Disintegration

Full disclosure: I’m not an RTS guy. I’ve tried to be in the past, but controlling more than one character effectively just doesn’t gel with me. This is worth mentioning because, despite my experience with the genre before, Disintegration manages to blend fantastic first-person shooting with intuitive real-time-strategy elements to create a title that’s easily the biggest surprise of 2020 so far.

Disintegration is a game of, and about, duality. It manages to feel like a throwback while it's fresh genre melding brings it straight into the present. It's an occasionally lifeless, mechanically sound construct, but everything about it has heart. It's a double A game, the likes of which we don't often see anymore, and it's one of the most unique and consistently enjoyable sci-fi shooters of recent years.

Disintegration is a different and fun game when it comes to mashing two genres together. While the story may be mediocre, it’s characters keep you invested to see the mission through. It’s a shame that load-outs are handed to you and do not promote build diversity, but the gameplay is still a blast

Disintegration smashes first-person-shooting and real-time tactics together to create a wild, crazy thrill ride of a strategy game with a few rough edges.

Disintegration poses interesting questions about how we will define the human experience in a recognisable future. It's not going to answer those questions, sadly, but the gameplay is so creatively rewarding and satisfying. Plus, cool robots.

Disintegration comes from the co-creator of Halo, but don't let that lead you to think this is a typical FPS. It's a satisfying but flawed genre-bender that usually capitalizes on its risks.

Overall my time in Disintegration was a fun one, however it just left something to be desired in terms of shooting, or the RTS mechanics, I really hope that if there is a sequel to this game that they drastically improve the shooting mechanics. Multiplayer is fun and I can’t wait to spend more time with it.

Fun fact: Halo began life as a real-time strategy before shifting gears into the iconic FPS it is today.

Disintegration is the latest effort by the Halo co-creator Marcus Lehto and his new development team V1 Interactive. They set out with a lofty goal of trying to create an entirely new genre of game, like a souls-like of sorts (Disintegration-like? We’ll work on it). This ambitious mash-up of real-time-strategy and first-person-shooter is full of charm and impressive visuals. Unfortunately,  the ideas just feel… hollow. Let me explain.

Some good points for effort but in the end, it's an unpolished mix of a shooter and strategy that doesn't do either of those two well.

It's astonishing to see just how far off the mark Disintegration is in terms of how it looks and plays. An astonishment made painfully evident across both of its equally-unflattering, technically-flawed game modes devoid of any quirk, personality or lasting impression. Impressions that are of anything but the feeling of eliciting a smoke-screen so as to mask the game's evident lack of ingenuity or creative endeavor. It's more astonishing that, in a vacuum, the design philosophy underpinning its gameplay mechanics feel oddly "complete." That the conceptual attempt to mix a decade-old mentality ...

Verdict: Verily, Disintegration offers new ideas and explores a subgenre mix of both FPS and RTS that is both intriguing in action but poor in delivery. With the lack of customization and a neglected multiplayer mode, the replay value is almost non-existent. I played through the campaign once, and I was done with the repeated gameplay before the credits rolled. Going back to a mission for a lovely revisit isn’t in my agenda, and I can only hope that the developers come up with noteworthy downloadable content to keep Disintegration afloat. Unfortunately, it seems like the game is dying out quic...