I’ve been loving Star Wars: Galactic Racer–I still cannot believe that a silly racing roguelite is one of my favorite games this year. But as it happens, I could have been enjoying it way more this entire time, because for the first 16 hours or so I’ve played, I’ve been playing all wrong: in third-person perspective.
I’m still not sure how I didn’t know that Galactic Racer allows you to race from the perspective of your pilot, Shade. Like, obviously, it would. It’s not an uncommon practice for an arcade racer to have the option to change your perspective from third- to first-person, so why wouldn’t Galactic Racer also have that choice? But it wasn’t until after I had finished my review and was excitedly talking about the game to a friend and was showing them a trailer that I noticed some of the gameplay being in first-person.
“Surely, this must be just cinematic flair or something,” I thought.
Nope. Anyone who simply opens the settings menu and looks at the controls will see that there’s a button to change your perspective. The game never teaches you this; you just need to know to go looking for it in the settings. I immediately jumped into a quick arcade challenge to test it, and, turns out, first-person perspective is 100% the way to play this game.
Playing this way doesn’t alter Galactic Racer so completely that it feels like a different game, but it makes the already-frenetic speed of skirting around a sharp corner or slipping through a tight squeeze feel even more frantic, and the shaking rumble of every collision with the environment or another racer far more discombobulating. It ups the feeling that you’re piloting a death machine being held together with hopes and dreams (and maybe duct tape) to a delightfully tense degree.
I love it. In my Galactic Racer review, I talked about how the punishing nature of the roguelite loop creates a palpable pressure to perform well in every race (something that the main story doesn’t deliver with its dialogue alone), and that this tension is reinforced with just how fast every moment of the game feels. Putting the game into first-person, where you can’t immediately see what’s directly behind or around your speeder and also can’t as easily see ahead to judge how far or long you need to turn or drift to successfully corner the track, ups that sensation.
Plus, it really alters how each speeder feels. The game does a great job of that already, but the skim speeder feels even more unwieldy in comparison to the landspeeder and speeder bike when playing in first-person, because your seat position both rises and slightly turns as your entire speeder reorients itself sideways with its knife-edge ability. You don’t really feel that transition when playing in third-person. Similarly, the landspeeder and speeder bike feel more distinct from one another when piloted in first-person.
It took some practice, but after an hour or so, I fell into a flow state that I haven’t been able to achieve playing the game in third-person–I think pushing through to the extra mastery needed to pilot through the challenge of first-person flipped a switch in my brain that the crutch of third-person was holding me back from.
All in all, does playing Galactic Racer in first-person make it feel more challenging? Absolutely. Would I recommend someone start playing the game like this before they even have a chance to go through their first setback? Probably not. Will I continue to play the game in this way going forward? Without a doubt.
So if you’re jumping into Galactic Racer this week, don’t make my mistake. Playing in third-person is the more approachable perspective for learning the basics, but piloting a landspeeder, speeder bike, or skim speeder in first-person feels like the intended way to play. So figure out how things work, find your favorite speeder type, and then go ahead and hit that toggle to play the rest of the roguelite campaign in first-person. It’s a wild ride worth mastering.
