When I first saw the reveal trailer for Star Wars: Galactic Racer, I let out an audible gasp. Star Wars: Episode I – Racer was one of the more meaningful games of my childhood—both on the N64 and in the arcade—so seeing a game that was attempting to capture the spirit of that, even saying in its reveal trailer, “We gotta go back to the way racing used to be,” did fill me with “a new hope” (wink).
Star Wars: Galactic Racer is a phenomenal game, but it’s also kind of a frustrating one. There are so many good ideas within it that it genuinely creates a racing game experience unlike anything I’ve ever played. However, there are also a lot of little annoyances and strange design choices that keep it from being all it could be.
Something that actually surprised me a bit in Star Wars: Galactic Racer was its story. Not because it had one—lots of racing games have stories—but more so because of how the game makes its narrative feel less like one from a racer, and more like one from Star Wars. Set after the events of the sequel trilogy, players take on the role of a mysterious racer named Shade, who is introduced to the new Galactic Racing Circuit by his friend Darius Pax—who is trying to return racing to its glory days, before the Empire.
However, there’s a catch—a hot-shot racer with some high pedigree and a history with Shade named Kestar Bool has been the undisputed league champion for far too long and will do whatever it takes to stay in that position. It’s up to Shade to rise through the ranks, remove Kestar from his throne and return Galactic Racing to its former glory. It’s a solid foundation for a story that presents itself like it could have been a film with the “A Star Wars Story” subtitle attached.
But where it kind of falls apart is in its presentation—both in the micro and macro sense. There’s a certain lack of polish (which will become something of a running theme in this review) that holds the story back from being as good as it could be. For starters, there’s a distinct lack of cutscenes during the campaign mode, and the ones that are there feel very half-hearted. You think each chapter would begin with the iconic Star Wars text crawl, but instead it displays the star-spangled void we all know and love and just a single paragraph of text.
“With just a little more production value, Star Wars: Galactic Racer could have had a genuinely exciting and engaging story to carry its gameplay.”
Actual in-game cutscenes—if they can be called that—feel kind of slapdash, being rendered in-engine rather than as proper videos, so nothing moves as well as it could, and there’s no real cinematography or sense of grandeur. Even at the end of the first chapter, when Shade has to race against the legendary Sebulba, there’s no buildup or visual introduction to him, despite how much of a big deal this is supposed to be. And it’s a shame because you can see where the threads of a good narrative could be here.
Before each set of races, players can walk around a little hub area, and each moment has a chance of dialogue with one of the other racers. They can trade barbs, talk about their past, or offer little hints to who Shade was. The problem with this is, it all kind of happens in medias res, so they’ll just say things that seem like important details that the player is just supposed to know—I guess based on how much Star Wars lore you know? With just a little more production value, Star Wars: Galactic Racer could have had a genuinely exciting and engaging story to carry its gameplay.
Thankfully, this shortcoming is made up for with aplomb by the gameplay. Star Wars: Galactic Racer absolutely nails the fundamentals of a sci-fi racer—delivering high-speed racing with tight controls and some pretty unique mechanics. I can safely say this is the most fun I’ve had with a racing game in a long time…but this too isn’t without its faults. First, I want to focus on what I really like about Star Wars: Galactic Racer: its Galactic Tour mode.
This mode makes up the core of the single-player experience, but it is available for online multiplayer matches. Galactic Tour takes the form of a roguelike experience, where players choose their craft and play along a sequence of races—choosing progression paths that can feature different types of races or random events along the way. With each race win, players are given credits to purchase upgrades and stats to apply to their craft—choosing one from three randomly selected options.
Depending on how well they do in the race, players can get even better rewards in the form of parts for their craft, which apply different bonuses, and even abilities that can be activated during a race. This, paired with different Racer Styles, can dramatically alter how you approach each Tour. However, there is a catch—during a tour, players are given League Tokens which they can lose by crashing enough times to be eliminated from a race, or failing to qualify during certain races. If players lose all their League Tokens, they lose the Circuit and have to begin again from the start—stats wiped and abilities lost.
It’s a really interesting gameplay mechanic to attach to something like a racing game, and it fits the fast-paced nature of the whole thing. Races are quick and exciting, and if you get knocked out, you can jump right back into the action with a new strategy. And things get even more interesting as you progress—allowing you to take on challenges for bigger rewards, place bets on who you think might win, and more!
And each of the three available crafts—four technically, but we’ll get into that—offers a unique way to approach every new run. The Land Speeder is an all-around vehicle with a reliable drift. The Speeder Bike is fast and fragile, but compensates with its “Kinetic Burst,” allowing it to take tighter turns at reduced speed, but offering a big boost the longer its held (kind of like drifting in Mario Kart).
“Star Wars: Galactic Racer absolutely nails the fundamentals of a sci-fi racer—delivering high-speed racing with tight controls and some pretty unique mechanics.”
The Skim Speeder is fast but turns wide; however, it can roll onto its “Knife’s Edge” to take incredibly precise turns. Add to this, vehicles come equipped with both a basic boost and the “Ramjet,” which is a far more powerful boost but can overheat your craft if held for too long and cause a blowout.
With all these mechanics working together, you can create some really fun builds. One I really liked for the Speeder Bike was a Pilot ability that made the Ramjet way faster when it was in the Redline (the danger zone before a blowout), but I paired it with abilities that not only made that surge faster, but extended how long I could be in the Redline. It made for a really tense build where I was constantly on the edge of death, but moving at extreme speeds.
In addition to this, Pod Racing returns as a separate mode which is a little more straightforward, and harkens back to the N64 classic. Pod Racers are fast and maneuverable, where players are all on a more even playing field and need to use skill and cunning in order to win. However, where Star Wars: Galactic Racer falters is in its Arcade Mode. For some reason, rather than just giving players a standard Arcade Mode where they can choose different courses, racers and just have fun, this game locks everything behind sequential progression—so every challenge in every mode needs to be cleared one at a time. On top of that, it doesn’t even feature a Time Trial mode, which is just baffling to me.
Not only that, the online multiplayer Galactic Tour, which is REALLY fun and interesting, doesn’t seem to feature a way to join a tour from the start. Every single time I joined during the press multiplayer sessions, I always seemed to join when one or two races had already gone by, giving me two missed opportunities to build my craft the way I wanted to.
Alongside this, EVERY character is locked behind player progression levels, meaning basically everyone starts as Shade and needs to play a bunch of matches before they can get new characters. I get that each character has their own unique ability for online play, but this isn’t a complex RPG, its a racing game. It’s not hard to understand, one character goes fast and another hits hard.
And if I’m being honest here, the course selection is kind of weak. Star Wars: Galactic Racer features seven planets to race one—two of them deserts. Furthermore, the tracks themselves are designed in a way that feels like they’re these big areas, split up by the circumstances of each race, rather than unique biomes with interesting layouts. Racing through an icy cave on Ando Prime feels kind of the same as going through a crystal one on Crait.
This game had a chance to include some really fun levels—racing above or below the clouds on Bespin, or blasting through the cities on Coruscant. Weaving through trees on Endor, or across the crags and magma pools of Mustafar. With the speed and visual fidelity this game offers, it could’ve been something really special.
And my last complaint about Star Wars: Galactic Racer is its music. It’s incredibly underwhelming given how fast-paced and fun this game is meant to be. Racers basically play out in silence until the last lap, where the John Williams-adjacent score picks up with bombast and grandeur…but not really excitement. It gives the game this unnecessary air of drama that it doesn’t really need. Heck, they don’t even use the Star Wars theme anywhere in the game! I just put on the soundtrack to F-Zero X and had a way better time playing.
However, at the end of the day, Star Wars: Galactic Racer is a really fun Star Wars-flavoured racing game that is sure to please fans of the iconic franchise and fans of the genre. Even with its weird shortcomings, I was never not having fun while playing and consistently kept going back for more. It’s the closest thing to a new F-Zero we’ve got in years, and I’ll take it.
- COMPETE IN HIGH-STAKES RACES - Slam, shunt, and takedown rivals across varied circuits as you pilot land speeders, speeder bikes, skim speeders, and pod racers. The greater the risk, the greater the reward.
- SURVIVE A DANGEROUS UNDERGROUND SPORT – Join The Galactic League – an unsanctioned racing circuit born in the lawless Outer Rim. Become Shade, a lone racer chasing revenge and glory.
