Disintegration is the debut title from developer V1 Interactive, whose president and creative director – Marcus Lehto – was a co-creator of the Halo franchise and a former creative director at Bungie. Published by Take-Two Interactive, Disintegration aims to set itself apart by fusing two unlikely genres in order to synergistically create something new. With aspects of both a First-Person Shooter as well as a Real-Time Strategy games, Disintegration is a brand new type of game all on its own. But is it greater than the sum of its parts, or does it fail to even get off the ground? Here’s our review of Disintegration.
STORY INTEGRATION
The story of Disintegration centers around this new technology that allows humans to integrate their minds into what are essentially immortal, mechanical bodies. This science was initially optional and was supposed to be temporary, but over time became mandatory for humans to integrate with these new machine bodies. Now, the machines are trying to get integrate everyone and is trying to convince them to throw their humanity and free will away.
Our main hero, Romer, is one of the few integrated persons left that still has his free choice. He escapes a prison ship with the aid of a ragtag group of Outlaws, who are fighting to keep their humanity intact. Shortly thereafter, they meet up with a mysterious old and seemingly blind human called Wagoner. All this story gets explained to you in the very beginning, very quickly, and I had to go back to listen again just to understand the story.
That said, I enjoyed the journey that Disintegration took me on, and I loved seeing how the characters evolved and grew. Unfortunately, these character developments were marred by subpar voice acting. Thankfully, Romer’s performance is decent enough and offers believability, but the rest of the Outlaws came across more as caricatures than believable personas.
ASSIMILATE THE ART
The design and art style of Disintegration bear a strong resemblance to other games; from the initial setting, which looks like an area straight out of Halo, to the character designs that bear an uncanny likeness to Exo characters in Destiny. The world of Disintegration, albeit pretty, looks like a jumbled mess of inspirations from other games. It should be no surprise since Marcus Lehto, the creative director for Disintegration, was such a pivotal developer to both of those franchises.
Although the more I played Disintegration, the more nuances that are in the art style did pop out to me. Despite the characters looking like extras taken out of Bioware’s Anthem, there were components and traits unique to certain characters that give them a sense of individuality. For example, one of the bigger mech units, Doyle, has a mud flap behind his leg that says, “BACK OFF!” that matches his prickly personality perfectly.
Unfortunately, unlike in Destiny and Anthem, the textures to character models don’t quite have the shine or sheen like they should, and even the faded paint on the walls just looks like a bad texture rendering and not an artistic choice. Disintegration looks beautiful from a distance – which is where most of the gameplay unfolds, flying high in a gravcycle away from the melee – but it doesn’t hold up under scrutiny.
MERGING MISSIONS
The way that gameplay in Disintegration shakes out is going mission by mission, commanding a group of Outlaws, and completing objectives to further the Outlaws’ fight against the tyrannical machines. The missions are extremely linear and there’s not much incentive for going off the beaten path to go exploring. That said, there are still salvageable containers to collect and side objectives to complete in each mission that offer replay ability.
Yes, missions can be replayed at any point in the story. There are four difficulty modes, ranging from Story mode, which requires almost no tactical command of units, up to Outlaw mode, which requires extremely strategic and conservative play. This lets you re-attempt missions at a harder difficulty, but sadly there is no benefit to opting for a higher difficulty at this time. Once I figured out there was no benefit, I turned the difficulty down to Story mode just to enjoy the gameplay and the story.
The downtime in-between missions allow for you to catch up with your fellow Outlaws; to learn more about their character and to flesh out the world. There are certain aspects of lore that can only be discovered the way, like how during the time Romer was held captive he was segregated alone whereas most of the other Outlaws were grouped together. It’s a small touch of world-building that I appreciated since the alternative would be even more exposition during missions themselves.
The locales visited during missions are some of my most memorable times with Disintegration, since the world is so breathtakingly gorgeous. From the turning leaves of autumn up in the Rocky Mountains, to dense city scapes, and even to an arid desert, the locations are gorgeous and beautifully detailed.
Some of the missions have unique and interesting mechanics included in them. For example, there was a mission that an EMP pulse kept frequently going off and would damage Romer and my team unless we found shelter within these special spheres that negated the EMP. In another mission, I had the pleasure to push the payload for a vehicle. This reminded me of Overwatch and made me smile, even though pushing the payload was only a small aspect of that mission.
SYNERGIZED COMBAT
The combat in Disintegration is among the most unique systems I’ve ever played. Not only do you control Romer flying his gravcycle and shoot like in an FPS, but you also have a squad of units to command on the ground. Advanced players will utilize both in order to strategically dominate the day. I had a bit of difficulty starting out and trying to get used to this new system of multi-tasking, but I think Disintegration does a good job in pacing the introduction to mechanics and slowly building up your familiarity with the systems. That said, it is entirely possible to play Disintegration like a straight-FPS rather than as a tactical game at all.
Dropping the difficulty down to Story mode made the combat feel like a DOOM game; albeit a very floaty doom (literally, you’re floating). This feeling is even more prevalent during the mission where you unlock a new shotgun weapon for the gravcycle. By contrast, anything above Recruit difficulty must be played slowly and tactically, or else you and your forces will be overwhelmed – leading to a more CRPG-lite feel. I personally just prefer the Story or Recruit difficulty, which keeps combat light enough for me to finish missions within 20-30 minutes as opposed to almost an hour when I played a mission in Outlaw mode.
The loadouts for missions are set and cannot be customized at all to either swap out units or change the weapons available on the gravcycle. It threw me off when the healing gun I was familiar with shooting at my guys was suddenly replace with a 20-second cooldown healing ability instead – they both perform the same function, so why even bother forcing me to swap them? Missions where there was no healing ability given were exceptionally tricky, and required a different way of approaching them in order to ensure my team survived.
I really would have liked to set up my own loadouts for missions, especially after unlocking so many new weapons to use on the gravcycle. The twin machine guns I was using in the beginning quickly changed into a pair of shotguns, then a sniper rifle, and then a sticky grenade launcher as I went through the first several missions. These were great to try out, but why can’t I go back and play completed missions with a custom loadout, instead of being shoehorned into a specific gameplay style for that map?
SYSTEM INFRASTRUCTURE
This time in-between is also used to pick up quests for the next mission, which initially all guided objectives that are designed to teach through repetition the skills of certain units. For example, my first mission with the big mech guy, Doyle, had me utilize his Mortar Strike skill to kill 25 enemies. This had me looking for those opportunities where I could easily wipe out groups of enemies using his skills, rather than using it against the more powerful enemies for additional DPS.
These quests will award upgrade chips upon the end of a mission. These can be used before setting off on new missions to upgrade aspects of both Romer and his crew. Weapon damage, Health regeneration rate, faster Ability recharging, and maximum health are some of the upgradeable options for both Romer and the team.
There are salvageable points around in missions as well, which show up as green highlights when looking through in scan mode. Salvage is used as experience in Disintegration and is awarded to Romer at the end of a mission. By leveling up, further ranks can be increased in abilities with upgrade chips. Sometimes, the salvage caches that can be found may have upgrade chips in them as well which make it easier to upgrade.
MULTIPLAYER MAYHEM
The Multiplayer mode of Disintegration is like a mix of Call of Duty and Overwatch. There are 9 different crews to choose from, each with a unique cosmetic style, weapon, and abilities to use that make them feel like individual hero characters from Overwatch. Just like with the campaign though (and in Overwatch), weapons and abilities cannot be swapped out or customized. Each crew feels notably different, with some like The Business and Neon Dreams able to maneuver more easily and whose gravcycles are nimbler.
What I didn’t like about the different crews is that there is no easily recognizable way to distinguish between how these different crews operate. I wish they could include Overwatch-like icons next to the crews so that I can tell which ones are speed-types, which ones are heavy offensive types, and which ones are durable tanks.
Much like Call of Duty, the Multiplayer in Disintegration offers Badges, Banners, and Emotes. The Badge Editor specifically is about as in-depth as CoD’s is, so fans can customize their perfect logo to their heart’s content. Also, like Call of Duty, there are microtransactions; luckily, the only items I saw available for purchase was to unlock skins for the gravcycles and crews, pilot skins, and attachments (which act as trophies or keychains to put on the gravcycle.)
The real meat of Multiplayer is in the three different game modes: Zone Control, Collector, and Retrieval. The Zone Control mode is exactly like ‘Domination’, Collector is pretty much exactly ‘Kill Confirmed’, and Retrieval is comparable to ‘Plunder’ from Call of Duty: Warzone. There’s also a Quickplay for matchmaking, which queues for all of the game modes at once. Matches are all 5v5 and you are commanding a squad in addition to piloting the gravcycle. I do like that it’s team-oriented instead of just a free-for-all.
OVERALL IMPRESSIONS
There’s not much during the 15-hour long campaign to really provide much more depth to this story, and I ultimately found the ending to be lackluster. There’s no incentive to go back and replay missions other than to collect all of the salvage and complete the side objectives. Although I didn’t get to play a lot of the Multiplayer, I think that it will be a pivotal part in keeping Disintegration from feeling too stale or getting old. There’s no season pass announced yet, but I imagine that V1 Interactive will be providing content updates to Disintegration’s Multiplayer mode in order to keep players coming back.
You can easily see the inspirations that went into Disintegration, from Destiny and Anthem to Call of Duty and even Overwatch, there is a lot of influences on display throughout both the campaign and multiplayer modes. Which isn’t to say that it’s a bad thing, but sometimes it feels like Disintegration just doesn’t know what it wants to be. The blending of FPS and RTS gameplay elements makes it unique, but I feel like it struggles to really settle into an identity for itself and tries to pull a lot of different ideas together that don’t always synergize. The world is beautifully striking, but the devil is in the details and I expected my robotic-companions’ metallic shells to shine with the luster and sheen that I would see in any other robot. It’s too bad that Disintegration, much like its metallic characters, feels cheap and plasticky instead.
