No brakes on this revival
By Paul Hunter
I’ve put a lot of hours into Milestone’s motorsport titles over the years, most recently MotoGP and RIDE, so when the Italian developer and publisher announced a reboot of its 1995 arcade racing franchise Screamer, I was paying close attention. Screamer runs on Unreal Engine 5 and pairs high-speed arcade racing with combat mechanics, two things Milestone has never combined before in a single package.
This new version of Screamer is very different than the original, adopting a Japanese anime and manga aesthetic that covers everything from the character designs to the UI, with Polygon Pictures handling more than 30 minutes of animated cutscenes. Troy Baker voices Mr. A, the game’s enigmatic tournament organiser. In a genre where sim-cade racers currently dominate, Screamer is built for gamers who want something with more bite.
So, is Screamer the arcade racing game worth getting revved up about? Let’s find out!
Every team has a personal stake in being there. The Green Reapers, former private military contractors led by Hiroshi Jackson, entered to avenge the death of a previous team leader. Their target is Gabriel Mertens of Anaconda Corp, a powerful corporate outfit, though Gabriel himself is far more focused on proving his worth to his own family than on the race. Strike Force Romanda, three pop legends, enter under the cover of a promotional campaign while quietly pursuing something far more personal. The Jupiter Stormers, scientists and astronauts, accepted a personal invitation that brought them into a world they would not normally touch. The Kagawa Kai, street racing royalty, are collecting on a family debt that has been waiting too long.
The ECHO device is the mystery that connects everyone. Gage, the tournament’s mechanic, installs it on every car, and when a vehicle is destroyed in a race the ECHO brings both driver and car back instantly. Characters start focusing on that device immediately, wondering why does Mr. A have exclusive control over it, and could it do something far more significant than resurrect a racing car? Gage is a memorable supporting character throughout, and his apparently sentient dog Fermi, who is genuinely capable of getting behind the wheel, adds a fun layer of personality the story uses well.
Animated cutscenes and visual novel-style scenes carry everything forward, with a full international cast speaking their native languages across English, Japanese, Italian, French, and more. A universal translator chip handles the in-universe communication between them. The themes running through the whole thing are pulled from classic 80s and 90s cyberpunk anime like free will, revenge, and the danger of a single person controlling technology the world does not yet understand.
Taken as a whole, The Tournament is a story mode with genuine ambition and five teams compelling enough to race the whole thing to the finish. It's huge, too, with over 100 story missions that took me over 15 hours to complete.
The other early mechanic to get right is Active Shift. Screamer uses a semi-automatic transmission, and timing a tap of L1 as your gear gauge fills shifts you up with a burst of speed while also building your Sync meter. Sync is the foundation of the ECHO system, the combat layer that sits on top of everything else. You spend it on Boost for a speed increase, and if hit the timing window for a Perfect Boost, it runs longer than a standard one. Every time you spend Sync, it converts into Entropy.
Entropy is what you spend on Strike and Overdrive. Strike costs two bars and activates a temporary speed surge where any opponent you collide with is instantly KOed. Overdrive needs a full set of meter before you can activate it, but once activated every car you touch explodes on contact. The catch is that track barriers will explode yourself while Overdrive is active, so it's a very risky maneuver with potential big payoffs. Shield gives you a safer option in between: spend one Sync tank to protect yourself temporarily against Strike and Overdrive, while banking one Entropy tank at the same time. Building the habit of cycling between all four actions is where Screamer's racing really opens up.
Every character handles the ECHO system differently through their unique abilities. Team Leaders drive the fastest cars but require more precision and concentration. Members are set up for fighting, with cars that favour getting into and staying in combat range. Some characters build a separate Hype meter through drifting and use it for an enhanced Strike. Others generate extra Entropy through Active Shifting. I put several races into a Member whose ability kept Sync from draining after an explosion, which meant mistakes cost less and I could stay in the Boost cycle more consistently. Working out which character suits your approach to the ECHO system is a rewarding process.
Outside of The Tournament, every Arcade mode is open from the start. Race! gives you a customizable single race with Story Mode special rules to turn on. Team Race focuses on team-based scoring in pairs or trios, with finishing position with KOs awarding points. Time Attack is three laps for a best time with separate leaderboards for Leaders and Members. Checkpoint is a solo race against a countdown. Overdrive Challenge activates Overdrive from the first lap and escalates its power through each one, with total distance tracked on a global leaderboard. Score Challenge runs a character-specific race series where your in-race actions produce a Score that goes to a leaderboard at the end.
Arcade mode lets you tune races significantly. You can change the rate your power meters fill, force all cars into Overdrive, or remove offensive attacks for a straight racing experience. Completing races in any mode earns unlocks across characters and their abilities, tracks, game modes, mode modifiers, and Gallery content. The Mechanic's Workshop handles car customization with liveries and car-specific parts, and you can mix parts from different cars to build something unique.
Screamer supports up to 16 players online and four-player splitscreen offline on the same system. Online, Mixtape rotates through casual game modes for pick-up-and-play sessions, Private Lobby gives you full control over rules and who gets invited, and Ranked Team Race puts up to three-player teams into a competition with special rules built around coordinated play. The mode modifiers make it straightforward to dial in the experience for any group regardless of experience level.
All in all, Screamer's gameplay gives you a combat racing system that rewards mastery and a strong set of modes to keep things fresh well beyond the campaign.
The car roster has also been given exceptional visual care. Every vehicle has its own colourful livery and wild bodywork, with oversized spoilers and exposed chassis components that look like they rolled out of an 80s anime. The animated cutscenes are crisp and colourful from the opening sequence through to the final moments of the campaign. The manga-influenced UI is bold and well-organised, maintaining the game's visual identity consistently from the main menu through to the in-race display.
Turning our attention to audio, the soundtrack is full of intensity from the first race and sustains that energy throughout the entire game, with high-energy tracks that match the pace and aggression of the combat racing. The international voice cast delivers strong performances throughout, with Troy Baker doing an incredible job in particular.
Performance on PC ran smooth across every race I played, from full online sessions to the most explosive combat moments in The Tournament campaign.
Taken as a whole, Screamer's presentation delivers strong detailed visuals and a high-energy soundtrack that elevates the game's ferocity across every race.
Final Score: 8/10 - Great
Developer: Milestone S.r.l.
Publisher: Milestone S.r.l.
Genre: Racing
Modes: Single-player, Multiplayer
A key was provided by the publisher.
By Paul Hunter
I’ve put a lot of hours into Milestone’s motorsport titles over the years, most recently MotoGP and RIDE, so when the Italian developer and publisher announced a reboot of its 1995 arcade racing franchise Screamer, I was paying close attention. Screamer runs on Unreal Engine 5 and pairs high-speed arcade racing with combat mechanics, two things Milestone has never combined before in a single package.
This new version of Screamer is very different than the original, adopting a Japanese anime and manga aesthetic that covers everything from the character designs to the UI, with Polygon Pictures handling more than 30 minutes of animated cutscenes. Troy Baker voices Mr. A, the game’s enigmatic tournament organiser. In a genre where sim-cade racers currently dominate, Screamer is built for gamers who want something with more bite.
So, is Screamer the arcade racing game worth getting revved up about? Let’s find out!
Story and Narrative
The Tournament is Screamer’s career mode, and it is built around a question nobody in the race can fully answer: what is organizer Mr. A actually planning? Five three-person teams compete in an illegal championship with 100 billion dollars on the line, and the story reveals itself non-linearly through the perspective of each team, so the same events keep recontextualising as you learn more.Every team has a personal stake in being there. The Green Reapers, former private military contractors led by Hiroshi Jackson, entered to avenge the death of a previous team leader. Their target is Gabriel Mertens of Anaconda Corp, a powerful corporate outfit, though Gabriel himself is far more focused on proving his worth to his own family than on the race. Strike Force Romanda, three pop legends, enter under the cover of a promotional campaign while quietly pursuing something far more personal. The Jupiter Stormers, scientists and astronauts, accepted a personal invitation that brought them into a world they would not normally touch. The Kagawa Kai, street racing royalty, are collecting on a family debt that has been waiting too long.
The ECHO device is the mystery that connects everyone. Gage, the tournament’s mechanic, installs it on every car, and when a vehicle is destroyed in a race the ECHO brings both driver and car back instantly. Characters start focusing on that device immediately, wondering why does Mr. A have exclusive control over it, and could it do something far more significant than resurrect a racing car? Gage is a memorable supporting character throughout, and his apparently sentient dog Fermi, who is genuinely capable of getting behind the wheel, adds a fun layer of personality the story uses well.
Animated cutscenes and visual novel-style scenes carry everything forward, with a full international cast speaking their native languages across English, Japanese, Italian, French, and more. A universal translator chip handles the in-universe communication between them. The themes running through the whole thing are pulled from classic 80s and 90s cyberpunk anime like free will, revenge, and the danger of a single person controlling technology the world does not yet understand.
Taken as a whole, The Tournament is a story mode with genuine ambition and five teams compelling enough to race the whole thing to the finish. It's huge, too, with over 100 story missions that took me over 15 hours to complete.
Gameplay and Mechanics
It's rare these days for racing games to give us gameplay that shakes up the norm, but Screamer does exactly that. To begin with, getting to grips with the twin-stick controls is the first real task the game puts in front of you, and it takes practice. The left stick steers and the right stick manages your drift angle by pushing the rear of the car wide through corners. The vast majority of corners in the game require a drift to hold your speed, so both thumbs are almost never resting. Go into a sharp corner without using the right stick and your car understeers and drops back through the field quickly.The other early mechanic to get right is Active Shift. Screamer uses a semi-automatic transmission, and timing a tap of L1 as your gear gauge fills shifts you up with a burst of speed while also building your Sync meter. Sync is the foundation of the ECHO system, the combat layer that sits on top of everything else. You spend it on Boost for a speed increase, and if hit the timing window for a Perfect Boost, it runs longer than a standard one. Every time you spend Sync, it converts into Entropy.
Entropy is what you spend on Strike and Overdrive. Strike costs two bars and activates a temporary speed surge where any opponent you collide with is instantly KOed. Overdrive needs a full set of meter before you can activate it, but once activated every car you touch explodes on contact. The catch is that track barriers will explode yourself while Overdrive is active, so it's a very risky maneuver with potential big payoffs. Shield gives you a safer option in between: spend one Sync tank to protect yourself temporarily against Strike and Overdrive, while banking one Entropy tank at the same time. Building the habit of cycling between all four actions is where Screamer's racing really opens up.
Every character handles the ECHO system differently through their unique abilities. Team Leaders drive the fastest cars but require more precision and concentration. Members are set up for fighting, with cars that favour getting into and staying in combat range. Some characters build a separate Hype meter through drifting and use it for an enhanced Strike. Others generate extra Entropy through Active Shifting. I put several races into a Member whose ability kept Sync from draining after an explosion, which meant mistakes cost less and I could stay in the Boost cycle more consistently. Working out which character suits your approach to the ECHO system is a rewarding process.
Outside of The Tournament, every Arcade mode is open from the start. Race! gives you a customizable single race with Story Mode special rules to turn on. Team Race focuses on team-based scoring in pairs or trios, with finishing position with KOs awarding points. Time Attack is three laps for a best time with separate leaderboards for Leaders and Members. Checkpoint is a solo race against a countdown. Overdrive Challenge activates Overdrive from the first lap and escalates its power through each one, with total distance tracked on a global leaderboard. Score Challenge runs a character-specific race series where your in-race actions produce a Score that goes to a leaderboard at the end.
Arcade mode lets you tune races significantly. You can change the rate your power meters fill, force all cars into Overdrive, or remove offensive attacks for a straight racing experience. Completing races in any mode earns unlocks across characters and their abilities, tracks, game modes, mode modifiers, and Gallery content. The Mechanic's Workshop handles car customization with liveries and car-specific parts, and you can mix parts from different cars to build something unique.
Screamer supports up to 16 players online and four-player splitscreen offline on the same system. Online, Mixtape rotates through casual game modes for pick-up-and-play sessions, Private Lobby gives you full control over rules and who gets invited, and Ranked Team Race puts up to three-player teams into a competition with special rules built around coordinated play. The mode modifiers make it straightforward to dial in the experience for any group regardless of experience level.
All in all, Screamer's gameplay gives you a combat racing system that rewards mastery and a strong set of modes to keep things fresh well beyond the campaign.
Presentation and Audio
Screamer's track environments are stunning and hold up nicely at full racing speed. Neo-Rey is the most immediately striking, running through a neon-lit cyberpunk city at night where rain-soaked streets reflect glowing advertising boards and glass towers line every straight. Sky Road Desert shifts into sun-baked industrial terrain with satellite dishes and rocky outcroppings surrounding the circuit. Forest #13 runs through a mountain landscape where dense tree cover alternates with industrial structures on the corner approaches. Weather effects and a day/night cycle occur across all three locations, and the near photo-realistic environmental lighting is detailed and gives the game a nice sheen.The car roster has also been given exceptional visual care. Every vehicle has its own colourful livery and wild bodywork, with oversized spoilers and exposed chassis components that look like they rolled out of an 80s anime. The animated cutscenes are crisp and colourful from the opening sequence through to the final moments of the campaign. The manga-influenced UI is bold and well-organised, maintaining the game's visual identity consistently from the main menu through to the in-race display.
Turning our attention to audio, the soundtrack is full of intensity from the first race and sustains that energy throughout the entire game, with high-energy tracks that match the pace and aggression of the combat racing. The international voice cast delivers strong performances throughout, with Troy Baker doing an incredible job in particular.
Performance on PC ran smooth across every race I played, from full online sessions to the most explosive combat moments in The Tournament campaign.
Taken as a whole, Screamer's presentation delivers strong detailed visuals and a high-energy soundtrack that elevates the game's ferocity across every race.
The Verdict
Screamer is such a breath of fresh air. Milestone has built a combat racing system with genuine depth and wrapped it in stunning anime-inspired presentation that looks incredible on PC. The story mode has no business being this good in a racing game, and it should honestly be made into an anime series one day. Four-player splitscreen and 16-player online round out a package that delivers on all fronts. This is one of the best racing games out right now and hopefully the beginning of more Screamer titles to come.Final Score: 8/10 - Great
Screamer details
Platform: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PCDeveloper: Milestone S.r.l.
Publisher: Milestone S.r.l.
Genre: Racing
Modes: Single-player, Multiplayer
A key was provided by the publisher.