Gameitall 
From the minute we saw Disintegration at The Game Awards, I had mixed feelings. On one hand, the mix of a First Person Shooter where you control a gravity-defying jet bike with a small army like a Real-Time Strategy Game sounded intriguing, but on the other hand, it gave me flashbacks of the worst parts of Brutal Legend – the parts that weren’t a heavy metal Zelda clone.
Still, the game’s been on my watch list and it was easy to see why, with Private Division – 2K Game’s Indie Publishing brand who previously published our Game of the Year choice: The Outer Worlds, and being developed by V1 Interactive – a small team of 30 people lead by Marcus Lehto who co-created the Halo series.
Luckily, Private Division gave us an early look at the game thanks to the Closed Beta, which gave us the chance to try out the game’s multiplayer, which after a bit of a rocky start, ended up being one of the more interesting multiplayer concepts I’ve played.
In Disintegration, players are given the role of the commander of a small squad of robotic soldiers and, as previously mentioned, controls a gravity bike to fly above the battlefield. Players have the ability to fight from the cycle with a load out of two weapons, usually a primary weapon and a stronger special weapon. The concept is different and it takes some time to get used, it’s helpful to do a rundown of the tutorial to get used to the basic combat procedures before jumping right into the match.
Surprisingly, the controls were the least of my problems, as V1 Interactive did a great job with the mapping. Altitude was assigned to the Left bumper and trigger, while the right trigger shoots and right bumper control your squad. The cycles fly smoothly and I was able to evade attacks and deal damage with relative ease after a couple of rounds.
The surprising thing was how easy it was to command the troops, as everything is assigned to the right bumper. Players have to target a specific location and press R1 (or RB) to command the troops to move to a spot, attack a specific unit, or pick up an item. Each troop has a special ability, ranging from stun grenades to rockets and motors which can be activated using the D-Pad.
Of the different troops, I’ve only picked out three classes with my time in the beta, warrior class which do a lot of the grunt work, snipers which like to hang back and defend locations, and a giant mech that acted as a tank and did most of the heavy work. With everything being set to one button for control of the troops, usually found myself focused on the dog-fights and taking on the other fliers while letting my troops defend positions or pushing forward.
For the most part, the AI seemed competent, doing what I wanted it to do when I pointed out instructions. However, it seemed like it didn’t know how to properly defend itself by trying to utilize cover, and I could not find ways of separating the units so they all didn’t move in one lump group. Given the chaos that I experienced trying to command the troops and shoot down opponents, it became very hectic even after becoming fully adequate with the controls.
In the Beta, players were given access to specific crews – these crews had their troops and weapons load-out already selected for them with the only thing customizable being their look. I couldn’t choose to walk into battle with 4 warriors, or a group of snipers to fit my playstyle which made everything feel impersonal when it came down to the RTS element of it. This lead me to avoid specific crews as either I didn’t care for their troops or I felt like the weapon was not to my liking, and it didn’t give me much incentive to change after I found a favourite.
We were given two of the three multiplayer modes to test, Zone Control and Retrieval. Retrieval is played in two rounds with one side attacking and the other defending, players have to get three fuel containers to a group of rockets using their troops with the team with the most rockets fueled wins. Zone Control plays similar to Domination in Call of Duty, in which players hold a specific location and control the battlefield.
Between the two modes, Retrieval felt the most RTS inspired as it focused a lot on the troop control, making players work to defend the troops on the ground, while Zone Control utilizes a more Attack/Defend the position style gameplay which I often found myself ignoring my troops in favour for taking down opponents myself. Both modes felt like they were over almost too quickly, especially Zone Control, as it felt battles were just heating up before the score limit was reached.
In a sense, the game plays more like a Hero Shooter with some light RTS elements than the original hybrid concept that we thought it would be, and despite my gripes with the lack of personalization to the crews aside from cosmetics, I generally had a fun time with the beta. I can see that there is likely some growing pains in store for Disintegration but if it can find a loving community, and if the team can keep them invested, I can see it possibly becoming one of the biggest surprises of the year.
I would like to take this time to thank Private Division for sending us the Private Beta Access and allowing us to talk about the game in detail
