| Star Wars: Galactic Racer | |||
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| Release Date | Gameplay & Story | Pre-Order & DLC | Review |
Star Wars: Galactic Racer throws you right into the most chaotic pod racing circuits in the galaxy. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying.
| Digital Storefronts | |||||||
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 Epic Games |
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| $59.99 | |||||||
Star Wars: Galactic Racer Review: The Galaxy’s Fastest Speeders Set a New Standard for Arcade Racers
Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away—or, more accurately, back in the PS2 and Xbox 360 days—arcade racers were everywhere. These were games made around going ridiculously fast and making you feel like the best driver in the world five minutes after picking up the controller. That brand of adrenaline has grown harder to come by over the years, so seeing Star Wars: Galactic Racer show up with its speeders and very obvious Burnout inspiration feels almost like unearthing a relic from a different era.
Galactic Racer takes that old-school arcade racing formula and throws it into the Star Wars universe before adding a roguelite campaign on top of it. I went in knowing very little about what Fuse Games had cooked up here, and the result has been one of the more exciting games I’ve played this year. It is blisteringly fast, occasionally cruel, and entirely unapologetic about dragging you back to the starting line for another punishing run.
The Campaign Could Use More Force
Shade enters the Galactic League with a massive chip on their shoulder. They’re an ex-cargo pilot from Gathleon with some serious history with the Bool family, which eventually sets them up to challenge Kestar Bool, the reigning champ. From there, the whole campaign is basically a straight shot through the ranks until you finally get a crack at the person you’ve been gunning for. It’s a pretty paint-by-numbers sports-anime-esque plot. It is simple enough that I never had to think too hard about where things were going, which felt appropriate for a game about racing around the Outer Rim at terminal velocity.
That said, the cast you meet along the way are a blast. Hibi is an absolute standout—easily my favorite of the bunch—and the rest of the grid has enough weirdo personality that I actually looked forward to checking in with them between races. Sebulba is the obvious returning face from the movies, and I was genuinely stoked that the game gives him an actual role instead of just using him as a walking member-berry for The Phantom Menace. His arc digs into what happened to the underground podracing scene after those events, and little world-building nuggets like that are scattered all over the campaign. Hanging out with a bunch of characters who feel like they belong in this greasy, back-alley corner of the Star Wars universe ended up being way more engaging than Shade's main revenge tour.
That's probably the best way to describe how I feel about the story. It is fine for a racing game. I was never sitting there wondering what was going to happen next, but I also never felt like the story got in the way of the racing. A lot of the fun comes from the fact that all of this gets to happen in Star Wars. You can have some obscure alien racer show up, give them a ridiculous vehicle, put them on some planet I have barely seen before, and suddenly I am interested in whatever nonsense they have going on. Galactic Racer has a lot of room to play around with the universe, and I think it makes the story more enjoyable than the actual plot probably deserves.
Kestar is a different story. He's that classic arrogant champion from a ridiculously powerful family, and the game eventually dives into the crushing pressure he feels from his dad and how much of that obnoxious attitude is just him desperately trying to live up to the Bool name. I actually liked having someone like Kestar at the top of the League because he is just so thoroughly punchable.
I just expected way more from the rivalry once the narrative started peeling back the layers on Shade’s history with his family. By the time I finally got my shot at him, beating Kestar didn't feel particularly satisfying as a story beat. I totally got why Shade wanted to crush him, and I saw what the writers were going for, but the emotional payoff just didn't land for me.
The real satisfaction came from somewhere else entirely. Kestar is an absolute nightmare to race against, especially in the harder difficulties, so finally getting past him after failing over and over again felt incredible.
Your Fate Is in Your Hands, for Better or Worse
That reality hits you pretty fast once the campaign stops letting you just coast on simple wins. The game follows a roguelite structure. Every run starts off with picking a vehicle and some basic upgrades, dropping you onto a branching map where you have to map out your route. Normal races are the safe, reliable bets, but if you want the big payouts, you’ve got to throw yourself into Eliminators and riskier events. League Tokens keeps your run alive, and losing too many of them can send you back to the start of the current act. At least some upgrades stick with you between attempts, meaning even a total disaster of a run usually leaves you with a little something to show for it. .
I actually like what this does to the races themselves. Getting first place is obviously the main goal, but pulling off a clean race with your rig still in one piece becomes just as vital when you're trying to keep a campaign alive. Since whatever malfunction carries over from event to event, and every single repair, upgrade, and ability has to come out of your pocket, you find yourself stressing over things you'd completely ignore in a standard arcade racer. A bruising race can still count as a massive win if you crawl across the finish line with enough cash left to live to see the next track.
The upgrades are probably my favorite part of the whole setup. Parts and abilities can lean your vehicle into a completely different playstyle, and some of the effects totally flip how you have to approach a race. You can build around raw boost, brutal collisions, cooling management, weird gadgets, or whatever wild combination the game throws at you during a run. There is always that nagging temptation to see just how far you can push a totally broken build before it shakes itself to pieces. And when a run completely goes up in flames, you usually walk away with a pretty clear idea of what you want to tweak for the next one.
That gets even better when the map forces you to choose between playing it safe and taking a massive gamble. You might have a standard race ahead of you that's an easy win, but then an Eliminator pops up with way better payouts. Mystery events throw another unpredictable wrench into things, and half the time I’ll intentionally pick the riskier path just because I’m chasing that upgrade or extra cash. The game does a great job of making those choices feel entirely like your own fault. When it actually pays off, you get that awesome little rush of knowing you had zero business taking that kind of risk—and winning anyway!
Of course, Galactic Racer can be pretty ruthless about making you live with those choices. Runs can stretch out for a good while, and blowing it right near the finish line after you've spent an hour building up a pristine vehicle hurts. However, that’s more so on me as it is on the game. The campaign expects you to learn from your screw-ups, and looking back, I could usually point to the exact moment I got cocky and ruined my own run.
The repetition is a lot harder to forgive, though. After losing a grueling run, having to grind back through the exact same early planets gets old fast. Randomized events can only mix things up so much when you already know the campaign's entire playbook by heart.
The Faster You Go, the More Fun It Gets
Regardless, I still kept starting new runs because the game is just that addictive. A big part of that comes down to how good it feels to actually drive these things. Galactic Racer is ridiculously fast, and the handling gives me enough control to throw a speeder around a corner without making me feel like I am fighting the controls. It definitely took me a minute to get the hang of drifting, but once it clicked, I started taking corners way more aggressively.
That changes depending on what I am driving. There are three types of Racers, and I could feel the difference between them pretty quickly. Switching vehicles gives me a reason to adjust how I approach a track. A turn that feels totally manageable in a landspeeder turns into an absolute panic attack on a speeder bike when you're moving at full speed.
| SPEEDERS | DESCRIPTION |
|---|---|
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Landspeeders are the most balanced of the three, with steady handling and enough durability to take a few hits. |
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Speeder Bikes are the fastest potion, built for players who want to push their speed and live with the added risk. |
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Skim Speeders are the most agile of the three, with unique handling that lets it carve through tight corners. |
Of course, the temptation to push your luck with the many types of boosts is constant. You’ve got the Afterburner for a safe and reliable burst of speed, but Ramjet is the one I keep coming back to because it lets me lean way harder into the throttle before the engine starts redlining. Once it hits that danger zone, the whole rig feels like it’s about to rattle itself to pieces, and I’m just white-knuckling it, trying to judge exactly how long I can cheat physics.
Really, my favorite build ended up being one totally centered around riding that redline. There is nothing quite like keeping the boost engaged an extra second too long, watching the temp gauge scream toward disaster, and using that absolute slingshot of speed to blow past someone right before the finish line. Of course, it’s stupidly easy to get greedy, stay on it half a second too long, and blow my engine into a fiery spin-out—which has definitely happened to me way more times than I'd care to admit.
That naturally got me into way more trouble than I needed. Once I had that kind of speed under me, I just wanted to abuse it. I’d divebomb into a corner, use someone’s side panel as a brake, and just pray I had enough steering left to apex the turn. The collisions actually have a meaty, satisfying thud to them, and timing a takedown right can completely flip a race on its head. I also had plenty of humiliating moments where I clipped a rival and immediately realized I had just ruined my own day, but it is never not exhilarating.
A lot of that comes down to sheer track knowledge, too. At first, I was purely reacting to obstacles as they materialized out of the blur. After a few runs, though, I started mapping the blind corners in my head and learning where I could actually afford to open the throttle. That said, there are still times when something jumps out at me way too fast to humanly dodge. At these speeds, a race can go from totally under control to absolute, fiery pandemonium in a heartbeat.
The insanity only gets better once people start slinging abilities around. A well-timed shield can pull your bacon out of the fire when a crash looks guaranteed, and offensive gadgets give you a nice way to clear out the idiots clogging up your racing line. I loved having to make those split-second calls because I rarely had time to overthink it. Half the time, I’d hoard an ability waiting for the "perfect" moment and completely forget to use it until I crossed the finish line; the other half, I'd panic-fire it just to survive the next corner.
The thing is that those mistakes follow you home. A collision can leave a structural fault on your vehicle, and that damage stays with you from race to race until you actually pay up to get it fixed. It definitely made me second-guess myself once I had a clean run going. Sure, I could take the insanely risky inside line to claw back a few seconds, but I also knew that one stupid mistake would hit my wallet in the next event.
Is Star Wars: Galactic Racer Worth It?
Yes! Now This Is (Kinda Like) Podracing!
Sub-10 hours isn't a ton of time to spend on a sixty-buck game, especially when the campaign is the main attraction right out of the gate. But Galactic Racer actually manages to squeeze a lot more mileage out of those hours than the raw numbers suggest. Because of the roguelite structure, beating the campaign once is basically just scratching the surface. I kept jumping back into new runs just to see how different choices and vehicle builds would ripple out. And once I finally wrapped that up, multiplayer gave me a whole other arena to put all those hours of practice to the test.
That replayability does hit a bit of a wall with the track variety, though. There are seven planets to race across, but a few of the courses just recycle the same layouts in reverse. Don't get me wrong, running tracks backward adds a nice little twist and gives you a fresh puzzle to solve, but I still wish there were more totally unique environments. Seven planets sounds like plenty on paper until you realize how often you're looping through familiar stretches of road.
Regardless, I had a really hard time putting the controller down. Galactic Racer just has that magnetic kind of pull where you want to see how far a clean run can take you before everything falls apart. There are definitely bigger, longer games out there that will stretch your dollar further, but I'm still glad I spent mine here.
FAQ
How Many Maps Are There in Star Wars: Galactic Racer?
By our estimate, Star Wars: Galactic Racer has around 20 unique track layouts, with many also available in reverse. The game spans seven planets, though some tracks reuse sections across different layouts.
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