The surprise reveal during the 2025 Game Awards that we were getting a spiritual successor to Star Wars Episode 1 Racer wound up being one of the most popular announcements on the show. That was before we found out it’s being made by a new studio of developers who worked on Burnout and Need for Speed. Now Star Wars: Galactic Racer is nearly upon us, and having spent tens of hours racing at breakneck speeds around courses in a galaxy far, far away, I can assure you, this Star Wars racing game is everything you’re hoping it’s going to be.
Galactic Racer could have been little more than a racing game with a Star Wars backdrop, but it is so much more than that. Like all good things Star Wars, Fuse Games has ensured it has been carefully woven into the massive tapestry that is the franchise’s sprawling universe. Not just by making it very clear when exactly Galactic Racer takes place on the timeline - shortly after the fall of The Empire - but by taking the time and attention to strike a balance between easter eggs and references, and new characters and lore drops that are interesting and add to the Star Wars universe
All of the new characters introduced are great, but the standouts are Hibi, your scouse mechanic, and Kestar Bool, Galactic Racer’s antagonist. It would have been very easy for the creators of this game to have given us too much Hibi, adding them to both video game and Star Wars history’s long list of annoying companions. That’s not the case here. You get just enough and, like any good Star Wars sidekick, they provide effective moments of comedy and levity in what is a surprisingly dark story.
That darkness is down to the aforementioned Kestar Bool. I won’t reveal here why the new addition to Star Wars’ rogues’ gallery is quite so inherently evil, as I don’t want to give away how Galactic Racer’s story unfolds. I’ll just say that Bool is a lot more than the stuck-up rival whose skin you get under to kick off the campaign.
Said campaign is where Galactic Racer really shines, because it does something no other racing game has done before, at least no racing game I’ve ever played - it’s a runs-based game. Split into three acts, to make it out of act one, you need to make it through qualifying by racing across various planets and eventually going head-to-head with a legendary podracer. Lose that race, or crash out in any of the events that pave your way there, and you lose your league token, sending you right back to the start.
Those here simply for the racing that might be a little turned off by the runs-based elements, it’s not as grindy or repetitive as it sounds. As is the point in any good runs-based game, you’re supposed to lose a few times and then come back stronger. You unlock new parts and abilities, and can better equip your speeder for your next run. That next run will also be entirely different than the last. You progress along a tree, of sorts, with different paths and events to choose from. Not everything is just a straightforward race - there are encounters with various characters, trials where your token isn’t on the line but you can unlock a new part to beef up your speeder, and eliminators, which are effectively Galactic Racer’s take on Mario Kart World’s Knockout Tour.
Losing your league tokens doesn’t necessarily send you all the way back to the start of the campaign, just the start of whatever act you are currently in. From there, you start over, but with access to more upgrades and abilities. A souped-up speeder comes with its own set of challenges, though. As well as parts, you can also equip new abilities and various perks that might give you the edge on the track. The more of those abilities you have, the more frantic the actual racing in Galactic Racer becomes, as there’s so much stuff you need to keep an eye on. Hit the afterburner, fire an ion bolt at the racer ahead of you, activate your ramjet at just the right time, quickly open the vent before it overheats, and look out, you’re about to hit a- damn, you exploded.
At first, all of those elements to keep track of through a UI which isn’t always clear frustrated me. However, it quickly dawned on me that that’s kind of the point. It all lends itself to making you feel like you’re racing a speeder or a podracer. It’s also when that racing game DNA from the devs at Fuse Games really shines through, particularly when it all goes wrong, and you cinematically crash out, à la Burnout
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.thegamer.com/star-wars-galactic-racer-review/
