Building up your video game collection can seem like an expensive task once people start throwing recommendations your way for things you absolutely must play. Thankfully, this hobby is fast becoming much cheaper thanks to people like the Humble team who put together bundles of games for the price of basically-how-much-have-you-
Their latest collection bolstering package is the Humble Star Wars Bundle, which is unsurprisingly themed around Star Wars video games.
The bundle is by no means every best Star Wars video game, but if you elect to spend at least $12 (approximately eight of our English pounds) you’ll be getting nine varied and mostly enjoyable games, including a couple of classics.
The force has long been with video games
Star Wars has a long standing relationship with video games, going back to the early days of Atari’s arcade cabinets and considering how familiar most of us are with the Star Wars franchise, this could be an ideal place to dip your toes into the interactive experience waters.
Included for any amount paid is Knights of the old Republic, one of those games that will occasionally be strongly recommended by an overly enthusiastic gaming-friend at the pub. Developed by RPG power house Bioware, Kotor is set pre-prequel and walks the right side of a thin line between feeling like star wars and feeling like something entirely different. It has some excellent characterisation, some solid if not now slightly dated visuals and one of the most jaw dropping narrative moments ever to be found in a video game that talking about any more would give away. That will probably be the thing that your gaming-pub-friend will be thinking of and desperately trying not to give away.
Also of note in the bundle is Jedi Academy which I personally have very fond memories of, even if it is probably inferior to its predecessor Jedi outcast which is sadly absent from the package (Update: Not any more! The bundle added three more games whilst I was writing this!). This has you fulfilling pretty much anyone’s power fantasy of being a young Jedi initiate being tutored by Luke Skywalker, building up your powers and generally having a great time throwing Stormtroopers off cliffs.
More Stormtrooper flinging fun can be found in The Force Unleashed, which has an odd feel to it but is delightful if you just don’t think too hard about the fact you’re playing Darth Vader’s secret jedi hunting apprentice who appears to be more powerful than the rest of the Star Wars universe put together.
There’s also the surprisingly excellent Republic Commando, which might very well be the only good thing to come out of the prequel trilogy, Empire at War, an awkward and slightly buggy real time strategy, competitive multiplayer shooter Battlefront 2 which has its fans and Dark Forces, which at this point is probably one for the historians seeing as it is a first person shooter old enough to be remembered as a Doom clone.
There are many hours of enjoyment and escapism up for grabs here and the Humble team normally adds a few extra games in to the bundle half way through the promotion (Update: This has just happened) to make it that bit more attractive. As an added bonus, you can specify some of your payment for the deal to go to Unicef.
The Humble Star Wars Bundle ends in about a week’s time, but if you’re reading this much further in the future and have missed it, I’d recommend keeping an eye on the Humblr Bundle site for the next deal that comes along. They’ve been doing them for a while (I wrote something brief about the third Humble Bundle a couple of years ago) and they are almost always remarkably strong selections.