Screamer to offer unique take on racing in a gorgeous anime world

Milestone is one of the most respected development houses in the racing world, with a ton of racing franchises in its stable that should be familiar to gamers – everything from Hot Wheels Unleashed and Ride to MotoGP and the Monster Energy Supercross series. But when setting out to add another franchise to the list, the team at Milestone wasn’t happy with the same old. Milestone worked to create some unique vibes with its new title Screamer, and – in addition to the singular look and feel of the title – is also rethinking racing controls and mechanics as part of the project.

Screamer – due out on PC and consoles next year – is the follow up to a series of games released on MS-DOS back in the mid-90s. The success of the original Screamer in 1995 resulted in four sequels, but after Screamer 4x4 in 2001, the series went dormant. Milestone has picked up the franchise, dusted it off, and given it a fresh coat of paint in its project to bring Screamer to modern gaming audiences.

The new Screamer is set firmly in a neon-lit anime world, and the art style of both the drivers and the cars reflects that setting. With lens flare galore, the art style of the racing is locked squarely in a beautiful animated universe that looks like it just peeled off of an 1997 bootleg Japanese VHS tape.

With inspiration from modern fighting games, Milestone has created a roster of unique drivers with a focus on creating a narrative world that players can deeply engage with. Each driver in the game has not only a unique personality, but also a slightly different style, and they each have their own perks and benefits that help set them apart from the pack.

In addition to the focus on characters, Milestone has also made some fairly dramatic changes to the driving mechanics – while still keeping things close enough to normal that they are recognizable to racing fans. The most immediate change that players will notice is the twin-stick driving system, which allows players to initiate and control drifting with the right analog stick.

I got access to an early pre-alpha build of Screamers, which gave me access to a few drivers and several tracks. While I didn’t think I would be able to control the cars at all, I found that I actually adapted to the right stick-drift controls very easily. By my second race, I was controlling the trajectory of the car naturally and found that the extra control allowed me to enjoy the drift mechanics more than usual. The combination of steering and drift control allows the player to really thread the needle; if you are getting too close to the side of the road, you can let up on the drift and punch the gas to kind of reset yourself.

In addition to drifting, Screamer has a few more game mechanics that players will need to come to terms with. There is an optional active gear shift mechanism that can be triggered with the left bumper button, which in turn earns the player boost. Boost is also triggered by holding down the left bumper button, and if you let up at the right moment, you get a “perfect boost”, which sends you surging forward on the track. There is another mechanic that has players blasting forward into opponents and causing their cars to explode, and a corresponding shield mechanic to protect yourself from opponents attempting to knock you out.

It all sounds super complex on paper, but once you get your hands on the game, this all feels quite natural. After a few rounds with Screamer, I really appreciated the thought that has gone into making the game feel interesting and unique; there is a lot going on here that sets Screamer apart in the sometimes cluttered racing genre. If you still aren’t catching onto the vibes I’m describing, maybe think Akira meets Burnout, and you’ll get the picture.

While I’ve enjoyed my time with the Screamer alpha, it has been restricted to single races. This has left me very excited to see what the overall structure of the game looks like. With characters as well-designed as this, there must be a lot of connective tissue to this game that Milestone has yet to reveal. The menu system in the game is absolutely slathered with options and modes that are obscured in my build, and I’m dying to see what all of those goodies are when the game is fully revealed.

In the meantime, I’m going to keep practicing with my alpha build as long as I have access. There is a bit of a learning curve here; while I’ve adapted nicely to the controls and have become somewhat competent, I can’t exactly say that I’m good at Screamer. Hopefully by the time the game fully releases next year, I’ll be whipping around the neon-laced tracks with the best of them.