Star Wars: Galactic Racer Review
Pod Racer Is Back, Now Where Are the Private Lobbies?
Twenty-five years after Pod Racer owned our childhood couches, Star Wars racing is back, and it's fast. Really fast. Galactic Racer is a pure arcade racer with no bloated story and no RPG busywork. It just puts you in the Galactic League with a vehicle and asks you to hang on. It doesn't land every lap, but when it hits, it's the most thrilling racing game in years.
The Vehicles
Galactic Racer offers a lot to keep you in the fun. The first of which is your choice of which vehicle you want to race with. The land speeder is the tank. It's sturdy, it usually carries a shield, and it's perfect for bullying rivals into walls in elimination modes. The speeder bike trades top speed for quick bursts and rewards clean drifts with a Kinetic Burst. The skim speeder is Josh and Ryan's favorite. It can turn veertically and take corners impossibly tight... if you can tame it. Each one really changes how you approach a track, and finding "your" vehicle is half the fun. Classic pod racers also make an appearance in campaign flashbacks and a dedicated online mode.
Roguelike Builds Keep Every Run Fresh
The big modern twist for Galactic Racer is the roguelike upgrade system. Finishing races in the campaign or multiplayer tours earns credits for parts and stat boosts: ion and concussion mines, longer Ramjet bursts, afterburner refills on perfect landings, and plenty more. Stack everything into raw speed and you'll fly down the straights, then eat every corner. Before each race you also input quick Helldivers-style codes to arm your upgrades, a fun bit of hands-on ritual that punishes you if you skip it. Because no two builds play the same, races rarely feel repetitive, and it's dangerously easy to say "one more run" at 2 a.m.
Tracks with Real Personality
Each planet changes how you drive. Jakku blinds you with sun glare coming out of tunnels and overheats your engines. Ando Prime freezes your vehicle and forces you through thermal tunnels to thaw out. Craits crystal caves are claustrophobically tight and it's red salt fields can choke your ramjet. Mirrored reverse tracks add variety, and the course design really makes every race a joy to experience.
The Eye Blistering Speed
The sense of speed in Galactic Racer is unmatched. The pod races in particular deliver a sense of velocity we've never felt in another racer. It's the kind of fast where your eyes can barely keep up. On top of that the game is gorgeous, and it nails the feeling of being inside the Star Wars universe. It even has a breakout superstar: Biddy Blas a gibberish-spouting character in the pre-race hub who's become an internet brain worm for good reason.
Where it Stalls
For a game built for friends, Galactic Racer is oddly bad at friends. There are no private lobbies, and you can only squad up in small groups, which is a baffling miss for a racer begging for a 12-player Discord night. There's no split-screen couch co-op either, in a game aimed right at people who grew up playing Pod Racer side by side.
While the maps are gorgeous, everyone wants more of them. It's not a hinderance to the game itself, but a few more woudl go a long way to the longevity of this game. Crashes are hard to recover from, we ran into some other kinds of crashes. The PC hard freeze kind, mid-race. Solo campaign races against the AI can start to feel samey if the build system doesn't hook you.
Worth the Money?
If an arcade Star Wars racer sounds like your thing, yes. The full $60 is fair. There are easily 20 to 30-plus hours here before you even get serious about leaderboard times. If you mostly play solo or you're on the fence, it's a great pickup on sale.
The Verdict
Galactic Racer is the best arcade racer we've played in a long time. It has a sense of speed nobody else matches, vehicles with real personality, and roguelike builds that keep every run fresh. The missing private lobbies and couch co-op hold it back, and so does a track list that needs more planets. Fix those, and this is game could be pushing Masterpiece status for those that enjoy this type of game.
VGP Leaderboard: #37, between Resident Evil Requiem and Lies of P.
Host scores: Josh 8/10, Ryan 8.5/10, Ace 7.5/10.