Happy Monday! Today I want to go over something in Star Wars: The Old Republic that is awesome fun. Sith, Bounty Hunters, Agents, this list is for you. For every person who goes through their work day looking to come home and force choke some b*tches. That’s right I said it. It’s a video game, it’s fun and Bioware has done a great job of making evil a riot. Is that possible? Yes it is, playing the Sith Empire in Old Republic is pure win and here are the top five reasons why.

5. Force Choke

The move that put Darth Vader on the map. Let’s be honest, fancy lightsabre fights didn’t come until later. In the early days of Star Wars, Vader Force Choking people just by holding his hand out was insanely cool. The idea of choking someone with a thought is crazy, and even better he doesn’t kill them. He just makes them realize how powerful the Dark Side of the Force is. At Level 24 your Marauder will be getting a Force Choke skill. It’s a stun for 3 seconds, but what a great three seconds it is. Holding someone over the fire blast in Huttball with a Force Choke; does it get any better than that?

4. Blizz - The Ultimate Companion

Bounty Hunters get it all. The flirty voice for hot Twi’Lek chicks, the cool armor and jet pack, and the best companion in the game: Blizz!  Blizz is a Jawa which is Star Wars for ‘awesome’. Sure the Gungans and the Ewoks were mistakes, but the Jawa? Hell no. They rocked. Little guys who ravaged the desert picking up scrap and looking for droids to exploit.  Not only that, their little desert cloaks were freaking cool. In the first few minutes of Star Wars: A New Hope we meet the Jawa and they blast R2 with lighning and carry him away like a dead body, how can you go wrong? A little guy to kick around and laugh at and he even has a rocket launcher! Some may think Blizz is cheesy, he is not.  It’s fact. He is cool and Jawas are cool and the Dark Side has them! Go ahead Republic, go team up with your Ewoks and Gungans, our Jawas have rockets!

3. X-70B Phantom

Agents rejoice your class is the James Bond of Space! That’s right the X-70 for short as I’ll call it is the coolest looking ship in the game. This proves once again that the Empire has bank and can give its agents some serious cash to fly in style. The Agents gets a lot of other great gadgets and we’ve seen them pull off some amazing moves in PvP. Not to mention the slick uniforms. But out of all these: the Agent Starship, the X-70B is just flat out cool. It’s like the Lotus of space travel.

2. Force Lightning!

I can still hear that sound from Return of the Jedi when the Emporer first unleashed Force Lightning on Luke. The Sith get Force Lightning: we invented it and it is amazing. The visuals in The Old Republic do Force Lightning some great justice and as I am sure plenty of Sorcerors and Assassins will agree. The idea of using the universal energy to blast people into the void just caps off everyone’s impression of the true Sith Lord. Wwe get to use it early on too. A while back I wrote a feature about the perception of power in games. In Star Wars, wielding Force Lightning is a great way to give the player a feeling of power and destruction that goes hand and hand with the Dark Side.

1. Dark Side Choices!

Both factions in the Old Republic can make Light or Dark side choices in the game. Yet some how, when playing on the Empire side making those decisions just feels like the right path. I played a Jedi in Beta and when the choices came up I was compelled to make the Light side choice regardless of the story. With the Sith I feel like I can go either way. I know there is armor and all, but in truth the class that benefits most is the Bounty Hunter where I felt like I could make either choice comfortably as a true neutral character. The Dark Side choices are cool though: sure I wouldn’t want to see my kids making those murderous choices, but sometimes it is good to be the Sith. Embrace your Dark Side and Force Choke some poor bastard!