Star Wars: Galactic Racer is a masterful game, combining the best of high-speed thrill races with the galaxy far, far away. It’s one of the best Star Wars games in a long time, allowing you to race in the Galactic League to prove your worth – and, if you’re good enough, take up podracing.
Most humans can’t do it, but maybe you can!
The game features seven planets on which you can race, and all of them are fun. There’s not one among them that I grew tired of or thought was poorly designed, but there are definitely some that I prefer more than others. Which one is the best? Here’s my ranking.
7. Derven Acos
Created for this game, Derven Acos is a planetoid (basically a larger asteroid) which forms the track for the Galactic League. Designed by the league’s founder Darius Pax, it incorporates elements from all of the other worlds that make up the race’s season to create one final mash-up course for the League’s final stages. It’s nice to be able to navigate all of those features in one, but the track is actually pretty straightforward and simplistic, relying more on sheer speed than anything. It’s not a bad course, but given the fact that it takes elements from other planets and combines them in a more simplistic, straightforward way, it’s last on my list.
6. Sentinel One
Another planet created for Galactic Racer, Sentinel One is an acidic, volcanic world controlled by the Bool family for their spying and mining operations. It also contains the most frustrating tracks to race in the game. It isn’t frustrating in the sense of being poorly designed – in fact, it’s actually a really impressive and interesting course, objectively – but in the sense that it’s just difficult. The rocky terriain is surrounded by rivers of acid which, if you touch them, will corrode your vehicle and cause negative effects (or force you to explode). They’re difficult to avoid. The more I have played these maps the more I’ve come to enjoy and appreciate them, but it remains, in my estimation, the most challenging of all the planets.
5. Jakku
Jakku (first seen inThe Force Awakens) was the site of the final battle of the Galactic Civil War, where the New Republic forces (led by Admiral Ackbar) won the decisive victory over the Imperial remnants (led by Gallius Rax). The desert planet’s surface bears the scars of war, littered with wreckage – the same wreckage that Rey grows up scavenging. In this game, the wreckage makes for some fun courses to race through. Most of the time the tracks are more open, and this is the planet where you learn to race on (for good reason). But the tight turns through the wreckage make it stand out from being just racing through sand (which is course and rough and irritating), making it a fun map to race. Just be forewarned: you’ll probably have to re-start the season a few times, which means you’ll keep going back to Jakku. That means this one is probably most at risk of growing old, quickly, but it’s still a fun planet to race on.
4. Tatooine
This is the only planet not included in the Galactic League, but you still get to race on Tatooine in podraces, both in re-living the Boonta Eve Classic and also in racing Sebulba’s ‘buddies’. The planet needs no introduction, as it was the first world ever seen in Star Wars (in A New Hope) and has appeared in lots of stories since then. But it’s inclusion here is more than just going back to Tatooine, as it makes perfect sense. It was the location of a major podracing tournament (as seen in The Phantom Menace), and the course is clearly designed for the high speeds of podracers. The course itself is pretty simple, without a ton of obstacles in your way or challenges to look out for. That makes it all about speed and skill. What makes this stand out, though, is admittedly something quite different: nostalgia. It’s just a world of fun for Star Wars fans to get to re-live the podracing seen on the big-screen, and that is enough, in my mind, to set it ever so slightly above Jakku.
3. Lantaana
Lantaana was created to appear in this game, and the developers did a fantastic job at it: this planet is gorgeous. The planet is known for it’s large volcano, which sends flows of lava running throughout the caves that make up the courses. There are green trees, rocky terrain, caves, lava streams, an old Imperial mining facility, and more, making this planet the most vibrant and colorful and diverse. You’ll probably be distracted by the scenery at one point or another, but fortunately the tracks aren’t all that difficult. There are just enough challenges (the lava can cause overheating) and tight turns to add some unique elements, but the reason this planet is so high is because of how well-designed the maps are, both in its functionality and even more in its appearance.
2. Ando Prime
Ando Prime is an absolute thrill to race on – and it also is a really fun throwback to Star Wars racing games of old. The planet was created for Star Wars Episode 1: Racer, which released in 1999, so it’s awesome that it was brought back in this modern racing game. This planet actually also appeared in Attack of the Clones, albeit in a brief cameo. As Obi-Wan Kenobi stands at the bar in the nightclub early in the film, as he and Anakin Skywalker search for Zam Wessel, there are various sports on the screens at the bar. Among them is a race on Ando Prime. It has long been known as a racing hub, and it’s not hard to see why. It’s an icy planet, which means you can use your ramjet longer as it won’t overheat (yay!), but it also means that your vehicle will freeze quickly and be hard to steer (uh oh!). Fortunately, there are heating tunnels along the path that will reduce the effects of cooling. This mechanic makes the maps a lot of fun, and this is especially the case at night.
1. Crait
While there are lots of tracks I really like, Crait is my favorite planet in the game. First introduced in The Last Jedi, Crait is the site of an abandoned Rebel base and becomes the site of Luke Skywalker’s heroic stand against the First Order. It’s a mineral planet, with white salt blanketing the entire surface. But as the speeders race over it, red salt is kicked up, giving it a beautiful appearance – both in the movie and in this game. I think it’s the most gorgeous planet in the Galactic League, with the red rhodochrosite that’s kicked up making it a visual masterpiece. The maps are pretty straightfoward and simple, but there are some tight turns in the crystal caves to watch out for, and you’ll want to avoid racing in the wake of the salt kicked up by other racers. When you look at the design of this planet it seems like the perfect fit for a racing game like this, and that certainly translates in the action. The track that you race when competing against Ben Quadinaros just might be the best single track in the game.
