“You’re bantha fodder!” I yell as I ram my opponent’s speeder right into an oncoming ridgeline. His craft is utterly smashed into more pieces than an asteroid belt as I smirk with glee at my sadistic success. Only, I haven’t noticed that my speeder bike is now frozen, steering locking up and its backend sliding out behind me. I glide non-gracefully right into the wall that was once on the horizon. My bike explodes, my dignity is left in tatters. So it goes, in the unforgiving world of Star Wars: Galactic Racer.

Developer Fuse Games and publisher Secret Mode set out with a mission to deliver the ultimate Star Wars racing experience. From the visual finesse to the intense speeds, the aim is to immerse you in the Galaxy Far Far Away’s fast-paced antics. Does it cross the finish line with its junker intact, or fall apart at the seams faster than Mawhonic getting knocked out of the race in The Phantom Menace?

Not Bool Man, Not Bool

Star Wars: Galactic Racer has a full campaign, spanning six planets across the galaxy. Our playable character, Shade, is brought on board by the charismatic Darius Pax, head honcho of the Galactic League. Facing competition from the League’s best racer, Kestar Bool, he enlists us to don our helmet and knock Kestar down a peg, or twenty. The racers you compete against are regularly found milling about the HUB areas between planets, and will often engage with banter and taunting in equal measure.

Kestar Bool is a brilliant villain, owing to how he’s constantly sauntering around, dishing out insults and throwing tantrums. He’s the ultimate sore loser and provides a compelling motivation to overcome the odds. Shade also has personal conflict with him, harkening back to his species’ de facto occupation of his home planet. It’s a clever and efficient story that sets up stakes for both player and character alike, while never getting in the way of the main event: the racing.

Side characters are given just enough personality to make them distinct, and some of the voice lines are brilliantly delivered. It’s authentically Star Wars and slots into the universe like a comfortable pair of racing goggles. Sebulba returns as a grizzled and bitter former champion, and he’s as miserable as you remember (in a good way). I won’t spoil his involvement, but rest assured his presence slots seamlessly in alongside the new cast of characters. For a racer, this is a genuinely good story.

A Boonta Classic

The six planets featured in the campaign (and three other modes we’ll come on to) are the star of the show. Each one brings its own set of hazards and considerations. Lantaana is a beautifully lush planet with rolling foliage, bursting with greenery. However, it also has lakes of lava streaking through its caves. Crait has its distinct salt trails that’ll clog up the engines of those caught in them, affecting their boost abilities. Jakku is scorching hot, which overheats race crafts, while Sentinel One will straight up melt your speeder thanks to acid lakes.

Learning each planet’s intricacies and shortcuts is a delight. Fuse Games have crammed so many off-ramps, cut-throughs and sneaky lanes into each of these maps; you could spend an hour just learning one and still miss something. Some maps are reused, albeit with reverse versions, which feels like a slight shame, but they’re so well crafted, it’s hard to not want to jump in and fire up the engines again. They’re all absolutely stunning to behold too, with movie-familiar locations brought to life like never before.

It was such a blast to tear through these maps and live out those Star Wars fantasies. Coupled with the numerous obstacles, dangerous corkscrews and tight turns, you’ll be seeing far too much of the set dressing up close. Well, I did, anyway. As far as capturing the essence of the Star Wars universe and delivering compelling racing tracks goes, Star Wars: Galactic Racer mostly nails it.

Watch The Outer Rim!

But what would a good track be were it not for the handling of the skim speeders that grace them? Racing in Star Wars: Galactic Racer is fast, furious and on a knife’s edge at all times. There’s making the Kessel run and then there’s threading the eye of the needle on Tatooine’s gauntlet. Each vehicle type has its strengths and weaknesses, with the three variants specialising in speed, strength and turning. Personally, the speeder bike was my favourite, though the other two are just as viable.

If you’ve played a more arcade-like racer, you’ll feel right at home here. Dutiful use of the Ramjet boosting system is essential, as is carefully managing your afterburner. While I’m no connoisseur of the genre, it plays very similarly to Burnout Paradise. Take a turn too late, and you’ll ram right off the end of a cliff. Overshoot an overzealous charge attempt, and you’ll be swiftly left behind by the competent AI racers. Upgrades make a significant difference to the handling and speed potential of all three options, which can make the early game feel a bit of a slog, especially if you’re testing out all three.

However, the thrill of landing overtakes with precision, accompanied by a slow-mo camera panning to an opponent’s junker breaking apart mid-collision, is sensational. When using your acquired upgrades, abilities and learned know-how in sync, Star Wars: Galactic Racer comes into its own. The boss battles at the end of each act can be straight up unfair in some respects, though, which can feel demoralising when you’ve spent a good chunk of time reaching that point.

The Roguish Type, Huh?

See, the campaign isn’t content to just be a series of races for you to canter to the end of, oh no. Instead, it’s a run-based system, similar in concept to a roguelike. You start with a league token and have to complete a series of events, comprising races, eliminations, special trials and random encounters, in order to reach the final showdown. Spread across three acts, this structure adds a significant amount of enjoyable replayability. You acquire between-run upgrade currency to improve your three vehicle classes permanently, alongside in-run upgrades and abilities that are lost upon completion or failure.

The point is to lose and suffer, particularly at the starting line. Over time, you’ll hoover up more currency, making your speeder a force to be reckoned with. You’ll also accrue new cards which can then be acquired during runs. There’s a wide selection of all of these, allowing for some really satisfying experimentation. One run, for example, had me equip abilities and cards that effectively allowed me to permanently boost, provided I got myself airborne and used my Ramjet (boost) right on its limit.

This structure is also carried into the Multiplayer Tour, which plays out in a similar fashion, as well as Scenarios. It adds a fun layer of strategising and thinking on the fly to what could otherwise descend into bantha fodder boredom. Typically, this comes with the caveat that a run can be completely derailed from the off thanks to a poor performance or really inopportune critical malfunction to a part. Equally, overcoming that adversity is what Star Wars scoundrel life is all about, and adds to the exhilaration of coming out on top. What was it Han Solo said about knowing the odds?

They’re Side By Side!

Star Wars: Galactic Racer will launch with the aforementioned campaign mode, multiplayer suite, arcade mode (time trials and the like) and scenarios. The latter involves the side characters you meet throughout the story, fleshing out some of their history and offering a more streamlined, curated mini set of races to master. There’s more content here than you’d find trash amongst the Jawas. If you want your racing games to last you some time, Galactic Racer will have you covered, and then some.

Arcade mode had me tearing my hair out over a two second deficit I just couldn’t bridge. Until I did, and it was a feeling of enlightenment even the Jedi wouldn’t understand. That’s not even to speak of all the little touches like the pre-race “checks” which activate ability bonuses, or the Tales of Podracing events, which just add so much to the overall feel of this being the ultimate Star Wars racing title.

Star Wars: Galactic Racer is one of the most stunning renditions of the Star Wars universe we’ve seen so far. Each map is lathered in detail, environmental effects and a creative flair that brings these planets to life. It runs smoother than Anakin’s flying, and I had next to no technical issues or crashes. I do wish the chromatic aberration effect wasn’t so prominent and intrusive however, and there’s no option to toggle it off. It’s a real bug bear of mine, and it did bother me more than a handful of times.

This Is So Wizard, Ani

When it comes to arcade racers, the real question devolves into whether the speeder jostling can inspire long-term mastery alongside the grin-inducing joy. I think Star Wars: Galactic Racer has the engine and parts to achieve both. The run-based nature of the campaign and multiplayer tour offers a fresh concept to keep players invested, while the scenarios and time trials fill out a substantial amount of content, with challenging requirements to best.

It’s an accomplished racing game, one that flows with the midi-chlorians and the Force to deliver an adrenaline-pumping good time in the Star Wars universe. It has some minor faults which cause some spluttering and stalling here and there, but I’ve come away from each run thoroughly satisfied. There’s just nothing quite like slipstreaming your rival, whom you’ve got a sidebet of 1000 credits with, launching yourself from a ramp and Ramjet boosting yourself into the distance as they fall into your rear view.

It turns out very similarly to how Anakin’s pod racer did – a collection of unassuming parts that stutter at points, but coalesce into the perfect boost to best Sebulba and take the win to adoring cheer. The Force is strong with this one, that’s for sure.

Star Wars: Galactic Racer is available October 6th on PlayStation 5 (review platform), Xbox Series X|S and PC.

Developer: Fuse Games
Publisher: Secret Mode

Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, we were provided with a promotional copy of the game. For our full review policy, please go here.

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