Screamer Looks like a Fantastic Racing Game. I Won't be Playing It.
Racing games have been in a massive slump lately. Many fans of the genre could give you a small chapter book full of reasons and explanations, ranging from artistic direction being focus-grouped into visionless slop, to inconsistent handling models, and everything between and around what makes any game fun. I could go into more detail about this, but I'd just be repeating someone much smarter than I. Raycevick's video, "I Love Racing Games, They Suck!", mirrors a lot of my own opinions.
Every racing game seems to have a catch; the handling model is fantastic, but the multiplayer is a glitchy mess. The number of cars and tracks is endless, but the content is so expansive that none of the cars or tracks feel great to drive. The multiplayer is top-of-class, but you'll be burning a hole in your wallet trying to keep up with all the paid DLC.
I've been saying over and over again that I just want a racing game with an artistic vision that the developers can bring across the finish line intact. I want a racing game that has a cohesive creative vision and executes it well. Mediocre handling models can be forgiven if the artistry surrounding the game keeps me engaged - I mean, my favorite Need for Speed game is NFS: Prostreet for fuck's sake. Its handling model felt sloppy at the best of times, but its creative direction selling the closed-course tuner racing scene at the time more than made up for the poor driving controls.
And so, when I heard about Screamer, I smiled like a fucking maniac.
The passionate narration, the anime-influenced visuals, the vehicle designs, the world design... it all came together to wow me with its potential. A few years ago, the Milestone branding would have given me a sense of apprehension; however, their promising potential was demonstrated in the Hot Wheels Unleashed games. I knew this would finally be a competent arcade racer, set in the cyberpunk genre that I love so much, and with a very specific artistic direction that had personality. The smoke was even stylized, similarly to NFS: Unbound's style but a bit more subdued. I liked Unbound in spite of its terrible driving gameplay specifically because its artistry was so fun to experience. Having Unbound's style with Hot Wheels Unleashed's gameplay sounds exactly like what I've been hoping for!
"Finally," I thought, "a game that doesn't have a fucking catch!"
Turns out, I spoke too fucking soon.
Now, Screamer looks and sounds fantastic. The cars sound great, the world looks even more gorgeous than it looked in the reveal trailer, the heads-up display looks beautifully designed, the character designs look awesome (aside from a couple characters' portraits on the left side of the screen being fixated on nothing but their noses), the defensive and offensive mechanics look fun to engage with, and the tracks look like a blast to drive. The cars still look gorgeous, but even more so in the daylight where you can see all their curves and angles. The soundtrack blaring in the background is intense in the best way, selling the action on-screen. So, what's my problem with it?
Twin-stick drifting.
To be clear, this isn't my 31-year-old racing-game-obsessed ass coming in here with a boomer-style take that new things are bad. Like I said, I enjoyed Unbound despite a lot of other old-head racing game fans outwardly calling it trash for most of the reasons stick-in-the-muds would. The thing is, I've already tried this gameplay mechanic in Inertial Drift, a game developed by Level 91 Entertainment from Ireland.
Inertial Drift's visual style is similarly striking and appealing, though it uses cel-shading compared to Screamer's PBR shaders on the world and car assets. However, I was similarly avoidant of that game because of its main selling point - twin-stick drifting mechanics. Before I'd played it, I actually was one of those brain-dead idiots who bitched about those mechanics without having tried it. Eventually, I realized I needed to stop being a picky eater and at least try something new so I could at least know I don't like it for sure. So, I gave Inertial Drift a shot. I bought the game rather than downloading the demo because I respected the game devs doing exactly what I wanted racing games to do - be different, with confidence.
I don't regret making that purchase at all. I gave the game an honest try, and I appreciated the commitment to this handling model. While the game's content was somewhat lacking, the small size of the game is forgivable in this instance; the developers are just a small indie studio, after all. It was also obvious that the developers decided to focus their efforts on solidifying this innovative twin-stick driving style. The cars did exactly what I told them to do after I'd learn the control scheme, and each car had its own unique handling characteristics. Some cars were better suited to highway tracks, excelling in straight lines and wide, sweeping corners but feeling clumsy and sluggish on tighter mountain roads. Other cars loved the twisties, but behaved like a bone-stock sedan when it got put into a drag race.
I genuinely did try to enjoy my time with Inertial Drift, but I just... couldn't. Learning the mechanics took some time, but I'm used to practicing for hours on end in simulation racing games, so this wasn't a problem. The cars all did what I told them to do, and I adjusted to each car's specific handling characteristics to make sure of that. It seems like it's just the twin-stick style itself that doesn't activate the same portions of my brain that get me hooked on racing games. Apparently, my distaste for this gameplay style is similar to my distate of pickles; I will uncontrollably gag until the taste of a gherkin is entirely washed away. I can't even take pickles off of whatever it touches and eat it anyway; my tongue is so sensitive to the taste that even a slight hint of pickle will cause extreme physical discomfort.
Ultimately, I'm just not wired for enjoying twin-stick racing games.
That makes this Screamer situation all the more disappointing for me. I was excited to finally play a racing game that was a complete package, with visual flair and gameplay I could enjoy without any strings attached or compromises to forgive. Unfortunately, they've chosen an innovative and interesting control scheme that I already know I can't force myself to put up with. Twin-stick racing isn't bad in any way, it's just an artistic decision I don't agree with. So, I guess Screamer will be a game I enjoy watching people play rather than a game I get to enjoy by playing it myself.
Honestly, though? I'm just happy there are racing games out there that develop an artistic vision and execute on it. Not every game is made for me, and I shouldn't want that to be the case. Milestone should stick to their guns because good art will always leave someone feeling unsatisfied. As sad as I am that this game is gonna be one I pass on, that feeling is overwhelmed by the sheer relief that it's not just indie studios who are trying to reinvigorate my favorite genre of video games.
Screamer might be evidence that the previous decade of indie game innovation has led to trickle-up momentum into mid-shelf studios. Hopefully, these confident artistic choices make their way up the ladder into Triple-A game studios and we finally see big budget video games that have a unique personality again. I wish Milestone all the success they can muster with Screamer, if only for a sanity check that would confirm racing games can be cool again.
EDIT (3:08pm CST, Aug 27th, 2025)
I realize now that my tone in this blog post is a bit more negative toward the game than I intended, so I feel a need to defend Screamer's game-defining twin-stick mechanic here. A few people have mentioned either their enjoyment of the mechanic in Inertial Drift, or are excited to try it out in Screamer. There are a few reasons for this, so I want to present them here.
Firstly, this is an opportunity to learn a racing game from scratch. Many dedicated racing game fans already know the complexities of racing inside and out, so many of the most hardcore racing game enjoyers tend to be pretty quick and competent as soon as they start a new racing game. Screamer and Inertial Drift is the first time they've been able to enter a racing game as if it was brand new to them, and they seem to enjoy that aspect. I can see why; many arcade racing games I've played feel too easy even on the hardest difficulty setting because of the 25 years of experience I've had in the genre. I can totally see where those people are coming from.
Secondly, some people actually just enjoy twin-stick driving. Much in the same way that people can love or hate brake-to-drift arcade driving mechanics, people can also love or hate twin-stick. Maybe they like it for the added precision in a drift without being difficult to handle. Maybe it feels better to them than the inconsistent or unintuitive countersteering in some brake-to-drift racing games. Maybe they just like it, full-stop. Either way, there will be people who like twin-stick and people who don't. That's fine. Art was not made for me in particular unless I paid for it to be that way, and people can enjoy art I don't like.
Thirdly, Screamer genuinely does look like a great game that's being developed by a studio that has shown its ability to make great games. Milestone's recent track record is good. Hot Wheels Unleashed was genuinely a lot of fun to play, and my only major problem with it was that it was fairly one-note. You take a Hot Wheels car onto a race track, you drive it fast, and that's it. Hot Wheels Unleashed 2 built upon that solid - if barren - skeleton and filled it out with meat and muscle, with a competent and fun story and a per-car upgrade tree that made it feel like a complete game. Milestone knows how to make a good racing game, so it goes without saying that their execution on Screamer will take what they've learned on the Unleashed titles and apply that to this new game to be released next year. If this game flops, I'd sooner chalk it up to twin-stick driving needing more time to incubate into the minds of the mainstream audience than to poor quality. I'd be willing to accept that twin-stick might be an acquired taste. Who knows, maybe ten years from now twin-sticks are everywhere, and I end up learning how to enjoy them.
Finally, my negativity toward Screamer is entirely self-contained. I already know I don't gel with twin-stick racing games, and my disappointment comes from Screamer being a twin-stick racing game - not from anything else of particular substance. My negativity is because of a difference of taste, not an objective evaluation of execution. This game wasn't made for me, and that's it. It's not a failure on Milestone's part that my taste buds just don't have the palette for a game like Screamer. If you've not played a twin-stick racing game before, please go play Inertial Drift's demo before you make your judgements about the mechanic. Give it an honest try like I did, and be open-minded. I know a few people who doubted Inertial Drift's twin-stick mechanic, and they were quite surprised that they ended up enjoying it. At the very least, if you don't end up liking it, you can at least say you gave it a try - and that makes your opinion a lot more valid than some of the other elitist jackasses who hate change just because it's not what they're used to.