Video Games Are Making Star Wars Fun Again

It's been a bad few years for Star Wars, huh? From the dire reception to Episode IX through to a succession of (mostly) underbaked TV shows to a run of high-profile cancellations, the overall vibe of the series of late has been far, far away from its heydays.

Most of that can be laid at the feet of corporate overlords Disney, who we could generously say have mismanaged one of the most popular galaxies on the planet. But some of it can be blamed on EA too, because for almost as long as Disney have been fucking up the bigger-screen versions of Star Wars, EA's limited run of mediocre and exclusive video game adaptations starved the market of what had once been--in the 90s especially--one of the places you could find some of the best Star Wars stories around, not to mention some of the best video games around.

Boy has that changed this month, and it is great. As someone who as recently as a few months back wavered with swearing off Star Wars altogether (that Mandalorian movie is a war crime), getting Zero Company and now Galactic Racer within a matter of weeks of each other feels like my love for the series has been dunked headfirst into a bacta tank.

I've written about Zero Company already, a game which drew a line between Clone Wars and Andor then walked it almost perfectly to completely invert my feelings on prequel stories, but this week I've been playing Galactic Racer and been having a blast. It is, as so many reviews have said, a really good racing game in its own right. It draws equally and lovingly from Burnout, F-Zero and Wipeout, and provides a perilous sensation of speed and danger that few driving games in history (maybe outside the three just mentioned) have been able to capture.

Star Wars: Galactic Racer Gives Me What I Want: To Go So Fast That I Explode

I missed going at sublime speeds and bursting into flames.

AftermathChris Person

What's just as notable about the game is how much fun it's having with Star Wars. It's clear the developers love Star Wars down to its most minute visual signatures, but have also remembered that the series isn't all religious orders and galactic tax policies; it can also let its hair down. Galactic Racer knows it's a game about racing (space) cars driven by a cast of weird alien guys, and so it shines a spotlight on those weird guys to heart-warming and hilarious effect.

The writing, animation and voice acting here is way past the standard you'd expect from a roguelite racing game. I love some of these guys, your monkey mechanic with the unambiguous Northern accent (mostly Scouse, sometimes Yorkshire, Brum, Manc or all four at once) especially, but the windsailing toff, insane crocodile child (see above) and precious Ronaldo-adjacent bully are not far behind. Everyone is so bombastic and funny; there's a charm here that's perfectly at home with the setting, which is closer in tone to F-Zero GX and Wacky Races than some of the heavier stories (Skeleton Crew aside) we've been told lately.

Which is great! Star Wars should be fun! The classic trilogy was fun, many older video games were fun, it's a sci-fi universe full of odd aliens and magical technology, where nothing makes sense and shouldn't always need to. So it's been a breath of fresh air to see something set in the series let its hair down, to the point where walking around between races and chatting with everyone here isn't a frivolous option, it's mandatory.

Of course it doesn't hurt when lauding Galactic Racer’s Star Warsiness to remind you that it’s a fantastic racing game, and would have been so regardless of the license or story plastered over the top. The speeders feel fast, heavy and precarious, and the visual effects conveying your speed and movement are so white-knuckle that I've had to stop myself playing before bedtime because I have been getting too jacked up. The Burnout-style takedowns and explosions are a particular highlight, and the roguelite structure to the game--where every run is a season of racing--really helps ease you into the game's surprisingly difficult latter stages.

Like Zero Company, this is a very good video in its own right. But the fact it's a very good video game and is a very fun Star Wars experience, coming so soon after the last one, is making it extra special. Disney can cancel as many movies and TV shows as they want so long as we keep getting games that have this much fun, and do the series as much justice as these.