CHAIRQASITION: Distance 1.0

This week your intrepid heroes race up walls, explode, and wonder why this game took six years to make. Distance faces, the CHAIRQASITION!

Game: Distance
Webzone: Distance
Devel: Refract
Engine: Unity
Price: £19.49

Wazzat: Distance is an atmospheric racing platformer. Fusing futuristic arcade racing with parkour, survive a deadly, mysterious, neon-drenched city by jumping, rotating, and flying.


CHAIRQUISITION:
– Nooope

– Not sure if want

– Check it out

– Shutupandtakemymonies


Venn:

Does It Launch

  • No issues.

Performance @ 1080

  • 120 @ 1080 and low 50’s at 2160.

Graphics

  • Dark, more on that @ 11.

Control

  • Yall cocked up the button prompts but you can still rebind everything.

Jordan:

Does It Launch

  • Yerp. Really likes my samsung monitor for some raisin

Performance @ 1080

  • With everything up to 11, I still get about 200 ferps @1080
  • Holds about 100 in game @ UHD

Graphics

  • They’re very trippy

Control

  • For whatever reason, the game doesn’t like my dualshock or steam controller. Had to dust off the ol’ USB xbox controller
  • Also, guys, you’ve been in development as long as we’ve been making this fucking show. Figure out how to do controller specific button prompts
  • Do you know what button 5 on an Xbox controller is? I do! I HAD TO LOOK IT UP

Pedro:

Does It Launch

  • On the SteamBox it freezes after 30 seconds, but that may have something to do with the fact that the Ryzen 5 2400G is still very poorly supported on Linux in general.
  • But over here on the desktop with the Ryzen 5 1600 and the GTX 1080, no issues

Performance @ 1080

  • Some tracks the FerPS dips to the 60s at 1080
  • At 3840×2160 those same tracks dip to the 30s.

Graphics

  • I hadn’t seen z fighting textures since Victor Vran released the Motorhead DLC.
  • Though, judging by how the fighting makes those “textures” disappear, I’m more inclined to think it’s Z Fighting Tessellation.
  • There’s also some issues at 3840×2160 which cause seizuretastic flickers and, on some tracks, they just don’t render at all. The screen just stays black.

Control

  • You can rebind everything.

QA Score:

Fedora:   
Soulless:
Ubuntu:   


Fun?:

  • Venn:

    • I hate being right.
    • The “story mode” (so far) is a 5 minute tutorial stretched out to 30+ with some random VO in the background.
    • And it randomly locks your ability to fly at times.
    • Alright, Story mode is a massive waste of time and energy so what about the Arcade Mode?
    • It’s a collection of Workshop tracks with a few Refract classics smattered about.
    • You can try and frame this as “we love our community soo much we included Workshop Tracks into our final product to showcase their skills” or you could simply call it what it is, lazy.
    • Playing Workshop tracks was already an option, Refract.
    • Empty brought up a good point on last night’s stream.
    • Most (if not all) of the included Workshop tracks were designed by people who have played Distance for years and wanted something more challenging.
    • For the new player these levels come off as something akin to impossible levels from Mario Maker.
    • At the end of the day what you get for $24.99 is a single player arcade racer where your only opponent is the track.
    • It’s forever alone mode with no AI, no collisions, just ghosts.
    • And that’s it’s biggest sin.
    • Distance went from a promising neon TRON game of OMG pretty to post apocalyptic nope-scape filled with cheap shots and shite lighting.
      • Yes, the shite lighting is used to hide the cheap shots on the track.
    • Not angry, just massively disappointed.
  • Jordan:

    • Most racing games I don’t really grok, and distance isn’t an exception’
    • I guess I’m not that good at carkour, and this game makes no qualms about shoving it in my face
    • Story mode? I guess if you want to have a reason to drive from point a to point b.
    • It looks alright, despite being dark AF
    • The Arcade mode tracks are OK I guess
    • I typed out the entire lyrics to sir mix a lot’s “I like big butts” into the trackmogrifier and it made the easiest fucking track I’ve ever played
    • Honestly, for 6 years of development and fine tuning, I’m not horribly impressed. Sure the game looks good and has decent controls (when you’re using the right controller), but short of carkour It doesn’t seem to do anything revolutionary
  • Pedro:

    • 58 minutes, that’s how long it took me to destroy the single player campaign they had been promising for several months.
    • Even got the speedracist-runner achievement to prove it.
    • Having the Nitronic Rush levels included in a remastered style form was a nice touch
    • What wasn’t a nice touch, as Venn pointed out, were the workshop levels.
    • And if you watch the Stream from Friday, people weren’t having fun with those levels.
    • Or the official levels with z fighting.
    • That used to be a staple of Unity games back in the olden times of Unity 3.
    • That said, I did really enjoy the atmosphere and design of the campaign.
    • Not sure I’d call it worth the long, LONG wait but it was really nice.
    • Despite the poor choice of Workshop levels given official status, I do still very much enjoy Distance.
    • And they did fix the horrible performance the last few betas introduced.
    • It doesn’t look like it has 6 years of “Early Access” behind it but it’s still pretty fun to play multiplayer and the atmosphere they so promise does indeed seem to be there for the single player.

Fun Score:

Venn:   
Jordan:
Pedro:   

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