We have to thank LucasArts for some of the best movie-adjacent games with their foray into the Star Wars expanded universe during the ’90s and early ’00s. Still, the dark side is real, meaning that they also directly made or allowed for the creation of some Holiday Special-tier video game crap. Here are the 7 worst Star Wars games ever made.
#7 — Star Wars Racer: Revenge (of the Sebulba)
This one isn’t even that bad, just really weird. It stars Sebulba, the scummy murderous podracing ex-champion from Episode 1. That’s messed-up, but let he who didn’t call bullshit on Qui Gon Jinn just letting slavery happen in front of his face cast the first stone.
Weaknesses: It doesn’t have the mystique of the first one, and that’s saying a lot since it we’re talking about a game based on Episode 1 that starred kid Anakin.
Strengths: It’s actually pretty decent, gameplay-wise.
#6 — Star Wars Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike
Rebel Strike is the sequel to Rogue Leader, the best space Star Wars game ever made. The only people who disagree with that assessment are the Sith and the people who never got to play it because they refused to get a GameCube, the only platform where it’s available.
How did they follow up on that? By, ugh, dramatically reducing the amount of space shooting and having players walk around on foot with a blaster on hand. Imagine like a Starfox game doing that. How ridiculous.
fake editor’s note: a deeper dive into the history of the GameCube reveals that they also did that with Starfox and it also sucked ass and killed the series up until now.
Strengths: The space levels are good
Weaknesses: Few space levels
#5 — Star Wars: Force Unleashed 2
Hey, remember the original Force Unleashed? The game that made up an apprentice of Darth Vader who seemingly used a glowstick instead of a lightsaber and had us repeatedly hitting enemies with it instead of allowing us to just cut them up? Yeah, this series invented lightsabers that somehow just aren’t fun. Force Unleashed 2 is even more of that bullshit but worse because its development was rushed and resulted in the release of an unfinished mess.
Weaknesses: The biggest addition it made to the bloated and unfun gameplay of the original was a bunch of glitches.
Strengths: It doesn’t feel all that absurdly fan-fiction-y when compared to the newest non-Andor Star Wars TV shows.
#4 — Star Wars Episode 1
Episode 1’s game sucks because it features a locked camera angle that points down and seemingly tasks players with using real-life force powers they don’t possess to guess what’s in front of them. What was behind this decision? Did they end up with a mediocre game that was still much superior to the film it was tied to and thus had to turn it into crap just so they didn’t make the Episode 1 film look even worse?
Weaknesses: The inexplicable camera angle turns an otherwise acceptable game into an unbearable mess.
Strengths: It sucks to play but it’s still more fun to look at than the goddamn movie.
#3 — Star Wars: Obi Wan
It’s easy to say that nobody needed more Obi Wan stuff anyway now that you’ve seen the TV series and it sucked ass, but gamers have known that ever since ‘01 when they made a game based on the supposedly really eventful life of that character. The only reason few people actually know about this game’s existence is because it plays very poorly and for one the people behind it decided to not spending millions promoting it. Thanks!
Weaknesses: It’s a technical mess that clearly relied solely on the character’s nonexistent appeal.
Strengths: It got our expectations so low that we got even more amazed when we got Star Wars Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast, one of the greatest games of all time, just a year later.
#2 — Star Wars Masters Of Teras Kasi
Did you know that between the events of the original Star Wars and Empire, the bad guys sent Arden Lyn, a master of Teras Kasi to beat up Luke Skywalker?
What the hell is even Teras Kasi, you ask? Well, it’s a word in a made up language that translates to Steel Fist. To give you some context, Tekken means Iron Fist, and Steel is cooler than iron, so I believe I have all the evidence necessary to accuse LucasArts of openly trying to make a fighting game better than Tekken. They did not succeed. The only fun you can get out of this game is from seeing the non-surprising result of pitting an unarmed Chewbacca against a lightsaber-yielding Luke Skywalker.
Strengths: The enjoyment you get out of thinking that there was once a time when someone could just have an absolute bullshit idea for a game and then an entire development team and publisher were like “yes, why not?”
Weaknesses: Aside from its ridiculous concept, it’s slow, controls very poorly, and features very few moves. Also, it doesn’t feature any of the untrained and unarmed characters from the prequels.
#1 — Kinect Star Wars
Remember Kinect? If you do, then I hope it’s not because you bought one. Unlike “Teras Kasi,” “Kinect” doesn’t mean shit, but it could be the word used to pinpoint the moment the Xbox 360 went to crap. The only occasion in the history of consoles when a company actually had the edge against Sony, and decided to abandon regular games and focus on motion-controlled camera bullshit that allowed players to barely dance as if they were Darth Vader. Every single game made for Kinect sucks, and Kinect Star Wars, maybe due to the love for Star Wars that still remained in our hearts during 2010, feels like the worst of the bunch.
Strengths: The Kinect is very fun to break with a baseball bat. You can make lightsaber sounds while you swing at it. No one will know, and no one would judge you, anyway.
Weaknesses: You can only break it once.
