What looks like an obvious money title is redeemed by being good.
While I'm always worried about big franchises experimemting with new genres and although racing games are quite simple to pull off, I still had doubts while booting up this game. I blame Sonic for those doubts because his developers have shown they can't do racing at all.
Well, I was wrong. Star Wars Racer (can I drop the Episode I subtitle?) is an extremely good racing game. Its gameplay combines fast speed and obstacle-dodging. Those two aspects tie together very well and create a unique racing experience.
The maximum speed of your pod is something like 900 kilometres per hour. However, the pods control quite well without and even with nitro. Another interesting aspect of the game is constant overheating which ensures you don't just press the nitro button and overlap every enemy.
The track design is really good. All the race tracks are different and require a totaly different strategy in most cases. The obstacle placement is pretty good, not cheap like it happens in some other games dealing with fast speed.
Since it is about Star Wars, the game has a lot of fan service but it doesn't feel forced. The addition of some characters is a really nice move by the developers. The race tracks are mostly taken from different SW planets but they still feel different from eacg other. Overall, the game truly feels like a game set in the galaxy far far away.
It is the kind of the franchise racer that... well... works. It implements a lot of stuff for the fans while also atrracting people who like fast-paced racing action. That's rare.