Review: Star Wars: Galactic Racer

Background: From Wheel-Less Cars to Anti-Grav Cushions

Years ago, Criterion Games co-founder Alex Ward revealed something surprising about the earliest Burnout titles: the cars didn't actually have wheels. The vehicles simply ghosted over the road on invisible physics. That same spirit of hidden mechanical artifice now resurfaces in Star Wars: Galactic Racer, a game built by Fuse Games—a studio packed with former Criterion talent—where landspeeders and podracers hover on blurry antigrav cushions rather than tires.

For anyone who considers Burnout 3 and Burnout Paradise the most thrilling racing games ever made, this lineage matters. But even players with no Burnout history will find something immediately gripping here.

Development: Burnout's Muscle Memory Meets Star Wars' Junkyard Tech

The game is set somewhere between Episode 6 and Episode 7 of the Star Wars timeline. There are droids, desert planets, and fish-headed aliens. There's also a faux-John Williams score that shifts from twinkly and intriguing in space to martial and brooding on planetary surfaces.

But Galactic Racer truly clicks on the first corner of the first race. Players who grew up on Burnout will instinctively hit the boost button—and get the same jolt, the same broadening horizon, the same shimmering sense of speed. The crash cam still swoops backward to catch tumbling wreckage after a takedown, then rushes forward to rejoin the player. Takedowns are still called Takedowns. Boost still changes everything when timed correctly. And the game still encourages—to put it delicately—driving like a deeply mean-spirited son of a bitch.

The Star Wars setting fits because Fuse focuses on the franchise's junky, formidable technology. Forget Jedis, Wookiees, and midichlorians. This is the Star Wars of the Millennium Falcon, which needs a good thump before its engines start. It's the Star Wars of rusted landcraft that look like the back panel of a refrigerator, and malfunctioning droids that shower sparks and shed loose parts.

The Two-Boost System: Afterburner and Ramjet

Galactic Racer's most ingenious mechanical twist is that it has not one boost but two.

Afterburner behaves like Burnout's classic boost: hold a button, drain the bar, go like heck. Unlike Burnout, it generally refills on its own. It's fun, and in any other game it might be overpowered. Here, it's the safe option.

Ramjet is the reason Afterburner feels tame. Faster and more dangerous, Ramjet requires a thumbstick stab to switch over. That switch triggers a thump and shudder suggesting mechanical parts realigning somewhere in the dark guts of your rattling craft—a sound effect that alone is magic.

Leave Ramjet on too long and you enter redlining, a section of the boost bar that triggers an alarm and, eventually, an explosion. The eternal Burnout question—to boost or not to boost—becomes: to boost, or to boost in a way that might kill you?

Campaign Structure: A Roguelite Across the Stars

Galactic Racer's campaign is a Roguelite. Players choose from three craft types:

• Landspeeders: dependable all-rounders
• Speederbikes: darting but bad at corners
• Skim Speeders: the royalty of the track, able to turn on their sides for extra maneuverability, but with a learning curve

Races are split across acts and planets, with branching FTL-style path maps. Between races, players select events—standard races, elimination races, story encounters with other racers, or special events with bespoke craft. Earning money allows vehicle upgrades. Losing the final race of an act, or crashing out in an eliminator, resets the run and strips away additions. As a Roguelite rather than a Roguelike, however, starting machines improve over time.

The variable pool is deep: Parts, Racer Styles, and Favours (selectable perk loadouts) combine with core stat upgrades and Mario Kart-style abilities like dropping mines, triggering autopilot bursts, or punishing others after a crash. Relationships with the cast of rival racers shift between playthroughs depending on deals, part swaps, or rivalries.

One illustrative build: pouring all points into wall-robustness and Afterburner capacity, then stacking parts that extend Afterburner duration and recharge rate, plus autopilot abilities. The result—almost always boosting, almost never steering—was deeply unwise and utterly committed. It eroded driving skills so badly that starting over without autopilot meant endless wall impacts.

Risk and Reward on the Track

Damage and failed recovery can cost a part, forcing players to race without, say, a 25 percent boost until repairs between planets. Falling out with a rival in a story encounter can mean exploding at the start of the next race—right after the wonderful ritual of tapping in codes to bring each machine system online early, which feels exactly like flicking overhead switches in an X-Wing.

Planets aren't just visual variety; they have mechanical impacts:

• Icy worlds make Ramjet cooler and longer-lasting
• Toxic worlds corrode racers who linger over lurid acid lakes
• Desert worlds bake craft to the point where leaving Ramjet off becomes advisable

Tracks blend tight underground corridors where cornering is a constant negotiation with death, and wide-open surface sections where getting turned around—and going backwards—is entirely possible. From Jakku's dunes and wrecked Star Destroyers to Crait's white crystalline surface with red dust billowing underneath, each location demands its own optimal strategy.

Latest State of Play: What's Included and What It Means

The game includes arcade modes, themed mini-tours, and multiplayer. Between races, on-foot sections let players visit shops, chat with rivals, and pass by droids—all rendered with English regional accents suggesting dayplayers doing bits at Elstree Studios. A very familiar targeting computer appears on the dashboard of an unlockable craft.

For Burnout veterans, Galactic Racer is a homecoming wrapped in Star Wars skin. For everyone else, it's a Roguelite racer with a surprising range of variables, a two-boost system that layers strategy onto every corner, and a commitment to the franchise's battered, clanky, brilliantly terrible technology. The game is currently in a state where its Burnout DNA and Star Wars setting have fused into something that feels both familiar and genuinely new—a racer that rewards players who grit their teeth so hard they start to turn to dust.