Star Wars: Galactic Racer Review (PS5)

Our review of Star Wars: Galactic Racer, developed by Fuse Games. Available now for PS5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

WHAT IS IT?

A spiritual successor to the one good thing to come out of the prequel era.

IS IT GOOD?

It’s a fantastic, if repetitive, sci-fi racer.

WHO SHOULD PLAY IT?

Hayden, Jake.

THE FANDOM MENACE

It’s difficult to appreciate the prequel hype if you weren’t there.

Poring over Star Wars Insider previews, scouring Zellers for spoilery action figures from a film yet to be released, marveling at coverage of fans queuing days, even weeks, for the midnight premiere of Phantom Menace on May 19, 1999 – Star Wars was a cultural juggernaut at its absolute zenith. A pop cultural phenomenon unlike any other, and one unlikely to be repeated.

It’s not only that ticket sales have since gone online, mercifully vitiating the need for in-person queues (though shout-out my buddy Kimo for racing to the cinema for advance Dune 3 tickets) – it’s that the pop culture landscape has changed.

Too many competing behemoths, too fragmented a media, and a culture of sequelization which makes every property, no matter how obscure or bad, ripe for the content mill. Sure, Avatar and Avengers did boffo box office – nearly three times more than Phantom Menace’s piddling $1.04 billion – but you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who names Thanos or Na’vi as their personal religion. (Well, mostly hard-pressed.)

The Phantom Menace also, inevitably, brought with it a voluminous supply of licenced tie-ins, ranging from Happy Meals to comic books to, of course, video games. Some were terrible; others were okay (albeit played endlessly at my house); but the only one that anyone remembers with any real fondness is Star Wars Episode I: Racer. 

Released quite literally the day before The Phantom Menace (technically offering even more spoilers for those desperate to know the names of several random supporting characters), Racer was a good if not exactly great 3D racer which translated the prequel film’s best sequence into interactive form. We all – all of us – played Racer at one point or another, and its perennial ranking near the top of greatest Star Wars game lists demonstrates its staying power.

Frankly, it’s surprising it’s taken this long for a successor, but here we are: Star Wars: Galactic Racer is here, and it’s a more-than-worthy spiritual sequel.

STAR WARS: ROGUELIKE ONE

Technically, there’s a story in Star Wars: Galactic Racer, one in which your masked character Shade (customizable gender, voice, and outfit), enters into a galactic racing league, aiming to topple its infuriatingly cocky star racer, Kestar Bool.

In between races, you’re treated to brief conversational interludes, as you wander through simplistic race “camps”, interacting with other racers and your annoying monkey alien sidekick. None of this really matters, but the (small) walking environments are nicely realized, capturing the look and feel of Star Wars.

Galactic Racer itself is broken up into a number of modes, ranging from the (online-only, boooo!) multiplayer, a series of challenge races, and, the meat of the game, its three-act roguelike campaign.

This single-player campaign has some interesting ideas, not all of which we’re entirely comfortable with. In essence, Galactic Racer has the same play-die-repeat structure as something like Hades, Dead Cells, or Returnal – all games where you’re expected to lose, and lose again, resetting the campaign each time but with lessons learned and new abilities acquired.

In Galactic Racer, it works like this: each self-contained Act is structured as a series of branching path missions – mostly races, some time trials, the occasional “mystery encounter”, which is typically just a short dialogue scene where you’re asked to pick from a few options (trade credits, accept a dubious-sounding deal from a fellow racer, etc.) – all leading up to a boss-style race.

If you die too many times in a given race, or if you fail one of the “Eliminator”-style races in which only the Top 3 survive, you’re sent all the way back to the beginning, restarting the Act (albeit not the entire campaign). Only on your next attempt, your vehicle will be slightly upgraded, and you’ll have a better idea of what to expect along the racetracks.

What this means, in practice, is spending a lot of time returning to the same few races, particularly the early (and therefore easier) races at the start of each Act, and which you’ll encounter so many times you could probably complete them with your eyes closed. I am not averse to this style of game design, but I also think it’s a pity that Galactic Racer is so ruthless about forcing you to repeat the same races, again and again, to diminishing returns.

It doesn’t help that there are only six themed planets (4-5 tracks per planet), and that these levels fall into the modern Star Wars trap of serving up the wrong planet: a snow planet but not that snow planet; a forested planet but not that forested moon, etc.

At least Tatooine is here, but you’ll only see it after way too much time spent on The Force Awakens’s discount Tatooine, aka Jakku.

THE SPEED IS STRONG WITH THIS ONE

Galactic Racer’s blistering fast gameplay is the obvious highlight of the game.

All four classes of racer – landspeeder, skim speeder, speeder bike, and yes, podracer – move absurdly fast, with speeds that range from merely blood vessel-popping (landspeeder) to Spaceballs-grade ludicrous speed (podracer). Your reflexes don’t just need to be fast, they need to be perfect to have any hope of overcoming its most daunting challenges.

That said, while I was surprised by Galactic Racer‘s difficulty, I was also pleased to discover that it’s rather forgiving in other ways. Most races don’t actually need to be won, for example; it’s often enough to merely survive and move on to the next race, albeit at the cost of lesser rewards. The branching paths, meanwhile, afford plentiful options for hedging your bets, so, while it might be tempting to go for the increased rewards of an Eliminator race, there’s no harm in playing it safe in a standard race, where even a last-place finish isn’t a knockout.

During the races themselves, Galactic Racer provides plenty of tools to keep things manageable. Unlockable abilities – a temporary shield, an autopilot function – reduce the chance of crashing out, and even when you do, the game’s quick reset function (think Mario Kart’s Lakitu) gets you back on track quickly. Though, I have to say, it’s consistently funny witnessing your speeder bike absolutely blown to bits – the crashes always play in slow-mo for extra drama – only for the vehicle to magically reset, your driver unharmed.

Aside from the repetitive roguelike structure, we did have some other misgivings about our time with Galactic Racer. Depending on the track, the paths aren’t always clearly marked, and you’ll sometimes smash headlong into a wall at 700 km/h when you thought you were simply turning a corner. Some of the difficulty spikes, particularly when it comes to “boss” races, are unfair, and seem only designed to force you to replay an Act, inflating your playtime. (Looking at you, Sebulba.)

We were also shocked – and genuinely confused – to discover that Galactic Racer offers no local multiplayer. We invited a friend over precisely for that reason, fond N64 memories playing in our head, and had our hopes for a fun evening in dashed.

The absence of classic multiplayer is a bizarre oversight, from a team which cut their teeth on famed multiplayer racers like Need for Speed and Burnout. It’s sad to think we may have to wait until Galactic Racer 2: Ben Quadinaros Strikes Back, for the chance to hop on the sofa and race each other through the snowy wastelands of Hoth.

***

Final score: 8/10 Beggar’s Canyons

Visit the official website for Star Wars: Galactic Racer here.