A lot of times, in the racing genre, you have a pretty good idea of what to expect after just a few laps around the track. The games that buck that trend – the Forza Horizons, Mario Karts, and Burnouts of the world – often elevate themselves above the more niche racing game audience. As the studio behind the MotoGP, Ride, and Supercross series, as well as Monster Jam and Hot Wheels Unleashed, Milestone is a studio that is no stranger to the racing scene, both its conventional and nonconventional sides. The studio’s latest, Screamer, might be its least conventional yet, and I went hands-on with the anime-inspired narrative racing game to learn more.
In Screamer’s story mode, you control a team of three racers seemingly bent on vengeance against a fellow racer. The main character seems to be Hiroshi, while he is joined by Róisín and Frederic. Frederic, a Frenchman, speaks only in French, but his teammates respond to him in English without missing a beat. In a later cutscene, I learn that’s because, in this futuristic setting, all humans have an auto-translator implanted in their heads; one character even has one that translates what his dog says. Though the circumstances surrounding the death of Quinn, seemingly the fourth member of your crew, are murky, the perpetrator is clear: Gabriel. Your team, known as The Banshees, enters the tournament for revenge.
The Banshees (or Green Reapers, as they come to be known to conceal their identities from Gabriel) aren’t the only characters you play as. The story hops around a good bit, putting you behind the wheel as multiple different characters. Milestone promises you’ll uncover the dark secrets of the tournament as you progress through the narrative. The dialogue between the characters is witty and often entertaining, but I didn’t get a great sense of how it will progress in a satisfying way. However, for the purposes of this demo, I was more interested in how the racing felt.
Thankfully, speeding (or screaming) around the tracks feels good. Milestone wanted to capture the vibes and feel of old-school arcade racers, and from my time with the game, they’ve mostly succeeded. Cars don’t handle too strictly when you’re going around a corner, and I absolutely love how Screamer handles drifting by mapping it to the right stick. Steering still happens with the left stick, but rather than having to activate the E-brake in conjunction with steering, you intuitively use the right stick to drift around corners. It takes a bit to get used to, but after a few races, I was cornering like a pro, and when you hit a perfect drift around an elongated corner, it’s a blissful feeling.
Outside of the core driving mechanics, Milestone has installed various arcade-focused mechanics, like a quick-time-event style boost mechanic, and an offensive/defensive system that uses the same energy for a unique risk/reward mechanic. To attack your enemies, you must consume Entropy, the in-game energy, which will temporarily increase your speed, causing any opponent you collide with to explode. This is an extremely fleeting speed boost, so you must be skillful to successfully take down an opponent. On the other side, you can use your energy to activate your Shield, which counters incoming Strikes. This was pretty difficult to pull off, but if you do it successfully, you get your energy refunded. There’s also an Overdrive Ultimate, which you can activate when all your tanks are full. In Overdrive, every vehicle you collide with explodes, but if you touch any track barrier, so will your car. I love that every attack has a counter or risk associated with it, creating what I hope will be a balanced experience.
While the full picture is still coming into focus, what I’ve played of Screamer delivers on the enticing premise. The arcade sensibilities and anime-style storytelling appeal to a wider audience, while the rock-solid gameplay and longstanding pedigree of Milestone will appeal to those in the know about the racing genre. We’ll have to wait and see how this all coalesces into a finished product and its subsequent reception, but for now, Screamer is a game I’ll be keeping my eye on.
Screamer arrives on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC on March 26.
