Youtube video essays 10 years from now:

„Screamer is a Misunderstood Gem of an Arcade Racer”
„The Best Arcade Racing Game From 2020s You Forgot About”
„Unique Mix of Ridge Racer, Split/Second and Burnout That Became a Cult Classic”

…and in my opinion, those clickbait titles, even if a little romanticized, won’t actually be that far from the truth.

Screamer is a racing game that dares to do things a little differently. It's a high-speed arcade racer with twin-stick controls and semi-automatic shifting that is tied to novel combat mechanics that feel not unlike a fighting game. By driving fast, slipstreaming or actively shifting to higher gear, you generate a cyan juice which, when consumed, gives you a great burst of speed. Doing that fills up the magenta juice meter which in turn can be used to turn you into an ICBM for a second, so you can nuke your enemies with reckless abandon.

This works really well for the most part, even if it takes a while to master the handling model and all other mechanics. Managing your resources is an important part of gameplay and it feels really natural and deep, despite being quite complicated in theory. Additionally, twin-stick driving also gives tons of skill expression and fun, especially if you nail those kilometer-long narrow corners, going sideways the whole time. The only time when gameplay doesn’t really gel well is on some of the more claustrophobic tracks, where there are too many opponents randomly bonking each other. Aside from those few black sheep on the roster, racing circuits in Screamer are stellar. Diversity of layouts and locations is very refreshing, especially compared to some other popular arcade racing games currently on the market.

You will learn everything when going through Tournament Mode – game’s story content. It is a surprisingly long string of missions and races, intertwined with tons of stiff and unexpressive visual novel sections and occasional, really good looking animated cutscenes. I definitely like Screamer’s general artstyle and world-building, but characters got off to a rough start. First chapters are introductions of protagonists Hiroshi and Roisin, which both go blow for blow in terms of offering the most cringeworthy and whiny lines imaginable (although Roisin is the worst of the two). Thankfully, when characters like Lavinia, Gabriel and Noboru get more screen time later, it becomes much easier to get invested into things happening on the screen. Story ebbs and flows between ”somewhat bad” and ”actually very good” nearly the whole runtime. Thankfully, some good character drama and a genuinely surprising plot twist in the final chapters made me ultimately happy after beating this campaign. Overall, Tournament Mode left a lot to be desired (ie. It could show more of the mechanics of the in-univese tournament itself), but the final output is still quite respectable and it smells like ambition that was at least in part realized.

After that there are still a lot of miscellaneous aspects to get through, so let’s enter Overdrive. The graphics are amazing, but they do require a strong PC to fully appreciate them (reached 60FPS on Ultra settings with some resolution upscaling, but no frame gen). The OST is full of bangers, but the idea of circling between only your character and their teammates’ themes is somewhat questionable and repetitive. There are additional modes aplenty and they provide some prime fun, even if they could be designed a little better (like more diverse and less punishing Score Attack). Visual car customization is there, but it is limited. Online is serviceable but laggy. Finally - I don’t get the design decision of making Leader cars objectively better – this reduces the viable pool of cars in both categories. It would be better if all cars had both a Leader spec and a Member spec.

All in all, Screamer took a lot of risks on many different fronts. Sometimes those risks paid off and sometimes they didn’t. While I could rag on those aforementioned design missteps and few blunders of Roisin’s dialogue all day… Ultimately, I still had one of the best arcade racing experiences in quite a while. An experience that dared to do something truly unique and gave me hope that this genre can still be a little daring and full of new ideas.

I also took the risk and put 60 dollarey-dos for this and, to a massive surprise of my legendary stingy ass, I felt like I got my money's worth and more.

Please, do try this one.