Five Things I’m Absolutely Loving About Star Wars: Galactic Racer On Xbox Series X

One of the Xbox games that I’ve been most anticipating over the past few months is Star Wars: Galactic Racer – the first ever release from UK studio Fuse Games. All of the trailers and preview footage have made it look like a dream for fans of Star Wars Episode 1 Racer, and I’m certainly someone who falls into that category.

So, you better believe I was knocking on the door of the PR team for this game, desperately trying to get my hands on a pre-release review code! It ended up falling into my hands a little later than hoped, hence why we haven’t published a full review yet, but I at least wanted to share some of my early impressions ahead of launch. Just be aware that these are only based on a few initial hours with the campaign, and it’s still very early days for me.

With that in mind, here are five things I’m loving about Star Wars: Galactic Racer on Xbox Series X!

1. The Racing Feels Suitably Fast And Furious

When podracing was first introduced to us in Star Wars: Episode 1, it was presented to us an ultra-dangerous and ridiculously intense sport that featured tight turns, big crashes and long stretches of immense speed. While Star Wars: Galactic Racer doesn’t actually focus on podracing for the most part (although it’s still certainly in the mix), it absolutely nails the sense of danger at every turn, and you can barely afford to blink at any moment.

Simply put, Galactic Racer’s biggest quality is that it actually delivers on providing a fast and furious racing game that’ll get your adrenaline pumping. Boosting feels great, you can unlock all kinds of special abilities for your loadout (that make a major difference in some cases), and there are usually many different routes you can take on a track to try and get the edge on your opponents. It’s a shame that local split-screen isn’t an option here, but you do kinda need the full screen to keep up with everything going on in a race.

2. It Bares More Than A Passing Resemblance To Burnout 3

For those who have been missing the glory days of Burnout 3 over the past couple of decades, I definitely encourage them to check out Star Wars: Galactic Racer. While it’s obviously a different kind of game to the Criterion classic, there are many similiarities between the two, and I’d say it’s much closer to a Burnout 3 (or Revenge) than something like Burnout Paradise due to the focus on linear tracks rather than a big open world.

The biggest resemblence is in the takedowns though. They basically work the same way – barge into another racer, and watch them smash into the terrain and crumble into pieces in slow motion. You can turn this slow-mo feature off if you want to, but it was always one of my favourite parts of the old Burnout games, and takedowns feel just as satisfying to pull off in Galactic Racer as well.

3. The Roguelite Campaign Encourages Replayability And Forces You To Master Each Track

For the first time ever in a Star Wars racing game, Galactic Racer’s campaign adopts a roguelite progression structure. That means it basically encourages you to fail and start again – if you either get wrecked three times or fail to place high enough in an elimination race, you’re thrown out of the competition. Your racer then gets scrapped for parts, and you’re rewarded with extra credits (and a few other bonuses) for your next run.

Not only does this stretch out the campaign and encourage you to keep coming back, but it also allows you to get better familiarised with the track layouts and learn how to master them. There’s such a sense of speed in Galactic Racer than it’s impossible not to crash sometimes, but once you start to understand how a track is properly laid out, you suddenly find yourself making incremental improvements along the way.

4. Audio And Overall Presentation Are Top-Tier

Star Wars: Galactic Racer does a really good job in the presentation department, boasting pretty awesome visuals for a small-ish development team, and even allowing you to walk around and interact with characters in-between races. Tracks look great, vehicles look great, and planets such as Ando Prime and Jakku are spectacular at times.

It’s no surprise that the audio is good as well, especially when you start adding recognisable racecraft into the equation such as Sebulba’s podracer. Voice acting seems on-point for the most part too. Ultimately, I’ve been very impressed with the presentation and audio across the first few hours of the game.

5. Performance Seems Really Smooth On Xbox Series X

I should note that I’m using a VRR-enabled display to play Star Wars: Galactic Racer on my Xbox Series X, but I haven’t come across any performance issues so far. You only get the one mode — there’s no way to choose between Quality or Performance here — but it seems to be a stable 60FPS that lends perfectly to such a high-speed game.

That’s not to say everything is perfect, as I’ve definitely noticed a few instances of pop-in during the non-racing segments, but those are just minor grumbles. On the whole, the game seems to look and perform great on Xbox’s most powerful console, which is very much what was expected anyway.

So, there we go! As I say, I’ve only put a few hours into Star Wars: Galactic Racer over the past couple of days, and I’m particularly looking forward to seeing how the multiplayer fares when the game properly launches on October 6th.

That’s when you can get your hands on it as well, with the pre-order currently live on the Xbox Store at a price of £49.99 / $59.99. I was always going to buy this anyway, but getting early access has certainly justified that decision.