One of this year’s best games is, surprisingly, a Star Wars roguelike arcade racing game. I wasn’t expecting that either, but it’s true. Star Wars: Galactic Racer is fantastic and one of the best arcade racers I’ve played in years. And if you’re an Amazon Prime subscriber, you can play it right now for free via streaming and check it out. Just don’t expect this to be the best version.
Out today on Xbox, PS5, and PC, Star Wars: Galactic Racer is a fast-paced racing game that combines roguelike progression with high-speed racing and even podracing to create one of the year’s best games. In my recently published review, I didn’t have many bad things to say about the new Star Wars racer beyond noting some repetitive hub areas between events. So when I saw the news that Amazon was going to feature Galactic Racer on its game-streaming service Luna on launch day for Prime members, I was excited, as it meant more people would get a chance to check it out. However, after playing it, I’m not sure anyone should invest too much time in this version.
It’s nice to be able to go to a webpage, click start, and a few seconds later have Star Wars: Galactic Racer boot up on my screen with no downloads or updates needed. That’s always been a cool trick of streaming games. And when I started up an arcade event, I was shocked to find that, at least on my connection and setup, I didn’t notice any input lag or delay. That would be a death sentence for a game that moves as fast as Galactic Racer.
But unfortunately, Galactic Racer doesn’t look great via Luna Streaming. I noticed all sorts of low-res textures, pop-in, image artifacts, and a general blurriness to everything. I think Galactic Racer looks incredible on console and PC, with super-sharp image quality and lots of Star Wars details to spot. So this downgraded, messier-looking version of the racing game is a big disappointment.
Also, it should be noted that the Luna version doesn’t include multiplayer features. This is just the single-player races and events. That’s not a dealbreaker, but it’s yet another problem with this version of Star Wars: Galactic Racer.
If you really have no other way to play Galactic Racer, the streaming version on Luna is fine enough. But I’d recommend playing this on a console or PC and only using this Luna version as a way to quickly demo the game to see if it’s even something you’d like. If you do think you want to play more, play Galactic Racer anywhere else and have a better time with one of the best games of the year.
