Is Star Wars: Galactic Racer Worth It? Critics vs Players

Evidence-based review · scores read on 10 October 2026

Yes, if you like arcade racing: Star Wars: Galactic Racer holds a Top Critic Average of 87 on OpenCritic and 84.0% positive reviews on Steam. Critics and players mostly praise the same things; the gap between them is about PC crashes, the price and small online parties, and our score is 8.6 out of 10 (Great).

This review is a synthesis, not a play test: nobody at AFK Journal has played the game. It is built on OpenCritic and Metacritic read on 10 October 2026, Steam's public review data read at 09:10 UTC the same day, our reading of all 493 negative English Steam reviews, and the full reviews from Eurogamer, IGN, PC Gamer and Insider Gaming linked below. The method and the maths are in the section on how we got to 8.6.

What do critics agree on?

Three themes come up in almost every review we read, and the first is lineage. Fuse Games was founded by former Criterion developers, and Eurogamer's 5/5 review calls the game a homecoming for Burnout 3 and Burnout Paradise fans, down to the crash camera that swoops back to catch the wreckage. IGN's 8/10 review adores the Burnout-style takedowns, while PC Gamer notes they matter less than expected: this is a racing game first, with the odd spectacular crash.

The second is the roguelite campaign. You pick a landspeeder, speeder bike or skim speeder, choose events from a branching map and buy upgrades between races; fail the decisive race of an act and the run is over. IGN calls the no-restart rule a genuinely fresh source of risk, and PC Gamer's verdict is that the run-based structure shakes up racing more successfully than Burnout Paradise's open world did.

The third is the setting. Reviewers single out the tracks on Jakku, threaded through crashed Star Destroyers, and the crystal caverns of Crait, plus a walkable paddock where rivals pick fights between races. PC Gamer praises the engine sounds and the music, and GameSpot's 9/10 review sums the game up as a perfect ten minutes of racing stretched into a full game.

Eurogamer and PC Gamer also single out the boost system. There are two boosts: Afterburner, which refills on its own, and Ramjet, which is faster but overheats and can blow up your craft if you hold it too long. Both reviews describe juggling the two as the tactical heart of each race.

Where do critics split?

The range is narrower than usual. OpenCritic lists Eurogamer and Giant Bomb at full marks, PC Gamer's 76 is the lowest score among the reviews we read in full, and 95% of critics recommend the game. The disagreements are about how long the fun lasts, not whether it is there.

IGN's main reservation is repetition: the campaign leans on a slim set of planets you revisit run after run, and your speeder is scrapped between tours, so there is little sense of owning a vehicle. Insider Gaming makes the same point, finding events samey and tours long enough that it needed to break them up with other modes.

PC Gamer is the toughest of the major reviews. It blames many of its crashes on tracks that are hard to read, such as white ice against white snow, and on an autopilot ability that is both overpowered and prone to steering into walls. It also found the story's ending flat after a lot of setup.

What do Steam players say?

Players are close to the critics. Steam showed 3,334 positive reviews out of 3,970 (84.0%, Very Positive) on 10 October, up from 77.9% of 553 in our launch-day reading on 6 October. Steam counts only reviews from people who own the game and already filters off-topic review bombs. With the game four days old, the total and the recent figure are effectively the same thing.

We read all 493 negative English reviews and tagged recurring complaints by keyword, so the counts below are approximate and one review can raise several issues. Several of those negative reviews still say the racing itself is fun.

The multiplayer complaint already has an official answer. Online parties are capped at three players, with bots or strangers filling the grid, and there are no private lobbies. Fuse Games told players on X that an update will raise the party size to six within the first few weeks of launch, as VGC reported on 8 October. There is no date yet, and private lobbies are not part of that promise.

Player numbers are holding up for a full-price game in its first week. Steam's API showed 6,747 people playing at 09:10 UTC on 10 October, a Saturday morning in Europe, against the 13,375 we recorded at 17:37 UTC on launch day; the times of day differ, so treat that as two snapshots rather than a trend. We found no official sales figure as of 10 October.

How does it run on PC and consoles?

The game is out on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, at $59.99 on Steam. Crashes are the one technical problem that shows up repeatedly in player reviews. Fuse Games' launch-week hotfix raised the minimum graphics driver version, now checked when the game boots, and made stability fixes to the DLSS options; the game's Steam news feed lists no other patch as of 10 October.

The official minimum PC spec is an Nvidia RTX 2060, AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT 6GB or Intel Arc A580, with 12 GB of RAM and an SSD with 50 GB free. PC Gamer reviewed on an RTX 4060 and lists Steam Deck support as unknown; IGN reviewed on Xbox Series X|S. Console player numbers are not public, so the player half of our score comes from Steam only. Prime members can also stream the campaign on Amazon Luna, as GamesIndustry.biz reported.

How we got to 8.6

Our formula is public and the same for every review: 70% critics, 30% players, with a correction of up to half a point only for problems documented by at least two independent sources.

We did not apply a correction. PC crashes are real in the Steam reviews, but we found them documented by players rather than by two independent outlets, and a hotfix is already out. The three-player party limit is a design choice the developer says it will change. If Steam falls below about 74% or the top critic average moves by about four points, the score shifts by 0.3 and we will update this review.

For comparison, the same formula gives Gears of War: E-Day, released on the same day, an 8.3. Its critics' average is almost identical at 87.08, but its Steam score sits about nine points lower, at 74.9% when we reviewed it, mostly because of PC crashes and a long campaign.

Should you buy Star Wars: Galactic Racer?

• Burnout and arcade racing fans: yes. Eurogamer and IGN tie its appeal directly to Burnout, and it is made by former Criterion developers.
• Star Wars fans: yes, especially if you liked Episode I: Racer. Its 88 Metascore is the best for a Star Wars game since Knights of the Old Republic, as Push Square noted at launch.
• Players who hate starting over: think twice. A failed run sends you back to the start of the act, and that is one of the most common reasons for negative Steam reviews.
• Groups of four or more friends: wait for the party-size update.
• Unsure? Prime members can try the campaign on Amazon Luna before paying $59.99.

If you want a racer without the roguelite structure, Forza Horizon 6 is the open-world alternative we cover, and its PS5 release date is now set for January 2027. Galactic Racer shared its launch day with Gears of War: E-Day, and our E-Day review uses the same method. The rest of the month is in our October release calendar, and the Star Wars: Galactic Racer hub collects everything we publish on the game.