Star Wars Galactic Racer review: the spirit of Burnout reincarnated

Typically we like our racing games with wheels, here at TG. With its various hovering vehicles, Star Wars Galactic Racer doesn't feature a single one, not even a cheeky 'steering'.

We're going to give it a pass, though, because the essence of one of our favourite arcade racers of all time lives on, reincarnated, in this game. The spiritual sequel to Burnout showing up in the form of an officially licensed Star Wars game certainly wasn't on our bingo card, but then we haven't played bingo for a while. Maybe it's gotten more interesting.

It turns out the development team who worked on Star Wars: Galactic Racer features several folks who were behind the brilliant Burnout arcade racing games in the early to mid 2000s. Combine that heritage with inarguably the best scene from the entire Star Wars prequel trilogy - the pod racing sequence - and you've got an alluring, sci-fi cocktail.

That Burnout DNA is evident from the moment you hip check another racer into a cliff face and their hovering 'speeder' explodes in glorious, lavish slo-mo, you'll be instantly transported back to the heady days of Burnout 3: Takedown on PlayStation 2. This aggressive, physical gameplay is the perfect fit for the type of cinematic, dangerous racing established in Star Wars Episode 1.

That's not to say Galactic Racer takes a predictable path. For a start, the actual specific pod racers you saw in the movie only make up a small part of the game - the real meat of the campaign mode is in a lower league racing series featuring slower machinery. Though complaining about the lower speed is like quibbling over the difference between being chased by a leopard or a cheetah.

This game is also what's referred to as a 'rogue lite'. Without getting deep into the weeds of videogame genre terminology, the gist is that rather than a linear path from the beginning to the end of the game, you aren't supposed to finish it on the first attempt.

Instead you are supposed to complete multiple playthroughs, building up skills, abilities and upgrades until you're able to win the game. There's a degree to which this is used to pad the content of the game out to several more hours, but ultimately it's not a bad fit for keeping you motivated in this sort of arcade racer.

That said, the first moment we got knocked out of a race and dumped back to the start of the league, we couldn't have felt farther from the swashbuckling Star Wars heroes we're used to from the movies.

Of course, neither of these things really matter when you're in the thick of the action, managing the two different types of boost, juggling the various special abilities you've unlocked and turning your opponents' rides into metal confetti.

The racing is sublime, the campaign structure is unique to racing games and the recognisable Star Wars environments look ripped straight from the movies. And best news of all? The spirit of Burnout hasn't burnt out yet...