Screamer Review – Too Many Layers

Arcade racers can be a ton of fun, but they’re rarely especially deep or complex. Screamer is one of the exceptions. Unabashed in its embrace of many classic arcade sensibilities, it also gleefully throws new mechanics, concepts, characters, storytelling tropes, and customization options at the player, keeping the action fast and furious while layering in all sorts of twisty complexity. At first, this depth feels rewarding, but as more and more pieces drop into place, it all starts to feel overwrought and fiddly, distracting from the core fun of a fast, intense race. I appreciate the desire to try new things in a frequently stale genre, but the many mechanical pieces just don’t gel together enough for me to offer a full-throated endorsement.

Screamer’s Tournament mode is both the central campaign and introduction to the game’s many characters and systems. Playing out through both dialogue-heavy character conversations and several impressively crafted anime cutscenes, Screamer tells the tale of a near-future sci-fi racing tournament and a cast of emotionally damaged drivers who hope to win. Strong voice acting notwithstanding, the pacing and tenor of the storytelling are always cranked to 11. All the characters are angry, despicable, or both, with little room for subtlety, unloading soap-opera levels of melodrama that starts to wear thin after the first few hours. I felt like I had no one to root for. The frenetic beat-heavy soundtrack is equally high-energy, but eventually exhausting in its noisy fervor; it’s the rare game music I was eventually forced to mute.

The racing is tight and pretty, featuring fictional supercars blazing down an impressive variety of challenging courses. Everything is vibrant, and the sense of speed is satisfying and intoxicating. Likewise, I’m a tremendous fan of Milestone’s innovative approach to steering and drifting, which uses both sticks in tandem to offer precise control of front and back wheels; it takes time to master, but it feels slick once you grasp what it’s going for.

As the tournament progresses, it’s the seemingly endless parade of additional mechanical systems that lead to a breakdown. Boost, sync, entropy, strike, shield, hype, overdrive, character skills – each new bit layers onto the last, and eventually becomes so much that it distracts from the fun of the furious race tempo. Semi-automatic shifting gifts boost, but its visual cues are at the edges of the screen, distracting you from the upcoming turn. Boosting builds strike capability, but in so doing, it forces you to consider firing it off at inopportune moments just to build up the chance to attack. Skills differ from one character to the next, some of which have extremely detrimental effects if you don’t use them in the perfect situation, such as detonating your own car.

These problems are exacerbated by several frustrating objectives, like one race that demanded I knock out opponents from behind (forcing me to stay in the back of the pack) while also winning the race – not impossible, but fundamentally unintuitive and illogical. Difficulty is also frequently wildly uneven, with sometimes annoying rubberbanding from the computer opponents and individual races that bounce between way too easy and infuriatingly hard to pass, which can subsequently block story progress. By the time I hit credits on the Tournament, I was happy to be moving on.

Thankfully, the arcade mode offers plenty of flexibility to race as you please; even if I was still not in love with all the interlocking mechanics, at least I felt free to focus solely on the race. Several fun challenge modes provide additional paths to engagement, like checkpoint races or explosive overdrive runs where you careen headlong at boosted speeds for as long as you can before blowing up. Car customization is simple yet enjoyable, letting you tweak the visual aesthetics of each of the many playable leads and their vehicles.

I also appreciate the wide range of multiplayer options. Four-player splitscreen play was once a staple of the genre, but many other racers have since abandoned it. Screamer significantly boosts replayability through its inclusion, which worked well each time I tried it. Players can also dive into several different online races in larger groups of up to 16 players, where the competition is fierce.

I love that Milestone is experimenting with new ideas within the arcade racing formula, and while the story didn’t land for me, I applaud the effort at narrative in a genre that frequently doesn’t even try to add meaningful context to its races. Even so, difficulty spikes and arbitrary objectives combine with overly convoluted mechanics to rob Screamer of some of its fun. It’s worth experiencing to see a developer try something new, but this race track might just have too many turns to be a winner.