The best Star Wars video games of all time, revealed

As a media property larger than 10 Jabba the Hutts, it’s no great surprise there have been a lot of Star Wars video games over the years. And much like the films a big chunk of them are inspired by, their quality varies greatly. But from third-person to first, platformers to pinball, and so much Lego, you’ll struggle to find a more eclectic selection.

Given Star Wars games have been around for nearly as long as George Lucas’s movies, spanning numerous console, handheld and PC generations, trying to rank the best of the bunch initially seemed about as good an idea as building sandcastles near a Sarlacc.

But with the launch of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, the latest Star Wars games to arrive, we were in a reflective mood.

We hope you enjoy this trip down memory lane, and you can let us know how we’ve got on by upvoting your favourites. Think we’ve missed something? Let us know in the box at the bottom. Alternatively, we’ll happily receive any strongly worded letters. Address: a galaxy far, far away….

The best Star Wars games of all time

Not to be confused with the controversial 2017 game of the same game, 2005’s Star Wars: Battlefront II arrived on the scene long before the era of microtransactions and loot boxes that we live in now. Anyone who played it at the time will probably have only good memories of the large scale - up to 64 players could play on PC - objective-based skirmishes, which let you take control of iconic Star Wars heroes for the first time. Away from the multiplayer, Battlefront II also featured a surprisingly engaging single-player campaign, centered around a veteran clone trooper reflecting on the battles of the 501st Legion. It was quite the package.

The best Star Wars game ever made has nothing to do with Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader or even Babu Frik. BioWare’s legendary RPG is set thousands of years before the movies that made Star Wars a household name, although it’s still very much concerned with Jedi vs. Sith, and light vs. the dark side of the Force.What’s so brilliant about Knights of the Old Republic (often referred to as KotOR) is the freedom it affords the player, allowing them to mould their character into a righteous Jedi or a wicked Sith lord ol’ Palpatine himself would approve of. But in typical BioWare fashion, the choices you make are rarely easy ones. The semi turn-based combat won’t be to everyone’s taste these days, but KotOR remains one of the best Star Wars stories ever told, and we’re holding out for that remake.

It might not be the best Star Wars game ever made, but Traveller’s Tales’s biggest Lego Star Wars game is almost certainly the ultimate video game celebration of George Lucas’s beloved space opera.Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga lets you play through all nine mainline films as slapstick Lego homages, and when you’re not following the main story, each unlocked planet also serves as an open-world hub you can explore using any of the game’s 400 playable characters. As rammed with content as it is daft gags, this is the definitive Lego Star Wars experience.

Good single-player Star Wars games are a rarer thing than they probably should be, but EA’s Respawn studio, best known for the Titanfall series, got an awful lot right with Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.It is set in the years that followed Order 66, when the emperor ordered the death of all Jedi. You play as the red-headed Cal Kestis, a former Padawan and survivor of the purge, who embarks upon a mission to rebuild the Jedi Order. Fallen Order can be described as an ambitious cocktail of Uncharted, Dark Souls and Metroid, but with lightsabers and Force powers, and while we didn’t love everything about the game (the map was truly terrible), there was more than enough here to make us very excited about the imminent sequel.

The GameCube is mainly remembered for classics like Resident Evil 4, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and Metroid Prime 4, but it also launched with one hell of a Star Wars game in Rogue Squadron 2: Rogue Leader. As well as being a technical showcase for Nintendo’s newest console, it was a breathtaking space combat simulator, letting you pilot a range of starfighters and recreate some of the most famous Star Warsmoments in history, including the Battle of Hoth and, of course, the Death Star trench run.

Don’t be fooled by its decidedly less than catchy title, this 2002 classic features some of the best lightsaber and Force-based combat ever committed to code, and it speaks to its confidence that none of it is present at the start of the game.In Jedi Outcast you play as the aforementioned Kyle Katarn, a former Jedi-turned-mercenary who regains his powers over the course of the campaign. By its end, you’re chucking Stormtroopers about like soft toys, aided by some very familiar faces. With a generous suite of multiplayer modes accompanying the single-player campaign, Jedi Outcast is a standout Star Wars power fantasy, over 20 years on.

The 90s was a formative decade for first-person shooters, it being the era of Doomand Quake. Inevitably, the former in particular inspired a number of other games looking to build on its high-octane gameplay and freedom of movement, and Star Wars: Dark Forceswas one of the better examples.Dark Forces introduced Star Wars fans to Kyle Katarn, who was as handy with a blaster as he would eventually be with a lightsaber in the various games he’d go on to star in. It felt great to play on PC (a PlayStation version arrived later but was plagued by serious performance issues) and was praised at the time for its inventive level design.

Star Wars and virtual reality were made for one another, and while there have been countless Star Wars space combat games over the years, Squadronswas the one that actually put you in the (customisable) cockpit of an X-Wing and let you live your Skywalker fantasy (if your stomach could tolerate all those barrel rolls, that is). The single-player game has you fighting for both the New Republic and the Empire, so you get to be the baddie too, but it’s in the multiplayer dogfights that the game really sings. You don’t need a VR headset for this one, but with one on it’s truly transportive.

Next up, have your say on the best Star Wars movies

Matt Tate is a freelance journalist and contributor at for Shortlist. Formerly Stuff Magazine’s news editor and based in the UK, he’s been writing about consumer tech for around eight years, with a particular focus on gaming.

For his sins, Matt is a huge Tottenham Hotspur fan and unfortunately spends a lot of his time scanning his published work for Spurs-related digs that may have been slyly inserted by editors. Otherwise, he’s often buying Lego sets he can no longer accommodate and trying to perfect his carbonara recipe. He can be found tweeting (mostly about football and video games) at @MattWTate.