Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

Pulling a Stormtrooper out of a Star Destroyer's window with a single flick of the hand — that's exactly the feeling The Force Unleashed wanted to offer, and on PSP it had to pull it off in your pocket. While the big consoles bet on flashy physics systems, the handheld version faced the task of translating the fantasy of an all-powerful Force-wielding apprentice onto hardware with a single analog stick. The result is an action game that strives to make you feel like an unstoppable weapon even on a small screen.

The story casts you as Starkiller, Darth Vader's secret apprentice in the period between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. This narrative gap was extraordinarily important for Star Wars canon at the time — the game was among the officially sanctioned titles of the Expanded Universe and was meant to fill the blank space between the trilogies. The release was conceived as a major multiplatform event, so the PSP version existed alongside variants for the big consoles and for the Nintendo DS, each tackling the same vision by different means.

The core of the fun rests on the combination of the lightsaber and Force abilities. Hurling enemies, lightning and telekinetic manipulation of objects form the foundation of combat, and the game encourages you to experiment and chain attacks into flashy combos. On PSP some of the physics play had to be simplified compared with its console cousins, but the core fantasy — being more powerful than a padawan ought to be — was preserved.

The environments take you through a range of locations across the galaxy, gradually unlocking new abilities and upgrades. The pace is brisk, the combat loud, and visually the game holds up bravely for its era and platform. It's a title that doesn't play to realistic difficulty but to the feeling of power — it wants you to enjoy how easily you scatter a superior force.

For Star Wars fans on the go, it was an enticing offer: a piece of official story that actually counted, plus action that let you behave like a dark apprentice. Even though the handheld version wasn't a technical showcase like the console one, it carried the same ambition and the same appetite to put the Force in the player's hands without compromise.

Why play: If you want handheld action in the Star Wars world where you feel like an unstoppable weapon of the Force, and you're curious about the narrative gap between the trilogies.