New ‘Star Wars’ Game Combines ‘Burnout’-Style Crashes with Galactic Racing

Fuse Games, the studio behind racing franchises like Need for Speed and Burnout, is launching Star Wars: Galactic Racer, a high-speed racing game set in the Star Wars universe. The game offers three vehicle types: the blade, a middleweight option that can drift and tilt onto its side; the Landspeeder, a car-like vehicle more resistant to collisions; and the skimspeeder, which gains a speed burst when accelerating out of tight corners.

Racing mechanics include two boost types: the safe Afterburner, which gradually refills, and the risky Ramjet, which heats the engine and can cause an explosion if overused. Shields, hacking abilities, and status effects that can disable boosting are also part of the gameplay. The campaign mode follows a mysterious helmeted pilot named Shade through a season of races to defeat a well-funded antagonist. There are four modes: campaign, scenario (specific conditions), challenge, and versus mode.

Set after the fall of the Empire during the New Republic era, each race is bookended by a short walk from the player's spaceship to the garage, where rival racers may engage in conversation. The author notes this traversal could become tedious over time. Players earn and unlock parts to upgrade their vehicles, with installation requiring credits earned from racing. Star Wars: Galactic Racer releases on October 6 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.