“Biddy Blas! Scrib doon!” That’s Huttese for “write it down,” and I’m going to do just that. Star Wars: Galactic Racer is gas. It’s a great game, and it lived up to every bit of hype I built for it. Gamers love it, Star Wars fans love it, and people who’ve never touched a racing game are quoting a tiny alien. It’s sitting at an 88 on Metacritic, and 18,052 people were playing at once on Steam five days after launch.
That battle cry belongs to Biddy Blas, a Crocin hustler who rolls up to the grid, shouts his own name, and hands you a gift that turns out to be a bomb, according to IGN. A clip of his intro blew up on launch day, and plenty of people bought the game to meet him.
They’re staying for the racing. It’s fast, it’s mean, and it’s harder than any licensed racer has a right to be. You claw your way up, barely sneak into the top nine, and spend race after race fighting for fifth place. Then the game reintroduces you to your greatest nemesis, the wall. Three straight crashes later, you’re in 12th. Dead last.
It plays like an arcade game but still obeys the rules of its galaxy. The planets push back. Lantaana’s lava cooks your engine, and Ando Prime’s ice freezes your steering, according to IGN’s review. Sentinel I is the meanest of the bunch. Its corrosive acid is the game’s most unforgiving terrain, and whatever you’re driving can’t stay on it for more than a second before it’s on the fritz. The crashes are massive, the kind no pilot in any galaxy walks away from. Here, you just respawn. Fuse Games was founded by senior developers from Criterion, the studio behind Burnout, and you can see it in every pileup. Polygon’s Oli Welsh called it “the best arcade racing game in a generation.”
N64 kids get Sebulba and a replica of the Boonta Eve track on Tatooine, but this isn’t a remake of Episode I Racer. Podracers are one of four vehicle classes, and the roguelite campaign is what keeps pulling me back. You build your ride, gamble on risky upgrades, and live with the wreckage when a run goes sideways. No two runs play out the same, and that’s where the replay value lives. Take the Star Wars off the box and you’d still have a hit.
The one real knock is the map. IGN’s Luke Reilly found the campaign “unavoidably tedious over long stints” because it keeps sending you back to the same few planets. The League’s seven stops include two deserts in Tatooine and Jakku, plus Lantaana’s lava jungle, Ando Prime’s ice, Sentinel I’s acid wastes, Crait’s salt flats and the Derven Acos arena. The game takes place between Return of the Jedi and The Mandalorian, a Fuse developer told Metro. Every planet below existed then, and none of them repeats a look the game already has. A couple sits outside the Outer Rim, but the syndicates can afford the hyperspace fuel. Here’s where I want to race next.
Naboo
This game clearly loves The Phantom Menace, so send it to the source. One lap could run from Theed’s plazas, over the waterfalls, and out to the grassy plains where the Gungans fought the droid army.
Coruscant
The outlaw league would feel right at home in the city-planet’s underworld. Drop it into the lower levels, where nobody asks for a permit, then climb into the sky lanes from Attack of the Clones and race through traffic stacked a thousand stories high. That’s a lot of walls. My nemesis would love it here.
Corellia
Solo opened with a landspeeder chase through Coronet City. Run it back through the shipyards and the docks, where every corner hides a crane.
Canto Bight
Canto Bight’s high rollers bet big on fathier races, and a speeder beats a fathier every time. Lap the old town, swing past the casino and finish along the artificial sea.
Bespin / Cloud City
Bespin already has a race on the books. The Cloud City Grand Prix is a regional event in Star Wars canon, a deep cut from a 2018 roleplaying sourcebook, where a pilot named Bo Keevil once flew his racer, the Yellow Ace. Bring it back under the League banner. Thread between Cloud City’s platforms, then drop into the gas giant’s orange clouds below.
Endor
The Empire just lost here. Run Return of the Jedi’s speeder bike chase through the giant trees, past the scrap of a fallen shield generator.
Dagobah
Skim a swamp so foggy you can’t see the next turn, with roots grabbing at your speeder and Yoda’s hut as the last checkpoint.
Kamino
Race across a storm-whipped ocean between whatever’s left of the old cloning platforms, with waves breaking over the track and rain sheeting across the canopy.
Mon Cala
Take the race under the waves and through the coral cities. On Lantaana, water cools your engine. A whole track underwater could be the one place you never have to worry about overheating.
Scarif
Rogue One left the beaches standing. Skim the lagoons and cut between palm-covered islands.
Utapau
Utapau. (Lucasfilm)
Obi-Wan rode a giant lizard down these sinkholes in Revenge of the Sith. A speeder should do it faster, spiraling past cliffside landing pads and hanging bridges on the long drop to the bottom.
Batuu
Black Spire Outpost is where smugglers and bounty hunters go to disappear, which makes it League territory. Race through its market streets and out past the petrified trees the outpost is named for.
Kessel
Han did the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs, so the League should take its shot. Run the spice mines, then punch out into the planet's storm. After Sentinel I, I’ve learned to fear anything glowing on the ground, and Kessel has plenty of it.
Death Star II
The second one is fresh wreckage. Make it a salvage run through the guts of the battle station, trench run included.
Biddy Blas told everyone to write his name down. Fuse, write these down too.