I've got several Friends that completely wrote the game off because of stupid nitpicks. It took developers away from ride 6 and that's why it's bad, The art style between the cutscenes and the real game conflict, It's a milestone game It can't be that good, The visual novel sections aren't laid out correctly, the translations aren't perfect, twin stick drifting bad... I mean I streamed it for 2 hours for them just to have a good look at it and they did nothing but bitch and bitch and bitch...
Okay, great I don't care about any of that. The game has probably the most intelligent boost and combat system I think I've ever seen in a racing game and it's incredibly fun. It's the first arcade racer that rewards you for driving well instead of driving dangerously. That's cool. Plus I appreciate a racing game having an actually intelligently written story, Even if the writing is a tiny bit of a rollercoaster between edgy and serious.
Literally the only criticism that I think was valid out of all the things that they said, the price. Apparently milestone didn't do any regional pricing, so although the game was mostly fairly priced here in the US, apparently around the world it is f****** ridiculous. I can sympathize with that. But almost every other problem they had was nitpicks and criticisms that are in my opinion totally unfair because they're judging it against a game that doesn't exist.
Screamer does exist and it's a very good game. Perfect, No, but worthy of building off of absolutely.