Distortions Reviews

absolutely gorgeous graphics and stellar soundtrack. story-driven with a specific path to follow as you try to figure out where you are, who you are, and why you're doing what you're doing. very interesting game play that uses music as a defensive and offensive tool or weapon. there were moments of pretty real terror and deep pathos. suffers from a few minor bugs, but that could also be my (old) graphics card. i totally recommend this for anyone looking for something new and eccentric.

This is the kind of game that started with a great concept and reached misery. Yeah, misery, that's what you feel playing this game. The story is great, the idea of uncover and reorganize memories, etc... very great indeed, but the bad control, continuous camera changing allied with monsters that will kill you almost instantly and unskipable long cutscenes kill the mood. Music is very tied to emotions, and, to me, this game tried to appeal to a series of emotions like hope, sadness, confusion... but failed, imprinting only the fear of having to rewatch a long cutscene or redo a long part of the game due a stupid dead. Producers/Devs, if you have in mind the idea of really fixing this game one day, please, go play DEAR ESTHER before, and learn how you don't need action features to make a good game (like fleeing from monsters when the camera is that bad).

I liked the premises of this game. A lot. And I really want to give a thumbs up. But I can't. The game was full of bugs, many times I had during in-game to remap the commands on my keyboard because designated buttons (default) would't work. Same thing with the controller - a xbox controller by the way (which is the one they say they give support). So... unfortunately I had to ask for a refund. Sad...

So the good news is that this game had some of the most artistically beautiful graphics I've ever seen in a game. The controls are simple and work smoothly. I had difficulty progressing through many parts of the game, and I needed a walkthrough to get me unstuck from not knowing what to do next. The bad part was that I kept freezing up. The music would continue, but my screen was black except for the violin playing graphics. I must have experienced this at least 20 times, and all I could do was quit the game and lose quite a bit of progress back to my last save. Which brings up my pet peeve.....the game only saves when you encounter different save points. I died about a hundred times, so this became an issue having to repeat many difficult scenes. Sometimes I had to leave the game for days before wanting to try it again. My biggest complaint is when I froze up near the ending, when I was on the raft and the commentary was about the King who built the ivory room. That was the end of the game for me - it would never progress beyond that point without freezing up. I resorted to watching a walkthrough to see how it ends. That was sad. In spite of the negative things, believe it or not, I am still recommending this game! Artwork was sensational, music good. Much gameplay was very satisfying and fun. It's very unusual and worth seeing if you are the kind of person that likes a unique game. But be advised, you may have to deal with the freezing up issues until they are hopefully corrected.

Perfect game for a teenage wallflower, because it's modestly gorgeous, and reliably boring. The intro is extensive and the opening five minutes gives a greater and intensely exciting impression the game doesn't live up to, except for the inconsistency of point of view and player control. Cut scenes interrupt as much or as little as three seconds of game play, and "obstacles" are merely inconveniences solved by a long and--[CUT SCENE]--scenic walk. IF you are looking for something styling that's all about finding bits of journal entries so you can solve "what happened" and pretend that the initial evidence doesn't give itself away, then this is the game for you. If you want to play four notes on a violin (a la guitar hero) FINALLY almost two hours into the game, with absolutely NO need to get the notes remotely accurate to pass the vastly remote and very brief challenges, then by all means, drop some valium and zone out. There are no stakes. There is very minimal difficulty in playing other than imploring one's patience. There are no consequential choices, and the character and her situation is hinted at repeatedly without it ever getting interesting. The game developers had a great idea, and it simply doesn't pull off as a game... I'd rather see this as an animation, because the same graphics and concept can be best delivered with a fleshed and concise narrative.

[h1][b]”Despite of design flaws, Distortion is unique ride of remembering and music”[/b][/h1] Indie games always come up with something we used to like or overlook with unique settings. It’s a reason I want to support their idea and share to the others. Distortion is a story-driven adventure developed by Brazilian team which caught my attention last year, not by graphics, but musical gameplay and settings. --------------------------------------------------------- [h1]Coexisting Worlds[/h1] Distortion brings your adventure to unparalleled world. You play a girl wakes up in imaginary place who suffers from amnesia. The only way is to explore and fine fragment of memory from each place and journals. The world of Distortion lives up to its name. It’s surreal, mystery, and connects to event of girl’s past by real-world entities. Yet, it has breathtaking landscape from broken bridge to sky tower built around shaped stones. As you advanced through the story, you will encounter giant masked creature that hold the secret of this world and the violin as the girl learns the power of music to shape up the world. With powerful intro, the story becomes intriguing as the game lets player to learn backstory from environment and set of messages as piece of memories. It’s quite interesting and can be interpreted in different meanings even though it can be confusing at a time and lack of proper to explanation to some players. It still keeps me engaging from memorable scenes to the finale. --------------------------------------------------------- [h1]Adventure of Lone Musician[/h1] The gameplay is involved around exploration, power-based puzzle, and chasing sequence. As musician, your main tool is old violin use for solving puzzle. You explore the area and gain access to power for unlocking another area. Using power is very simple, you equip violin and press/hold on correct note (Do, Re, Mi, Fa). Each power has fixed preset and effectiveness based on your play. It’s not hard and easy to master compared to most rhythm games. There are not much of power types due to simple design of puzzle and platforming. Moreover, you can also play freely or specific note to trigger story event. You will later encounter shadow creatures. They will chase and attack you in certain area and chase sequence. It forces to use approach carefully for exit route and use noise power to avoid detection. Some can be bit tricky and require almost perfect timing where you need to use multiple powers to escape. Luckily, the checkpoints are forgiving, but don’t forget to manually save the progress in cave spot before quit the game. --------------------------------------------------------- [h1]Shaped up by Melody[/h1] The sound designs are quite good and play accordingly to environment. For example; the gusts sound on high ground and indoor echo in water cave. In contrast, shadow creature sounds are terrified and disturbing in good way. There might be some big drop when the action affects various prop and environment and weird audio cut. The original soundtrack is very well composed. It’s charming, powerful, and motivated to keep the feel of wondering and travel despite of looping in long sequence. --------------------------------------------------------- [h1]Stumble in Gap of Darkness[/h1] Although, Distortion has great visual design and interesting gameplay, but technical problems and flawed design can drive some people off. The problems are inconsistent and subjective that some might experience game-breaking bug or crash with certain action. It doesn’t happen in my playthrough, but visual and animation bugs can be visually annoying. For example, the game accidentally drop player during moving platform causes player stuck in loop animation or movement glitches due to geometry design and stiff animation. Transition between sequence (cutscene > third-person) can prevent player movement for few second, this becomes worse when you are in middle of chase sequence. The game also lacks visual guidelines in some areas (especially where you encounter shadow creatures). With timing and lack option of defense, you are mostly overcame by swarm and blindly forced to do trial and error which is frustrating. --------------------------------------------------------- [h1]Performance[/h1] I found the game run quite solid and optimized on my 7 years old hardware with max settings. The game uses dead engine called c4 Engine (probably personal build). It shows impressive render of terrain and keep details from far distance. Unfortunately, it has few frames drop in some area due to amount of additional effects, no option to tone down bloom, and many unpolished levels (floating foliage/trees). --------------------------------------------------------- [h1]Verdict[/h1] In my opinion, Distortion is not a bad game; it’s quite above an average adventure for 7-10 hours experience. It’s ambitious project with many interesting elements, but it requires more testing and polish. If you’re interested in surreal adventure game despite of design flaws, I could give this game a try as it rewards you with powerful consequence and idea about life. [quote][i]If you found this review helpful, please consider and give a thumb up or feedback to improve my review[/i][/quote]

Gameplay from 1997's Resident Evil 1 but done much worse. Story and graphics 8/10 Gameplay -10/10 is almost unplayable. Would you recommend this game? NO.

An interesting premise. Reminds me of games like Remember Me and Hellblade. Beautiful art and music design. Terrible Camera: It variously jumps from first person to top down, to Resident Evil style Camera switching to side-scrolling. This is all touted as a feature but in its current state, it is very much a bug. I haven't gotten very far into the story yet because the tutorial alone is about 45 minutes. Might be a tad expensive in its current state. https://youtu.be/fNRsJ6oHkSg

In Distortions, the good and bad moments mix up so strongly that when one is happening it totally overshadows the other. It is easy to notice that the conception of the story, the script, the dialogues, the creation of the universe, the message, both the main and the small texts scattered throughout the world, was written by someone wich writes well and has excellent ideas. The game in its history is interesting from beginning to end, it does not lose pace, it keeps catching all the time, with absolutely incredible moments like the Museum. The language, the metalanguage, the concepts, and the psychology behind all of its history (which may even be interpreted as an allegory of something deeper) are absolutely fantastic. Aesthetically the game is also wonderful, the surreal elements applied in the nature of mountains, caves, and lots of water give a simply unique aesthetic quality, in several moments of the game you NEED to stop and observe the scenery, it is clear that the care with this part was great, each stone floating, each mountain shape, each irregular path was beautifully done, visually this game is a rejoice to the eyes. Some moments (thankfully few) you need to escape from "shadows", the creatures that inhabit this "world" are aggressive and try to kill you if you get too close, the idea is not so bad (but would not be bad if it did not exist) but the mechanics of this situation are so ridiculously poorly made that it seems to us that the game makers did not bother to play these parts, and I do not say this because it's a difficult part, King Dice in Cuphead is difficult, Nightmare King Grimm in Hollow Knight is difficult, the shadows in Distortions are only unbalanced, poorly timed and very problematic on the controls. They hit on choosing to put a few moments with these creatures, but these few moments are so frustrating that he can put himself in a position to completely ruin such an incredible game. A game concerned with aesthetics and message does not have to be something difficult to be memorable, it would be no problem none if it was, since control, programming and balancing were well done. And the biggest and worst part of all is, undoubtedly, the final escape of the monster that besides having all these problems (even more problematic) still has something extremely annoying that, in scape, you have in several moments the camera changing angle, which makes the control get totally messy which makes you get caught by pure programming problem. I find it sad that I can not recommend a game as unique and captivating as this, but I would feel bad for getting people to go through some bad experiences in it (note that I'm completely ignoring the bugs I've seen a lot of people complaining about). I do not know if it is possible, but if they did an update fixing these issues would be fantastic, be able to recommend and revisit this game. To be able to walk for hours through such beautiful scenery without thinking of the discouragement that is the part that the shadows appear. Even if they relaunched the game by changing ONLY these questions, I would definitely buy, because fixing the defects that so much damage a work of art like this one is not at all shameful, on the contrary, it is putting the game at a very high level.

Great graphics/visuals, sounds and story... However, there are some aspects to this game which makes it barly playable / annoying (I did finish the entire game). Now, below are the reasons why i would not recommend this game to anyone (even if the story is pretty good). 1: The jump mechanics are super bad, I mean sometimes you will jump twice the distance than you do normally. But the worst part.... the WORST part about jumping, is when you are creating these "bridges/platforms". When you do a jump towards your "bridge" the character will land on it and take an extra step, this extra step makes you fall off the platform 9/10 times. This is annoying because you need to be able to do 3-4 of these bridge jumps in a row sometime without a checkpoint and if you fail you will have to rewatch that minor cutscene and redo all of those jumps again. (Honestly, my controller almost went out my window due to this shit) 2: The camera angles in this game are super wierd and changes frequently in fights. You might be running away from something and then the camera angle rotates 180 in a split second, this means you have to change direction from "->" to "<-" or you would start running back the way you came from. This is annoying as the camera changes alot (even in boss fights). 3: Not to spoil to much, there is a part where you will be on a boat, its super slow, super buggy and just ruins all the fun... 4: Last thing, the character running mechanics is also bad. She can run for like 3-4 seconds before she is out of breath and then you need to wait 3-4 seconds before she can run again.. I mean, comon its not hard to run for longer than 4 seconds..... All in all, the controller mechanics and camera angels are super wierd and annoying, if you can live with that I would say go buy the game for its story/music/visuals. But I will not recommend this game due to the buggy implementation of core features such as character physics / camera angles / controller mechanics.