Screamer Review – ANIME FAST & FURIOUS?

While I am super keen for Forza Horizon 6 later this year, we don’t often get major arcade-style racers like this anymore. You know the ones I’m talking about: boosting away, blowing up other racers and finding shortcuts to cheese ahead. Screamer is a high-octane thrill ride almost all the way through.

Strategic Barging

The first thing you’ll notice is how strange the handling can feel, featuring a dual analog stick approach where the left controls steering and the right handles drifts. It does take a bit of elbow grease to smooth out, but you’ll be snaking around like a boss before you know it. Once you’re comfortable with the controls, the Sync and Entropy systems come into play, and this is where things get exciting.

As you gearshift in time and maintain a top speed, your stackable Sync meter charges up, letting you decide when to boost ahead or shield yourself from any incoming boot barges. And for most drivers, they need to use their Sync meter to build up Entropy, which then allows them to charge into nearby racers for a crunchy KO. And the best part? More charges. If you end up completely filling your Entropy gauge, you can even enter a state called Overdrive that makes you boost for ages and take out other drivers in the process. However, it also immediately explodes your own car whenever it touches a boundary or gets rammed after a couple of seconds. Youch.

Overall, it’s a very cool setup that encourages both tactical and risky plays, as you’ll constantly be asking yourself,
“Should I save my boost to bolt out of a tight turn? Or should I hold it to shield on this stretch? Can I casually blaze through here with my Overdrive? Or should I just manually deck a few people who get in my way?” It’s these moments that make Screamer extremely addictive, and that’s not even factoring in each driver’s special perks that give each of them a unique approach to racing and ramming. But what about the game modes? Because they can easily make or break games like these. Well, let’s start with the most obvious one.

Angry Driving

The real meat and potatoes of Screamer is Tournament mode, a story-based, 71-episode drama where 5 teams compete for 100 billion dollars—a stupid amount of money. Yet does the action match the prize pool? I’d say yes, but not without caveats. Most episodes involve checkpoint runs, solo bouts and winning races as a team, where not only does the final position matter, but taking drivers out on the track also gives your team more points. Meaning, you can still win the race, even if no one in your squad finishes first. Here’s the thing, though: it’s all fine and dandy for these types of events, yet, when it wants you to KO drivers several times in one race and/or win at the same time, I almost rage-quit in frustration. It feels like the game is fighting itself, telling you to go full speed in front, but then slowing down if you’re ahead. Because remember—you still gotta smack some dudes to the shadow realm and back. Enjoy.

It’s also a shame how few tracks were picked throughout the Tournament as well, with several races (especially towards the end) being used 3, 4 or 5 times in quick succession. You could argue this lets you adapt to the turns and whatnot, though deja vu does lose its charm. Another, albeit funnier, critique I have is how Overdrive works in certain scenarios. In story mode, the objective will display something like ‘Keep your overdrive up for 30 seconds’ though you can actually just sit there once you’ve filled the Entropy gauge and finish it while you grab a sandwich. The same thing goes for the Overdrive Challenge in the Arcade.

While you can still blitz through as intended, if you just lightly tap on the throttle, you’ll be cruising through without a worry in the world. This kind of defeats the whole point of it, but it’s still exhilarating if you play properly. Apart from the traditional custom race mode, there’s Team Race, Checkpoints, Time Attack and Score Challenge, which are all pretty self-explanatory and worth checking out. Though the coolest thing about Screamer is that it has 4-player split-screen! That’s something I don’t say often. I wasn’t able to fully test it during the review window, but the 2-player option seems to run at a solid 60FPS on base PS5, with no slowdown that I noticed, at the very least.

International Mayhem

Now, I glossed over this before, but the story starts off with a strong, I’ma-take-my-revenge-in-the-tournament hook, mostly focusing on a team called the Green Reapers, who have all the beef with their leader, Hiroshi. The team’s constantly bickering about whether Hiroshi is actually fit to lead, since he’s mostly just a shouty anime boy with fairly decent driving skills, and not much else going for him—besides his cool clothes. You’ve seen this type of setup before. Even though the cutscenes are well-made and fun to watch, I just wish there were more of them. Especially since major moments are often played out in these flat, visual novel-style segments that don’t hit anywhere near as hard as the fully-directed scenes.

Outside of a few plot points that fall off the face of the Earth, the dialogue is well-acted, has quality banter and is dramatic enough to keep your attention most of the way through, including some absolutely ridiculous anime shenanigans at the end. There’ll be times in the story where you’ll go, “Really? That’s what we went with? Come on! A little contrived, much?” But still, I’ve seen stories a lot worse than this over my lifetime, believe you me.

One aspect I quite liked was how they made the characters from each team speak in their own native tongue and accent, featuring English, Italian, French, German, Dutch, Japanese and Hindi from what I could hear. Now I’m no language expert, and I don’t think every game should do this, but it does give Screamer a unique flavour of storytelling that’s rarely done in media, in general. It’s just a shame that the story doesn’t try anything particularly new or make you feel the way it hopes you will, even with the game’s optional side stories that offer more insight into these characters.

Decision

After all’s said and done, Screamer is a gloriously chaotic arcade racer that makes you remember why smashing rivals off the track never gets old. Its dual-stick handling and Sync/Entropy systems turn each race into a high-speed game of “Should I boost, bash, or go super saiyan and nearly explode myself?” as its tactical approach and reckless antics make it an absolute cracker of a time. The Tournament mode is full of dramatic anime flair and ludicrous twists and turns, but sometimes it’s pure, frustrating nonsense, both story and gameplay-wise. Also, you will see a few racetracks too many times, and there definitely could’ve been more cutscenes to make the big beats land. Still, with a solid set of racing modes, rare 4-player split-screen, and a multilingual cast that sounds like a Formula 1 pit crew on holiday, this game is a pulse-pounding, edge-of-your-seat experience, even if some parts feel like they crashed just short of the finish line.

By Anthony Culinas – Reviewed on PS5

Great

Screamer is a chaotic arcade racer that excels in high-speed, risk-reward gameplay thanks to its unique Sync/Entropy systems, 4-player split screen and addictive moment-to-moment action. While its main Tournament mode and anime-inspired story add a solid amount of flair, it can feel inconsistent and repetitive at times.

This game was reviewed using a download code provided by PLAION. The Beta Network uses affiliate partnerships, however, this does not influence reviews or any other content published. The Beta Network may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links that are on the website.