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PaperclipPerfector  13hr ago (text post)   692 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for October 16, 2026

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I've been playing Star Wars Galactic Racer, the spiritual successor to both the Episode 1 podracer game for the n64 and the Burnout franchise (from which much of its dev team comes). I've never been a huge racing game person, but I'm a big Star Wars fan and have very fond memories of playing Episode 1 Podracer as a kid.

It's pretty great. The vehicles all feel really good to control, the maps are well designed, and the rogue-lite upgrades and abilities system allows for a lot of interesting (and surprisinglu balanced) playstyles. It's got a solid story mode that takes about 20 hours to work through. The NPCs are fairly fun and colorful from what I can tell, but I'm not really interested in story in my racing game, so I just skipped through most of the dialogue. I expect the online multiplayer will keep me coming back for another couple dozen hours or so before I get bored.

A couple major drawbacks: the podracing feels like it was kind of tacked on out of obligation. It's the best part of the game, but siloed off from both the main campaign and the main multiplayer mode, and there are no ways to customize your podracer, unlike the other vehicles. The lack of splitscreen and private multiplayer lobbies are also glaring oversights. For both issues, one can only assume they were discarded for time/budget constraints, with the intention of selling them to us later as DLCs. This sucks, and prevents me from having a fully positive impression of what is otherwise one of the best games I've played recently. It captures the feeling of extreme speed better than just about any other game I can think of.

the podracing feels like it was kind of tacked on out of obligation. It's the best part of the game, but siloed off from both the main campaign and the main multiplayer mode, and there are no ways to customize your podracer, unlike the other vehicles.

That seems like a massive own goal. I'd assume most people who hear "Star Wars" and "Racer" in a videogame would be in it for the podracing, even people who hated the prequels overall.

It really is bizarre, and makes me wonder if it started its life as a generic scifi racing game that only got a Star Wars coat of paint relatively late in development

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