With Disintegration, Private Division and V1 Interactive deliver a sci-fi mix of FPS and strategy, which was designed by Marcus Letho, a co-founder of the Halo series. “From the co-creator of the Halo series!” – Disintegration cannot be deprived of the privilege of advertising with this slogan. However, the game developed by V1 Interactive does not really manage to capture a living world like the one in Halo and only presents interesting ideas that mostly go nowhere and where the gameplay can neither really convince in the FPS nor in the strategy area – a problem that many Have genre mix games.
Human robot human
Integration describes the process of transplanting a human brain into a robot. Integration was launched as an emergency solution in the face of a global pandemic, which is a very topical issue. Now, decades later, it is actually time to reverse this process again and to create clones using genetic databases and to give people back their bodies. But not everyone wants to go back to the old, natural way of life. The Rayonne, a belligerent robot faction, would rather keep their robotic bodies and, on top of that, force all remaining natural people to integrate, enslave or kill if necessary. As players, we face the Rayonne with a small rebel group, led by Gravcycle pilots Romer.
Disintegration creates an interesting world, with characters that have charm, but does not exhaust its potential and lets a lot go in nothing. Romer only knows the name at the beginning of the game – understandable, especially since you are thrown directly into the story. Little by little you learn more about Romer and his companions, but they never really come to life. Depth is only hinted at here and there, but not exhausted. Our mechanic tells e.g. B. from his family and his daughter’s habit of watching him at work, but that’s about it. Three sentences and he has nothing more to say to us. Here comes the impression that the character development was only cobbled on afterwards or deleted somewhere again. The approaches are there, but there is a lack of implementation.
It’s the same with the hub, where you talk to different people between missions. The hub is yawningly empty, here and there your rebel colleagues stand here and there and tell you about their daughter, a dog they once had or give you a small task for the next mission, unfortunately nothing more has been done. The hub looks very sterile, in places almost as good as new, so it is difficult to believe that this place should have a history. As with the background stories of the characters, you also miss a certain depth in the hub and so you get the impression that the hub was only added afterwards to explain, for example, why you are killing 20 enemies in the next mission and have a reward for it.
Simple also works
Disintegration gameplay is passable for this, but neither manages to present the strategy elements nor the FPS part really outstanding. The strategy and FPS elements are simply too simple for this. With your Gravcycl you fly over the battlefield and fire at your opponents or heal your units. As long as there is solid ground underneath you, you can influence the height and depth of the gravity by pressing a button and thus get a better overview. Ground units can be targeted to attack opponents, command to interact with certain environmental elements or use their individual skills, which are then on cooldown. Sounds simple, it is.
It becomes problematic with the AI of your companions, who often complain that they need repairs, only to then run towards the next enemy with their weapon in hand. One can z. B. also by means of healing stations on the battlefield, they not only heal far more effectively than your healing pistol, but also in a large area and accelerate the skill cooldown, which benefits your entire squad. If you order a unit to activate such a station, they often don’t just stop there, but continue to run to the next enemy. If you could keep points, the healing stations, especially at higher difficulty levels, would get a strategic value. Without this command option, however, you have to babysit your entire squad and click on the healing area again and again so that figures that are just about to sprint to the next opponent remain there.
Stray AI
It became extremely frustrating in a mission in which you had to accompany a vehicle. Here you can order your figures to assemble the vehicle, which sets it in motion, but you move too far away, e.g. For example, to explore the area for upgrades or resources, your units will follow you, causing the vehicle to stop.
Disintegration also offers a level system through which figures slowly rise and unlock new upgrades. Junk works as experience and chips as skill points. Scrap is dropped by enemies, but can also be found in boxes along with chips. To open boxes, you command your units, provided they are in the mood or find their way there. During my time with the game, it happened a few times that a unit didn’t want to open a box right next to it, so you had to command it twice. When a completely different character, who was currently fighting with units, runs across the entire battlefield, opens the box and then returns to his shootout or the pathfinding completely fails, it becomes particularly exciting. The figure rises z. B. up a flight of stairs that leads away from the box to find an alternative, longer path, only to then land in front of the box that it was standing 20 seconds ago instead of opening it directly. Why easy if complicated is another option.
It is also unpleasant that you can not choose your armament, instead you always get a pre-made Gravcycle for the mission, which means that in some missions you have to do without the healing pistol or use weapons that you do not like at all. Here you are simply prepared for the multiplayer, in which you can choose the different Gravcycle from the story as ready-made classes.
Solid multiplayer
The multiplayer can also only be described as solid. Different Gravcycles with different floor units, all of which have a great design, offer different ways of playing in game modes such as Capture the Flag or Domination. The multiplayer is therefore not really outstanding, here you can perhaps have fun for a weekend before the novelty factor is exhausted. Disintegration gives rise to the suspicion that multiplayer was considered necessary, as is the case with many games in the PS3 era – a multiplayer that is not bad, but gives the impression that the single player suffered from its integration.
Graphically, disintegration makes a decent impression, but here too nothing groundbreaking is conjured up on the focusing screen. Textures in particular attracted negative attention, which often offer low resolution and little detail. Here and there there were some strange problems with units that disappeared as soon as they ran behind waist-high objects, only to reappear a second later – a button that saves resources was probably set too aggressively here. Disintegration offers a very good English setting with German subtitles.
6Disintegration is a simple mix of strategy and FPS. Due to its too simple structure, disintegration will not convince neither FPS fans nor strategy fools. The FPS gameplay is too slow and the strategic options are too thin. The story and setting of the game can be entertaining, but the sterile hub and the quite silent companions, who only hint that they have a past and personality, give away a lot of potential. This wasted potential may be due to the multiplayer, which is okay but cannot really captivate and feels more like an accessory that somehow had to go in there. As a small and new studio, V1 Interactive may have just overdone itself. If you had focused on one of the two game modes and deleted the other one, disintegration would certainly have been a much better game. In its current state, disintegration can only be recommended to a limited extent, since it ultimately feels like two unfinished games with good approaches and a lot of wasted potential. It remains to be seen how strong the support will be. Some people know how to surprise with it.
