Star Wars: Galactic Racer reinvents single-player racing games with its roguelike-style, run-based campaign, in which the player progresses through randomized events and upgrades a specialized build through a mixture of planning and chance. This was clearly signaled in advance by developer Fuse Games, but that didn't stop it coming as a shock to the system. It's invigorating to play a racing game that doesn't conform to well-worn traditions, and one that's unafraid to dump you back to the start after a few ill-timed crashes.
What was perhaps less understood ahead of release was that Fuse was set on extending some of this thinking into multiplayer, too. During the review phase, I booted up multiplayer with the dim expectation that it would be a standard affair that defanged Galactic Racer's design and blunted its originality in pursuit of a strictly level playing field. After further testing on live servers, I'm ready to call this the best multiplayer racing mode in years.
I expect it will be quite influential. A vanilla quick race mode with no upgrades is available, but it's not the main attraction. That comes in the form of Multiplayer Tour. (There's also a Podracing variant.) Multiplayer Tour is a six-race, 12-player tournament that plays out like a condensed version of the runs in the game's campaign mode (albeit with no fail state).
The first five races constitute a build phase during which you acquire skills, parts, and upgrades for your racer. Then you put them to the test in a capstone championship event. Multiplayer tour is brilliantly conceived and surprisingly well-balanced, considering it is essentially the campaign mode on fast-forward.
To begin with, you select a character from a list that unlocks over time as you accrue multiplayer XP. Each has starting skills and traits that play into a specialized archetype: an afterburner specialist, a weapons technician, a type that focuses on cooling ramjets and another that gains extra boost when redlining them. Whilst it's not prescriptive, your choice gives you a slightly more pronounced focus than the racer styles in the campaign, nudging you helpfully toward certain parts and upgrades.
In between each race, you have 90 seconds to collect your winnings, allocate triple upgrade points, and spend credits on new parts or skills to flesh out your build. Galactic Racer adds some wrinkles that add some appropriately roguish Outer Rim flavor as well as spicing up both the build-crafting and the racing action. After completing your upgrades, you can use any remaining time to accept a backer contract and bet on where you will finish: in the top nine, top six, or top three.
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