The podracing sequence in 1999’s Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace is probably the one part of the Star Wars prequels most people, even non-fans, can agree is really cool. Weird aliens zipping around at impossible speeds in clunky machines that make strange noises that seem one bump away from falling apart.
And Star Wars: Galactic Racer is a video game dedicated entirely to recreating and expanding on that one genuinely awesome bit from the prequels. Like any good podracer or speeder bike, it has some imperfections. Some dents. But none of these issues hold back Galactic Racer from crossing the finish line and becoming one of my favorite Star Wars games in years.
Welcome to the Galactic League!
Star Wars: Galactic Racer is set sometime after the events of Return of the Jedi, likely around the time of The Force Awakens, but before the First Order shows up and starts causing chaos. The thing is, Galactic Racer isn’t really concerned about being part of a larger Star Wars story or connecting dots between moments in the canon. And that’s great! Not every Star Wars game needs to be concerned with Luke Skywalker or the Rebels or whatever.
Instead, you play as a new character, Shade, who, through some trickery, ends up in a large galactic racing league with the goal of beating the reigning champ. That champion is Kestar Bool, a smug bastard who is part of a powerful and rich alien family that brutally invaded and took control of Shade’s planet years ago. So Shade is eager to beat him and help kick him out of the league before he can take it over.
To beat Kestar Bool, Shade will have to do a lot of galactic racing. And this is where Galactic Racer really shines, as no matter what you’re driving, the game feels very fast and runs perfectly.
It didn’t matter if I hopped into a speeder bike, landspeeder, skimmer, or even a podracer; all of them whipped around the game’s various race tracks at screaming speeds. Cutting through a cave or trying to take a small shortcut at these speeds is genuinely difficult, and it doesn’t take much to crash and burn. I think I stopped blinking for extended periods of time while racing around planets like Tatooine and Ando Prime.
Each of the different kinds of space-racing vehicles in Galactic Racer feels totally different to pilot, too.
Landspeeders love to drift, but take time to reach top speed. Meanwhile, skimmers use their movable fins to turn tightly and never slow down. Speeder bikes offer bursts of incredible speed and acceleration, but offer little protection against aggressive racers trying to bash you off the track. And then you have podracers, which move faster than anything else in the game and feel like they’re about to explode if you look at them the wrong way. I really enjoyed learning how to master each type of vehicle, even if I ended up preferring the landspeeder over the rest.
The other thing you’ll have to master is how boosting works in Galactic Racer. You have a basic “turbo” button that uses up a meter. But there’s also your “Ramjet,” a sort of super-boost that you can activate that’s even faster, but if not used correctly, will literally blow up your vehicle. Though you can still win a race if you cross the line as you blow up. Trust me.
Managing these two boosts while drifting around tracks and dodging hazards such as acid and lava, and also managing different abilities like shields, can be a lot.
Early on, I slammed into a lot of rocks and lost a lot of races. However, as I learned how to handle the speed and the controls, I fell in love with the smooth racing on offer in Galactic Racer. It just feels so damn good to drive around in this game. Even better when I got to slam another racer into a wall and got a slow-mo view of them eating it.
Flipping switches and winning races
The game’s main campaign mode, starring Shade taking on Kestar Bool, is built around a roguelike progression system where you start a season with a crappy new vehicle and then upgrade and improve it as you win races across multiple planets.
If you crash a few too many times or lose a few key races during a season, you’ll have to restart with a new vehicle and make your way through a new selection of randomly picked events and races.
This setup makes each race in Galactic Racer much more intense. Every crash builds towards a failure. Even just smashing into walls or other racers too much at high speed can break parts of your vehicle and add negative status effects, like making your speeder drift in one direction.
When these parts break, there’s a small QTE mini-game you can play to try to avoid picking up a negative effect. And nailing those QTEs made me feel like Anakin Skywalker flipping switches in his podracer to make it work again. Mess those up, though, and it can be a big problem, especially if you don’t have the resources to fix these malfunctions; it can make a season much trickier to win.
I loved building up a racing vehicle with upgrades and new parts, adding shields or boosters to make it tougher or faster. There are a ton of parts and upgrades to unlock via winning. And you eventually get the ability to pick a sponsor, like a racing-loving Hutt gangster, who offers even more upgrades and resources if you keep winning and completing other challenges on the track. Fail too much, however, and your benefactor will ditch you.
The racing is even more exciting in this mode as you can develop rivalries with the other NPC racers, some of whom are real assholes. Eventually, this can lead to one-on-one challenge races against your rivals to prove who really is the best. Play your cards right, though, and by the end of the story, you might be able to win over some of these bastards to help you take down Kestar Bool.
Star Wars: Galactic Racer
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Back-of-the-box quote:
“A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far away…I did a sick drift and hit a ramp.”
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Type of game
Arcade racing game with roguelike elements and competitive multiplayer.
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Liked
Looks and feels amazing, sounds great, moves fast, podracing is exciting, excellent roguelike campaign.
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Disliked
On-foot segments are lackluster.
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Developer
Fuse Games
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Platforms
PS5 Pro (played), Xbox Series X/S, PC
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Release Date
October 6, 20226
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Played
19 hours. Finished main campaign, played most of the single-player content and arcade races, and tinkered with multiplayer.
Off the track, Galactic Racer’s main mode does suffer from some stale on-foot sequences that don’t add much and quickly start to feel repetitive. Then again, during these segments you get to chat up Sebulba and even experience past podraces he won back in the day, so it’s not all bad. I just wish these on-foot areas felt more varied as you visited other planets and weren’t filled with the same conversations and animations.
At the very least, these segments, like the rest of the game, look incredible. This is one of the best-looking Star Wars games I’ve seen, with everything feeling appropriately grimy and clunky. And when I was flying around tracks at breakneck speed, it still looked great, even as a blur. More importantly, it ran perfectly, with no noticeable framerate issues mucking up the smooth racing action.
Galactic Racer also has impeccable sound design. When you pop the boost on a speeder, you get the classic Star Wars “Bwwwooooommm!” And podracers all have those odd jet noises, too. I found myself sometimes humming the noises to myself during races. Yes, I’m a nerd.
Now this is podracing!
Outside of the main single-player mode, there’s a lot of game in Galactic Racer. There’s a dozen or so “Scenarios” which operate as mini-seasons in which you play as a different character, one of the NPC racers from the main story, and unlock permanent upgrades and cosmetics to use in the campaign. (Which, after you roll credits, you can keep racing in for as many seasons as you want.)
There’s also a huge list of arcade races that feature time trials and other events across all the different tracks and planets in the game. These even feature friend leaderboards so you can try to beat your pal’s best time on the Boonta Eve Classic podracing track seen in Episode One.
I totally didn’t spend two hours chopping off a few seconds from my time on one of these events to beat a friend. Nope.
It’s in these arcade events where most of Galactic Racer’s podracing content lives. Yes, there’s some in the main campaign, but without spoiling anything, it’s just a small part of that mode. If you want to race podracers, you’ll be doing it in these events.
And I get why podracers have to be sort of sequestered away from the other vehicles. They’re just too damn fast. When you pop the boost in these things, it can almost become disorienting, and I loved every moment of it. Playing with the option that places the camera right between the two big engines of the podracer might be too much for some, but oh how I enjoyed the intensity.
The other place where you can race podracers is in multiplayer, which is the other big part of Star Wars: Galactic Racer. Here you can do single races using speeders and skimmers, or you can do some podracing. If you want a more involved experience, you and some other online racers can take part in campaign-like seasons (with speeders or podracers) that feature the same roguelike mechanics, such as upgrades, as the story mode. But now your rival racers are real people.
Sadly, I wasn’t able to put much time into multiplayer as there was limited availability to play it during the review period. What I did play seems good, but any online mode like this will live and die based on how the meta shakes out and how large a community supports it.
Thankfully, even if multiplayer is a bust in Galactic Racer, the rest of this new Star Wars racing game is fantastic and substantial enough to overcome that possible future. The campaign will likely take most people around six to nine hours to finish, though that will vary depending on how many runs it takes you to work your way through the various story acts. Beyond that, you have plenty of arcade events and single-player scenarios to enjoy, too.
Star Wars: Galactic Racer is everything I wanted from a new Star Wars racing game. It’s fast, it’s loud, it has a ton of great tracks to learn, and it all runs perfectly. The on-foot segments aren’t great, and I do wish there was a bit more podracing action in here, but on the track, where it matters, Galactic Racer is amazing, nailing every curve and hitting every straightaway.
