While this isn’t our final review of Disintegration, as that will arrive later this week. With that in mind, we’ve decided to show you our progress on the game so far.

Premise and Introduction

Developed by V1 Interactive, Disintegration takes place in a futuristic sci-fi world. It follows our main hero Romer Shoal, a former celebrity pilot as he joins a group of outlaws on a mission to take down the central villain, Rayonne. The world design is interesting enough to keep players interested as it did for me, and the gameplay manages to be fun and in-depth at the start. Disintegration is a satisfying merge of a first-person shooter and a real-time strategy game.

As a pilot, you control a gravcycle. These vehicles are mainly what you’ll use to conduct the real-time strategy parts of the game where you’ll fly around and control things with an aerial view. You’ll mostly be controlling your NPC teammates by giving them commands and even healing them when necessary.

What’s good about these teammates is that they’ll need very little babysitting. The AI is competent enough to take out enemies and complete objectives without giving you a headache.

While you’re at the forefront of the battlefield controlling your troops, you’ll also be able to move about and shoot enemies on your own. The main challenge is trying to balance out these two elements and keeping the enemy forces at bay.

The controls work surprisingly well and add enough variety which includes a ping system and other types of controls. The game also introduces players to multiple kinds of gravcycles and weapons as they progress through the story.

Some Minor Tidbits

Sadly, the fun of being a gravcyclist begins to fade as the mechanics and gameplay start to get repetitive. In each of the 12 campaign missions available, at some point, the objectives and overall formula of the game start to feel same-y. You get to the start point and defeat enemies until you progress to the next point and defeat some more enemies move on to the next objective, hold a point, rinse, and repeat.

Aside from that, I also encountered some gameplay issues here and there from frame rate issues to enemies and teammates lagging in the battlefield. Though we did receive warning of this beforehand, as this isn’t the final build. Luckily, they weren’t too prominent, but the issues are still noteworthy.

An Imperfect Plot

Then we have the campaign which, as I’ve said earlier, brings enough intrigue and world-building to keep the player at the very least interested, but unfortunately, the story begins to lose its appeal as it goes on. For one, many things aren’t explained adequately in the game. We Know our main character is famous, but we don’t know what he’s famous for. Nor do we know the motivations for the villain.

Another issue is how underwhelming it is that the lore isn’t expressed as much as I’d want it to. The start of the game gives off the vibe of a totally unexplored world and the story behind it, but so far I’ve yet to see any groundbreaking details on the lore.

For now, I can only describe the story as decent but the characters at the very least seem to be interesting, especially with their witty and sassy commentary. While these characters lack any sort of depth, they’re all quite likable. You’ll also be able to converse with them between missions in the hub world, and while it isn’t as effective as the conversations you’ll see in say Mass Effect, it still does its job well of being a break between completing missions.

Admittedly there have been some hiccups here and there, but I can genuinely say I’ve enjoyed my time with Disintegration so far. All that’s left is to venture into the multiplayer mode, so expect a full review soon.