Reviving a decades old IP has historically been a difficult thing to do. On the one hand there is a lot of nostalgia at play and wanting to honor the past. On the other hand, there’s often a reason why a franchise went dormant for so long. In the case of Screamer, developer Milestone managed to not only revive the IP, but they’ve elevated it to stand near the top of the racing genre. 

While I’m by no means an expert when it comes to racing games, you certainly won’t see me in your local Forza or Gran Turismo championships, I am becoming a fan of the genre more and more. Typically, you will see me enjoying games with more of a story, and while some racers do an admirable job of telling a story, they aren’t winning any awards for their narrative. 

While it might be a stretch to say Screamer will be in the best narrative category come end of year, Milestone has created a campaign so good that wouldn’t shock me if it did. Called “The Tournament” in the game, the campaign is essentially the launching pad for how to race in Screamer. 

Told in a series of text-based scenes mixed with the odd cutscene, the story brings 5 teams of 3 together for a Screamer tournament. Screamers are illegal street racers, racing in these types of races all around the world and making a solid living. This particular tournament is being hosted by a mysterious Mr. A who has offered up a 100-billion-dollar cash prize to the winning team. 

Mr. A alongside a street mechanic named Gage has created a device called an Echo. The Echo is supplanted into each racer’s car and through it, no one can die while racing. If the car crashes the driver can feel the pain for a moment before them and their car slip back onto the track and they continue to race. It’s honestly a pretty cool way to use the story as an explanation of why we can race even after blowing up. 

And while you think with that type of money being involved the story would be about these racers coming together for the money, each team actually has an ulterior motive for the race, most of which involves the other teams. 

An Entangled Web Of Characters

Without getting into too much details and spoilers about the story, what plays out across the 10+ hour campaign is a fantastic story. Each of the 5 teams has a very interesting dynamic that tells a story within a story, all while building upon the greater overall narrative. 

Every team in the race seems to know one another. Maybe not each individual, but there is a lot of history between everyone here. They’re former friends, former lovers, former co-workers. And with all of this we see all the different dynamics and why these teams are actually here. 

I’m trying to be as vague as possible here because I truly don’t want to spoil anything. A story as good as this, especially in a racing game deserves to be seen by the player. And considering a big selling point of Screamer is it has a narrative driven campaign as a racer, no one should be disappointed with the story. 

The game also has a fantastic voice cast. At first, I was really confused and kind of annoyed that all these characters spoke different languages. Why on earth would 2 English speaking people team up with a French speaking person if they can’t understand each other? How are they all talking to the woman speaking Japanese? Heck how can the mechanic speak to and understand his dog?!

Turns out in this world, everyone has a device implanted in them that allows them to understand each language and communicate. This smart bit of storytelling allowed Milestone to hire such a dynamic cast and really gave Screamer some extra character that sets it apart from the competition.

The Tournament

As mentioned above, the campaign is told through a variety of text-based scenes and some cutscenes in an episodic fashion. Typically, you would read or see a minute or 2 long scene and then be put into some type of race. 

The races tie the narrative together really well and break things up. You can tell how much I enjoyed the story by the fact that at times I would get annoyed that I had to do some more racing before getting to the next episode. I need to know what happens next!

The tournament also does a great job of not only giving players a tutorial on how to race, but it gives a lot of lore and backstory behind the racing itself. At first each time spent in the car is just the basics. It might be to teach you how to use the boost system. Boost 3 times and you are done that race. Other times it would be to simply finish the race and move on. 

As you get further into the Tournament though is when the real fun begins. Thanks to the Echo everyone can use Strike which will give a significant, short boost and allow you to KO any car you hit. Each racer also has their own ability that they learn how to unlock thanks to the Echo. This is all gradually introduced and ties into the story of each character. 

And on the race track itself all of these abilities need to be charged up. In order to gain boost you need to do things like race at a high speed, get drag from another car, do successful manual gear shifts and drift. In order to gain the ability to strike you need to perform boosts. This usually meant you would need almost a full lap just to gain the ability to strike. With most races being only 3 laps, it didn’t leave a lot of time to use these abilities.

Because of this, the tournament itself is quite difficult. Most racing games I’ve ever played can be as easy or hard as you want depending on what difficulty you put it on. Put it on Very easy and you might as well be in a race by yourself. In Screamer even on Story mode the game is quite difficult. Not only because the AI is actually quite good, but because of some of the objectives within the race.

There were numerous races that when I did drop the difficulty down to story mode, I’d still fail 4-5 times. There was one race where all I had to do was land 1 KO on the only other car and there were unlimited laps to do so. By the time I charged up my strike ability, the car was so far ahead of me I couldn’t catch up. After frustratingly trying to chase the car down, I simply stopped and waited for it to lap me to get close enough. 

In another instance there was a race in which you had to win while also KO’ing 3 or more cars in a 3 lap race. This race was on a small track that didn’t take long to do a lap on, and I didn’t even get the ability to strike until the end of the first lap. I think over the course of the race I charged my strike ability up 4 times. And because I needed to land these KO’s I couldn’t just race out to the lead, and by the time I got my third KO I was too far behind to win the race. 

Luckily, Milestone has told us that they are working on a day 1 patch to better align the difficulties across the board so when you play the game, things might be different. But some of these combinations of objectives will be annoying regardless. 

Arcade Racing At It’s Best

It’s kind of crazy that were this far into the review and we’ve barely talked about the actual racing. While the story is quite good in Screamer, Milestone has done an equally good job with the racing itself. Every single car in the game feels different in the way it handles. Some cars are much faster but don’t handle quite as well, some are much slower but are great for drifting. 

Because of this I’m actually kind of surprised the they don’t have some kind of stat page on them. Most games like this would have something to show a cars speed, handling etc. I don’t know if it’s because they didn’t want people to focus on that and learn the cars for themselves or what, but it is an odd choice. 

A few of the cars are almost too arcade like, feeling more like bumper cars than race cars. While this won’t matter too much in the modes outside of the campaign it can be pretty jarring to go from a fast car with some good handling to a car that ping pongs off everything like a pinball.

There’s also a large variety of tracks that again shows off the versatility of Screamer. While I much prefer a fast paced race with a lot of room for reaching high speeds there are a handful of tracks that are almost exclusively for drifting cars. I didn’t try taking one of the faster cars on these tracks but I can imagine they’d struggle mightily.

Screamer also uses a dual stick approach to racing. In order to engage turning and drifting you control that using the right stick rather than the left. It takes some getting used to but once you get a few races under your belt it begins to click.

The one downfall of the dual stick controls is because of how much is going on in the game in terms of controls it can almost be overwhelming at time. Every trigger and bumper has a purpose, and the bumpers have 2 uses. Press the LB to do a manual shift and hold it down to trigger a boost for example.

Adding all of this on top of the dual stick controls can make doing certain things more difficult. Trying to hold down the RB to do a strike while also holding RT to keep your speed and using the left and right sticks to control your car and hitting the LB to do a boost can be a lot. I cannot tell you how many times I simply missed striking an opponent because I was trying to handle too many buttons at once.

The Rest Of The Package

Outside of the tournament Screamer has its fair share of game modes, all which are pretty standard fair for this type of racing game. There’s regular races, team races, score challenges and checkpoint races.

All of these modes are pretty solid and give you a lot of room for customization depending on what you want. You can pick your tracks, length of race and much more. Score Challenge and Checkpoints also have their own leaderboards so you can compare yourself to fellow racers and work your way up the the ladder.

The one area of concern I have about all of this is how much replay value there will be. There is an online portion that allows for up to 16 players in a race so I suppose that is where the value will come long term. But for those who prefer an offline experience you will likely have seen all you want after awhile unless you are a racing junky.

Verdict

With one of the best campaigns you will ever see in a racing game and a great arcade style of racing, Screamer is one the best racing games we’ve seen this generation. Its flashy artstyle is great to look at and while there is a lot going on with it’s gameplay, once you get a grasp of it, you will wonder why more don’t do dual stick racing.

With a few more small tuneups to its difficulty and car handling Screamer could sit atop the genre. As is any gamer, racing enthusiast or not, should fall in love with Screamer. Hopefully we don’t have to wait another 30 years for more Screamer.

Screamer was played on Xbox Series X. At the time of this review the reviewer had 20 hours of game time and 22/50 achievements for 460 Gamerscore. A review code was provided by Milestone for purpose of this review.

Screamer launches on 26 March 2026 across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.