Drift king



Ed (RPS in peace) has, finally, posthumously, got his wish: another Screamer. This one’s gone all cyberpunk and/or anime-styled, with a heavy focus on story – it follows multiple, multinational merc-drivers entering a lightly murderous racing tournament – but can it still deliver on drifty driving thrills? After much practice, Mark and James both avoided clattering into the track barriers long enough to find out.

James: Mark, I might need to lean on you for accurate automotive lingo here – my notes on Screamer’s car handling are hastily scribbled nonsense like "scampery" and "easy to get the arse out." I can advocate later for the practice of always going near-perpendicular through every slight bend, but as our resident expert, how do you find Screamer as a straight-up racing game?

Mark: At first, I was fairly convinced that Screamer’s controls and I weren’t going to get on. The crux of my issue was how the ability to drift is tied to flicking out the controller's right stick in corners, independently of the steering you’re doing with the left stick, or how much throttle/brake you’re applying at any given time. As a result, the sliding that’s key to getting around Screamer’s twisty tracks quickly feels detached from the typical driving inputs every racing game has, which certainly takes a bit of getting used to.



Once I got into the rhythm of it, though, I found it no barrier to slicing around courses feeling as satisfying as it should in any boost-happy arcade racer. My feelings were a bit more mixed when it comes to how unforgiving Screamer’s walls can be. As someone trained by the likes of Burnout and Need For Speed that the occasional bounce off the scenery is a often a perfectly fine substitute for actually using the brakes (provided you don’t hit hard enough to totally wreck your car), learning to stay off the guardrails as much as possible - in order to avoid having my speed halved - has been tough.

James: I love the twin-stick setup, in all honesty – get to grips and it's essentially the power to fine-tune how you attack tricky corners, but there are also loads of long, loping turns that let you keep the back wheels pushed all the way out while just utterly flooring it for the full duration of the bend. That, to me, is arcade drifting heaven, of a gleefully exaggerated kind that I haven’t really enjoyed since those Burnouts. There’s enough weight and engine growl, too, that slipping around like this doesn’t feel too floaty or airy.

It’s definitely super-punishing of muckups, though. Besides eating your KP/H, it’s harsh that bumping the sides also costs Sync – the gradually earned technobullshit gauge that powers boosts and, by extension, the ramming ability that forms the backbone of Screamer’s vehicular combat. I like the resource management aspect in theory, as it adds a degree of tactical thinking to what might have otherwise been a simplistic, almost instinct-based racer, but is it not a bit strange to make the breakneck thrashing-about so appealing, only to then encourage the more clinical, careful style you need to maintain Sync buildup? I struggled with that disconnect a lot on some of the tougher story races.

Mark: Speaking of the tougher story races, there are plenty I’ve had to try multiple times on my way through. Typically it’s been ones that require successfully hitting certain opponents with knockout attacks - which see your car lunge towards them for a fatal swerve, powered-up by a meter which charges as you boost - and also demand you finish above a certain position. At the start of each race, it typically takes at least half a lap or so for your boost and attack meters to charge up so you can start using them. That’s fine on its own, but in this context it stops you from trying to rack up knockouts early doors when the field of foes is most tightly packed together.



As the laps tick by, big gaps tend to form between runners, so if you’ve got to knock out someone who’s running in a lowl...Read more: Full article on www.rockpapershotgun.com

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