The last few years have been pretty great for Star Wars video game fans. While EA arguably failed to really capitalize on the license properly, a few good games still managed to come out of it, with Star Wars Battlefront 2 getting much better with age, Star Wars Squadrons being a solid dogfighting game, and of course, the Star Wars Jedi series managing to become one of the best set of Star Wars games ever made. But while these games have been great, they still don't quite live up to the golden age of Star Wars games of the mid-late 2000s, with Star Wars: The Force Unleashed being just one excellent example.

Released on September 16, 2008, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed came right at the tail end of the Star Wars video game golden age that began with the likes of LEGO Star Wars, Star Wars Battlefront 2, and Star Wars Republic Commando back in 2005. And while Star Wars: The Force Unleashed wasn't a perfect game, it still offers one of the greatest power trips in all of gaming 15 years later.

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15 Years Later, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed's Chaos Still Hasn't Been Topped

At the time, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed was a pretty huge deal. While Star Wars games had been a prominent part of the gaming landscape for quite a while, with at least a handful of games releasing every year since the mid-1990s, there was a certain buzz around The Force Unleashed that hadn't really been there before. On top of a huge marketing push by Lucasfilm/Lucasarts, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed was also being marketed as the first truly next-gen Star Wars game, a title that was going to really push technical boundaries and deliver a Star Wars video game experience like no other.

That's exactly what Star Wars: The Force Unleashed did. With next-gen hardware on its side, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed managed to deliver the ultimate Force-user power trip, making players truly feel as if they were this all-powerful Jedi or Sith, capable of causing an absurd amount of destruction by simply flicking their wrist. From the get-go, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed lets players live out their wildest Sith fantasies. Thrust into Darth Vader's black leather boots, players are given free rein over the Sith Lord's ultimate Force powers, letting them fling Wookies off trees and dice their way through Kashyyyk with practically no restricting boundaries.

As players progress through Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, this power trip only becomes more intense, and more satisfying. Taking on the now-iconic role of Sam Witwer's Starkiller, players are able to Force lightning entire crowds of enemies, throw troopers into oncoming TIE-Fighters, and launch foes into the vacuum of space. The more players continue to upgrade Starkiller, the more they start to feel like the ultimate Sith Lord or Jedi Master, and that's only exacerbated by the game's spectacular set pieces. By the end of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, players will have killed multiple Jedi Masters, survived a fatal stab wound from Darth Vader himself, and brought down an entire Star Destroyer with only the power of the Force.

The recent Star Wars Jedi series has done an excellent job of making players feel like a Jedi Knight that's relearning their powers and abilities, and that leads to a compelling gameplay loop across both games. But while players can pull off some cool Force moves, it doesn't quite match the sheer scale of even Star Wars: The Force Unleashed's set pieces and moment-to-moment gameplay. Though the Star Wars Jedi series is a masterclass in franchise storytelling and Soulslike game design, sometimes fans just want to feel like an all-powerful Force-user, and 15 years later, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is still the best place to go for that.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is available on Nintendo DS, Switch, PS2, PS3, PSP, PC, and Xbox 360.

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