Screamer Review: Chess on Wheels

1995 was the era of dial-up modems, beige tower PCs, and a racing scene riding high on the coattails of Ridge Racer’s PlayStation debut. For those without a PlayStation, the original Screamer—a PC-exclusive from Italian developer Milestone S.r.l. (then known as Graffiti)—was a real eye-opener. It was brash, fast, polygonally primitive, gloriously fun, and famous for letting your car genuinely flip and crumple in ways the home console competition couldn’t quite manage. It was followed by Screamer 2, and later sequels pivoted into rally and 4×4 territory before the franchise quietly retired around the year 2000, fading behind bigger names like Need for Speed and Gran Turismo.

Screamer (2026) marks developer Milestone S.r.l.’s first arcade racer in nearly three decades, as they’re now mostly recognized for crafting meticulous, niche motorcycle sims like MotoGP and Ride. However, this Screamer shares only one thing with its ancestor: the name on the box. Everything else has been torn down and rebuilt from scratch as a narrative-heavy, cyberpunk-flavored, anime-inspired spectacle with the combat sensibility of a fighting game smuggled inside a racing game. It’s the kind of project that only happens when a studio is given full creative freedom—and the result is one of the most distinctive racers in over a decade.

Screamer was released on March 26, 2026, for Xbox, PlayStation, and PC.

The Echo of Neo Rey

Screamer is based in Neo Rey, a fictional sprawling megalopolis that bears a striking resemblance to Akira’s Neo-Tokyo with splashes of the rain-slicked neon of Blade Runner and the kinetic energy of every great 90s racing anime you may have half-remembered. The city is a powder keg of corporate corruption, crime syndicates, washed-up pop stars, and military veterans — and somebody has decided to set the whole thing on fire with a racing tournament.

The game-changer and the entity central to all of this is the Echo system: a mysterious tech installed in every ride at the tournament. It gives the players four core abilities: Boost, Shield, Strike, and Overdrive, turning every race into a high-stakes chess match between cars blazing above 200 miles an hour. But the most prominent thing about Echo is that it also saves the rider from certain death if their ride goes boom, but it is also confined to the tournament area. So if a rider tries to leave the tournament with the Echo system installed in their ride, that results in an explosion, killing the rider instantly.

The game’s most striking feature is its art style, drawing heavily from classics like Akira, Gurren Lagann, and the golden era of action anime from the late ’80s to mid-2000s, with that influence shining through every frame. The anime cutscenes, created by Polygon Pictures—the Japanese studio behind Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Granblue Fantasy: Relink—are so gorgeous that the 2D sprite-based scenes can’t quite compete. I only wish the studio had the budget to animate the entire game; honestly, I’d pay good money to watch it on one of my OTT subscriptions. Plus, with fictional cars in play, there are no licensing issues, meaning, unlike some beloved titles, this one will never be delisted.

Every Face Has a Story to Tell

Five teams. Fifteen racers. Each trio is built around a distinct identity—visual, narrative, and mechanical—and the game is generous enough to put you behind the wheel of every single one across its campaign. Here, every driver is a person with a past and a reason to be furious about it.

Speaking of the factions, there’s the Green Reapers—a former military group made up of Hiroshi, Frederic Barthélemy, and Róisín—on a mission to avenge their fallen leaders. Then there’s the notorious villainous trio, the Anaconda Corp., a mega-conglomerate-backed team led by Gabriel, determined to prove himself a worthy successor to the corporation after his mother. We also have the Jupiter Stormers, headed by Aisha; Strike Force Romanda, led by the kawaii pop icon Ritsuko; and the surprise wildcard entry, Kagawa-Kai, led by the legendary Masato, a renowned screamer from his glory days.

Overall, I really enjoyed the cast, and the voice acting was quite good. What stood out even more was that everyone spoke their own language with a distinct accent. Japanese, German, French, English — the characters communicated in their native tongues, with subtitles throughout. This choice grounded the game’s global cast in a way the genre rarely attempts, adding an authenticity to the tournament’s international scope that would be lost if everyone spoke the same accent-free American English most racing games default to. From Róisín’s Irish English lilt to Aisha’s Hindi accent reminiscent of Mumbai, it truly feels like the whole world is part of this race.

The Thing that makes Screamer so Unique but Also Somehow Kills it

Whether it’s Forza, Need for Speed, Gran Turismo, or even Assetto Corsa, Screamer offers a more unique experience because of how it plays. Its standout feature is the control scheme—drifting is handled with the right stick while steering is on the left. There’s no automatic transmission, so you’ll need to use L1 (LB on XInput) to shift gears, called the active shift system, which also executes “boosts” that work like a nitrous system but with a razor-thin window to hit that perfect burst of speed.

Drifting with the right stick reminded me of the dodging system in God of War 3, which had a similar control setup. The game heavily emphasizes drifting and boosting to win races, with ruthless AI that pulls off these moves flawlessly, making some races so frustrating that even on Story difficulty, they’re still tough to beat. While a patch fixed particularly annoying sections like events 23 and 32, there’s still a lot to be done to make it fun for casual arcade players. It has a steep learning curve, but with some smart tweaks, it could feel more rewarding instead of forcing you to retry a race ten times in a row.

Part of the problem comes from the ineffective and at times useless steering response in some cars, which doesn’t provide the necessary turning radius to maintain speed through curves. As for the tracks, while the game boasts over 32 of them, most are set in just four environments—the same neon-lit cityscape, the same forest stretch, the same desert road, and the same sky-road layout repeated multiple times. The tracks are well designed, on par with those in sim racing titles, but a greater variety would have definitely been an improvement.

One Can’t Chill While Playing Chess on Wheels

Despite its challenges, if you stick with it and develop the necessary muscle memory, the Screamer in you can truly shine. If you’re looking for a laid-back arcade racing experience like Forza Horizon, this isn’t the game for you. But if you’re patient and enjoy clawing out small leads, using the tracks to your advantage much like in Gran Turismo, this could be the arcade experience you’ve been searching for. In the end, it either wins you completely or loses you at the door. 

Once you finish its tutorial chapters—which are pretty long—you unlock all the Echo abilities and can use them to your advantage. The Echo System adds an extra combat layer, where burning your Sync meter to boost generates Entropy. This can be spent to briefly turn your car into an invincible battering ram that knocks opponents out of the race temporarily. When knocked out, they respawn and drop Sync for you to collect. Shields block incoming Strikes, but Strikes can be canceled mid-windup as a feint to bait the shield, then reactivated once it drops. It might sound complicated, but in practice it’s a thrilling bit of game theory—reading rivals, juggling two meters, and deciding when to go all-in or play it safe.

When everything clicks into place, and a race flows effortlessly—the rhythm building with clean upshifts, the car gliding smoothly through corners with a perfectly controlled right-stick drift, and a well-timed strike landing just right—Screamer delivers an exhilarating racing high. The sense of speed shines on modern hardware; cars feel firmly planted yet still hit blistering velocities that make your eyes water. Once you’ve mastered the controls, you’re ready for its online multiplayer and local multiplayer modes, complete with 4-player split screen. In an era where split-screen games are rare, this one truly feels like a breath of fresh air.

Real Talk

Screamer is one of the most unique and challenging arcade racers ever made. It is bold, stylish, and deeply satisfying. Its twin-stick racing system has a steep learning curve that demands commitment, which may scare off casual players, but for enthusiasts, this might just be the next cult classic that will be remembered for a long time. Its neon-soaked, anime-inspired presentation delivers one of the best narratives in racing games we’ve experienced in over a decade.

FINAL SCORE: 85/100