Star Wars: Galactic Racer

The horror and trauma of decades of warfare is over. The Empire has fallen and peace reigns...which means a return to prominence for the Galactic Racing League. Speeder racers from across the galaxy converge for a new championship, but the rich family of spoiled brat Kestar Bool has basically bought him the championship. Organiser Darius Pax hires the racer Shade to take the fight to Bool, if he can.

Star Wars: Galactic Racer is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin: a racing game in the Star Wars universe, and a spiritual successor to Star Wars Episode I: Racer (1999). The development pedigree is impressive, with new company Fuse Games assembling a team of top talent from other racing games, with a majority coming from the Burnout franchise.

Galactic Racer does some interesting things with its premise. The main gameplay mode is the single player campaign, which combines a narrative story with roguelite elements. The player takes part in a tournament consisting of multiple races but losing certain events means losing a token; lose all your tokens and you fail the entire season, and have to wait to start the next tournament to rejoin the fray. Early in the game you only have one token, so losing an event is an insta-fail condition. But, whilst you lose your upgrades for the season, you keep any permanent upgrades you make to your vehicle between tournaments, plus of course you as the player get better and better as you go along. You need to win three tiers of tournaments to complete the game, though once you've completed one tier, you automatically start at the next (i.e. once you've beaten the first tier, all future resets will be to the start of the second tier until you complete it, and then the third; you don't need to complete all three tiers in one go, for the sake of sanity and any furniture near you). You can also start grudges with other characters, eventually forcing them to agree to a duel. Defeating them means taking a token from them. Certain sponsors also provide you with additional tokens, so you can fail one or two token events per run and still have a shot at victory.

This structure is surprisingly compelling, and the game is successful at nailing that "fail by doing," angle. When you fail a run, you usually know exactly how and why you failed, and how to succeed next time, nailing the appeal of games like Hades and Frostpunk in a completely different genre. This also makes the single-player campaign surprisingly chunky. It took me 20 hours to finally beat it, which doesn't seem unusual. That's a decent amount of SP content compared to most racing games, where the SP material is fairly limited with the main focus on multiplayer.

You have a choice of three vehicles to race, namely a speeder, a bike or a skimmer. Certain flashback missions also give you access to a Phantom Menace-style podracer. Each vehicle can be customised, though for the most part changing models only has an aesthetic effect. You get actual new parts for your vehicles through the game from winning events, and can also buy new parts from your mechanic or new rare parts from the specialised merchant (who also repairs your vehicle). You can also tweak certain characteristics between each race, though which characteristic you want to tweak is randomised. Also, oddly, you can only buy new parts or engage in repairs between planets, or if you visit the merchant at the expense of not taking part in a race.

This does lead into Galactic Racer's arguable biggest weakness. There are a lot of elements in this title which are "gameified," that is, it does things for game balance that have no basis in actual logic. Not being able to repair damage between races is infuriating, and strictly limiting when you can buy new gear is weird. If your engineer doesn't have any good parts, you need to pay an ever-increasing amount to reset the pool, which means you frequently waste your bank balance resetting the pool only to find you can't now buy the parts for your favourite setup. What this means in practice is that you may find a favoured setup which dominates one run but on the next, the randomisation means you can never achieve that setup again, which is annoying. It does encourage you to try different tactics and approaches, which is good, but if you've hit on the perfect ramjet build, not being able to recreate it again just feels aggravating.

Fortunately, the actual racing is excellent. Handling is solid and responds well to upgrades, and knowing when to deploy your afterburner versus your ramjet becomes a key strategy. Sliding around corners and then boosting out via ramjet feels fantastic and the game gives you a tremendous sense of speed. Getting into "the zone" as you learn the tracks and know exactly where and when to boost can be very satisfying. The three vehicle types respond differently and require different lines, and the podracers you fly in the flashback missions are genuinely unhinged, incredibly powerful monsters constantly on the verge of killing you or other racers, or both. The only disappointment here is opposition AI, which is rarely threatening, with the game resorting to the groan-inducing tactic of "rubberbanding" (mysteriously teleporting opponents you've really left utterly in the dust close enough behind you to keep things interesting) to keep them in the game.

For a racing game, there's a lot of good writing and characterisation here. The eleven other racers in the league gradually become more familiar over multiple runs, with some emerging as enemies, some as allies, some as frenemies, and some as, er, Biddy Blas. Some will also be vicious competitors on the track but turn on the charm off it (between runs you can wander around the paddock and converse with other characters). Do enough runs and you will have the opportunity to defeat them all in one-on-one duels. The flashback missions, which explore the life and misadventures of a Phantom Menace side-character, are also well-characterised, adding a lot of depth to the one-note racers from that movie. 

Graphically, the game is superb, the only issue being occasional readability on some of the tracks where the track limits are not clearly delineated. This is more of a problem on Jakku than the other tracks, and also an issue more with graphics options that can make the details smeary at a distance. The game also defaults to having the cinematic camera on, which is a nice idea but a damned liability mid-race and killed me more times than any competitor. Fortunately you can turn it off. Music and sound effects are also outstanding.

Star Wars: Galactic Racer (****) is a great arcade game, with a lot of customisability. The story and characters are much stronger than expected, it has an infectious sense of humour and fun, and the game has a ridiculous "one more race" feel that may cause serious sleep disruption. Some of the progression mechanics feel harsh for their own sake, and graphically some tracks have issues with not always making it clear in time where the hell the limits are. But these are mostly minor irritants. The game is available now on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.

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STAR WARS: FATE OF THE OLD REPUBLIC announced

A new Star Wars video game has been announced at the 2025 Game Awards.

Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic is an action-RPG successor to Knights of the Old Republic I and II, and is directed by Casey Hudson, who was the project director on the original Knights of the Old Republic (as well as the Mass Effect trilogy). His new studio Arcanaut is developing the game alongside Lucasfilm Games.

In an interview, Hudson confirms the game is very early in development and is not a direct sequel to the existing games, but is a successor in a similar time period.

No release date has been set so far.

STAR WARS: ZERO COMPANY announced

Lucasfilm, Respawn and BitReactor have confirmed development of Star Wars: Zero Company, a turn-based tactics game set during the Clone Wars. The game is currently targeting a 2026 release window.

The game is basically "XCOM, but in Star Wars." The game sees players taking control of a Republic special forces group fighting the Separatists. Your initial squad of named characters (who will drive story decisions and appear in cutscenes) can be augmented by fresh recruits, who can level up as they do missions. The game will feature an ironman mode and also permadeath, which on the highest difficulty can be applied even to your named characters. On the named characters is a Jedi, one is a droid and there are at least two Clone Troopers. You lead character, Hawks, can be customised in appearance and ability.

The game is being developed by new studio BitReactor (who have veterans of the XCOM, Civilization, Gears of War and Elder Scrolls series on board) but are receiving support from Respawn, who made the recent Jedi Fallen Order and Jedi Survivor games. The game will be published by Electronic Arts.

STAR WARS: OUTLAWS announced

Ubisoft has formally announced a new Star Wars video game. Star Wars: Outlaws is the franchise's first open-world action game. It is set between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, and a cinematic shows Han Solo, frozen in carbonite, being delivered to Jabba the Hutt.

In the game, the player takes on the role of scoundrel and pirate Kay Vess. Vess gets in over her head with several crime syndicates - including possibly Jabba's - and has to live on the edge to regain her freedom.

Developed by Massive Entertainment for Ubisoft and Lucasfilm Games, the game is scheduled for release in 2024.

KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC remake on hold at Aspyr and in "serious trouble"

In surprising news, Aspyr Media has put its eagerly-awaited remake of classic Star Wars CRPG Knights of the Old Republic on hold.

Knights of the Old Republic was released by BioWare in 2003 and has been regularly acclaimed as one of the very best Star Wars video games of all time, and one of the very best CRPGs. A sequel, Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords was released in 2004 and launched the career of Obsidian Entertainment. The game was released during BioWare's "imperial period" when everything they made was either great or at least ambitiously interesting. Baldur's Gate II (2000), Neverwinter Nights (2002), Jade Empire (2005) and Mass Effect (2007) all hail from this period as well. BioWare has since fallen on tougher times, with Dragon Age II (2011), Mass Effect 3 (2012), Dragon Age: Inquisition (2014), Mass Effect: Andromeda (2017) and Anthem (2020) all suffering controversies of one kind or another, and the latter two also experiencing poor sales. Critics and fans have frequently said that BioWare needs to get back to making games of the type and scale as Knights of the Old Republic to return to success.

Aspyr Media, based in Texas, has focused on porting existing games to new formats, including porting Knights of the Old Republic itself to MacOS in 2004. Knights of the Old Republic Remake was announced in 2021 as Aspyr's first large-scale, big-budget video game project. The game is a total, ground-up remake of the original title using modern graphics technology and new voice acting (including the return of fan-favourite actor Jennifer Hale).

Unfortunately, it appears that Aspyr were unprepared for the scale of the project. Internally and informally, Aspyr were targeting a late 2022 release date, but insiders have noted this is unachievable and unrealistic, and that a release date of 2025 is more likely. It also sounds like the game may have started off with more modest goals but transformed into a full-on remake when it became clear how difficult using the original code and assets was going to be. If it's the case that Aspyr envisaged a more modest remaster and scaled up to something of the scope of the Final Fantasy VII Remake, it's unsurprising that they've realised they've bitten off more than they can chew.

Whether the project is remounted in the future remains to be seen, but unfortunately, it looks like the project is not happening in the near future.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

Five years after the end of the Clone Wars and the collapse of the Galactic Republic, with the Empire rising to replace it, fugitive Padawan Cal Kestis is flushed out of hiding on the planet Bracca. Rescued by former Jedi Knight Cere Junda and starship captain Greez Dritus, Kestis discovers that the Empire and its Inquisitors are hunting for a Jedi holocron filled with the location of Force-potential children scattered across the galaxy. Kestis revolves to find the information first before the Empire can wipe out a potential new generation of Jedi.

There's a saying that if you're going to steal, steal from the best. Respawn Entertainment took that to heart when they were given the keys to make a new Star Wars action game. As well as the movies and expanded setting, they tapped games like Dark Souls, Metroid, Arkham Asylum and Castlevania for inspiration. The shadow of the Dark Forces (aka Jedi Knight) series, with its definitive first and third-person Star Wars action and unbeaten lightsabre combat, also looms large over Fallen Order.

Against such comparisons Fallen Order buckles but does not fail, and sometimes impresses. The game sees the player take control of Cal Kestis, former Jedi Padawan who has gone into hiding from the Empire. Flushed out by the Inquisitors, he is rescued by former Jedi loyalists and learns that he has to follow a trail of breadcrumbs across the galaxy in search of a Jedi holocron containing vital data. The Empire is also, of course, after that data and a race against time develops. The trail takes Kestis to several different planets, some new to the franchise, some well-known (thankfully, Tatooine is notable by its absence after its recent, massive overexposure). On these plants Kestis finds roadblocks to progress, but also learns new skills and gains new equipment which unlocks new routes on other planets. Hence he - slightly comically - is stymied by a slightly too high cave opening and has to travel five thousand light-years to get some special climbing gloves and then come back to climb to the opening.

It's daft but it works. As you to and fro across the galaxy, the story evolves and each world's levels evolve, giving you more new areas to explore, new enemies to fight and new skills to learn. It's fun, but drawbacks soon start appearing.

The first is how the game treats enemies. Fighting stormtroopers is fun and Fallen Order cleverly repurposes some of the types we've seen before: Return of the Jedi scout bike troopers are now reclassed as advance recon troops with special melee combat training; whilst flame and rocket troopers are much more lethal with those weapons than previously. Stormtroopers are less disposable goons here and have to be treated with some respect in how you fight them. Inquisitors, who are trained to fight Jedi one-on-one, are even more formidable, and their officers (and the main villains) are devastatingly effective bosses whom you have to learn Dark Souls-style attack patterns and blocking formations to defeat effectively. This is all excellent. Less excellent is the fact that you spend maybe around 25% of the time fighting any of this type of enemy. The rest of the time you are fighting deadly birds, angry plants, giant slugs, gianter insects and a quite bewilderingly huge variety of spiders. Why on Earth they spent so much time making the lightsabre combat so solid only to have you spend more than half the game fighting off wildlife with your laser sword is mystifying.

The game's trump card is its amazing level design, with levels that fold back on themselves quite ingeniously, fantastic use of vertical space and are also at least vaguely believable as actual spaces someone would live in or use. Less amazing is the game's tendency to overuse certain tricks like slippery slides. You will spend a quite astonishing amount of time in this game judging how to fall down a slide and making sure you hit turns correctly so you don't shoot off the side to an insta-death. These slides are absolutely everywhere, regardless of it it makes any sense or not. There's also a truly staggering amount of wall-running and double-jump puzzles (some inherited from the same developers' Titanfall series), some intricate and fun, others tiresomely frustrating.

For a game so rooted in precision jumping and controls, it also does have a fair bit of jankiness and iffy collision detection. There's a lot of clipping, allowing you to sometimes kill enemies through solid walls, and during boss fights it's not uncommon to see an enemy weapon go right through you without causing damage one second, and in the next hit thin air three feet away and cripple you. The jank never gets too bad, but it does feel like this is one area that needs to be worked on for the in-development sequel.

Still, negating the levels, fending off enemies and successfully deducing and executing the solution to an environmental puzzle never gets too old. The story is basic, but told with aplomb and some great voice acting, and the characters are great, especially Dathomir witch frenemy Merrin, who really should be the star (or co-star) of the next game, along with her ridiculously dry sense of humour. Kestis himself is a bit of a blank slate, though the utterly predictable mid-game struggles with the Dark Side do at least liven him up a bit.

Graphically, the game looks phenomenal, although as a PlayStation 4/Xbox One game it does have that slight problem of needing to slow down progress to load the next environment in the background, leading to rather a lot of crawlingly agonisingly slowly through narrow passageways. The built-in 3D map is excellent (if occasionally confusing, especially regarding vertical travel) and the controls are mostly responsive and fluid (if occasionally requiring a bit too much ambidexterity on the keyboard).

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (****) overcomes a fair bit of jank to emerge as the most satisfying Star Wars action game since Republic Commando in 2005. In terms of its mix of combat and action, it can't match the venerable Jedi Knight series - and Cal Kestis is no Kyle Katarn - and its occasional arbitrary limitations feel random. But the lightsabre duels are great fun, the level design is very solid and at 20 hours or so, it doesn't outstay its welcome. Fallen Order is available now on the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Google Stadia and PC.

RUMOUR: KNIGHTS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC project underway at Aspyr Media

Aspyr Media, a video game porting company based in Austin, Texas, are reportedly working on a Knights of the Old Republic project in conjunction with Lucasfilm Games, according to strong rumours.

Aspyr is best-known for porting games from one platform to another, including multiple BioWare games including the original Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire. Just this month they were acquired by Embracer Group and have been partnered with Embracer's subsidiary, Saber Interactive. Saber have a mixed history of ports (including recently working on the Halo: Master Chief Collection on PC and the next-gen versions of The Witcher 3) and original games including Evil Dead: The Game and the popular off-road games Spintires and SnowRunner.

According to a mixed release of information from investor calls and podcasts, Aspyr are now working on a licensed, original IP project with a budget of $70 million. They have also been busy hiring artists, designers and writers, including a large number of ex-BioWare Austin staff (many of whom worked on Star Wars: The Old Republic) to effectively form a studio from scratch for this project.

The budget is interesting; on the low side for a totally original, AAA Star Wars game, but reasonable for a thorough re-imagining and remake (versus a much more simplistic remaster) of one of the most popular and acclaimed CRPGs of the 2000s.

This may make sense. Disney recently omitted the Old Republic Era from its new canon timeline, but is maintaining The Old Republic MMORPG as an ongoing concern, complete with input from the Star Wars Story Group (the keepers of the canon). Remaking Knights of the Old Republic (and possibly its sequel) for a new audience with some changes to keep things to their liking is a solid move.

Two years ago, Disney were also apparently considering ideas for a Knights of the Old Republic movie or TV series from Altered Carbon writer Laeta Kalogridis, but this idea was put on the backburner due to the under-performance of The Rise of Skywalker and subsequent reshuffling of ideas for the property.

Hopefully this rumour will be clarified in the near future.