Star Wars: Galactic Racer is the latest game in the Star Wars franchise this time a racing game with Roguelite elements as players customise and upgrade their Speeder across the campaign or cross platform multiplayer with PS5, Xbox and PC. 

Galactic Racer is developed by Fuse Games, a brand-new studio with this as their debut game made of former Criterion Games developers who made the Burnout and Need for Speed games before unfortunately being relegated to a support studio for EA’s Battlefield only. 

Pro: 

Graphics. 

Galactic Racer really impressed me with it’s visuals being the best-looking Star Wars game beating out the likes out EA’s Battlefront 2 and Jedi Survivor. 

Before getting into the environmental design and vehicle models the most immediate piece of graphical beauty in this game comes from the vehicle crashes and the cloud of debris they crumble into across the track. If a player sees this level of destruction and the sweeping camera angles to look back at the carnage of takedowns of other racers they might think of the classic Burnout games from the PS2 era.  

This is because it turns out that the newly founded Fuse Games was created by former Criterion Games developers, so they brought that experience and technology to the Star Wars universe as Fuse Games and it works perfectly as a blend of gameplay mechanics and visual splendour. 

When walked round the paddocks in the campaign being able to see off into the distant vistas is impressive the sheer scale of the environments and their detail with Ando Prime seeing the huge ice cliffs and metallic platform jutting into the sky or on Jakku with the remains of the Galactic Empire serving as a graveyard as a reminder this is set in Disney’s sequel era. 

The various characters are all very well designed and distinctive from the returning character designs of the Boonta Eve Classic Podracers like Sebulba and Ben Quadinaros to returning creature designs like Biddy Blas the Crocin who’s species appeared in the Solo film. Even some TV show characters fully return with a younger Griff Halloran from Star Wars Resistance, he is voiced by his original voice actor too and using his character design plus signature skull faced helmet. 

It is very easy to tell the love and care the staff at Fuse Games put into Galactic Racer for all these call-backs from across the franchise with every era being represented. 

Frame rate. 

The most important part of any racing game especially high-speed racing game is the frame rate and if it remains stable. 

I was very happy that across my playthrough it remained a rock solid and steady 60fps without any dips which is very much needed for a game of this sheer speed with Podracers and Speeders careening over volcanoes on Lantaana and inside of Star Destroyers on Jakku. 

This was also performed on base PS5 and while playing cross platform for the multiplayer with Xbox and PC users my own frame rate remained consistent at 60fps, even if the lag made by opponents’ zip around the map at times which is not the fault of the game due to Wi-Fi. 

Sound design. 

It is hard to describe how good the sound design in this game is from how authentic and Star Wars it sounds. 

From all the switches clicking from the start-up sequences to the roar of the Podracer engines it feels like being transported back to the 1999 sitting in the cinema and watching the Boonta Eve Classic section all over again on Tatooine. 

The voice acting is some of my favourite out of any video game missing Sam Witwer. As they brought back the voice actor for Sebulba revealed in the initial trailer with Lewis MacLeod still voicing the infamous Dug since 1999. Now he has a lot more dialogue and character taking on a mentor role to Shade in the campaign with more dialogue than he got in the original movie due to being such a presence in the game and with the Tales of Podracing mini game as he tells Shade of his rise to glory in the Podracing circuit. 

The main villain of the game Kestar Bool is voiced perfectly by Kris Laudrum. Who perfectly portrays the petty and slimy Caskadag nepo baby who tries to take over the Galactic League due to the inherited wealth and power of his corrupt family to abuse and cheat his way to the top. He is the perfect villain for this type of story being so easy to hate through his actions and delivered dialogue making the player want to ram him off the track and every opportunity given in a race. 

Special mention to Biddy Blas voiced by Richard Summers-Calvert will forever be the gold standard that all NPC voices will be marked against as the standout from his performance becoming the breakout star of the game going viral. 

Multiplayer. 

Aside from the fun quick race and quick Podrace the player can embark on Tours with other players online that act as a mini version of the campaign. 

Players begin the 12-player tour by choosing their backer same as the main campaign but also making side bets on the other players of who will finish in top three, top six or top mine. So, the player can bet big on themselves for a bigger reward or someone else if they don’t feel confident. 

Then the player races like normal and after each event they spend the credits they win at the shop on parts, upgrade points or abilities making for great, chaotic fun with friends online due to the number of crashes and random builds being created from parts available. 

After 5 races it moves onto the championship gauntlet on the final 6th planet where everyone gets to bet on who the champion will be at the end of it with whoever chooses correctly gets a bigger XP reward to increase player level. It also scales so the player in 12th place if they somehow win the player who chose them gets 2,000 XP but the player in 1st going in only rewards 500XP. 

Campaign. 

One of the biggest surprises in this game is how fleshed out the campaign was in this game. 

The campaign sees the player as Shade a mysterious Human racer who gets roped into entering the Galactic League to take down the champion Kestar Bool who was a personal history with Shade that gets revealed over the course of the game. 

Act 1 has 13 events across 4 planets; Act 2 has 18 events across 5 planets and Act 3 has 22 events across 6 planets. So, there is a lot of content in the single player campaign mode for people to work through especially since it’s designed to be replayed to unlock everything. 

So, the player embarks on this three-act structure of taking down Kestar in a very fun Rougelite gameplay loop where players build their Speeder with upgrades the player gets either won in races or bought at the shop with the credits players win in events. 

Backers. 

At the start of each new tour the player chooses their backer from a choice of three (Hutts, Pirates or Canto Bight gamblers) who acts as the sponsor for that tour giving the player extra tasks to complete on each planet for extra credits depending on how if they finish the challenge and how many races, they win.  

The challenges range from simple ones like using Ramjet or completing start-up sequences to more challenging ones like spending time in last place or getting takedowns. 

These backers really add to the sense of immersion helping the player feel like a real racer like real life face car drivers in F1 or NASCAR are covered in sponsorships so too is Shade to get ahead of the competition. 

Parts and abilities. 

Then what is the player to do with all these credits from events and Backers? They spend them of course!  

With 300 different parts to choose from ranging from offensive or defensive buffs players have a near infinite number of builds to create all down to sheer randomness. 

If the player has all four of their parts equipped and happy with the build then they can spend their credits on stat boosts for that single run or on ability packs as the game features 9 different abilities – Concussion Mine, Vent, Shockwave, Status Scrubber, Ion Bolt, Ion Blast, Shield, Autopilot, Surge. 

Each ability can also be upgraded into stronger forms that combine them like a Surging Shield that combines the defensive Shield with the acceleration boost of Surging so that when the player activates the Shield and crashes into another racer then Surging activates to go past them. 

When starting out I recommend picking up the Autopilot ability early on to help turn and navigate the courses especially on new tracks and planets that the player doesn’t know what to expect. 

Racing Styles. 

In addition to the parts and abilities players can also unlock new Racing Styles based on the abilities and play styles of the other racers. 

There are 14 to unlock like Biddy Blas with his Firebug style built around setting themselves and others on fire to go faster or Redliner based on Ary Quill who starts with Surge and is all about the Ramjet to go faster than all other racers. 

During the campaign Shade unlocks these from completing more events in each campaign run and can then upgrade them when equipped by winning more events or doing special missions like spend time shielded or using the Ramjet for instance. 

Each Racing Style feels very unique with how it tries to win and it’s starting ability like Flame Vent for Biddy and Surge for Ary, and these Racing Styles also effect online racing since each character has their default racing style online.  

Favours. 

The final component of the campaign is the ability to unlock and use favours from the other NPCs that are unlocked either through side objectives or given as part of the story. 

There are 20 to collect and these are by far the biggest time sink to unlock them all since some of these can only be unlocked by doing side missions with the NPC drivers through the random mystery events that show up on every tour, but the player doesn’t knows what event will trigger so they could get repeated or just random events unrelated to unlocking favours. 

These easiest favours to unlock aside from the story ones are the Backer related favours with my personal recommendation being the Team Vranki favour unlocked by choosing Vranki the Hutt as your backer. His favour is that for each event the player finishes without crashing the bet X amount of credits per crash remaining. So, at rank 3 when fully upgraded the player gets 200 credits per crash remaining which really snowballs late game. 

Scenarios. 

The scenarios serve a mini campaign for each of the main racers of the cast with 5 races across a single planet. 

Each scenario also has a different difficulty setting so none of them play the same with Biddy Blas on his Speeder bike on Cadet (Easy) setting compared to Kestar Bool in his Landspeeder on Crait at the highest difficulty setting for the most challenge. 

These also reward the player with Kit Points to unlock new parts for the Speeders or custom paint job, so they are definitely worth doing for players. 

Arcade. 

Arcade serves as the time trail mode for the game and has 50+ different Time Trials available to choose from with different vehicles, on different tracks on different planets. 

It is also incredibly challenging as on my playthrough I had finished about 50% of them but only got 1 Gold medal with the rest being silver medals, so there is a lot of content here for players to grind for many hours and get all the gold medals for the Platinum trophy. 

However, while fun I would suggest to improve this even more I would request not just comparing times against people on your friends list but also have a global ranking to compare against. 

If the global ranking was added I would also request a ghost function like other racing games have for Time Trial modes so people can see the racing lines of these racers to improve a players skill level. 

Con: 

No Offline Quick Race. 

The biggest glaring absence in this game is the lack of being able to freely setup offline matches with the ability to do a basic race on any track in the game. 

I can’t remember the last racing game I played that wouldn’t allow me to race against NPCs on any track from the menu even Mario Kart still does this. 

It would help immensely to learn the tracks for campaign and online multiplayer to suss out shortcuts without sabotaging a campaign run due to league tokens or feel like trolling in online matches. 

No Private online races. 

A big missing point is the ability to set up private lobbies with only friends and no other random real players. 

Instead, players can now set up 6 player parties for online matches but still not able to do a full lobby with just friends and NPCs only feels like a big missing feature. 

No Custom online races. 

There is also no option to set up custom online racers with a custom rule set instead players are thrown onto random planets and random tracks with random NPC racers. 

It would be a lot more fun to set up custom lobbies with unique rules like only Speeder Bikes with no Landspeeders or Skim Speeders with 5 races on Ando Prime and just Biddy Blas being the only NPC choice for maximum chaos. 

Autopilot. 

This is a con probably exclusive to me since I always choose the autopilot ability when it comes up to due to my Dyspraxia finding it more difficult to compete at max speed Podracing. 

The issue comes about when using Autopilot, as 9/10 times it works perfectly going around tight bends when engaged early but the other 1/10 times the game would slam my Speeder or Podracer into a wall and kill me potentially risking the whole run on my last League Token. 

The final issue is the most rare is that when Autopilot ends sometimes it would put me in a situation where I can’t avoid crashing into an obstacle due to going to fast unable to turn or apply the brakes in time. 

No Podracer customisation. 

In the online races players are able to customise their vehicle and it will be the same no matter which character they choose to race as. 

However, when it comes to using Podracers they player is stuck with each racer’s default Podracer with no option to modify it with different visual parts or even change the colour of the vehicle. 

Podracer roster. 

Of the main roster of Podracers to choose from there were only 6 options for online multiplayer which is disappointing since Episode 1 Racer had 23 different Podracers to choose from. 

However, since online Pod race matches only have 8 players at a time there are constant duplicates being denoted with a 2 next to the NPC name. 

Instead, they should add new racers to choose from since in the campaign both Shade and Kestar become Podracers but are unable to be chosen as Podracers even though they are available in normal races as drivers, so I would suggest making them playable to bring the roster up to 8 total and fill out a full room without duplicates. 

Planet variety. 

Galactic Racer features a total of 6 main different planets to race on and a 7th just for Podracing with Tatooine (Less different planets than Episode 1 Racer with 8) they all feel very safe choices being all natural environments with minimal industry and an overrepresentation of Disney era planets. 

Ando Prime is a great throwback to Episode 1 Racer with the unique frozen mechanism letting racers redline their engines longer to get to the fastest non-Podracer speeds the rest just don’t hold up. 

There is a severe lack of city planets or major industrialisation planets to race on, as no Coruscant or tracks based in atmosphere like Bespin or in another throwback to Episode 1 Racer could use Ord Ibanna known for the hardest tracks in that original game. 

Shade customisation. 

Shade is the main character for the campaign mode as a masked mystery racer who goes undercover in the league to get revenge. 

However, the player can only choose from 3 base outfits, 3 helmets and 4 voices with different levels of distortion on each but unlike the speeders that get more unlockable skins through challenges or Kit Points the player does not unlock more options for Shade. 

Since the player sees the back of Shade in all the walking sections of the campaign and in every speeder per race more customisations would be welcome. 

Online rewards. 

While online multiplayer is a lot of fun with unlockable vehicle skins, player icons and banners for the nameplate the issue I have is that players get no Tuning Points or Kit Points to unlock speeder parts or the non level locked skins that can only be unlocked with Kit Points. 

However, Kit Points cannot be earned through quick race or quick Podrace instead only in the tour modes, so players who don’t have the time commitment for a full tour won’t get the Kit Points to unlock more cosmetics. 

So being able to earn a small amount per quick race or Podrace would be a big improvement to help unlock the base game cosmetics. 

Podracing tour. 

The Podracing version of the standard tour format with the main three speeders, but however this mode is locked until the player reaches rank 5 which takes a few hours. 

I would have preferred if this mode was unlocked from the beginning rather than behind a small level lock as it’s the only mode that needs to be unlocked for multiplayer, as it’s very fun to play and upgrade the Podracer. 

Final Score: 8.5 

Conclusion: 

Galactic Racer is my favourite Star Wars racing game ever released as no other project encapsulates the sense of speed and chaos since Episode 1 Racer back on the PS1 and N64. 

If a person is a fan of fast paced hectic racing games or the Star Wars franchise, then they need to play this game either solo for it’s fun roguelite game or online with mates. 

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