Disintegration has you speeding around on a gravcycle, commanding your crew of Outlaws to victory below you.
The story in Disintegration is one of hope amidst despair. Set in the far future where cyborgs reign due to the collapse of human society, you play the role of Romer, an outlaw who rebelled against the post-humanist uprising known as the Rayonne. Fighting against these legions of robots who will stop at nothing to ensure humans go extinct, Romer enlists the help of some fellow outlaws with the same goal: fight so that they might one day become human again.
I got a chance to check out the closed beta of Disintegration, which was an entirely multiplayer affair. With only a few modes and a small selection of maps, there’s limited gameplay right now, but it’s not bad to play the same thing over and over to get you used to the unique gameplay. Before you can jump into action, you are provided with a rather lengthy tutorial. This particular tutorial is a blessing, however, as there are lots of things to learn before you’re ready to take on others in player-versus-player combat.
Gameplay in the multiplayer test was split into two different modes: Territorial Control and Retrieval. Territorial Control has you and your team racing to control points and trying to destroy any foes that might seek to make them their own. Retrieval has you retrieving a payload called a core and trying to deliver it to a drop off point while the other team tries to stop you; the team’s roles reverse between rounds. Both modes are ones we’ve seen in competitive multiplayer games before, but with the RTS twist on top that makes the game feel a bit like a MOBA. Each match is fun and can be frustrating, but there’s a lot to juggle in the game until you get your bearings and everything clicks.
The majority of what you’ll be focusing on is your troops, whether it’s managing their focus on a particular enemy or telling them to use their special attacks. There were seven different squads to pick from in the beta, and each one had different troops and a different type of Gravcycle for you to ride. You can set your squad to individually focus on something to fire at, but it’s sometimes better to use them as a group. Your bike will do a lot of the heavy-hitting as well, as you are equipped with your own weapons and abilities too. All the nuances of tactical gameplay are here, albeit with a much faster action-based approach.
Both maps available in the beta were relatively lackluster. I didn’t find them visually appealing, nor did I feel that they added much to the gameplay. Thankfully, their lack of complication made jumping into the gameplay fun and easy to find your way around, but I would like to see alternate paths and asymmetry to keep matches lively. I expected a bit more from veterans that created Halo, but hopefully we’ll see the best maps were saved for the final game and that these areas were just for a build that was created with the sole purpose of testing their server load.
Disintegration has me intrigued. I am mostly on-board to learn more about the single-player gameplay, but the multiplayer aspect is also interesting, with lots of commands and controls to get used to. I feel the game still has a long way to go to match up to its competitors, but I look forward to seeing how it all wraps up in the end.
Disintegration is scheduled to release later this year for PC, Playstation 4 and Xbox One. Check out their website and follow them on Twitter for more information.
