For a sequence as storied as Star Wars – one brimming with extra spacecraft and speeders than George Lucas has beard bristles – it borders on baffling that developer Fuse Video games’ Star Wars: Galactic Racer can arrive in 2026 as the primary new sport of its form in over twenty years. I blame Tremendous Bombad Racing, if solely as a result of Gungan isn’t an actual language and utilizing a portmanteau of bomb and dangerous within the title was in all probability by no means the proper pathway to gross sales success. Galactic Racer, alternatively, has a variety of impressively customisable automobile courses that expands the hangar nicely past traditional podracers, beautiful course design, and an impressively credible and explorable world outdoors the on-track motion. It’s an attention-grabbing and wealthy resurrection of Star Wars racing that’s as quick as it may be surprisingly unforgiving.
Galactic Racer’s essential hook is its run-based, roguelite-inspired marketing campaign, which comes with a strict philosophy of no mid-race restarts. It is an fascinating and genuinely recent strategy that bakes a really actual and logical feeling of threat and hazard into the motion – a sense that’s admittedly absent in racing video games with any type of rewind performance or limitless restarts. Sure, you’ll be able to nonetheless pause and, sure, you’ll be able to nonetheless save and are available again later – however you in any other case have to stay with the implications of what occurs out on the monitor. It’s a construction that makes the racing tense and significant, even when racing over the identical landscapes time and again does develop repetitive.
Now This Isn’t Pod Racing
Whether or not by intent or not, the massive time hole between Galactic Racer and traditional Star Wars video games like Episode I: Racer and Racer Revenge feels nearly mirrored in Fuse Video games’ authentic story. That’s, the place these video games had been set within the prequel interval, Galactic Racer is about within the aftermath of Return of the Jedi, the place the artwork of podracing is a distant relic of a bygone period. Unsurprisingly, podracing does nonetheless characteristic right here, and it’s represented extremely; lightning fast, and with impeccably genuine sound design. Nonetheless, I’m hesitant to explain particularly how or when it pops up outdoors of the quickplay modes. Simply know that I really feel just like the Fuse Video games crew had been paying shut consideration when Maverick discovered an F-14 within the coronary heart of enemy territory in the course of the High Gun sequel, or when Bond retrieved his DB5 in Skyfall. I could also be a reasonably informal Star Wars fan by most metrics, however I do love stuff that imbues automobiles with a way of outdated soul – even fantasy ones. That’s my jam.
For readability, the majority of the Galactic Racing League storage consists of landspeeders, speeder bikes, and a brand new automobile kind known as skim speeders. Bikes are quick however fragile, and skim speeders have a podracer-esque capacity to financial institution utterly vertically to slice by means of gaps and switch more durable, however landspeeders have confirmed to be my favorite class. They’re basically floating vehicles, and I take pleasure in their extra predictable dealing with and added sturdiness.
Because the mysterious and faceless human racer known as Shade, our final purpose is to beat the Galactic Racing League’s moaning, conceited, and entitled heel Kestar Bool within the remaining head-to-head race. Nonetheless, for that to occur, we want a suitably quick automobile. In easy phrases, constructing and piloting a fast one requires a mixture of basic stat upgrades, efficiency elements, and numerous extra perks – from devices that may be activated throughout races to particular bonuses granted to you by allies you accumulate over the course of the story. These are rationed out randomly, or earned, as we progress (and re-progress) by means of the championship “excursions.” I’ve grown to be a specific fan of the autopilot gadget, which is often a lifesaver to sort out notably treacherous stretches of monitor. The truth that these devices are primed simply previous to race begins with a sequence of particular button presses, like pre-flight checks, is a really intelligent contact that provides ready on the grid a tangible sense of event. The sequence at all times ends with the ultimate go-ahead to fireside your engines, which cough to life and glow more durable as you squirt the throttle. It was necessary to anyone at Fuse Video games that we must always have the ability to rev our speeders like hotrodders at a purple gentle, as a result of it seems cool. I like little prospers like that.
Now, speeders are scrapped between excursions, so that you’ll want to decide on and set-up a brand new one every time. It’s not an answer I discover I’m loving, contemplating I used to be by no means capable of set up any actual sense of possession or attachment to a automobile. Theoretically, you’ll be able to construct a duplicate of the same-looking automobile each time – with the identical add-on beauty elements and the identical livery – however you have to to wave goodbye to particular upgrades you would possibly’ve actually loved. The extra closely upgraded your earlier speeder, the extra factors you’ll should spend on pumping up its basic stats earlier than you begin – nevertheless it received’t behave the identical as your final one. Not except you’ll be able to decide up the identical upgrades in your subsequent run, whether or not by likelihood reward or recognizing them in your mechanic Hibi’s randomised choice. As a roguelite rookie and a conventional racing sport meathead, I’ve to confess I didn’t very similar to dropping highly effective upgrades that basically suited my racing type to what’s basically a cube roll, however I do respect the novelty of needing to come back to grips with one thing not typical of the same old racers I play.
Excursions unfold over three (and later 5) planets earlier than culminating in a remaining knockout occasion. Failing at any level means you’ll have to begin an entire new one over once more. That is fairly elegantly and thoughtfully carried out, due to the racing paddock at every occasion you’ll be able to totally discover in third-person. Not solely does this construct an genuine world across the Galactic Racing League – which in flip crafts a world I really feel like I’m inhabiting, quite than simply shuffling by means of menu screens – it lets Fuse Video games fill it with characters that may acknowledge your earlier failures as you come back for an additional crack on the title. That’s, you’re not really restarting, or just being scrubbed again in time till you get it proper – time retains transferring ahead and also you simply have to maintain racing till you emerge victorious. The story is break up into three distinct acts, so observe that messing up within the third act means you’ll simply have to take one other run on the third act. That’s, it doesn’t ship us all the way in which again to the preliminary League qualification section, and for that I’m grateful.
Nonetheless, Galactic Racer’s core weak spot is that it sadly doesn’t characteristic sufficient planets to keep away from feeling overly repetitive. Whereas I’m aware a roguelite construction brings with it an expectation of a sure stage of repetition, it does turn into pretty tedious slogging by means of its small record of repeating planets over successive makes an attempt. The precise circuits used, the order of occasion sorts, and the way they department over the span of a championship are shuffled from tour to tour. There are reverse layouts for the tracks, too. Nonetheless, the backdrops are nonetheless at all times the identical. Having a pair extra planets that might’ve been swapped out and in would’ve gone a good distance in lowering the fatigue that rapidly units in after a number of runs by means of the identical areas.
Intergalactic Planetary
It’s a fantastically realised array of planets, although, and the main points of the monitor environments are as glorious as they’re different. Jakku, as an example, has routes traced by means of its immense graveyard of conflict wreckage – swinging from broad open blasts throughout debris-covered dunes one second, to cramped sections of makeshift tunnels fashioned by half-destroyed spacecraft the following. Crait is characterised by sprawling caves and its flat, salt-covered floor – which speeders whip as much as expose the purple mineral beneath. Lantaana is roofed in dense forest linked by lava tubes, and Sentinel I is a poisonous wasteland the place racers should negotiate slim causeways over acidic swimming pools.
Every planet and monitor has its personal set of properties that may enable you or hurt you, relying on the way you race and the upgrades you’ve utilized. Maybe my favorite instance of this dynamic is Ando Prime, a wholly frozen planet, the place heating tubes have been dropped sporadically across the circuits. Passing by means of these will thaw out the frozen management surfaces that numb your steering inputs, however staying out of those sizzling bins permits you to run your delicate ramjet for for much longer earlier than it catastrophically burns out. It’s a racer that basically by no means stops asking you questions.
On the subject of burning out, it’d be massively remiss of me to not point out how a lot I like the Burnout-inspired takedowns that Galactic Racer actively encourages, with speeders on the incorrect facet of a hefty slam being speared into trackside obstacles and splintering into hundreds of shards. Not solely are they incentivised with a slow-motion takedown digital camera, which swings again to soak within the spectacle, however they are often factored into the improve system. Any time I spot it on a run, I at all times choose to seize the improve that replenishes my speeder’s battery for every profitable takedown – since doing so provides me extra bursts of my autopilot capacity.
However whereas the Burnout connection is powerful (and hardly shocking contemplating the roots of Fuse Video games’ founders attain again to Burnout creator Criterion Video games), maybe what I like most of all is how a lot Galactic Racer surprisingly jogged my memory of a sci-fi MotorStorm. That’s, the usually broad tracks stuffed with pure obstacles and a number of routes, the multi-class nature of the grid, and the truth that holding onto that ramjet enhance a fraction too lengthy ends in a fiery and fast unscheduled disassembly. Funnily sufficient, similar to the unique MotorStorm, Galactic Racer additionally has no splitscreen multiplayer. 12-player on-line racing (or eight, for podracers) has a six-event championship construction that works slightly like a shortened model of the singleplayer excursions (the place your upgraded automobile is discarded after the finale) – however that’s for a distinct type of participant than me.