If you combined — TrackMania, Krautscape and Thumper — something along the lines of Distance would likely pop out.
I realize those are relatively niche and/or unknown titles. But those are the games I think of when I think of Distance.
What is 'Distance' anyways?
Well, it's a mixed bag really. It does have traditional TrackMania style races. But it also has creepy and atmospheric sci-fi themed narratively-suggestive campaigns. Plus it also has a ton of user made tracks and online leaderboards. It features tracks that can be auto-generated with seed variants, technically adding infinite replay value. However, I would be hard-pressed to find anyone that really got a lot out of those tracks. They tend to not be that interesting.
Mechanically, this game behaves a bit closer to a platformer than a traditional racer. You'll have normal steering, for an arcade racer — and you'll have nitro boosts. Distance differs in that certain tracks will allow flight, and some tracks will have varying gravity wherein you'll need to also activate boosters on the roof of the car to maintain traction on the road or avoid obstacles by staying low. Most tracks will also have you performing 90-180° jumps onto new road pieces. Something analogous to “GRIP” or “Rollcage” looking further back.
Bread and Butter:
The core of this game is largely in its Arcade mode where the sprint, challenge and stunt tracks are located. You'll race against real player's times as ghosts i.e. TrackMania style. Though, they aren't “live” races in this mode. It does have multiplayer, however.
Sprint tracks are all relatively strait-froward and focus on “nitro management” — kind of like ExciteBike on NES where you'd need to drive over arrows to cool the engine. Distance checkpoints/respawn gates also cool your engine. Challenge tracks do not allow respawns and stunt tracks involve performing flips or stunts like wall rides to accumule points as you may suspect.
But I find the campaigns to be the most interesting aspect.
Campaigns:
Distance features three separate narratively driven campaigns. You'll need to complete them successively to earn the next. These campaigns are more Thumper than TrackMania in nature — minus the rhythm part.
They all have introduction cutscenes.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2452082882
The story is told through the environment and the overhead voice announcements. In the first campaign, it'll cite things like the station has lost power and life support systems are failing all while a vaguely threatening corruption temporarily shows up and warps the map and music — glitching the environment.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2452082862
The overhead announcements will inform you that power is being re-routed to a teleportation device, you've got a clock right on the back of the car for when the jump to sub-space will occur. [spoiler]Don't worry, it's a narrative clock.[/spoiler] Eventually, once successfully thwarting the death-defying obstacles that await you in trying to get to this teleporter, you'll be met with the corruption itself in a pseudo boss-battle. This is a theme throughout the other campaigns (as well as in Thumper.)
The campaigns are not that long, each shorter than the last, but they're my favorite part of the game.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2452082841
When traveling outside the station the sound will drop out, it's very atmospheric. It exists in staunch contrast to the cityscapes present inside the structure.
- — “Adventure” is the main campaign about what I've stated.
- — “Lost to Echoes” is the second campaign, I found this campaign a lot less interesting narratively, but much harder difficulty wise. The tracks themselves have more intricate jumps and the checkpoints are fewer. And it does not allow flight.
- — “Nexus” is the last official campaign, it's also the shortest. But requires flight mastery to navigate its winding paths. Narratively this one is about trying upload important data.
The Gist:
I can't say the average person would honestly get a lot out of this title. But if you're into challenging fast-paced platform-racing or vaguely story-driven creepy vibes then it's very likely you'd enjoy this game. For my interest personally, I don't find many of the user tracks to be highly engaging. I found the campaign tracks “curated” design to be much more satisfying to overcome after many failures.
I also simply enjoyed the premise of racing against what appears to be some sort of malevolent AI taking over a space station as [presumably] humanity reaches into the stars. I can recommend it on sale as I feel the game is a tad overpriced for what it offers. It does have a high level of production value, though.
Zitat:
If you've read this far, consider following my curation —
Station Argus
