As well as it lends itself to high-speed thrills in surprising ways, the Star Wars franchise hasn’t been terribly active in the racing genre with its video game outings over the years. And yet it still manages to knock the ball out of the part with Star Wars: Galactic Racer with shocking confidence. Combining the Star Wars universe with the arcadey action and adrenaline-fueled thrills of a typical Burnout game, Galactic Racer delivers one of the best and most surprising arcade racing experiences in recent memory. Naturally, many will be diving into its mechanics in the near future to get a taste of those offerings, and to help you do just that, here, we’ve compiled a list of handy pointers that should aid you in getting to grips with the game much faster. Without further ado then, let’s get started.
Perfect Start
Perfect start mechanics are by no means unique in racing games, and yes, it’s an important one here as well. As you rev up during the countdown for a race, you’ll see a bar with three sections fill up on the screen. Take your foot off the gas, and the bar will start going down, and if you can get it to land in the second section when the countdown ends, you get a boosted and speedier beginning to your race.
Pick the Right Vehicle For You
The multiple vehicle types that Galactic Racer offers differ from each other in some key ways, so it’s crucial to find the one that suits you and your play style. Landspeeders can be good starter repulsocraft, as a jack of all trades vehicle type, while speeder bikes are much better at weaving and tight cornering, thanks to their compact size. Then there’s skim speeders, which are more difficult to master, but once mastered, can allow for much tighter and more precise drifting. Oh, and speaking of drifting…
Master the Drift
Star Wars: Galactic Racer places a great deal of emphasis on drifting, to the extent that that’s the mechanic that you’re going to want to master above all else. Pretty much every single course in the game is fraught with intricate, tight, danger-laden sections where even the slightest mistake can result in a fatal crash, so perfect drifts that help you corner sudden and tight turns a re a crucial part of performing well.
Master the Ramjet
Just as crucial as mastering the drift in Star Wars: Galactic Racer is master the ramjet. The secondary (and arguably more important) boosting mechanic on offer, the ramjet can be activated once your engine is primed, though the longer you use it, the more your engine heats up. Use it too long, and you’ll overheat and explode, though turning it off too early means wasting precious ramjet usage and having to wait until it’s primed again. Also keep an eye for environmental elements such as ice or water puddles that you can drive over to cool down your engines and, in turn, prolong ramjet use.
Using Abilities
Star Wars: Galactic Racer has a suite of various abilities that you can equip and use in the middle of a race, and as you’d expect from an arcade racer, when and how you use your abilities is crucial to how you perform. For instance, if you happen to be heading into a race with the autopilot ability, it might behoove you to unleash it when, say, you’re about to enter a cave system with a lot of perilous tight corners and destructive crashing spots. Activating the autopilot at just the right moment can help you avoid those obstacles.
Chart Your Course in the Campaign
Each run in Galactic Racer’s roguelite campaign sees you choosing between different available events on a branching map, and as you’d expect from a roguelite experience, how you choose to progress through this map can define the outcome of that run. There’s a major risk versus reward element at play here- for instance, Eliminator races are easy to get knocked out, but if you do well, you also get much more bountiful rewards, which might make the rest of the run much easier going forward.
Making Deals
While most of the options available on the aforementioned branching map tend to lead to races and racing events, every now and then, you’ll also find opportunities to meet with various characters and make backdoor deals with them. These always come with unique pros and cons- such as a deal that might give you boosted upgrade points at the end of each race, but only at the cost of halved credit rewards- or vice versa. Deals can often be quite rewarding, and are often a great way to set yourself up for success over the course of an entire run, so make sure you don’t ignore them entirely.
Prioritize Drifting and Cornering Upgrades
You’ll be making plenty of temporary upgrades throughout the course of your run, and every player will obviously differ in what they prefer based on their playstyle. Our recommendation, however, would be to prioritizing upgrades to your repulsocraft’s drifting and cornering abilities. Though investing upgrade points into afterburners or your vehicle’s damage resistance is also never a bad idea, given the importance of the drifting mechanics, we’d suggest sharpening your vehicle’s cornering skills above others.
Choose Your Backers Carefully
Not long into Galactic Racer’s campaign, you will gain the ability to choose between various different backers who will provide you with grater injections of credits and better bonuses. Backers always want specific things from you, which means you get additional gameplay challenges with rewards to aim for. Those rewards can be genuinely useful though, especially if you pick the right backer. For instance, a backer that increases your payout boosts with, say, each successful ability use can be quite lucrative, if that ability happens to suit your play style- so keep an eye on backers and how (or if) each individual one can benefit your run.
More Crashes and Tokens
Crashes and tokens are your more pivotal currencies in Galactic Racer’s roguelite campaign- run out of your limited available crashes, and you’re out of the race; run out of your tokens, and your current run is over. There is, however, obviously a way to make sure you give yourself a greater margin for error on both of those fronts. From favours to racer styles and more, different available options at the beginning of a run (most of which have to be unlocked) let you head into runs with both, more tokens and more crashes, thus making things a little bit more forgiving.
Status Conditions
Every now and then, your repulsocraft will be hit with varying status conditions, and though that’s obviously something to keep an eye on, they’re not always necessarily a bad thing. For instance, if your vehicle becomes frozen, that will obviously affect things such as handling and drifting. At the same time, however, you’ll also be able to use your ramjet boost much, much longer before your engine overheats.
Fixing Malfunctions
During your runs in Galactic Racer’s campaign, you might end up picking up malfunctions for the parts that you have acquire for your vehicle along the way. These are temporary downgrades that once again bring a risk versus reward mechanic- like a malfunction that freezes your vehicle each time you deplete your afterburner fuel. These malfunctions can be fixed at specific intervals in the middle of a run, so if you do happen to pick one up, make sure you have saved up the credits that will be required to fix the problem.
