A New Game Endures; or, Screamer Still Kinda Claps!

Having been announced at the 2024 Game Awards, today marks about two and a half years since I was made aware of Milestone's latest entry into the racing game genre. Screamer, a reboot of an old racing game franchise from the MS-DOS days when Milestone was then known as Graffiti, initially hooked me HARD. Cyberpunk has always caught my eye as an aesthetic, and CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077 left me badly wishing for a good racing game with that kind of vehicle design. So, when Screamer's announcement trailer hit while I was watching the awards, I flipped my shit. Because of course I did. However, once gameplay trailers were released, that excitement almost immediately died. Screamer wasn't going to be like any other racing game I've enjoyed in the past - it, like Inertial Drift before it, was going to have twin-stick driving controls. I toiled and tossed about the game, wishing I could enjoy it but knowing I didn't feel 'connected' to Inertial Drift's control scheme and thus likely…