Star Wars: Galactic Racer review: "True to its Burnout legacy, blisteringly fast space racing keeps me coming back to the grid"

Star Wars is full of vile scum and hideous villains worthy of punishment, but perhaps none have a face more punchable than the arch-rival of Star Wars: Galactic Racer, Kestar Bool. He's the current champion of the recently established Galactic League and is a truly detestable one at that. A whinging, arrogant rich kid with an undeniable talent for tearing up the track who really needs to be taken down a peg or two.

The moment the game's faceless protagonist, Shade, meets him was all the motivation I needed, but I didn't realise the road to challenging him would be more demanding and thrilling than I imagined. This is what I've felt has been missing from big-budget racing games of the last few years – high-octane action and real challenges to get invested in – and Star Wars: Galactic Racer delivers on both in bucketloads.

Feel, don’t think

Star Wars: Galactic Racer feels sublime to play, and that becomes apparent after just a few races in my campaign journey. Given that developer Fuse Games was founded by five former Criterion Games developers – the studio behind the likes of Burnout and several Need For Speed games – it's hardly a surprise either.

Unburdened by tyres and petrol engines, the driving model allows the three repulsorcraft types – all-rounder landspeeders, nippy speeder bikes, and fluid skim speeders – to feel extremely slick, gliding around corners in wide arcs or sharply banking in at speed with no substantial effort on the controls. Once you master advanced drifting manoeuvres, the brakes often feel optional, so Galactic Racer is more Mario Kart than Gran Turismo in that regard.

There's superb tactility to the game, particularly in its pre-race check sequence. You've got to rapidly input cheat code-like button sequences (one of the Auto-Pilot ability inputs is actually the famous Konami code) within five seconds to prime your afterburners, activate any abilities you've picked up on your current Tour, and start your engine. Each button press is accompanied by satisfying bleep-bloops and, on the PS5's DualSense controller, there's even a nice bit of resistance on the trigger, like turning a key in a car, to start your engine – and I say that as someone who usually turns off adaptive triggers at the first opportunity.

Admittedly, it's a lot to take in at first. The high-speed racing feels both awesome and terrifying as a novice racer as you go through plenty of butt-clenching moments that result in narrowly making it through a series of tight corners, unscathed if you're lucky, or going out in a dramatic fireball. Galactic Racer at least makes each crash look spectacular while you consider your errors, with engine parts and crumpled bodywork blasting across the track in slow-motion and from multiple angles.

But, the more you learn the tracks, improve your racecraft, and push the limits of your speeder, the closer you get to entering a racing flow state, feeling the Force as you fly right on the edge and use everything in your arsenal, no matter how underhanded, to beat your opponents to the finish line. Success in Galactic Racer means giving it your full focus at all times. That's not going to be to everyone's tastes for an arcade racer, but when you come out on top, or even just barely survive a race, it makes for the most satisfying and immersive racing game I've played.

Star Tours

The smooth and speedy driving model is what makes the racing exciting in moment-to-moment gameplay, but it's the roguelike-inspired risk and reward mechanics and run-based format that kept me coming back. These permeate most modes in the game, including short but intense multiplayer tours, but are most prominent in the three-act campaign.

Rather than following the usual career mode blueprint of racing through various series/cups/wristbands until you become the ultimate champion of all racing, Galactic Racer's campaign plays out across run-based tours, where you pick from branching paths to decide which race events to tackle. Every four events moves the Galactic League to another planet with its own array of circuits and hazards, and there's time for you to explore the paddock and buy upgrades.

All the while you need to avoid losing your League Token or getting Wrecked (by crashing three times) to eventually reach the tour's final race and hopefully emerge victorious, ready for the next Act checkpoint and a new tour. Otherwise, you've got to attempt the whole tour all over again. It sounds unforgiving, but it's a genre mashup that works incredibly well to the point that I'm surprised it hasn't been done in a more mainstream fashion before.

Events are all very quick, making for a brief and moreish adrenaline rush. Each type offers its own rewards with the best being locked behind the most dangerous that can easily end your tour in flames. Eliminator races offer the best rewards – high Credit payouts, two Upgrade points, and a high-quality Part that can substantially buff your speeder – but if you can't battle your way into the top three before time runs out, your League Token is lost and your tour is over instantly.

Mystery Encounters, meanwhile, avoid races altogether as Shade is approached by one or more of the many colorful characters in the Galactic League paddock. You won't know what will happen until it's too late, from being offered faulty but powerful parts by monkey-like mechanic Hibi or getting a cut of gambling profits, to getting extorted for Credits under threat of having my ride sabotaged.

My favorite of these is when top-tier 'Glup Shitto' Biddy Blas – a noisy, irritating, and childish rival racer – offers me a powerful speeder part, claiming it's part of his culture to offer such gifts. Two races later, my speeder violently explodes the moment the race starts as Blas gleefully laughs over the radio. "Biddy Blas strikes again!" Thanks, Biddy.

Potential detonations aside, these events, and the parts and upgrades they provide, mean every tour is full of interesting choices to make regarding your build and how you progress. Depending on the speeder type and Racer Style you choose at the start of your tour, you may want to spec into boosting your afterburners or ramjet or maximize your ability usage to keep your rivals in check. Galactic Racer forces you to be adaptable, but also seek out synergies as you make the most of its partially randomized rewards.

As a big fan of the ramjet, I love getting upgrades that boost its overall power and efficiency but especially love the ones that trigger effects when you push it to its redlining limit. And the blaring alarms don’t bother me when I've got the Vent and Surge abilities equipped, allowing me to instantly purge heat to keep it going almost endlessly and fly even faster. That is of course until I inevitably go too fast and end up misjudging a turn, colliding with a barrier at over 600 or 700kph.

The archives are incomplete

Star Wars: Galactic Racer's tracks are highly technical, filled with winding turns, obvious and obscure shortcuts, and dangerous hazards that must be effectively used or avoided to stay competitive. Ando Prime's freezing temperatures may keep your engines cool, but spend too long in the cold and your steering will freeze up. Risky manoeuvres are essential to success and immensely gratifying to pull off.

Much like real racetracks, each planets' various circuits are made up of sections of a wider course. While that gives the environment a singular identity, it can mean individual circuits blur together a bit. Because they share common elements, I'd struggle to tell you what makes Jakku's War Fields, Giants' Graveyard, or Debris Dunes distinct, even after playing for over 30 hours and racing on them many times. Only a handful of individual courses truly sing, such as Sentinel I's Acid Ring, a small ring-shaped track – half-banked, half-flat – around an acid lake. The simplicity essentially makes it Galactic Racer's answer to Mario Kart's Baby Park, the site of some of the most chaotic and dangerous races I've played.

Still, I know which planets I like – Jakku and Lantaana's winding circuits with plenty of elevation changes are thrilling, while Sentinel I's acid puddles and Crait's terrifyingly tight crystal tunnels can be tough to deal with. But, with only six to race on, the tours you go on don't quite live up to the Galactic League name. I'd love to have seen something closer to a Formula 1 calendar, with fewer tracks per planet but greater variety – a Monaco on Mustafar or a Silverstone on Scarif, for example.

This becomes especially noticeable in Act 3, a gauntlet that runs through all six planets in the same order every time. Not only does that mean it can get repetitive, but it also starts to go against the run-based format by elongating the otherwise snappy tours I'd been enjoying up to this point. Additionally, podracing challenges appear between each planet – which are exhilarating, but saddle the tour with a comparatively brutal level of challenge since they act as another point of failure. "This is not where the fun begins", I think as Ben Quadinaros steals my League Token.

I'm more here for the action and sense of character than the story, but, thanks to an abrupt campaign ending, I'm left wanting more from Galactic Racer's narrative. Still, even with those annoyances, I'm impressed by how the tours add genuine stakes to these blistering races.

Star Wars: Galactic Racer feels like a proud rebel when compared to the current racing game landscape. It forgoes deep simulation mechanics, vast car selections, even larger open worlds, and live-service guff in favor of frenetic racing that feels fantastic, an honest to goodness story that fits perfectly into the Star Wars canon, and some proper friction.

That all means it oozes character, expertly modernizing the arcade racing of the 2000s for 2026 and putting risk and reward at the forefront, which is what racing is all about. And as Fuse Games' debut, it's bordering on a perfect start.

There's a galaxy of gaming out there. Check out our best Star Wars games or best racing games rankings if you feel force pulled towards more!