Screamer

Speed Racer

Screamer is actually a reboot of a PC racing series that started way back in 1995. However, even a quick glance between the then-and-now shows a bold new direction for the series: a high-octane anime racer that is about maintaining boosts, mastering cornering, and destroying your competition. 

While racing games have had some degree of challenge over the years, Screamer takes the cake when it comes to how aggressive and unforgiving its AI can be. Regardless of the difficulty you've chosen, which has differences and limits between arcade and story mode, you'll be fighting for a first-place finish like no game before it.

As I was putting the finishing touches on this review, we were given an update on said difficulty and how and when the team would be tackling this. At launch, Screamer will receive a patch to adjust the difficulty across all modes in some fashion. However, that patch wasn’t available during the review period, so I’ll likely return to this review and update as much as I can, giving you the most up-to-date review. 

Screamer has a lot to offer here in regards to its content and its Tournament Story mode, which has elements of a visual novel, but also some wonderfully animated cutscenes. Elsewhere, the package has an arcade mode filled with solo races, teams or duos, score challenge, as well as checkpoint races, where you try to survive a ticking clock. Finally, there is time attack and overdrive challenges, where if you crash and explode, the race is over. The game also supports split-screen multiplayer for 1-4 players, and online play for 2-16.

Now, to benefit from arcade mode, you'll need to unlock characters, as you'll have extremely limited options from the get-go. To fill up the ranks, you have two options: unlock them via rival races, which are in score challenge, or unlock them via the story mode. However, given the current difficulty of the tournament mode, unlocking them via score challenge has been a much simpler task.

So yeah, story mode is tough, and while arcade can be made to be somewhat of a breeze, the AI across story mode is a bit too unforgiving and will capitalize on every mistake you make, often leaving you in the dust after one simple error, requiring a miracle to happen to regain top spot. While there are some accessibility settings or difficulty settings to adjust some aspects of this challenge, most are only present in arcade mode, for some reason.

Story mode allows you to get behind the wheel of every member of the cast, racing in a tournament for 100 Billion Dollars, a prize offered up by a mysterious man named Mr. A. Each trio of characters across five unique factions has some narrative woven into this tournament. That said, the main characters are the Green Reapers, who join the tournament to kill Mr. A. You'll dance around the mini-stories of the other groups, but most of the lore and cutscenes are built around this group.

Now, Screamer does something different from any other racer out there. No, it's not the anime aesthetics, as Need for Speed Unbound showed us that that style can certainly work. No, it's the fact that while Screamer is a racing game, it's also a twin-stick racer with fighting game elements, offering up a mixture of genres that seamlessly work here, to mostly positive results. The studio has admitted during interviews that fighting games played a key role in the development of this game, so it’s no surprise to see that translate here in some small but significant ways. 

When it comes to drifting, most racers have you apply pressure to the brake in some fashion to drift around corners. Screamer, however, uses the right analog stick to handle your drifting, turning the car, and allowing you to move the stick gently or hard to drift. How this game works with a steering wheel, I haven’t a clue, as I don’t own one to test this out. However, if your steering wheel has two sticks, then I am assuming it would handle the same way. 

While it takes a while to get used to, it really does feel like a game-changer that I could see other racing games take from. It feels great to use, and as each car has unique abilities and handling, albeit the game doesn’t indicate the latter, you'll need to sample the flavor of each drift to get it down right, or expect to be passed at the finish line.

Each trio has a leader and its members, with even a corgi having its own car. The five factions consist of the Green Reapers, Strike Force Romanda, Jupiter Stormers, Kagawa-Kai, and Anaconda Corp. The leaders of these factions consist of Hiroshi Jackson, Ritsuko Imai, Aisha Waghmare, Noboru Sato, and Gabriel Mertens, respectively. Each faction consists of two additional members who are fully voiced and full of personality, such as Róisín Garrity, who was a standout character for me. 

Each leader and member’s car then has unique abilities that set them apart, which benefits you in arcade mode, as you'll then have to find out which ability serves your driving skill. As online didn't have any matches for me during the review period, I would assume that having the best ability for you would impact your enjoyment of its online matches as well. 

Apart from drifting, you'll also have a few mechanics to master if you have any chance of securing that first-place finish. You have a mini-game in boosting, as once you've filled up a meter based on your driving performance, you'll time your boost to either activate your standard blue boost or stop the charge in the yellow zone to boost even further. 

Right off the bat in arcade mode, you'll also have the ability to charge your opponent and blast right through their car. While their ability to resurrect is written into the story mode, this second meter allows you to shield an attack or use it to boost through your opponent. There is also an overdrive mode that has you thrashing cars and ending once your car explodes.

Mastering your meter intake based on your performance, or following close to your opponent to slipstream or draft behind them, is crucial to getting the most number of boosts in a race needed to stay ahead of the pack. That, and getting the hang of the yellow turbo timing, which, thankfully, is the same timing each time. I also like that certain cars can make this easier, so those became my go-to racers when tackling arcade mode, given that story mode has set drivers per chapter. 

Drifting, turbo, and the overall feel of Screamer feels great, as a good racer needs to. The sense of speed is thrilling, and when you pop that yellow turbo, it really elevates the excitement you get out of a race. Honestly, the racing here feels better than several of the past Need for Speed titles and most other arcade racers. While it doesn't quite feel as good as the Forza Horizon series, it nonetheless excels in offering a unique spin on the typical arcade racer. 

What I love visually about Screamer is that some drivers have a different style of anime to them, serving various eras of the genre. And yet, everything flows and mixes together without feeling like you're playing different games. The car details are great, with several aesthetic choices to unlock, with nicely detailed character models that look both great in their cutscenes and the visual novel approach to conveying their designs.

Courses don't have that same anime look and feel traditional when it comes to having that arcade racer look, especially when compared to the likes of something like Ridge Racer, which was its inspiration and competition back in the day. Nothing truly stands out in the courses, but I will say the first-person view for the cars does rest a bit too low, and can make discovering the uphill turns harder than they should be. As someone who doesn’t play racing games in the external view, this added another layer of difficulty to an already challenging game.

Screamer is damn fun once you’ve mastered its systems, both in their execution and timing. While the current difficulty can be a tad too challenging for the casual racing fan, the additional modes and online can provide a wealth of content to tackle. Screamer isn’t revolutionary, but its drift mechanics are damn impressive and allow the game to stand out and then some. 

Developer - Milestone. Publisher - PLAION. Released - March 26th, 2026. Available On - Xbox Series X/S, PS5, PC. Rated - (M) Blood, Strong Language, Violence. Platform Reviewed - Xbox Series X. Review Access - A review code for Screamer was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.