When Disintegration was announced at Gamescom 2019, the buzz around the game skyrocketed fast. The hype was heightened when we found out that the developer V1 Interactive is comprised of the minds who co-created the Halo series and SOCOM: Navy Seals, a couple of the best multiplayer shooters of their generations.
Disintegration is a post-apocalyptic sci-fi shooter. In order to avoid extinction, humanity has put their brains in robot bodies in order to ride out the end of the world. At Pax West, I got a better look at the multiplayer and more information on the different sorts of Crews you’ll choose from online in this peculiar shooter.
In each Crew, you control a commander who zips around the battlefield in flying Gravcycle while giving orders to the rest of your AI-controlled squad. Managing your people in a hectic battlefield as complicated as you would think. With the touch of the right button, you can direct your Crew to the general direction you want them head to. Even if you don’t, they are programmed to catch up regardless of where you fly off too on the map.
Players will choose from a number of different crews, each with their own skills and stats. They range from a heavy tank Crew like the WarhedZ with an armored Gravcycle leading the pack whose artillery includes an actual nuke. Other players might prefer a Crew where the Gravcycle pilot has long-range weapons and can also heal as a solid support unit.
The Gravcycles move like the Ghosts in the Halo series, which boost around the fight. Each of the Gravcycles has different speeds, armor, and weapons. Some are suited for a quick hit and run attack while others can sit there and take tons of abuse.
For our match, I went with a Crew with a bunch of robots dressed like clowns. This Crew was perfect for defending and holding chokepoints mostly thanks to an arsenal of sticky grenades that can remotely be denoted. Ideal for setting traps or generally causing mayhem among the enemies’ ranks. The mode we tried was two rounds of attacking and defending.
The attacking team had to scoop up these cores that then needed to be delivered to an evac point. If you played Halo, it essentially capture the flag with a little twist. The twist is that if you hold on to Core too long it’ll go critical and kill everyone in the blast radius. So, you have to work with your team to make sure the drop off is clean.
Since our team mostly picked defensive Crews we managed to repel our attackers with an irresponsible amount of tactical nukes and landmines. Our good fortune carried over to the next round we pushed through this time a couple of our teams switch over to a support Crew whose Gravcycle pilot can shoot out healing pulses that repair units within its range. The victory was swift and sweet. It made me excited to see what else Disintegration has to over.
V1 has not shared any details about the other two modes that will be available at launch, but I’m curious to see their takes on popular online modes. Not to mention, that there will be an entire single-player campaign to go along with the intense multiplayer action.
