New Star Wars Game Is Trying to Replace a Series Fans Have Been Missing for Almost 20 Years

The Star Wars franchise has benefited from a lot of creative game design and exciting approaches over the years, and Star Wars: Galactic Racers is just the latest example of how the series can be retrofitted to work in different genres. There have been Star Wars racing games before, but Galactic Racers throws players into the cockpits of ground-level ships and tasks them with surviving a deadly course full of opposing racers, environmental challenges, and criminal machinations. The trailers released so far have been very exciting, especially for fans of arcade racers.

Star Wars: Galactic Racer wasn’t going to be a gritty and grounded game, given the sci-fi qualities, but it doesn’t seem to be directly influenced by the previous Star Wars racer so much as another franchise, though. The arcade racer seems to be taking more inspiration from a distinct racing franchise that leaned into a truly ridiculous amount of explosive action, with the recently released gameplay trailer indicating that the central racing mechanics will involve a lot of fast-paced movement and mid-race combat. It all feels very reminiscent of the Burnout series, which makes the new game extra exciting for racing fans who loved that series and have been waiting almost two decades since there was a fresh entry in the series.

Star Wars Galactic Racer Has Some Clear Burnout DNA

Star Wars Galactic Racer seems to be bringing a sci-fi edge to the central gameplay mechanics of the Burnout series, which is a promising concept for a Star Wars racing game. Galactic Racer‘s latest trailer is the best view fans have gotten yet to see the space racing in action, with plenty of wild turns and apparent mid-race combat serving as the primary gameplay. That latter element is one of the more exciting beats of the trailer, with racers seen bouncing off one another and forcing each other into walls in an effort to steal the lead — even destroying other ships with well-placed bursts of speed. This fast-paced and explosive approach to racing mechanics seems specifically reminiscent of the gameplay central to the Burnout franchise, which was rooted in something similar.

Developed by Criterion Games and EA UK, the Burnout series was a high-intensity series that largely focused on the visceral joy of blowing up cars. While each race was an intense chase that relied on maneuvering around city streets and other racers, the real fun of the game series came from the destruction. The car physics would quickly send cars spiraling out of control, while entire secondary gameplay modes were dedicated to causing as much destruction as possible.

The gameplay trailer for Galactic Racer seems to be taking cues from that same approach, putting greater emphasis on taking out opponents and causing massive explosions across the race track. That’s a particularly exciting development, partly because it fits well with the nature of the Star Wars universe and the inherent danger of concepts like pod racing. It’s also exciting because racing fans who loved the Burnout series haven’t gotten a new mainline entry in the series since 2008, and a sci-fi take on the concept is a great idea.

A Star Wars Burnout Is A Great Idea, So I Can’t Wait To Play Galactic Racers

Burnout earned plenty of accolades in the 2000s, with eight console titles released across the course of a decade. However, the last entry in the series was 2018’s Burnout Paradise Remastered, itself just an expansion of an earlier release from a decade prior. The Burnout series had a lot of fun adding a kinetic and bombastic layer to the typical racing formula, which was a great tweak on a genre that had increasingly been focused more on delivering realistic physics instead of intense races.

That DNA is coming back into vogue in the world of gaming, thanks to titles like Screamer that include direct battle on the track as part of the race mechanics. Galactic Racer also seems to be following suit, which is an exciting development because of all the potential the Star Wars series has for that kind of gameplay. Games like the arcade-style Star Wars Episode I: Racer were a blast, but their racers were relatively light, with a focus on taking less damage and avoiding environmental obstacles.

Galactic Racer seems to be leaning more into the dangerous capabilities of the ships. It adds a bit of grit to the racing, raising the stakes of any lap and increasing the chances that the player’s ship will end up being a piece of scrap. It puts emphasis on the danger of the races, which fits the apparent stakes of the racing league that have been hinted at in the trailers. It gives the action a bit more grit than other games based on the franchise. It all seems to be setting up Galactic Racer to have a bit more