Disintegration Review

Disintegration from V1 Interactive and Private Division is a brand-new first-person shooter with absolutely gorgeous graphics. The development studio was founded by Halo’s co-creator Marcus Lehto and has a lot of hype to live to in that regard. So, is Disintegration worth picking up and does it deliver the first-person shooter goodness we’ve come to expect from similar titles?

In Disintegration, players will take on the role of a human that has had their mind integrated into a robotic being. This grants them a sort of temporary extended life in the form of a robot. The player will control Romer, an “Armature” unit that is freed from his prison cell aboard the Iron Cloud. The Iron Cloud is a massive airborne structure that housed numerous armatures and other robots.

Upon being freed, Romer teams up with some other prisoners and boards a ship. Unfortunately for them though, the ship crashes into the ground below and our group of robots makes their way across a vast wilderness to find an abandoned outpost. At the outpost, they encounter a man by the name of Waggoner. He offers them a place to stay in exchange for some assistance. This is where the game’s key mechanic comes into play. At the outpost, Rezek, the mechanic of the crew, fixes up a Gravcycle. The Gravcycle is piloted by Romer and this is where you as the player come in.

Players will take control of Romer as he pilots the Gravcycle. You can move up, down, left and right and boost forwards. It truly does feel as if you’re piloting some sort of anti-gravity mech in the game and the developers have clearly nailed this. Players will be able to shoot from the Gravcycle as well as issue commands to their squad mates. This is where the game transitions from a traditional FPS into something a lot more complex. It hybridises itself into a real-time strategy game and first-person shooter mixture. Perfectly blended and ready for consumption. Tasty.

In Disintegration, players will control their squad with one mouse button while shooting with the other. Using the keyboard for movement, players will also be able to trigger their squad mates special skills. For example, Doyle can make use of mortars which rain down from above or Coqui can use a concussive blast. This plays into the RTS elements of the game quite substantially since players will want to save their abilities to deal with large groups of enemies or to take out a particular enemy quite quickly.

Unfortunately, Disintegration suffers later in the game. The RTS aspects tend to fall away since the sheer number of enemies on screen and the frantic gameplay turns the game into a more action-orientated full-blown FPS with you as the player ending up doing most of the work. Yes, your squad does participate, but they are just there to assist you in blowing up every single Rayonne “red eyed” enemy you can find.

Upon completing a mission, players will return back to their base of operations and Romer can run around talking to other characters. This, however, is a severely missed opportunity since there isn’t much interaction going on between characters. There’s not much conversation to be had and Romer moves so slowly back at the base that running between characters feels off-putting. Nevertheless, players should definitely speak to everyone back at the base to get the full backstory behind them and to learn more about the game world itself.

The multiplayer aspects of Disintegration are just adequate with three different modes to play. Zone control (Two teams battle for control over various capture points but your Gravcycle doesn’t count as a unit in capturing a point), Collector (Defeat enemies and pick up their “Brain Cans”) and Retrieval (Players compete in two rounds in which the attacking team attempts to deliver an explosive core to areas under the defending team’s control). These are nothing stellar but do add some longevity to the game provided you do actually find a match after queuing. The game’s main campaign will take you around 13 hours to complete or more depending on what difficulty you’re playing on. This is a rather enjoyable campaign but it feels as if it’s already over for the multiplayer of the game with extremely long queue times at the time of this review.

Graphically, Disintegration is absolutely gorgeous. There are many aspects of the game’s graphics which are photorealistic and quite frankly jaw-droppingly beautiful. Grassy open areas, lush forests and gorgeous skyboxes abound. The robots themselves look great too and the flashy effects are pure eye candy. The exceptionally good graphics combined with the fact that a lot of objects in the environments are destructible means that Disintegration is a visual feast. Gorge yourselves on its beauty for there is plenty available. The soundtrack used in the game isn’t exactly mind-blowing or filled with catchy tunes. It’s pretty standard fare throughout but thankfully the voice acting is a cut above this.

Overall, Disintegration is a great RTS/FPS hybrid with an enjoyable story and exceptionally good graphics. The gameplay is fast, frantic and enjoyable and since the campaign is over quite quickly, it doesn’t get stale. It’s a shame the multiplayer is already dying due to a low player base as there could have been a lot of potential enjoyment there with the tactical nature of the gameplay. Given the game’s current high price point, you may want to hold off on purchasing it for now unless you’re fine with its relatively short campaign.

Disintegration was reviewed on PC, the game is also available on Xbox One and PlayStation 4

You can purchase the game on Steam for £39.99 here.

Developer: V1 Interactive
Publisher: Private Division
Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows

If you enjoy games and gaming and want more NEWS from the Gaming World Click Here