saber-swinging slugfests? If Dark Forces invented the Star Wars FPS genre, then Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy was the grand finale. Although the AI in the game was weak even for a Star Wars title – poor stormtroopers – the lightsaber combat (split across three different “stances” for single-blade fighters) did a great job of breaking the hack-and-slash stereotypes of previous titles.

Star Wars Galaxies

Star Wars Galaxies had a tumultuous existence, including its great gameplay shift from “Jedi are rare and sacred” to “Everyone’s a Jedi!” – otherwise known as the “New Game Enhancement” update. But we’ll give the game credit in its attempt to throw everything and the kitchen sink into the first massively multiplayer Star Wars universe. You could be a dancer; You could be a space pilot; You could hang out with Admiral Ackbar. Heck, you could even create and manage your own city, or even play a Star Wars-themed card game within the MMO itself.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic was BioWare’s first big RPG title that had no connection whatsoever to the Dungeons and Dragons universe. And, to gamers’ delight, the company knocked this one out of the park. To say the story is simply “epic” would be doing it a disservice, but to say anything more would spoil a series of twists that you owe it to yourself to experience. Whether you run light side or dark side in this sprawling title, you at least owe it to yourself to enjoy every single word that your companion droid, HK-47, has to say. Meatbag.

Star Wars: Battlefront II

 

You got your Battlefield in my Star Wars -- specifically, Star Wars: Battlefront II, an action-packed title that delivered heavy on the “multiplayer war” angle by supporting up to 64 concurrent players in a single map. But the gameplay was similar in both multiplayer and Battlefront II’s single-player campaign: You picked from one of four classes to wage war in objective (or deathmatch-based) battlegrounds. The better you did, the closer you got to unlocking two special “hero” classes to play as – typically of the lightsaber-swinging variety, we note. Space combat and a Risk-like “Galactic Conquest” mode made this shooter just that much sweeter.

Lego Star Wars II

It’s cute, okay? But more than that, the Lego Star Wars titles – and Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy, particularly – are chock-full of little geeky head-nods and plenty of fun unlockables for Star Wars aficionados of all ages. Ever wonder what would happen if, say, the Emperor himself was chasing Jawas through the Tatooine deserts? With more than 50 playable characters to choose from across the game’s many levels, Lego Star Wars II delivered hours of simple fun (and thousands of destroyed Lego blocks).

Star Wars: Empire at War

Many Star Wars-themed real-time strategy games have come, and many have fallen (Rebellion, anyone?) But Star Wars: Empire at War was perhaps the least-flawed of them all. The galaxy-spanning Galactic Conquest mode was fun without being needlessly complex, allowing you to play through scenarios like “Destroy the Death Star” via both ground- and space-based combat. We confess; blowing up AT-AT Walkers or Republic landspeeders wasn’t nearly as fun as using Interdictor cruisers and Star Destroyers to spring epic traps on your enemies.