For those who expected good things from episode 1

User Rating: 8.1 | Star Wars Episode I: Racer PC
Star Wars Episode 1 wasn’t the brightest star in the Star Wars universe and most games that came out based on it flopped horribly, luckily this game has almost nothing to do with the movie.

First up, the in game music is very nice. It’s entirely made up of the Star Wars movie soundtracks with a few new “John Williams” music for the game. In summation, there is nothing wrong with the music unless you hate Star Wars.

Next on my agenda is to discuss the sound effects. For the most part the sound effects are good, working against that the sound effects are ripped from the movies so the voice-overs are repetitive and annoying. In summation, other then the voice-overs the sound is great.

Now on to the graphics… Though they are trying really hard they are not very good. Actually the sometimes get in the way of good Gameplay. They consist of mostly 3D rendered people, vehicles and objects. Unfortunately most of the track and background is 2D or poorly rendered causing glitches and unwanted crashes and off track accidents as well as getting stuck to the point of needing to race restart. In summation, the graphics are ok but not great.

Now for the Gameplay. Here is the main reason to buy and/or play this game. The game plays easily enough, may be a little hard to get used to but once there you should be fine. You have the ability to zoom forward at blinding speeds (sometimes into graphics that haven’t loaded yet) you can pull slight strafe left or right, you can turbo boost and control the pitch angle during jumps. Most of the menus in the game all take place in a Tattooine-esc bar. The shop menu on the other hand takes place in the shop Anikin was once enslaved in by Watto (who has the most repetitive and obnoxious dialog in the game) and in his junkyard.(watch for the occasional cameo of other episode 1 characters in the menu areas) More on the gameplay later.

Lastly, the Gameplay modes.
The “Tournament” mode is the story mode of this game. You put in your name/initials and can have multiple save files with new/different names. Then you pick your pod/character, each have individual stats. There are 23 racers in all and 25 tracks that each of them have a mirror track unlockables after beating the whole game once.
At the tournament menu you may choose from…
Start Race – starts the scheduled race
Inspect Vehicle – lets you take a look at your pod from any and every angle
Vehical Upgrades – view the status of your upgraded parts and pit droids
Buy Parts – go to Watto’s shop to look around
Junkyard – go to Watto’s junkyard to look around
Change Vehicle – switch out your pod for another (parts switch too)
Options…
Music – turn the music up or down
Sound – turn the sound effects up or down
Audio – mono or stereo
Lens Flairs – on or off
Resolution – turn to hi res or low res

The races can be played by your ability choice…
Winner takes all – the winner gets the whole pot
Skilled – the winner gets a lot the second place takes a good amount 3rd and 4th get very little
Fair – splits up the winnings, 1st gets 800 second gets 700 third gets 600 and forth gets 100

Once you beat the tournament mode you get a very long ending credits sequence that you can’t skip. Not really worth the effort you have to put in.

Free Play Mode – pick a track play it by your rules with the pods and parts you unlocked in tournament

Time Attack – same as free play mode but geared towards beating times.

Finally back to the Gameplay, controls and replay value.
The Gameplay itself (annoyances aside) is fun and fast paced albeit a little tough… and since there is no multiplayer there is little to no replay value. And can easily get boring.

The controls are on the sketchy side… you can alter them to whatever you wish but controlling a pod racer with a keyboard isn’t an easy task…

Overall a good game for Star Wars fanatics and futuristic racing game fans but not a long lasting or wide range appeal sort of game…