A racing game that promises fast and destructive action, as well as a high-stakes story, sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? Well, in the case of Screamer, Milestone delivers on part of this promise. However, they also take some shortcuts and make a few wrong turns along the way.
The Tournament of a lifetime
Milestone, the studio behind the MotoGP and Ride games, brings us a brand new racing experience. Screamer. This ambitious new release promises a combination of fast-paced racing, destructive battles, and a deep storyline. The game centres around the Screamer tournament, a prestigious race organised by the mysterious Mister A, in which the winning team is promised a grand prize of one billion dollars. However, this seems to be the least of the racers’ concerns, as they all have their own reasons for taking part in this death trap. Luckily for them, though, they can’t die on the track. The brilliant mechanic Gage has developed technology that enables racers to crash and return as if nothing had happened.
Five teams, each comprising three racers, take part in the Screamer tournament. You start the game with just a few of these teams unlocked, so you need to play through the story mode to unlock the rest. Let’s take a closer look at this main mode and find out what’s on offer.
Seasonal anime
The story of Screamer is told in chapters that have an anime-inspired feel. Each chapter consists of an anime-inspired episode and a race in the middle. While not entirely like it, the occasional cutscene adds to that feeling. They are even grouped in sets of 24, just like a season of your favourite show. The overarching tale isn’t restricted to one of the factions. This is actually quite fun because each storyline is different and adds to the overarching narrative. You start with the Green Reapers, a group of mercenaries seeking to avenge the murder of their former leader by killing the man responsible. The team leader of the Anaconda Corps. Then there are the more light-hearted ones, such as the pop band Strike Force Rowanda, who are using the Screamer tournament as a platform to advertise their new album. But is there more to their involvement?
The game narrative is quite complex and requires a lot of setup. The first 24 chapters are just to help you get to know the characters and understand what is at stake, so they can feel a bit drawn out by the end.
One cool addition to the game is the multilingual cast. Each character speaks in their native language, which is translated into English subtitles. In the game, they say that everyone has a translation chip implanted, which is why everyone can understand one another. This was great in the beginning, but by the time I had finished the first third of the game, I had grown tired of this choice. Not because of the concept itself, but because of the strain it put on my brain. Like many people in Belgium, I speak three languages and understand even more, so I just listened when someone spoke French, German, English or even Flemish in the case of a major character. What I didn’t expect was that, after a while, I would get tired just from listening. So I just speed-read the dialogue boxes in English. It’s a shame, because it’s a cool concept. Perhaps the range of languages should have been more limited, though.
Full throtle
But Screamer is a racing game, so driving is another key aspect of the game. It was immediately clear to me that Milestone understands cars inside out. All the vehicles handle really well. I felt like I had full control over what I was doing and like I was sitting behind the steering wheel myself. This feeling is caused by the unique control scheme, because, as far as I know, Screamer could be the first twin-stick racer. The left stick is used for steering and the right stick for drifting. It takes a bit of getting used to, but it’s really intuitive once you’ve got the hang of it. I hope this control scheme is used more often in future.
A race isn’t just about speed and performance; it’s also a destructive battle. Accurate driving and gear shifting fill up the sync bar displayed on the screen. Sync can be used to increase your speed, but it can also be used to give you entropic power. It’s a resource used in both offensive and defensive modes. You can bash your car into rivals to drive them off the road, or you can use a shield. If your entropy bar is full, you can activate overdrive mode and unleash all your destructive energy at once. There’s nothing better than tackling an opponent and putting them out of commission in the home stretch of a race. So I find it a bit weird that the story mode excludes it for at least three hours of gameplay, because all the talk of aggressive racing made me want to have the option of knocking a couple of other racers off the road, at least. If you want that fix, you can always jump into the arcade racing modes earlier, but since most playable characters need to be unlocked in story mode, this isn’t encouraged.
“As far as I know, Screamer could be the first twin-stick racer.”
I would also like to mention the track design briefly. A good racing game is not just about the car you drive; the road is important too. The available tracks are a great mix of high-speed stretches where you can boost at full speed and technical turns that keep you on your toes. If a level is set in a city, you can expect at least one big drift section or a hairpin turn. The roads of this dystopian future will undoubtedly separate the good drivers from the truly great ones.
Fair play
One thing I can’t take for granted is the difficulty level. I am not a beginner when it comes to racing games, so when I got the choice of a setting at the start of the game, I chose medium. This promised me a balanced gameplay experience, which is what I like most. What I soon discovered, though, is that not all Screamer races are created equally. The time trials and challenge levels were fine, but some of the races in story mode just felt unfair. My AI opponents suddenly got speed boosts out of nowhere, and I consistently came fourth to seventh in every race. After half an hour of repeatedly trying the same race in chapter 23, I decided to switch to Story Focused/Easy. Lo and behold! I came first without even trying. While this did dampen my enjoyment of the game somewhat, I should mention that the moment I finished drafting my review, the developers launched an update that fixed some of the issues. I went back to test it out, and the balanced races now feel fairer. There is still room for improvement, but I hope this will be addressed in future updates.
Conclusion
Screamer is a unique racing game that makes bold promises about its gameplay and storyline. The twin-stick approach to drifting and driving makes the cars feel like no other, and you can sometimes feel the adrenaline pumping through your veins during races. However, the story has a slow build-up, and while it is unique to have every character speak in their native language, it can also be tiring. A smaller selection of languages would have been a better choice. It’s also strange to include offensive driving and leave it out of most of the story mode. This wouldn’t matter much if it weren’t for the difficulty spikes in the opponent AI, which made me want to see them crash and burn in a fiery explosion. But when it’s just me and my car on the asphalt, the high-octane action even manages to bring a smile to my sometimes frustrated face.
