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While there are people who hold it in great reverence, Star Wars Racer from the Nintendo 64 isn’t a game that has aged too well—I’d go so far as to say that, by today’s standards, it has aged like blue milk. It’s because of this that a new racing game, set within the legendary galaxy far, far away, is such an exciting prospect. Couple it with the fact that the game is being headed up by creatives who’ve worked on Burnout, and I’m feeling a rather welcome disturbance in the Force.
In the hour-long hands-on session I had, I got to try out the game’s campaign mode, which takes a runs-based approach, giving it almost a roguelite feel, as well as a small helping of pod racing, a much more frenetic, unwieldy arcade mode that’ll no doubt find its audience of sadists who think crashing is all that and a bag of chips.
Much like the recent Star Wars Outlaws, Galactic Racer’s setting is the lawless Outer Rim at a time when the New Republic is struggling to rebuild, all while an unruly underground is built up by syndicates and scoundrels. With gambling being a huge crux for these cartels, an unsanctioned racing league is born from this chaos, and it’s a high-stakes competition where speed is essential, and only the best will make it to the finish line.
Admittedly, I was surprised to discover Galactic Racer had a story mode at all. I expected it to be a strung-together run of events with perhaps a bit of flavour text providing context for it all. So while it’s a fun surprise to have an authentic campaign, I felt early on that there were a couple of key areas for concern that might see it fall apart under the strain of its own Gs. Shade, the game’s masked, quip-ready protagonist, has all of the makings of a forgettable avatar, and there wasn’t a point in that first hour or so where I really cared whether he succeeded or not.
It’s fortunate that characters like Darius Pax, a humble repulsorcraft mechanic and league architect, are there to fill in the lines and add some intrigue, as he engages and sponsors you, as an unseen benefactor, to join the league and take out reigning champion, Kestar Bool, whose firm grip over the competition has granted him too much control for Pax’s liking.
Being a racing game, all of the action takes place on the circuit. This seemed like something of a hurdle for the team, who clearly wanted to fold in another element to help in delivering story beats, and so there are several out-of-car segments where you’ll walk around pre-race, chat with Darius, and engage in the bustling market life we see in Star Wars. The issue is, these moments are hemmed in, not all that interesting, and could just as easily have been a cut scene that leads into a dialogue exchange. The potential is there for them to make better use of the idea later in the game; however, it feels more underwhelming than novel from what I experienced.
Fortunately, these kinds of back-and-forths aren’t the game’s bread and butter; racing is—and the racing in Galactic Racer is electric. It’s as thrilling as I’d hoped for, knowing for certain there’d be Burnout DNA to look out for. Outside of the general combat-racing that’s on offer, which does harken back to the Takedown era of Burnout with the ability to force rival racers into spectacular wipeouts, there are a few different speeders to pick from, each with its own capabilities. I opted for the Landspeeder, which is the game’s “everycar” and provides the most well-rounded experience.
With the run-based approach to the campaign, there’s an element of build-craft in Galactic Racer, too. Although failure often means curtains and forces a tour restart, success along the way grants upgrade points, which can be funnelled in any of the speeder’s six core stats, as well as spare parts and abilities to further fill out your build for that run. Further to that, certain racing styles can be unlocked through general play and be applied to earn small boosts in certain areas, adding another layer to how unique a run can feel.
What makes the campaign feel most authentically Star Wars, however, is the emergent examples of banter and comms chatter between racers. Obviously, your character keeps fairly quiet, but hearing others trash-talking each other or seeing their cockpit cam pop up as they let out a blood-curdling scream before being nudged into the debris littering Jakku’s surface never gets old, while adding a cinematic quality to each race.
Due to shaking off the ring rust, so to speak, I failed to penetrate beyond the campaign’s first tour, although restarting as often as I did, I still got a good sense of the mission variety involved. Again, being run-based, each run is made up of a branching selection of random missions, and that alone will help ensure that no tour feels alike. The first planet is Jakku, which, as I alluded to before, is crowded with junk and makes for a pretty tight and twisting series of circuits, and outside of standard races, I got to have a good run at Eliminators and Field Tests.
Although it has featured regularly in many racers since, Eliminators are torn right from the Burnout playbook. With the last place speeder being eliminated at regular intervals, knowing that just one bingle could be the difference of surviving makes these events particularly tense. Although the game doesn’t shy away from rubberbanding rival cars for the sake of story beats, these events can be particularly punishing if you don’t have your wits about you.
Field Tests, on the other hand, are shorter, novelty events that serve the joys of racing outside of pure, heated competition. From the ones I managed to see, they range from time trials, where it might ask you to best a course record on a speederbike, for example, to endurance tests where you’re expected to maintain boost for as long as you can across a circuit’s distance. While the racing is the main event, I do enjoy these small detours.
It was near the end of my hands-on time that I got a chance to sample the game’s pod-racing, which is seemingly confined to its own arcade mode outside of the main campaign. Having spent the prior bulk of the preview with the core racing experience, which felt brisk in its own right, I was blown away by the blistering sense of speed they’ve nailed in the pod-racing. Where other speeders have a bit of heft to them, pod-racing is where Galactic Racer shines in terms of combat; as you’d expect with such lean frames travelling at such raw speeds, every little shunt can be explosive. It’s equally tense and fun, and I didn’t realise until it was over that I’d shifted to the edge of my seat to lock in and focus.
Although everything blurs as you’re screaming past at hundreds of klicks per hour, Galactic Racer does have several moments where you might crest a big ramp and explode into a gorgeous-looking vista. I particularly remember one moment on Lantanna, a place where lush forest meets volcanic force, where I crashed multiple times trying to take in the scenery. What’s most interesting is how the environments can be a factor in certain race elements; for example, water sources, like rivers, can be used to cool the speeder’s boost systems. It’s a nice touch that adds strategy to charting a course through certain circuits.
I came away from Star Wars: Galactic Racer quite impressed. As someone who still considers Burnout 3: Takedown to be the pinnacle of racing video games, I do feel this game captures that same brand of nostalgic, uncomplicated fun. That’s not to say there aren’t complexities to its systems, as its approach as a replayable run-based campaign should give it a staying power that most racing games are missing.
