While Star Wars might be known for laser swords and space wizards, it's always been about weird little dudes doing even weirder things. Whether it's Jabba the Hutt's pet Salacious Crumb or alien Jizz (yes, that's a fictional musical genre) Band Figrin D'an, Star Wars has long revelled in the bizarre. It's long felt like the sci-fi series' extended universe should be embracing that weirdness, rather than trying to replicate the dramatic Skywalker Saga.
Amidst the explosions and high-flying speeders of Galactic Racer, one snouted jerk of an alien named Biddi Blas decided he'd crown himself my rival, and between races he hurled insults at me, daring me to take a bet on beating him each race. Of course, I took him up on his offer and continued to absolutely smoke the little freak for multiple races in a row. To sum it up, Galactic Racer absolutely gets what Star Wars is about.
I've long thought that more pieces of Star Wars media desperately need to branch off of the main saga, the titular wars, and those big storylines. This is one of the richest universes we've ever seen in media, and there's so much room to thrive by exploring the weird and wonderful corners of it. That's exactly what made the first season of The Mandalorian feel so special, and Galactic Racer hits that same stride by exploring a galactic underground racing ring, where a bunch of daredevils hurtle across planets while blowing each other up.
Science fiction has long had a fascination with what "futuristic" racing might look like; it's a natural extension of our inherent draw to sports and competition as humans. Virtually any sci-fi setting out there has some shape or form of racing; The Expanse has an entire high-speed racing league that helps set the backdrop for the franchise, and even the likes of Speed Racer skew heavily toward the fantastical. But nothing is quite as iconic as Star Wars' podracing, easily the standout segment of The Phantom Menace.
Galactic Racer integrates the tone and intensity of podracing, while fusing that with the highly technical gameplay and wacky rivals of Nintendo's F-Zero franchise – in fact, this is probably the closest we've gotten to a new F-Zero game in decades. If you've played any racer, you know the basics here: you speed through tracks while trying to avoid crashing, and use everything at your disposal to overcome your opponents. But Galactic Racer layers on some clever elements to help accentuate its distinct style.
There are three kinds of vehicles to choose from: landspeeders, speeder bikes, and skim speeders. Each of these vehicles has a distinct style, strengths, and weaknesses. Landspeeders take corners well but often have average speed; bikes have great top speed but take a momentary speed loss when cornering, and Skim speeders are more about managing your momentum and maintaining top speed, but are hard to navigate around corners.
On top of these styles, you can equip four different skills on your racer, things like an autopilot that takes control for ten seconds, a landmine you can lay behind you, a turbo burst that instantly puts you at your top speed, and more.
You have a boost gauge as well, but — by far — the most interesting mechanic is the Ramjet, an extra boost gauge that gives you an afterburner for a massive boost, at the risk of blowing yourself up. You need to be careful with this mode, as the gauge builds up; it's separated into two parts, with the upper part being the "redline." This redline section can give you even bigger momentary boosts, but if you push your racer too hard, you will literally explode. It's a very cool risk-reward system that encourages you to be gutsy, but I also genuinely love the physical act of activating it.
To use the Ramjet, you press R3 (right stick) and then hold down X to continuously use it. Although it might sound weird, every time I used the Ramjet, it reminded me of seeing racers in movies, like Phantom Menace, hitting that stick or button to shoot ahead. It's an incredibly satisfying tactile experience when you click that stick in, and the controller starts to rumble violently. It's such a smart little piece of immersive design that puts you right into the experience.
That's the core idea of what makes Galactic Racer so good: how effortlessly it puts you into that racing experience, and that's equally translated through a fascinating campaign mode. You play as an enigmatic masked racer named Shade, who's shown up to dominate the Galactic Racing League. Across a roguelike series of races, you learn more about Shade and the other racers, including what motivates all of them – including that annoying Biddi Blas.
The roguelike design is what's so fascinating here, as it gives a lot of variance in how each "tour" can play out, giving you multiple options to choose from: basic races, elimination matches, testing prototype machines, and more.
In between each race, you get a little moment where a rival will talk to you, often in an antagonistic way. You also get a little zone to wander around where you can hear random conversations, purchase upgrades for your machine with credits, and more. There's so much personality packed into these sequences, offering fantastic world-building that helps flesh out this particular underbelly of the Star Wars universe. As you do better in races, you can even get offers from crime lords to sponsor you, fulfilling their particular asks for greater rewards.
But my favorite detail is the return of the expert podracer Sebulba from The Phantom Menace. At a certain point in the story, you have to beat the legendary racer in a one-on-one race, but after that he becomes a sort of begrudging mentor to you. As you progress through the story, Sebulba will regale you with tales of the "good old days" of podracing, and how all these modern racers have lost their edge. But the really neat trick is that these flashback stories are actually playable Podracing segments, adding a wonderful bit of contextual variety to the campaign.
There are so many little smart embellishments and details across Galactic Racer that really make it shine, both as a futuristic racer and as a Star Wars game, like the unique little details applied to each planet.
Racing on Crait kicks up those vibrant red dust clouds, which obscure the view of other racers and can even slow them down. The icy planet Ando Prime freezes your machine, which can literally inhibit your turning as the joints are filled with ice, but it means your Afterburner doesn't run as hot. The toxic wasteland of Sentinel 1 reduces your vehicle's durability and can stop your Ramjet from working in acid pools. Each planet has its own little traits that affect how races can play out, once again playing into that idea of futuristic racing across a galaxy.
Of course, all of the elements of these races shine the most when you're playing against other humans in multiplayer, resulting in frenetic matches where the tides can turn in an instant. But the single-player offering in Galactic Racer also wonderfully fleshes out one of the more unpainted corners of the Star Wars universe; a corner I didn't know I needed until now. I'd legitimately watch an entire show about these weirdo racers and the hijinks they get up to, like a modern version of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon Wacky Racers.
Like most Star Wars fans these days, my relationship with the franchise has been complex in recent years, mostly due to the topsy-turvy quality of the films and TV shows. I still find that the best pieces of media from the series have me saying "Star Wars is so cool." The word cool is simple and derivative, sure, but there's a kind of purehearted thrill that this series can evoke, which is part of why it's proven so enduring across generations.
Galactic Racer, equally, is a game that's just simply… cool. The idea of blisteringly fast futuristic racing is also simply cool – a fascinating thought that so much sci-fi media has been endlessly fascinated with. By embracing the "cool factor" of both its source material and concept, Galactic Racer ends up shining.
Star Wars: Galactic Racer will be released on October 6th for PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X|S.
