Screamer Tips: How to Begin This Unique Racing Journey
Screamer is a remake/ sequel to four mid-90s PC racing games. This new title’s developer, Milestone, made those original games. Milestone’s more recently known for the MotoGP, Ride, Hot Wheels Unleashed, and Monster Energy Supercross games. They obviously know how to construct a racing game, but haven’t made anything truly memorable, until now. Screamer is a story-heavy racing game, with an anime aesthetic, and very unique twin stick controls. Reviewers have been buzzing about this original racing experience (you can read ours here), so COGconnected thought it would be a great idea to give readers some tips when trying out this interesting game for the first time.
1. Play Through the Tournament Narrative First
Tournament is Screamer’s story mode. It also acts like a tutorial and introduces players to the game’s unique mechanics. It took me so many laps to just do 20 seconds of drifting in the first level. It really pays off to have the game ease the player in, one mechanic at a time. Screamer has lots of great multiplayer and online options, but the core gameplay is so different than other racing games, that it really plays off to play through Tournament. I loved the narrative, but players who don’t care about the story can skip all the cutscenes and dialogue.
2. Get Used to Those Drift Controls
The way Screamer’s controls work is that the car accelerates with R2 and brakes with L2. The left joystick steers and the right joystick drifts. Without modifiers, there’s no way to play Screamer like an arcade or kart racer. Imagine, when playing a kart racer, instead of pressing a button to drift, you have to push the right joystick with the right sensitivity while drifting. The player is essentially swinging out the back end of their car to drift. It’s a feeling completely unique to Screamer, and it takes some getting used to. Practice using that right stick.
3. Shift Transmission at the Right Time for Boost
There’s a meter in the bottom left of the screen that shows what gear a car is in. When it gets to the right point for a player to shift up, they have to press L1 to increase their speed. If the player presses L1 with perfect timing, they get a speed boost. At higher speeds, cars enter a “sync gen up” state, where passive sync generation is increased. The meter changes from blue to orange when the car is ready to move up a gear. It’s important to keep an eye on this meter and be ready to shift gears at all times.
When the sync meter fills, the player has the option to activate boost by holding L1 to initiate a quick time event. Releasing L1 when an indicator turns green grants a speed surge, and releasing it when the indicator is yellow results in a longer boost. Characters also have a second entropy meter that can be used to activate attack skills. Practicing and mastering gear shift timing is essential for success in every difficulty mode. Between drifting, watching transmission, and combat, Screamer demands the player pay attention to lots of elements while driving at high speeds.
4. Different Characters Are More Effective on Different Tracks
Different Screamer characters have different stats. But they’re not just for speed, acceleration, durability, etc. Different characters have different skills for boosting, attacking, and defending. Not every character’s skills are ideal for each track. For example, a character could have an ability that makes them explode if they hit a wall while attacking. That character isn’t ideal for a course with lots of turns. They’ll be much more effective on straightaways, and for challenges where they have to take out opponents.
5. Practice Losing and Regaining the Lead
Most racing games just require the player to come in first place. Screamer’s Tournament story mode often has challenges other than simply winning the race. A player might have to take out and attack certain opponents. To do this, players often have to get behind enemies and boost into them. The only way to do this is to have those characters ahead of you. These challenges can be difficult. When trying to master Screamer’s controls, don’t just practice keeping the lead, also practice effective ways to hold a position, and strategically take the lead through boosting and attacking.
6. Don’t Be Afraid to Lower the Difficulty or Toggle Modifiers
Screamer has several options to customize the difficulty. I highly recommend players cast their shame aside, and use these modifiers to ease themselves into Screamer’s gameplay. The game has three difficulty modes: story focus, balanced, and challenge focus. Balanced mode can be really difficult, and might not be an ideal starting point for lots of players. The player can also adjust the AI difficulty and offline game speed separately from the overall difficulty.
There are also driving aid modifiers that can really help to ease the player into Screamer’s gameplay. Arcade throttle keeps the throttle on max, so the player only has to worry about braking. Neural throttle/ brake adds modulation during cornering, helps with exiting corners, and modulates in combat situations. And neural steer/ drift assists handling in corners, avoids wall collision, corrects steering for attacking, and avoids going off trajectory. All of these modifiers make for great training wheels while getting used to Screamer’s a-typical controls. There’s not shame in activating them, and removing them one modifier at a time.
I haven’t felt like anything unique has been done with the racing genre since maybe the sixth console generation. Screamer would have stood apart as an interesting racing title if it just had an emphasis on its narrative. But the game has a wholly unique control system that works really well. Because of this twin stick system, Screamer has a pretty big learning curve. But when everything clicks, and the player starts finishing courses at max speed, without bumping into walls, Screamer’s flow state feels incredible. And even when the player is doing poorly, it’s still fun to play. I hope people discover this unique game, and hope this article helps to ease players into their Screamer journey.
***PS5 code provided by the publisher***