Star Wars Galactic Racer Review — Step-by-Step Guide & Transcript

[00:00] For a series as storied as Star Wars, one brimming with more spacecraft and speeders than George Lucas has speed bristles,

[00:12] it borders on baffling that developer Fuse Games' Star Wars Galactic Racer can arrive in 2026 as the first new game of its kind in over two decades. I blame Super Bombad Racing, if only because Gungan isn't a real language and using the portmanteau of bomb and bad in the title was probably never the perfect pathway to sales success.

[00:35] Galactic Racer, on the other hand, has a range of impressively customisable vehicle classes that expands the hangar well beyond classic pod races, gorgeous course design and an impressively credible and explorable world outside the on-track action.

[00:48] It's an eye-catching and rich resurrection of Star Wars racing that's as fast as it can be surprisingly unforgiving.

[01:04] Galactic Race's main hook is its run-based roguelite-inspired campaign, which comes with a strict philosophy of no mid-race restart. It is an interesting and genuinely fresh approach that bakes a very real and logical feeling of risk and danger into the action.

[01:22] A feeling that is admittedly absent in racing games with any sort of rewind functionality or unlimited research. Yes, you can still pause, and yes, you can still save and come back later, but you otherwise need to live with the consequences of what happens out on the track.

[01:39] It's a structure that makes the race intense and meaningful, even if racing over the same landscapes over and over does grow repetitive. At the end, our newest racer has arrived! Welcome to the Galactic League!

[01:56] Whether by intent or not, the huge time gap between Galactic Racer and classic Star Wars games like Episode I Racer and Racer Revenge feels almost mirrored in Fuse Games' original story.

[02:08] That is, where those games were set in the prequel period, Galactic Racer is set in the aftermath of Return of the Jedi, where the art of pod racing is a distant relic of a bygone era.

[02:20] Unsurprisingly, pod racing does still feature here, and it's represented incredibly, lightning quick and with imperfectably authentic sound design.

[02:32] However I'm hesitant to describe specifically how or when it pops up outside of the Quick Just know that I feel like the Fuse Games crew were paying close attention when Maverick found an F-14 in the heart of enemy territory during the Top Gun sequel.

[02:47] Fuse Gun, you sh** me. Or when Bond retrieved his DD-5 in Skyfall. I suppose that's completely inconspicuous. I may be a pretty casual Star Wars fan by most metrics, but I do love stuff that imbues

[03:02] vehicles with a sense of old soul, even fantasy ones. That's my joint. For clarity the bulk of the Galactic Racing League garage consists of land speeders speeder bikes and a new vehicle type called skin speeders Bikes are fast but fragile and skin speeders have a pod racer ability to bank completely

[03:28] vertically to slice through gaps and turn harder, but land speeders have proven to be my favourite class. They're essentially floating cars, and I enjoy their more predictable handling and added durability.

[03:43] As the mysterious and faceless human racer called Shade, our ultimate goal is to beat the Galactic Racing League's moaning, arrogant and entitled heel, Kestar Bull, in the final head-to-head race.

[03:55] If they weren't holding me back right now, I'd have you frozen in carbon! However, for that to happen, we need a suitably fast vehicle. In simple terms, building and piloting a quick one requires a combination of general stat

[04:08] upgrade, performance parts, and various additional perks, from gadgets that can be activated during races, to specific bonuses granted to you by allies you accumulate over the course of the story.

[04:20] You can try to win a championship, but I'll have to have that same claim as mine. These are rationed out randomly, or earned, as we progress and re-progress through the championship tours.

[04:32] I've grown to be a particular fan of the Autopilot gadget, which is regularly a lifesaver to tackle particularly treacherous stretches of track. The fact that these gadgets are primed just prior to race starts with a series of specific button presses like

[04:47] pre-flight checks is a very clever touch that gives waiting on the grid a tangible sense of occasion. The sequence always ends with the final go-ahead to fire your engines, which

[05:00] cock to lights and glow harder as you squirt the throttle. It was important to somebody at Fuse Games that we should be able to rev our speeders like hot rodders at a red light, because it looks cool.

[05:13] I love little flourishes like that. Now, speeders are scrapped between tours, so you'll need to choose and set up a new one each time. It's not a solution I find I'm loving, considering I was never able to establish any real sense

[05:29] of ownership or attachment to a vehicle. Theoretically you can build a replica of the same looking vehicle each time, with the same add-on cosmetic parts and the same livery, but you will need to wave goodbye to specific

[05:41] upgrades you might have really enjoyed. The more heavily upgraded your previous speeder, the more points you'll have to spend on pumping up its general stats before you start, but it won't behave the same as your last one,

[05:53] not unless you can pick up the same upgrades in your next run, whether by chance, reward or spotting the Minion Mechanic Eevee's randomized selection. Oh, I really like that one!

[06:05] As a roguelike rookie and a traditional racing game meathead, I have to admit I didn't much like losing powerful upgrades that really suited my racing style to what's essentially a dice roll,

[06:17] but I do appreciate the novelty of needing to come to grips with something not typical of the usual races I play. Toolers unfold over three and later five planets before culminating in a final knockout event.

[06:32] Failing at any point means you have to start a whole new one over again This is quite elegantly and thoughtfully implemented thanks to the racing paddock at each event you can fully explore in third person Not

[06:44] only does this build an authentic world around the Galactic Racing League, which in turn crafts a world I feel like I'm inhabiting rather than just shuffling through menu screens, it lets Fuse Games fill it with characters that can acknowledge your previous failures

[06:57] as you return for another crack at the title. I'm just a grumpy couple who are broken through with my last return. Ha! Worry not, my friend. There'll always be another tour. That is, you're not actually restarting, or simply being scrubbed back in time until you get it right.

[07:12] Time keeps moving forward, and you just need to keep racing until you emerge victorious. The story is split into three distinct acts, so note that messing up in the third act means you'll just need to take another run at the third act.

[07:25] That is, it doesn't send us all the way back to the initial re-qualification phase, and for that I'm grateful. And for me, it looks like a bold, big, good goal! However, Galactic Race's core weakness is that it unfortunately doesn't feature enough planets

[07:40] to avoid feeling overly repetitive. While I'm conscious a road-like structure brings with it an expectation of a certain level of repetition, it does become fairly tedious slogging through its small list of repeating planets over successive attempts.

[07:55] The specific circuits used, and the order of event types, and how they branch over the span of a championship are shuffled from tour to tour. There are reverse layouts for the tracks too.

[08:08] However the backdrops are nonetheless always the same. Having a couple more planets that could have been swapped in and out would have gone a long way in reducing the fatigue that quickly sets in after several runs through the same

[08:22] locations. It is a fantastically realised array of planets though, and the details of the track environments

[08:38] are as excellent as they are varied. Jakku for instance has routes traced through its immense graveyard of war wreckage, swinging from wide open blasts across debris covered dunes one moment, to cramped sections of makeshift

[08:53] tunnels formed by half-destroyed spacecraft the next. Crate is characterised by sprawling caves and its flat, salt-covered surface, which speeds Wibb up to expose the red mineral beneath.

[09:09] Lantana is covered in dense forest, linked by lava tubes, and Sentinel-1 is a toxic wasteland where races must negotiate narrow causeways over acidic pools.

[09:25] What's more, each planet and track has its own set of properties that can help or harm you depending on how you race and the upgrades you've applied. Perhaps my favourite example of this dynamic is ENDO Prime, an entirely frozen planet where

[09:38] heating tubes are being dropped sporadically around the circuits. Passing through these will thaw out the frozen control surfaces that numb your steering input, that staying out of these hot boxes allows you to run your delicate ramjet for much longer

[09:53] before it catastrophically burns out It a racer that essentially never stops asking you questions On the topic of burning out it would be massively remiss of me not to mention how much I adore

[10:05] the burnout inspired takedowns that Galactic Racer actively encourages, with speeders on the wrong side of a hefty slam being speared into trackside obstacles and splintering into thousands of shards.

[10:17] Not only are they incentivized with a slow motion takedown camera which swings back to soak in the spectacle, but they can be factored into the upgrade system.

[10:30] Anytime I spot it on a run, I always opt to grab the upgrade that replenishes my speeders battery for each successive takedown, since doing so gives in more bursts of my autopilot ability.

[10:42] But while the burnout connection is strong and hardly surprising considering the roots of Fuse Games' founders reach back to burnout creator Criterion Games, perhaps what I love most of all is how much Galactic Racer surprisingly reminded me of a sci-fi motorstorm.

[10:59] That is, the often wide tracks full of natural obstacles and multiple routes, the multi-class nature of the grid, and the fact that holding onto that ramjet booster fraction too long results in a fiery and rapid unscheduled disassembly.

[11:17] Funnily enough, just like the original Motostorm, Galactic Racer also has no split-screen multiplayer. 12 player online racing, or 8 for pod races, has a 6 event championship structure that

[11:29] works a little like a shortened version of the single player Tours, where your upgraded vehicle is discarded after the finale. But that's for a different sort of player than me.

[11:47] Star Wars Galactic Racer is a fabulous looking and frantically fast anti-grav racer that impressively goes further than just taking the decades old Star Wars racer games and

[11:59] giving them a 4k facelift. With a range of satisfyingly customizable vehicle classes beyond pod racers, a world outside the racing you can soak in and explore in third person,

[12:11] Are you fooling me? It's so boring! and an interesting roguelite adjacent structure that injects a considerable degree of risk into the action, Galactic Racer is a fresh and accomplished blend of Lucas lore

[12:23] with a destructive spirit of arcade racing icons like Burnout and Motorstorm. Its run-based campaign can grow unavoidably tedious over long stints because of its heavy reliance on repeatedly revisiting the same slim selection of planets,

[12:38] and its lack of split-screen is disappointing considering its roots run back to consoles regarded as the kings of same-couch chaos. But Galactic Racer is an otherwise confident debut from developer Fuse Games, and one that

[12:51] has successfully lit the afterburners on a long dormant slice of the Star Wars universe. Ha ha! Wasn't that exceptional? Can't you feel the passion? For more recent reviews you can check out our verdicts on Silent Hill Townfall and Hot Wheels Infinite Rush.

[13:08] For everything else, stick with IGN. .