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As one of the older heads, even I haven’t played the original Screamer—in fact, I’d not even heard of it until the announcement of this reboot. What’s no secret is Milestone’s pedigree within the racing game genre, with several series in their proverbial rear view, including Ride and Hot Wheels Unleashed. To that end, I’m not sure what connective tissue remains between this game and the original, but Milestone has once again captured a blistering brand of tense, white-knuckle racing as only they can. As punishing as the racing can be, as the skill ceiling is rather high, it’s the “packaging” around the racing itself that I found harder to wade through.
Similar to Twisted Metal before it, an exclusive tournament is at the core of Screamer’s conceit. Although its cash prize is one hundred billion yen, each team and, in most cases, participants, have their respective reasons for joining—revenge, honour, even love. While the game focuses early on Hiroshi’s crew, who’ve joined with the intention of avenging their former leader, who was murdered by their rival, Gabriel, the focus hops around between several crews and nearly countless characters. Their stories might intersect throughout, but I found it difficult to follow or care about some of the more trivial motivations.
The campaign itself is a glacial drip feed of all of the game’s mechanics; it’s a thinly veiled tutorial that serves to prepare the player for the game’s multiplayer and challenge modes. The story itself lacks focus and could be significantly trimmed down to improve the pacing. As it is, it’s long-winded and could have achieved its aim in a quarter of the time.
The story’s vehicle is a mix of wonderful, slick anime cut scenes and some plain static visual novel panels. While I can’t fault them for placing budget where it should be, it’s so disappointing that there are far more of the latter than the former; the animated scenes punctuate key story beats, but not much else. If there had been a bit more of a budget and Milestone had been able to deliver a leaner, more focused, and fully animated story, like Dispatch managed to do, Screamer could have been an incredibly special game.
It might be a skill issue on my part, but I also found it prone to drastic difficulty spikes towards the end of acts. Within the space of a single race, I’d go from cruising to victory to chasing hard at the back of the pack. The game does have a few difficulty options, which you can always revert to, although these interestingly alter a mission’s objective. A greater difficulty might require a clean win, whereas something more story-focused might require a top-three placing. So this felt like a nice little step to keep people engaged instead of forcing them to reach for the rather high skill ceiling.
Unsurprisingly, the racing itself, given Milestone’s pedigree, is top gear. It’s blisteringly quick with an enormous emphasis on drifting around corners, which, based on my research, has remained a constant from the original. Unlike most games, which map drifting to a brake button, Screamer’s drifting is uniquely handled by the right stick—pushing it one way or the other causes the car’s back end to kick out and get sideways, which is always a thrill. Although the early act might bury the lede, the game is so much more than just that.
Upshifts in gears can be performed with key timing in mind; they’re almost like active reloads in that every successful shift up is met with an imperceptible boost that’ll help the player hit top gear and begin building up power to their boost and attack systems. The game’s vehicular combat is, like its racing fundamentals, surprisingly tight, although I think the way power economy is handled makes it easier to catch up and snatch victory from the middle of the pack. Boost use transfers into sync, which powers the shield and strike abilities, and each KO feeds back into boost, so it becomes cyclical if you remain chewing up those in the middle order. It’s arguably harder out in front as there’s nobody to pray on, it’s just about holding the line and activating defenses when you see somebody closing in. In that sense, I’m not sure whether Screamer’s balancing is particularly fair, but it does make for unpredictable finishes.
To add a bit of flair to the power dynamic in any given race, each competitor has their own unique special ability that gives Screamer an almost hero-shooter flavour. They’re often geared towards agility and prolonged attack, although any racer who lets their sync bar fill to the brim can activate Overdrive. While this makes you a veritable torpedo that ruins rivals with the slightest contact, it’s a risky gambit due to the vulnerability that comes with it; graze a barrier, and you’ll explode on impact. Similar to the general shuffling that comes with KOs in the middle ranks, it’s a great means of closing the gap if you’ve managed to bank enough sync.
Being able to ply these skills in the game’s multiplayer and challenge modes was, for me, where I found most of my enjoyment with Screamer—free of the strangely paced skill drip feed that is its campaign. Along with single and team races, you’ll find the expected modes, including time trials and checkpoint rushes. I can’t fault the number of tracks the game has shipped with, although they’re unlocked through general play, and each has its own leaderboard to top. They’re pulled from the many biomes seen throughout the narrative, from its grounded street-level beginnings to its, let’s say, ungrounded ending, as well as everything in between.
There’s also an enormous customisation component to Screamer that, of course, is geared towards cosmetic enhancement rather than anything else. It’s almost overwhelming the amount of kit you’ll unlock per race, and every minuscule detail is interchangeable, right down to the side mirrors. Keep in mind that each of the cast has their own car with its own unlockables and, suddenly, it’s a lot of stuff to chase. It’s also a good opportunity to express a bit of personality within Screamer, a game that already has offbeat anime leanings.
Though I’ve gushed already about the game’s gorgeous cutscenes, it’s worth noting that Screamer is quite a pretty game that doesn’t misstep when it comes to selling the dangerous nature of car racing. It’s blisteringly quick, and it holds a steady frame rate throughout. The cars, which are the centrepiece of any racing title, look stunning, especially on a drizzly race day where droplets spatter the paintwork. Because the world flies by so quickly, I find it hard to be critical of so many tracks feeling deserted; however, for a car combat game, I did find the lack of meaningful destruction within the tracks especially underwhelming.
Screamer, like the Hot Wheels Unleashed games before it, excels so much at being a genuinely well-crafted racing game, where it nails the fundamentals moment-to-moment, that I can’t help but be deflated by the things it manages to overdo. The campaign is long-winded, the story isn’t that engaging, but if you can find enough reason to stick around beyond that, Screamer is fast, it’s furious, and it’s anime as hell.