Fuse Games spent the past week showing Star Wars: Galactic Racer's multiplayer, and the footage is now all over Star Wars feeds: an official overview trailer fronted by studio head Matt Webster, hands-on captures from a London preview event, and a playable booth at Gamescom running a fastest-time board all week. Six weeks out from October 6, the online half of this game went from a footnote to the most interesting thing about it.
What Tour mode actually is
Multiplayer Tour runs up to 12 racers through six races that finish on a single championship track. The first five are where you build: your placing pays out credits, parts, and stat upgrades that you spend on the vehicle before the next race, so the field arrives at the finale with 12 different machines instead of 12 identical ones. Before a race you can also take a backer contract, mark a rival, or bet on your own finishing position, and the reward scales with how bold the call was.
PC Gamer's hands-on called it "a chaotic arcade racer spliced with a MOBA, and that somehow works brilliantly." TheGamer, who played it at length, reports Fuse expects this to be where most players spend their time.
Why it matters
Arcade racers usually treat online as a playlist you dip into. Tour is a session with an economy bolted on, and the build you spend an hour assembling exists only inside that tour. That is the same run-based thinking behind the campaign's League Entry Tokens, aimed at other people instead of the AI. For a debut studio shipping its first game, a mode players reopen out of habit is worth more than any single track.
The details
- Speeders and podracers run separate tours, because the builds don't mix. The speeder final is on Derven Acos; the Podracing Tour ends on Tatooine.
- Character rosters change with vehicle type. Each racer has traits and starting gear, and some unlock through mode XP (overview breakdown via GamingBolt).
- Quick Race and Quick Podrace are there for anyone who wants a race without the tournament layer (MassivelyOP's summary of the video).
- Two open questions worth holding onto: the PlayStation Store listing shows no local split-screen, a strange gap in a game selling Episode I Racer nostalgia, and while cosmetics are tied to progression with no season pass announced, nobody has confirmed the game ships free of microtransactions (CBR's preview).
If you preordered on the strength of the campaign trailers, the overview trailer up top is the twenty minutes to spend before October 6, because Tour is the part of this game you have not seen yet and the part most likely to decide whether you're still racing in November. If betting on your own finish and rebuilding between rounds sounds like homework rather than fun, that's useful to learn now while a refund is still hypothetical.
