UPDATE: I WAS SO FUCKING WRONG ABOUT SCREAMER
HOLY SHIT. WHAT A FUCKING GAME.
I only have four and a half hours of playtime on the 2026 release of twin-stick racing game Screamer, so my opinion might change... but I only see my opinion of this game improving over time.
Those who've kept up with this blog will think they recognize a pattern of a honeymoon phase giving way to frustration and burnout. At least, that's what happened with Marathon; I liked the game, I loved the game, then I absolutely despised it. The thing is, that happened because I didn't trust my gut - it's a PvP extraction shooter, and I already knew I wasn't usually a big fan of them. Marathon's presentation sold me, though, so my friend Laura Exige answered my wishposting on Bluesky and bought me Bungie's new shooter. Unfortunately, as much as I love Marathon's artistry - its narrative, its presentation and its artwork - the gameplay chewed me up and spat me out.
This time around though, we're taking a dip into a genre of video games I'm already very familiar with - even if the twin-stick control scheme made me judge the game pretty early on.
The thing is, I know I can overlook a racing game's weird handling and gameplay if there's something else about it that hooks me in. Need for Speed Prostreet is my favorite racing game of all time, and it's purely because of its execution on its vision. It perfectly portrays motorsport festivals of the time, complete with banged up street-legal race cars, hot women and angsty twenty-somethings. The cars drive like shit, but I genuinely couldn't care less. The game feels amazing, and that's all I need for it to be my favorite. So, given all of that, I knew I could be a lot more forgiving to Screamer's gameplay than I could be to Marathon's.
I am very, very glad to say that Screamer has the full package. Great racing, great narrative, perfect execution on their art direction. This is a Game Of The Year contender.
Presentation
I'm a total sucker for cyberpunk - it's what pulled me into Marathon, a game I knew I shouldn't have bothered to play. All it really takes is a strong commitment to the cyborg bit and I'm a bitch on a leash. Milestone commits to it completely in Screamer, right down to the FUCKING. MENUS.
Oh my GOD the menus. Screamer's menu design brings me right back to the 2000's, when menu design was still an artist's playground. These days, the menu of any video game is incredibly formulaic; whether it's a list in pure text or in tiles, your navigation through the menus is just a functional way to get you into the game, rather than a considered piece of art in itself. Screamer's main menu, on the other hand, comes to life in your hands. The inorganic tile shapes guide the eye across the screen, and the music intensifies as you step ever closer to the start of a race. The character/car select screen looks like it was ripped straight out of a fighting game, but it looks perfect here since the cars AND the drivers take equal focus in this game.
Speaking of which, the car and driver design is absolutely top notch here. Each fictional car feels tailor-made for their fictional drivers. Some drivers look a bit less memorable than others, but they're all still fairly unique in appearance. I'll note that the women don't seem to have much variety in their body shapes, which is a letdown for me. Where's our fat girl rep? Come on, devs! Chubby women are hot, too, you cowards!
The representation of different languages is nice, too. Drivers can all understand each other while speaking in their native tongue, and it's explained in-game with a translator implant. I was able to recognize German, Spanish, Japanese, French and perhaps a couple other languages being represented here, which was VERY nice to see. Screamer's presentation of the narrative partially through VN stylings lends itself well to foreign line deliveries, unlike Star Trek's "universal translators" that just turn everyone's native tongue into English as a lingua franca. Hearing Frederico loudly plead, "MON BURGER, QUINN! MON BURGER," was fucking hilarious, and that line delivery would just suck if it was presented in English. Star Trek could never. (Mostly because you'd be staring at the subtitles for 90% of the show if they portrayed languages like Screamer does, but I'm also a nerdy girl who loves reading so fuck you, actually)
The mixture of animated and VN cutscenes was a fantastic choice for Milestone. They probably saved quite a big chunk of money going for visual novel style dialogue events between characters, while the important character-driven moments are animated by Japanese studio Polygon Pictures. While Polygon's animations are done in 3D, the models are extremely well-crafted and animated to the point where I sometimes forget that I'm not watching a traditional 2D animation. I'd LOVE to see a Screamer anime with brand new characters, similar to CDPR's approach to Edgerunners, but CDPR also has 'fuck you money' while Milestone possibly doesn't. Still, I'd watch it if it ever exists. The visual novel scenes are good, but I think they could've gone a step further and emphasized emotional, comedic and tense moments with unique backdrop art featuring the characters rendered in a freeze frame of that scene, which is found pretty often in other visual novels. It'd help elevate those visual novel sections just a bit more and make them feel more dynamic.
Audio
Sound effects are fantastic, and the music is fucking perfect. No notes, genuinely. I think the only thing I can really critique is that the music was a smidge too loud in the mix across the board, but since it's an 'across the board' issue I just turned the menu and race music down by a couple clicks or so to remedy that. The shifting feels weighty and impactful, the various Sync activation noises are satisfying, the engine notes are beautifully done... I genuinely can't think of much that isn't extremely well executed here. Good job, audio designers and music producers! You fucking crushed it, and you deserve raises.
Performance
While the game stays steady at 60fps (which is all I need given my 60hz monitors), Screamer starts chugging quite heavily while Warudo and OBS are active. I don't stream anymore, but I'd be pretty frustrated by this if I did. Even on the lowest settings I can stomach (low settings with resolution scaling at 50%), I was frequently dipping into the 20s. I have an i9-11900KF processor, RTX 3070 graphics card and 64GB of RAM @ 3600MHz. I know it's not a top of the line computer, but it sure as hell isn't shit. If it can run well on a Steam Deck, I should be able to run apps like OBS and Warudo in the background flawlessly while maintaining at least an average in the 50's. Hopefully, the game's optimization improves as time marches on and updates get delivered.
Gameplay
What the fuck do I even say here? It's like they took Inertial Drift's twin-stick concept and perfected it. The added combat mechanics throttle the skill ceiling through the roof in a way that feels INCREDIBLY exciting to learn. I feel like I'm learning to race quickly all over again, but I don't feel like I'm up the creek without a paddle. Granted, this may be because of my previous experience with Inertial Drift, but Milestone's execution of this handling model seems to make the learning curve feel a bit more gentle. Their decision to hold off on combat mechanics for quite some time in the story mode is also a pretty smart idea - it gives me time to come to grips with the boost and drift mechanics before throwing me into high-pressure combat scenarios.
The arcade game modes are also a blast. Time Attack is where I've been honing my driving and boost timing skills, while Overdrive Challenge is where I put reflexes and clean driving to the test. I'd be super stoked to try this game on local split-screen with Crow, one of my partners who really enjoyed her time with Inertial Drift. Four player split-screen! What the fuck! That doesn't happen anymore! Milestone, I could kiss you.
Conclusion
This game's fuckin' awesome. Go play it. It's fucking good. GO PLAY IT. BUY IT. DO IT RIGHT THE FUCK NOW.