The new Screamer may have a time-honored name, but it doesn’t have much to do with the classic racing game series from the 90s. Except that here, too, the lead foot is pushed to the limit.
Let’s talk directly to the bright blue Walefanten pulsating in the room: No, this screamer has precisely nothing to do with the old racing games of the same name internationally (known and loved by us as “Bleifuss”). Yes, both games are about fast-moving cars, and then as now, the Italians from Milestone are behind the game. But that’s about it again.
Why even write a review then?Because there’s a lack of good arcade racers, Need for Speed has been put on ice and Screamer may not elicit any cheers from us, but it still puts its horsepower on the road. GlobalESportNews will tell you whether it’s worth buying – and for whom.
Cash for Fahres
The pivotal point of Screamer is “The Tournament”: Sometime in the not-too-distant future, dystopian and Blade Runner-neon-lit of course, a mysterious “Mr. A” organizes a car race in which groups of so-called “screamers” compete against each other.
These are teams with names like “Green Reapers”, “Strike Force Romanda”, “Kagawa-Kai” or “Anaconda Corp”, all of whom have their own reasons for taking part in the tournament.
Some want revenge for a murdered member, others are looking for fame and glory. And all of them are interested in the prize money of *checks notes* a relaxed 100 billion US dollars. Yes, in the world of Screamer, there’s definitely no spilling the beans.
In order to bag this stable sum, you take on the role of various drivers from all teams. At the wheel of their individual vehicles, you have to complete all kinds of tasks over many missions: achieve certain lap times, beat records, achieve a certain place on the podium, trigger boosts during a drift or win team races.
A gem in the dystopian forest
The level of difficulty swings back and forth a lot at times, despite selectable difficulty levels and a pleasing number of help functions.
One mission I win without any problems with a 500-metre gap to second place, in the next mission I hardly make any driving mistakes and scrape my way into a gracious third place with a lot of effort.
You’re also on comparatively few tracks: there are four different scenarios, with 32 tracks that only partially use other parts of the environment for themselves.
In any case, the whole thing looks really good: You only get to see the action from an outside view, but the insanely high speed and crashing effects look really good from it. And the whole thing runs quickly and stably even on mid-range systems at a high level of detail.
It’s just too bad that there’s not really much to see outside of the beautifully staged tracks. If you think back to the original Screamer (which was very much based on the first Ridge Racer), there was something going on everywhere with airplanes, helicopters and cable cars whizzing through the screen. There’s nothing like that here.
No racing game like any other
Within the tournament, the plot revolving around racing, revenge and wealth plays a remarkably large role. So big, in fact, that the short races feel more like filler material at times.
Before and after the races, you will be talked at endlessly, mainly in dialog cutscenes presented from the side view, but also in very solidly crafted short films created by the renowned Japanese anime studioPolygon Pictures(Tron: Uprising, Love, Death & Robots, etc.).
A special feature of the plot is that here, as in Tekken 8, almost every character speaks a different language – from English to French, Italian or Spanish to German and Japanese, you get to hear a lot without the characters having even the slightest communication problems with each other. Unlike Tekken, Screamer at least has a fig-leaf explanation for this babelfish wonderland.
In any case, the plot is well done. And if you value being as polyglot as possible, especially when it comes to swear words, then Screamer is an excellent teacher. Because there’s some really heavy swearing here, the teams definitely don’t mince their words.
In the long run, however, it’s all a bit much and exhausting; for my part, I would have liked it better if the game/story scale had swung much more in the direction of the game. At least all the race interruptions can be skipped if you just don’t feel like listening to the banter.
Anime Drift Master
The tournament is not only the center of the story, but also basically the game’s tutorial. Screamer offers several special features that clearly distinguish it from standard racing games.
Firstly, there are the controls, which are very much inspired by the two-stick system from Inertial Drift. Let’s remember: there, the left stick is used to steer normally and the right stick is used to control the drift. In Screamer, on the other hand, the left stick controls normally and the right stick controls the drift. Okay, we’re talking less about “inspired” and more about “adopted” here.
Here and there, the system requires some familiarization. The drift in particular enables remarkably precise control over the cornering of your own vehicle, but also requires very precise control. If you enter a bend at the wrong angle, you will slam into the kerb at full speed, which not only slows you down, but also occasionally costs you the extra-wide rear spoiler.
But once you’ve got the drifting under control after some practice, the whole thing feels pretty cool. All of a sudden, you’ll be able to drift from full speed, precisely follow the course of a bend, just a few centimetres past the kerb – and then finish it all off with a precisely timed turbo boost when you return to the straight. Because then there’s the echo system.
Hello Echo! Hello screamer!
The way you are introduced to “Echo” during the tournament is really stupid. Let me just summarize: “Hey, I’m the mechanic you don’t know. I’m going to install a device in your super-expensive supercars that was developed before me, which will ensure that if your car explodes, you’ll be revived immediately. Cool? Cool!”
Ahem. All right. Echo is a collection of game mechanics that elsewhere would be called Turbo Boost, Takedown or Shield. In order to use any of these, you have to build up “sync” energy by driving as skillfully as possible or shifting gears as precisely as possible.
If you use this, “entropy” will be charged, which you can in turn use for a short shield or an “overdrive” – if you hit an opponent with it, they will spontaneously burst into flames. However, you will also burst into flames if you touch the wall during this phase. A classic risk/reward system.
All of this is distributed across the shoulder buttons of the gamepad (strongly recommended by the game) and takes some time to get used to. Thankfully, however, this is only gradually introduced during the long tournament.
The arcade is calling!
If, on the other hand, you want to dive headfirst into the action right away, the arcade mode is your destination of choice: normal and team races, various challenge variants as well as checkpoint and time races await you here – more than enough choice for long-term, full-throttle fun. However, there is still very little content to begin with, as tracks and vehicles are unlocked within the tournament or through permanent arcade races.
The whole thing looks really good. And it runs really damn fast!
Patient collectors will also fill the archive with artwork, videos, the (wonderfully intense) soundtrack and lots of personalization options for all vehicles over time.
If you want to show off your big-spoiler gem to the world, you can also switch to photo mode at any time during the races to take highly dramatic pictures of your own car from the craziest possible perspectives and with lots of filter power.
Of course, not in multiplayer mode, as the other drivers would probably find that silly. Screamer offers various multiplayer variants, including a split screen for up to four participants, which is rarely seen these days.
Conclusion of the editorial team
Cutscene, cutscene, cutscene, short race, cutscene, cutscene – this is exactly how I imagine a racing game developed by Hideo Kojima should look. Although the tournament is really stylishly staged, for me it consists of too much talking and too little action on the track. As a result, I noticed signs of wear and tear on the “skip” button after a short time during the test. The plot isn’t that interesting after all, even if my international fugitive vocabulary has been expanded considerably here.
In terms of content, you can expect pure arcade. The drift control via the right stick works well and precisely after a while to get used to it. But just as with Inertial Drift, it feels like the solution to a problem that doesn’t actually exist. In the meantime, I played the good old OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast for comparison and I have to say: the drifts work just as precisely and are much easier to use
Screamer is a really good racing game, with blazingly fast, wonderfully effective graphics, a remarkably powerful soundtrack and suitably challenging opponents. And even if not all of its features really make a lot of sense, I appreciate that it tries something new here and there. Even if it does overshoot the mark from time to time.
