STAR WARS: GALACTIC RACER
From: Fuse Games
For: PS5, XBox X/S, PC
★★★★+
The games industry seems to be falling to pieces right now. The headlines are constantly terrible. Gamers have to take some wins where we can get them. So I’m counting two outstanding Star Wars games in a row as a definite morale boost.
Arriving hot on the heels of the excellent strategy title Star Wars: Zero Company, Galactic Racer couldn’t be more different in terms of genre or pace and is set at a different point on the Star Wars timeline, yet it shares plenty with that game too; outstanding voice acting, a fun cast of characters, and an understanding of what people love about Star Wars at its best.
We drop in some time not long after the Empire has been defeated in Return of the Jedi. A new atmosphere of possibility has arisen and into it steps alien entrepreneur Darius Pax (a Besalisk, for fellow nerds who are curious) to create a somewhat gonzo speeder racing league / tour. You take the role of Shade, a rookie racer who joins the league not only to prove their skills, but also out to take down Kestar Bool, the smug, shady, privileged and generally extremely punchable current champion with whom they have a personal grudge.
Galactic Racer cleverly makes the non-obvious move of eschewing the pod racers of The Phantom Menace as its main focus and instead creates a new era of racing in the lore. Shade can race a landspeeder, speeder bike or skim speeder in the league, each of which offers its own strengths and weaknesses (though the most notable difference is the cornering style of each). With a craft selected, it’s into a new tour run, each of which is a long, multi-planet build-up to an attempt to win the championship race.
Key to the whole enterprise, Racer succeeds in creating the feeling of extreme speed that harks back to classic sci-fi racing titles like Wipeout. The first (of many) crashes you see in the game — which follows each of these in slow motion, tracking the various flaming, disintegrating bits of a hapless racer’s craft as they are smeared all over the landscape — will leave you in no doubt that everyone involved in the Galactic Racing League is completely insane. It all seems impossibly difficult at first, but as you get used to things you’ll learn that not only can you take those sharp corners at a jillion kilometres an hour, but will be getting through most races without even touching the brakes.
Complicating matters as you blat along, you’ll need to manage your recharging afterburner for key speed boosts and also your ramjet, a sort of double afterburner that accelerates you even further, but will also explode if you leave it on too long. You’ll also get access to plenty of defensive and offensive abilities like mines, shields, and so on. Conditions on the planets where you race (including familiar locations like Jakku and Crait) offer hazards like pools of acid that will melt your craft, extreme heat that redlines your ramjet faster, or wintry conditions that freeze up your steering. And to cap it all off, your fellow racers are also quite happy to deliberately nudge you straight into crystal pillar or wrecked TIE fighter at Bert Munro speeds. Try to keep concentrating!
In between all the reckless (but not wreck-less) action on the track, there’s time to use your prize-money to buy parts to improve your speeder’s performance and abilities, interact with your fellow racers who become rivals and sometimes allies and find a sponsor who will dangle performance bonuses for you for in-race tasks. You’ll also catch up with a Star Wars racing legend who finds a way to sneak some playable pod racing (even faster, even more insane) into proceedings after all. The performances and writing here are great, and some of the characters have already become fan favourites (looking at you Biddy Blas, you unhinged little crocodile man).
Each tour offers a branching path towards the championship consisting of races, elimination events, time trials and off-track encounters with racers. Fail to finish a race or pass an eliminator and you can lose one of your limited league tokens — lose them all and you’re out and back to the start. It’s an interesting rogue-like approach to the racing genre that can lead to a bit of frustration, as there is a long, multi-race build-up to key elimination events that you can end up losing within about 20 seconds with one mistake. In classic rogue-like style though, there is at least the chance to permanently improve your craft’s baseline statistics over time, and earn “favours’’ that provide advantages on each tour.
Outside the campaign there’s a plethora of challenge modes to test your skills and a robust multiplayer where you can learn how good you really aren’t by taking on up to 11 other actual humans in a tour or quick race (chaos — absolute chaos).
Did anyone expect this to be this good? Not me, certainly. Much like Zero Company, Galactic Racer turns out not only to be a lovingly-crafted, super-fun game of its type, but also a great little slice of Star Wars. More of this please, games. More of this please, Star Wars. Shut the hell up, Kestar Bool.