// KOTAKU — GAMING
Star Wars: Galactic Racer: The Kotaku Review
The podracing sequence in 1999’s Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace is probably the one part of the Star Wars prequels most people, even non-fans, can agree is really cool. Weird aliens zipping around at impossible speeds in clunky machines that make strange noises that seem one bump away from falling apart.
And Star Wars: Galactic Racer is a video game dedicated entirely to recreating and expanding on that one genuinely awesome bit from the prequels. Like any good podracer or speeder bike, it has some imperfections. Some dents. But none of these issues hold back Galactic Racer from crossing the finish line and becoming one of my favorite Star Wars games in years.
Star Wars: Galactic Racer is set sometime after the events of Return of the Jedi, likely around the time of The Force Awakens, but before the First Order shows up and starts causing chaos. The thing is, Galactic Racer isn’t really concerned about being part of a larger Star Wars story or connecting dots between moments in the canon. And that’s great! Not every Star Wars game needs to be concerned with Luke Skywalker or the Rebels or whatever.
Instead, you play as a new character, Shade, who, through some trickery, ends up in a large galactic racing league with the goal of beating the reigning champ. That champion is Kestar Bool, a smug bastard who is part of a powerful and rich alien family that brutally invaded and took control of Shade’s planet years ago. So Shade is eager to beat him and help kick him out of the league before he can take it over.
To beat Kestar Bool, Shade will have to do a lot of galactic racing. And this is where Galactic Racer really shines, as no matter what you’re driving, the game feels very fast and runs perfectly.
It didn’t matter if I hopped into a speeder bike, landspeeder, skimmer, or even a podracer; all of them whipped around the game’s various race tracks at screaming speeds. Cutting through a cave or trying to take a small shortcut at these speeds is genuinely difficult, and it doesn’t take much to crash and burn. I think I stopped blinking for extended periods of time while racing around planets like Tatooine and Ando Prime.
Each of the different kinds of space-racing vehicles in Galactic Racer feels totally different to pilot, too.
Landspeeders love to drift, but take time to reach top speed. Meanwhile, skimmers use their movable fins to turn tightly and never slow down. Speeder bikes offer bursts of incredible speed and acceleration, but offer little protection against aggressive racers trying to bash you off the track. And then you have podracers, which move faster than anything else in the game and feel like they’re about to explode if you look at them the wrong way. I really enjoyed learning how to master each type of vehicle, even if I ended up preferring the landspeeder over the rest.
The other thing you’ll have to master is how boosting works in Galactic Racer. You have a basic “turbo” button that uses up a meter. But there’s also your “Ramjet,” a sort of super-boost that you can activate that’s even faster, but if not used correctly, will literally blow up your vehicle. Though you can still win a race if you cross the line as you blow up. Trust me.
Managing these two boosts while drifting around tracks and dodging hazards such as acid and lava, and also managing different abilities like shields, can be a lot.