Disintegration is a new sci-fi first-person shooter from Marcus Lehto, the co-creator of a little game you might have heard of called 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Halo. Considering that that franchise has gone on to be the backbone of Microsoft's entire gaming platform you might expect big things from a new IP by the man who helped give the world the gift of Master Chief.
Sadly, it's pretty doubtful that this will leave the same kind of impact on the world as Mr. Lehto's previous work. From its story to its gameplay to its multiplayer, Disintegration simply doesn't offer anything new or exciting, and is the kind of game that will quickly fade away from the memories of most gamers.
Only Flying Motorcycles Can Save The World
The plot of Disintegration revolves around the process of "integration", which is a fancy name for taking a human brain and shoving it into a humanoid robot body. As you might expect in a modern sci-fi story, Earth is now a desolate, dystopian wasteland and is being terrorized by a vague, ominous evil empire called the Rayonne, led by a Darth Vader/Megatron-esque figure known as Black Shuck. You play as Romer Shoal, a former celebrity who has undergone integration and is also a world-renowned gravbike pilot. At some point, he's captured by the Rayonne, but before he can be brainwashed into being a mindless soldier, he's saved by a rag-tag crew of wacky outlaws. After they all escape, Romer gets wrapped up in the fight against the Rayonne and must join forces with the resistance to take down Black Shuck while maybe, just maybe, making some new friends along the way.
Does any of that sound familiar? It should, as it's the same type of story that's appeared in countless games, movies, TV shows, books, comics, Youtube videos, infomercials, and so on and so forth. The story is so tired and cliched that at times it feels like the writers gave up and said "no one's going to care about this, so let's just skip most of the exposition." This game is awful at worldbuilding and after beating it I still have several questions. For example, what are the Rayonne, and what is their purpose or goal? I was able to infer from the campaign that they're some kind of hivemind that turns Integrated people into red-eyed slave soldiers and either wants to eradicate or enslave humans as well. But it's never explained how or why they're doing anything, where they came from, etc. The game just starts with everyone breaking out of jail, suddenly they're all one happy family, and we just move on from there.
It's disappointing because the characters in the story are fairly likable. They're all stereotypes that you've seen before - the tough guy, the comic relief, the mechanic with a heart of gold, the cocky yet affable protagonist who's initially reluctant to join the resistance but eventually becomes the leader, etc. - but they're all performed well and even Black Shuck seems like he could have been an intriguing villain. We're just not given enough time to get to know them, which is a shame since focusing more on the characters rather than the boring crusade to bring down yet another evil faction could have helped make the single-player campaign worth playing.
Along with the story, the visual style of Disintegration is pretty uninspired. There are some levels that take place in rural areas that have a nice autumnal feel, but most of the major battles happen in destroyed cities and outposts that are all various shades of grey, brown, and green. Maybe it's because I knew Marcus Lehto was attached to this game, but I couldn't help but be reminded of games like Halo or even 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Destiny. The character designs, the weapons, the strange symbols, even the fonts, it all screamed Bungie. When you're trying to create a new franchise of your own, it's probably not the best idea to constantly remind players of your better work.
First-Person, Real-Time Mediocrity
The major hook of Disintegration is the previously mentioned gravbike. It's a fancy flying motorcycle with guns that Romer gets to pilot for the entirety of the game. This means the player spends their time hovering around the battlefield looking down on the action. Since you have that aerial view, the game puts you in the role of commander and allows you to issue orders to a squad that follows you around. Thus, the game becomes a strange hybrid between an FPS and a real-time strategy game. It's a combination that, in theory, sounds pretty compelling.
In practice, however, it doesn't quite work so well. The problem is that neither the shooting nor the strategy are all that engaging. Your gravbike only has access to two weapon slots and you don't get to choose which ones you use for each mission. So for some levels, you might have an awesome rocket launcher or a chaingun, but other times you'll have some weak assault rifles or a healing gun, which is great to keep your squadmates alive but not so useful when you're trying to fend off a horde of evil robots. Some guns definitely feel better than others, which makes some encounters drag on because you're stuck with crummy weapons.
The gravbike itself can be a frustrating problem. Staying in the air for the entire game can make it hard to see where some bullets are coming from. It's common to get shot in the back or from below because enemies are in the blind spot of your giant flying chopper. The hitbox of the gravbike is also unclear, which means you might think you dodged some missiles only to still take damage.
As for the RTS elements, they're extremely limited. You can only tell your squadmates to attack enemies, move to a position, or interact with objects like computer terminals or containers filled with scrap that's used to level up. They also have special abilities like stun grenades or mortar strikes that they can perform, which were slightly effective on a few occasions. However, after a while, it starts to feel less like you're commanding an elite squad of soldiers, and more like you're babysitting. Their A.I. could be wonky and sometimes I would need to order them to shoot at enemies that were standing right in front of them. I didn't feel like I was forming strategies, I felt like I was shouting "hey dummies, walk over there and do something already!"
You Can Be A Clown On A Flying Motorcycle! That's Neat!
Much like every fledgling FPS franchise, Disintegration features a multiplayer component full of cosmetics that can be purchased to give V1 Interactive some of that lovely microtransaction money. I did like the various teams that you could play as. There's a clown team, a samurai team, a mariachi team, a cyberpunk team, etc. These outfits were colorful and fun, although they did seem a bit at odds with the drab, post-apocalyptic world that's seen in the campaign.
There are three modes you can play in multiplayer: Zone Control, which is where you capture different zones; Collector, which is similar to 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Call Of Duty's Kill Confirmed mode where you kill enemies and then collect their brains for points; and Retrieval, where you grab power cores and deliver them to a location on the map.
Of the few games I actually got to play, these modes were all fine but unspectacular. It's obvious that the folks behind Disintegration are hoping the novelty of riding a gravbike along with the RTS elements will hide the fact that their multiplayer is the same thing you've played in myriad other first-person shooters. It can be fun to collide with other players, but I can't see this multiplayer attracting or keeping much of an audience. Especially since there doesn't seem to be much in the way of progression aside from extra skins that are nothing more than additional colors and patterns.
Halo And Goodbye
I came away from Disintegration with a feeling of total apathy. There's nothing truly terrible and there's nothing really exceptional. Even if its multiplayer is mildly popular, it's certainly not going to be the next Halo. It's an ambitious project that has some original ideas which could allow it to stand out from other shooters, but in the end, Disintegration fails to be anything more than another title to add to the ever-growing pile of generic science fictio🦂n games.
A PlayStation 4 copy of Disintegration was provided to TheGamer for this review. Disintegration is avail💫able for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
Disintegration is a shooter from the co-creator of Halo that sees you pilot a Gra🤪vcycle, leading troops onto the b🅘attlefield. As a resistance force, you must fight to preserve humanity from the Rayonne.