Very Fast, Very Dangerous, And Very Good

Star Wars: Galactic Racer is absolutely a Star Wars game, and familiar locations, musical motifs, and characters will delight fans. But mentioning Star Wars these days feels like someone playing a song I’ve heard too many times. Fortunately, "Star Wars" is the least interesting aspect of Galactic Racer. Developer Fuse Games crafted an excellent racing roguelite that’s enthralling, challenging, and hard to put down, even when minor frustrations choke its engines. This fun spills over into the game’s various other modes, too, making for a robust package with no shortage of tournaments to speed through. 

Star Wars: Galactic Racer – Video Review:

Galactic Racer’s campaign is the foundation of Fuse’s revival of the Star Wars racer. You first compete to join the Galactic League to thwart champion Kestar Bool, an alien responsible for your prior imprisonment. Once in, you compete in a multi-planetary tournament and hopefully defeat him, bringing shame and embarrassment to Kestar and the treacherous Bool family. Fun twists and turns make for a story that goes above and beyond what’s typical of the genre. Great voice performances sell the stakes, and getting to know this game’s cast of allies and villains remained interesting throughout; it helps that they have no problem ribbing me via mid-race comms or outright mocking my mistakes on the track. 

Across multiple planets, including beautifully rendered movie highlights like Jakku and Crait, with various tracks on each (with reverse alternatives for added range), I raced so fast that familiar sights blurred into uncharted territory. This was a turn-off at first; it’s downright hard to get a grip on where you are and where you’re going, and the lack of a minimap accentuates the feeling. I respect Fuse’s commitment to tracks feeling like part of this galaxy, using materials and environmental terrain to create each one, but it’s sometimes hard to tell whether a crashed Star Destroyer’s docking bay is something I should enter or avoid on Jakku, doubly so when at top speed. But this campaign is a roguelite: Accrue too many losses and you’re dropped from the tournament. Losing is part of the gig, however, and in time, confusion on the track gave way to confidence as I blitzed through razor-thin hallways and drifted around tight corners to first place. I wouldn’t blame anyone for dropping early, though, because the initial hump is tall, and Galactic Racer does little to guide you toward success. 

Each planet brings a new pitstop to talk with characters, engage with rivalries, fix damaged parts, purchase new abilities and parts, upgrade your vehicle, and renew objective-based contracts. Currency comes generously, as do upgrades and new parts earned after winning races, and crafting a new engine type each run keeps roguelite repetition from getting boring. Abilities like auto-pilot gave me moments to breathe in tougher stretches, while lock-on ion blasts, corrosion vents, and shockwaves gave me an edge against some of the more dangerous racers on the circuit. Because these racers stay the same in each tournament run, I learned how each raced, whether they were offensive or defensive, and the abilities they typically use, which adds a real sense of athleticism to the campaign. 

Upgrading stats like your afterburner, drifting capability, or battery – which lets you equip more abilities – enabled me to craft an engine that works best for my playstyle. As someone all about speed, my upgrades went into the ramjet, which is a powerful but dangerous redlining turbo; the afterburner to increase my overall speed; and the battery, so I could use additional speed-granting abilities like Surge more often. But there’s room to build a vehicle focused on offensive maneuvers, great for elimination events, or countering environmental hazards like acid or ice, and I’m still finding weird but surprisingly effective builds. 

Galactic Racer focuses its racing on drifting landspeeders, speeder bikes that can stop on a dime and burst forward with extra speed, and skim speeders, which can cut through corners using a “knife’s edge” turn style. Though landspeeders brought me the most success, speeder bikes and skim speeders bring their own amusement to the course. The Arcade mode, with time trials, advanced races, and more, and the Scenario mode, with quick, curated six-race campaigns where you play as other pre-crafted characters/vehicles, forced me to leave the comfort of my campaign-crafted cockpit and try something new. In turn, I discovered even more avenues of racing fun. The same goes for the multiplayer, which smartly brings over most of the roguelite upgrade offerings and places them within quick six-race tournaments, complete with pre-race bets against other racers to raise the personal stakes. Single quick races, an XP leveling system, and cosmetic unlocks round out the multiplayer suite with enough to chase after for dozens more hours.

There’s a fourth vehicle type too, though: the podracer. Fuse clearly delights in infusing this legendary racing engine into the game’s narrative, and there’s a lot of pomp and circumstance around just how dangerous and fast podracers are compared to the other three. The thing is, however, is that they simply are too fast and dangerous, and being forced to use them in specific campaign events at the risk of ruining an entire run remained a frustration throughout. Going from the comfort of my own vehicle for five to six races, only to be forced to use a podracer with the risk of my run ending should I lose, was the wrong kind of left turn. 

Podracing is exciting, as the associated speed and unruliness make races unpredictable. But it’s nice that it’s available in other modes, including multiplayer where you can race exclusively against other podracers. I get that a Star Wars racing game without the canon’s most popular vehicle might be a miss, but I would have preferred them to stay relegated to a bonus style of racing in other modes, not an irritating, unavoidable core of the campaign.

Twenty hours later, with the campaign behind me and plenty more time sunk into the other offerings, there’s still so much Galactic Racer left. I spent 45 minutes on one track yesterday not for the gold medal, which I already had, but for the chance to beat a fellow reviewer’s time on the leaderboard, and I don’t regret a minute. Galactic Racer is a Star Wars game, and that might be enough for some, but not for me. Fortunately, it’s an even better racing game, one filled to the brim with courses, vehicle builds, and characters that keep me coming back to the track for one more race.