Somewhere along the way, racing games decided grow up, be all serious, and more or less fall into a singular drafting line. Screamer is not having a (big turbo) bar of that. Milestone’s latest wants to drag the genre back to the arcade, spray some dystopian anime paint over everything, and ask if you’d like a little fender bending with your drifting. As a fan of classic Burnouts, Blur and Inertial Drift, I went in sceptical of such a fusion but left feeling mighty surprised instead.
The first big swing here is the twin stick control scheme. Instead of leaving drift duty to vague physics, Screamer makes it a full-blown thumb sport. Grip-esque steering sits on the left stick, while the right stick is entirely dedicated to throwing your butt out sideways.
Basically, that means you are not just hoping for the best when you throw your car into a corner. It feels like rubbing your belly while patting your head, to be honest, but once it clicks it transforms drifts into something as intentional and satisfying as pulling off a special move in a fighter.
Speaking of fighters, Screamer has its own version of a super meter, and it is called the Echo System. Every car comes fitted with this mystical anime gizmo, installed by a chap named Gage, and it basically turns going flat out into fisticuffs. Echo governs your energy and rewards you for being aggressive, so when you slam into someone at the right moment and you don’t just nudge them off line, you straight-up KO them in an explosion of ego and metal. Those knockouts feed back into your resources, encouraging you to play the track like it’s a demolition derby that just happens to involve lap counts.
That energy splits into two delicious flavours: Sync and Entropy. Sync trickles in as you race, but it also spikes when you nail good plays like perfect shifts or clean drifts. Spend it on boosts or shields, and in doing so it converts into Entropy. Entropy is the spicy stuff, the resource that fuels the big-ticket moves like Strike. Strike is basically the racing equivalent of popping your super in Street Fighter. Three bars of Entropy buys you a glowing burst of speed where anyone silly enough to get in your way is instantly vaporised.
It is not subtle, but subtlety is overrated when your goal is to Bullet Bill fools to bits at 200 clicks an hour.
Of course, none of this would matter if driving itself felt passive. That is where Active Shift steps in. Cars run on a semi-auto transmission, but instead of ignoring gear changes, the game makes them into a quick-time skill check. Time your upshift right and you get a little resource boost, helping to fuel your Sync economy. Flub it and you look like the learner driver bunny-hopping their way through the family driveway. It sounds tiny, but it makes every second behind the wheel feel alive with opportunity.
Boosting gets the same treatment. You can spend a bar of Sync whenever you like for a jolt of extra speed, but if you time it perfectly you score a Perfect Boost that lasts longer. In the heat of the race, that tiny difference is the gap between threading through the pack and being the one who gets struck. Screamer loves this kind of high-risk rhythm. Every action feels like a chance to flex if you have the timing and nerve.
The mechanics are damn solid and the sense of speed (which seemed to be missing in early footage I saw) is a zippy as you please. That said being, there’s a large chunk of the Screamer formula that I can’t really speak to just yet. Apparently this is narrative heavy with a full roster of anime-styled racers, each with their own perks, quirks, catchphrases, and some sort of Team System.
The tracks themselves are equally flamboyant. Neo Rey Sky Road Desert sounds like a holiday package you could never afford, Downtown Run brings the neon grit, Stadium Olympus offers godlike grandeur, and Belly of the Beast suggests exactly the sort of ridiculous course design that makes arcade racing so much fun. Each track in the preview build is graded from C to S, which might be a difficulty system, or maybe just the developers telling me my driving deserves detention. Either way, it feels like variety is going to be one of Screamer’s secret weapons.
The art direction completes the package. Forget dull hypercars designed to look like real brands. These vehicles are exaggerated, glowing, and proud of it. Echo devices flare when abilities trigger, cars streak with trails when they boost, and the whole presentation leans into spectacle. The characters look like they could star in their own Saturday morning anime. Screamer does not want to look real. It wants to look cool, and that confidence is refreshing.
And while the build I saw is firmly pre-alpha, the important bones are already visible. The developers are clearly banking on three things: expressive driving mechanics, anime-styled personality, and a combat-racing loop that keeps you engaged every second. That is a cocktail that could fall apart if balance or polish is off, but the ambition here is clear.
Not gonna lie here. Milestone isn’t known for its storytelling pedigree, and so Screamer still has the potential to veer of track with an overabundance of…well, weird. However, I already love that it’s not just about racing clean lines. It is about expression, about flair, about turning every lap into a chance to put on a show. It wears its influences proudly, borrowing the energy of fighting games, the structure of anime rivalries, and the over-the-top chaos of the best arcade racers. If it sticks the landing, Screamer might just be the arcade comeback we petrolheads have been waiting for.
This preview was made possible by sampling pre-alpha code played at Plaion Australia.
