Disintegration Review English – Test of the Sci-fi Shooter + real-time strategy mix

Disintegration: A 3D first-person shooter with some RTS mechanics, a dark robot future, and a halo – masterchief developer, what comes out of mixing this?

Disintegration is a mix of 3D FPS First-Person Shooter and RTS real-time strategy that was released for Playstation PS4, XBox One and PC (Steam). In a dystopian future, humanity almost died out due to a destroyed nature and a plague, and they decided to digitalize their brains and put them into robots, a process called integration. After this has been going on for a long time, a radical group does not want some people to want to become human again and war arises between the radical supporters of integration and those who want to reboot humanity.

German Version:

This article is available here as text, but also as a YouTube video (German voice-over, many subtitles). This way you can choose how you would like to enjoy it most.

Video:

German voice-over, many subtitles

Disintegration Review – Test -Intro

Hi there, it’s the Zap. In this post I would like to introduce you to the game Disintegration. I show you everything interesting about the game and in the end there is a rating from me. But most importantly, I want to give you all the information that will help you decide for yourself if the game could be something for you.

I have received a free evaluation sample from the Publisher Private Division, my thanks for that. But I always play all games with the thought in mind, how would I feel if I paid the full price?

Background

Disintegration is developed by V1 Interactive. This is a brand-new studio, but it was founded by a veteran of the team behind the legendary Halo. Marcus Letho was one of the Creative Art Directors at Bungie Studios, the software company known for the Halo series and currently for Destiny 1 and 2.

Letho worked at Bungie for 15 years before quitting in 2012 to become an independent developer. And with V1 Interactive, he has now put together a 30-person team that, with Disintegration, has brought their debut work to the market.

Game Type

Disintegration is a very special mixture of different genres. It combines first person shooter with real time strategy and packages this in a very attractive SCi-Fi 3D world, which we usually travel through on a hoverbike.

In a distant future, we are the leaders of a team of robot soldiers, each with special skills. We lead the group into battle, set goals, trigger the skills of our companions and simultaneously accompany the team in a hoverbike with changing cannons and healing skills.

Disintegration offers a single player campaign and in addition a competitive multiplayer shooter. Both game modes are strictly separated from each other. So you can decide for yourself if you want to play alone or if you want to engage in multiplayer PvP matches. But especially if this multiplayer part appeals to you, you should wait for the later part of the review.

Gameplay – Story and Characters

We are playing Romer Shoal, a former advertising medium of the Rayonne Corporation, which is responsible for the transfer of human brains into robots in the future of the earth. This was first planned to save the earth, but after some time it turned out to be a pretty bad idea, because Rayonne took more or less complete control over the earth and all natural and robots.

Romer decides at some point to step out of this oppression. Together with a few like-minded robot friends he flees and crashes the huge spaceship called Iron Cloud. Soon we meet real humans, so-called naturalists, and other robots, with whom we form a resistance group to cut Rayonne down and maybe one day help the robots to become human bodies again.

Our crew consists of all kinds of different types of soldiers, they are called Agnes, Doyle, Seguin and Coqui. Each lady and gentleman from this colourful team has their own personality, special abilities and in battle special characteristics. Later on, other human and machine supporters join the team.

Every character can be leveled and improved in 3 basic stats and 2 personal skills. Unfortunately, this part is very stale because if you don’t run around completely blind in the maps, you always have enough chips to keep all skills at their maximum possible value. So there is no real choice or possibility for skill decisions here.

Gameplay – Combat and Skills

In combat, we fly Romer’s Gravcycle, a kind of flying motorcycle, on which some weapons were mounted. After some missions, we get more Gravcycles, which are equipped with different weapons, and then we have 2 different cannons in each level.

Sadly the game does not leave us the choice of how we want to play it. Neither the type of the Gravcycle, the weapons nor the colleagues we carry can be chosen. A selection is not intended, which I find quite a pity. Here the game could have given some more freedom and could have gained some strategic depth, but that was missed.

In the actual battle, we shoot with our own weapon, and can eventually switch to a healing tool or a second weapon, depending on the mission. Besides we can give orders to our up to four companions. You can set markers for their targets and whereabouts, as well as for the use of their skills. These have cooldowns and are not always available.

The comrades-in-arms are not completely stupid, if they don’t get orders, they usually find a target for themselves. But the AI is not completely smart either. Sometimes you have to tame the robot heroes and whistle them back, because otherwise, they like to run into their doom.

Here more strategy would have been possible, but still this actual combat and real-time strategy part is the real highlight of disintegration. Although I would like to see more here, what is there is mostly gripping and exciting. The fights are fun, varied, and depending on which of the 4 difficulty levels you choose, pleasantly entertaining to crisply difficult.

Gameplay World and Maps

The map design and the design of the world are two other big plus points of Disintegration. All maps appear very unique, each one offers something special both visually and strategically.

Sometimes we are in the countryside between villages and farms, sometimes we climb through the mountains or over dam walls, sometimes we are inside narrow buildings and sometimes we investigate different parts of a city, which also offer very different optics and enemies.

In addition, the maps offer all kinds of different tactical subtleties. At times we have to find power generators to open a gate, then we have to turn off an EMP tower because otherwise, our Gravcycle can’t fight anymore. Besides many different soldier opponents and larger mech units, there are Gravcycles and flying robots on the enemy side, and sometimes bigger bosses come into play. From time to time we are supposed to defend a place for a while or free hostages before they are killed.

We collect a lot of material on the side, do sub-missions and loot containers which we find with our scanner. This way we get more experience, ascend faster and sometimes the chips necessary for skill upgrading are hidden in these containers.

Gameplay Singleplayer-Campaign

The story campaign has its highs and lows. Purely in terms of gameplay, it is definitely well done. The design of the maps, the tactical demands, and the variety is entertaining. But unfortunately, the story is often flat and especially at the beginning not very thrilling. Later on, there are some twists and surprises and the story gets a bit better, but it’s not exactly a highlight of storytelling at this point.

The campaign has numerous missions, each offering between 20 and 60 minutes of gameplay. Each one is special and different from all the others. The enemy types are quite interesting, but the AI is usually not very bright. On the enemy side, you will rather fight with mass than with class. Sometimes there are also really big bosses, which in some places even appear in a double pack and together with several other units. Then it gets a bit trickier and the challenge increases.

Each map has three side missions, some of them are very easy to do, others are not at all. And unfortunately, the game is a bit unfair here, if you should die and have to reload. Because all positive achievements are lost with such a restart, while the negative ones are preserved. So if you miss a challenge, only a complete restart would help.

Disintegration Gameplay – Multiplayer

In multiplayer mode, I didn’t do much. Or I couldn’t, because just a few days after the release there were no more matches available. Even with the “Find me any slot in any mission type” search, there were no matches even in US main gaming hours. Since Disintegration has been released internationally, I don’t think it’s a good sign if you wait 10 minutes for a match and then the game stops by itself because it’s hopeless. I tried this 3 times and then gave up wanting to test the multiplayer.

Basically, there are 3 different PvP map types here. You can probably play with your friends on a team. There is the possibility to choose different clans, which are optically very different and should probably offer different bonus values. And with these missions, you earn in-game credits for which you can buy optical improvements. A real money currency is available, what is a downside too in a high-priced game.

This PvP part didn’t carry me away now, as well as when I didn’t find a match at all. This part of the game may be good for a few hours of fun, but I don’t think disintegration will set new standards in this area now. But for multiplayer, a certain amount of players are needed, and if they are not available one week after release, the prospects for the future aren’t that great.

Disintegration – Tech, Graphics, Sound

Disintegration uses a technically very high-quality base with the Unreal Engine 4, so there’s not much to complain about in terms of performance and the quality of the graphics. The landscapes are designed with high standards all the way through, the audio quality is good and the hit feedback in combat is on a high level. But I’ve already seen nicer landscapes and better character animations, I have to say that. Upper midfield is offered here, but not top quality.

I’ve already praised the level design, I can only repeat that. The consistently high quality of all components as well as the varied use of these elements is nicely executed. V1 Interactive has done a great job here.

The voice output which is only available in English is plentiful, and mostly on a high-quality level. Unfortunately, the stories are often very flat, but neither the sound designers nor the voice actors have anything to do with that. The German subtitles are well translated so that even non-English speakers should be able to follow the story.

Small bugs were present in rare cases. For example, one character had leveled out all his skills from the beginning, which was a bit strange. But the game played stable and smooth, even with a middle-class graphics card. So I have nothing else to criticize about the technical aspects of the game.

Disintegration Test – Conclusion and Opinion

So now we come to the main points of criticism of disintegration. First of all, there’s the current non-existent or extremely little multiplayer PvP. Here I hope for the multiplayer fans that this will become a bit more popular. Because basically, I can very well imagine that the system would be fun in PvP. Unfortunately, I couldn’t try it because of the lack of players and opponents.

And according to Steamspy statistics, already one week after release, there were at no time more than 100 players playing the game. And with such low numbers, this doesn’t look good at all for the multiplayer part in Disintegration.

Then there are the extremely lame and boring elements between the missions, where you walk around in the rebel base or on a meadow. There is usually a very large area, where the characters are widely spread and you only walk very slowly from one to the other. During this process, conversations are held on such a low artistic level and their content is so insignificant that it doesn’t help to deepen the characters, but rather completely undermines their otherwise not at all bad personality. If this base walking part had been left out completely, the game wouldn’t get 1% worse, rather the opposite.

And then there is also the rather flat storytelling of the campaign. Especially at the beginning, the story is extremely mellow and straightforward. That gets a bit better later on if you hold out that long. The actual story only picks up some more speed after a few missions. And this actually not completely bad story is only told in the rendered cutscenes, in which you are the pure spectator. Decisions don’t take place here at all.

Turning now to the strengths of Disintegration. And this is the actual gameplay. The mostly well working mix of realtime-strategy and shooter elements, flavored with some spaceship-like 3D combat, through the flying gravcycle. The fights are fun, the maps are very different and varied, the opponents are interesting. Depending on how hard you like it, you can choose four different levels of difficulty. There should be something for every taste.

The scope of the campaign is okay for a game that includes multiplayer and single-player elements. Usually, you will be fobbed off with a 5-hour campaign, but this is not the case here. I’ve already played more than 20 hours and the end of the story is still waiting for me. I might not be the Speedrunner, but I don’t play at the lowest difficulty level. Probably some people can play it quicker, especially on extra easy it should be faster. On Steam, some players say that after 12 hours of playing, they are done with the campaign.

I think the price of the game of €49 is too high for the offered single-player content. It would probably still be ok if the multiplayer would work. But if you take into account that the game might not even have a functioning multiplayer at all, because the amount of players is just not enough, I would say clearly, better wait for a good discount. I suspect that the game will soon be much cheaper in the Steam-Sale because of the shortcomings.

And especially multiplayer fans should check the Steam statistics or Steamspy to see how many people are playing the game online. But I know only a very few games, which came back to life after such a weak start in multiplayer. Here I wouldn’t get my hopes up too high.

Disintegration Screenshots

Click/tap on image for larger version

Disintegration Review – Rating

If we now summarize these pros and cons, we get a somewhat mixed picture. Disintegration wants to be an action game, and I think the gameplay works well. It’s fun and an interesting mix of strategy and shooter, which hardly any game offers in this form.

It has some interesting content and if the multiplayer eventually will work, I suppose it could be interesting as well. But the chances for the PvP mode to start running in the future are not good. The game also has some other weaknesses in the story area and minimal bugs, which should be easily fixed by patches.

Based on the fun of the game, I would like to give a 78% rating for Disintegration. But the many problems of the game, like small bugs, the high price, the irrelevant base hikes and the actually completely useless multiplayer make me deduct 12 % of it. So in the end the overall rating is 66 %. This rating could possibly rise to 70%, with a few good patches. But the main condition for this would be that the price will drop somewhat and the multiplayer might pick up some momentum after all.

As much as I would have liked to give the game a better rating, unfortunately, there is no more I could find positive in this game. I had fun playing the game, but if I had paid the full price for it, I would certainly be very unhappy with it.

Disintegration

Zap by ZapZockt.de

Disintegration: A 3D first-person shooter with some RTS mechanics, a dark robot future, and a halo – masterchief developer, what comes out of this when mixed?
Disintegration is a mix of 3D FPS First Person Shooter and RTS real-time strategy that was released for Playstation PS4, XBox One and PC (Steam). In a dystopian future, humanity almost died out due to a destroyed nature and a plague and they decided to digitalize their brains and put them into robots, a process called integration. After this has been going on for a long time, a radical group does not want some people to want to become human again and war arises between the radical supporters of integration and those who want to reboot humanity.

Besonderer Genre Mix

Grafik

Sound

Story und Kampagne

Multiplayer

Umfang

Preis – Leistung

Bewertung

If we now summarize these pros and cons, we get a somewhat mixed picture. Disintegration wants to be an action game, and I think the gameplay works well. It’s fun and an interesting mix of strategy and shooter, which hardly any game offers in this form.
It has some interesting content and if the multiplayer eventually will work, I suppose it could be interesting as well. But the chances for the PvP mode to start running in the future are not good. The game also has some other weaknesses in the story area and minimal bugs, which should be easily fixed by patches.
Based on the fun of the game, I would like to give a 78% rating for Disintegration. But the many problems of the game, like small bugs, the high price, the irrelevant base hikes and the actually completely useless multiplayer make me deduct 12 % of it. So in the end the overall rating is 66 %. This rating could possibly rise to 70%, with a few good patches. But the main condition for this would be that the price will drop somewhat and the multiplayer might pick up some momentum after all.
As much as I would have liked to give the game a better rating, unfortunately there is not more I could find positive in this game. I had fun playing the game, but if I had paid the full price for it, I would certainly be very unhappy with it.

3.3

Outro

Would you like to dash through the levels on a flying motorcycle and guide your robot companions through the battle? Or are robots too cold and impersonal for you and the abandoned multiplayer and the price a no-go? Please write me your opinion in the comments.

Even if you didn’t like the game, maybe you still have enjoyed the video, then leave me a subscription and a thumb. More gaming news, game reviews, and tips can be found here in the channel or on my website zapzockt.de and then I wish you a great day, have a good time, ciao ciao, your Zap.

Links and Sources

Disintegration cheaper buy at Gamesplanet ( Affiliate Link / Advertising )
https://us.gamesplanet.com/game/disintegration-steam-key–4260-1?ref=zapzockt
You save money with the cheap Gamesplanet discounts and for every purchase over this link I get a small commission. So you can save money and support my work at the same time.

Disintegration Developer Website:
https://v1interactive.com/

Disintegration Steampage:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/536280/Disintegration/

Dev Twitter:
https://twitter.com/V1Interactive

Dev Facebook Page:
https://www.facebook.com/v1interactive

Follow ZapZockt on Social Media: