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Disintegration Review
5 years ago
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It’s SOMA, but they took out all the existential storytelling and replaced it with explosive shooty goodness.
RATING: 7/10.
So while I was busy not playing a certain other game I don’t wanna talk about, I bought this game too! :D It’s a li’l sci-fi shooter made by an indie studio of about thirty people that feels a lot like Halo to an extent while also having some of the gameplay similar to a strategy command game. It’s the future, dozens of years after the beer virus has wiped out most of humanity. Basically scientists have found out how to have your brain transferred into robot bodies through a process known as “Integration.” You play as this cool celebrity of sorts who went around advertising about the whole process. Unfortunately, there’s a buncha red-eyed baddie robots who wanna exterminate humanity and everyone who believes in free will and free thinking and blah-blah-blah-blah. You get kidnapped by a nasty robot named Black Shuck, then you escape his prison facility, then you meet up with a gang of other robots, then you form a resistance with said robots and gain access to drive a floating motorcycle called a gravcycle. It has guns and shiz and it’s really cool. You go around with your crew shooting all the evil robots so you can save the world.
Now we have our game!
All right, so what I like about the game is that the gameplay is relatively simple. The tutorial is easy to follow, and once it’s over, boom. You’re right in. This isn’t like Halo in a sense that you just run around with rocket launchers and machine guns; each mission has you assigned to a couple members of your squad, and it’s up to you to assign them where to go, what to do, whether they can open up certain crates, etc. This isn’t a gimmick either; there’s several moments in game where you have to use your teammates to advance in the game, like using them to disable EMP towers or having them unlock doors and gates to get through. Or use ‘em to help out other teammates. Or simply use ‘em to take out enemies you can’t get to because you’re too damaged. That being said, you gotta make sure you protect said team with a gun that deploys health bullets and shiz, because if they die, you only got half a minute to resurrect them before you fail a mission.
Your team in question is actually pretty cool. You got the former cop who’s inside a bulky robot who fired giant missiles; you got a sassy black woman who isn’t afraid to blow shit up; you got the funny black guy who’s surprisingly very funny but also a total badass; there’s a colossal robot who’s basically the Hulk, and so on and so forth. There isn’t a whole lot of backstory given to your teammates, and that’s fine for the most part. You learn more about your team via their interactions between missions as well as how they behave and what they say/talk about on the battlefield. There’s no massive exposition dump or any crap like that—which makes it feel natural.
Plot’s basic. There’s evil robots doing bad shit around the country. Stop them. Okay there. Plot’s done. :D There’s a couple of twists halfway into the game, but nothing monumental, and nothing that is controversial and nothing that completely ruins the narrative. Like a certain other game! :D
Honestly most of the reason why I love this game is because of how simple it is. You fly around in a hoverbike-like vehicle shooting at robots, blowing robots up, instructing your badass crew to blow up robots, and defeating evil to help the resistance. It feels good floating around with your gravcycle wrecking shit. It’s wonderful taking on massive horde of enemies and blasting away all kinds of giant robots that can tear you to shreds. It’s cool watching your teammate Six-Oh-Two sprinting towards the enemy and literally beating them to death with his big-ass fists because he’s just that badass. What makes the game work is that with every other mission, they introduce a new kind of enemy or some new kind of challenge that either makes the missions harder, or makes the players strategize in advance as opposed to simply doing the same shit over and over again so it doesn’t feel monotonous. And by the time the game feels like it might go in that direction, it’s over.
This game isn’t above doing shocking shit either. There’s a point in the game where a major character dies. I had no idea this was going to happen; a cutscene starts, and then suddenly, boom. Character’s dead. It genuinely upset me and made me pissed off at the villain who killed him. And the best part about this whole scene is that it makes sense within the narrative. The game established earlier on that the character who dies is a bit reckless and stupid. So when he does something indirectly stupid that gets him in trouble, it bites him in the ass. And even though you can resurrect your teammates, the game even has a reason as to why you can’t: this character was killed miles away from you. By the time you reach his body, it’s already too late to revive him. Everything about this character’s death makes sense without seeming overly-forced and it felt like there was purpose behind it.
UNLIKE A CERTAIN OTHER GAME! :D
Of course since it’s an indie game, it does have some glitches in it. Some of the cutscenes do feel like the dialogue doesn’t synch up properly. Some of the lines are a bit cheesy or corny. The voice acting is surprisingly decent though—I’ll say that much. And like I said, it’s not in-depth. If you’re expecting SOMA levels of dialogue or existentialism, it’s not here. This ain’t that kind of game. And while the game knows what it is, it could’ve done a bit more with its plot and some of its characters, considering it felt like they were going in that direction but simply didn’t have the time.
My biggest criticism, believe it or not, is the price. You can beat the game in about ten hours—probably less than that if you aren’t trying to get all the achievements and challenges. I paid $50 for this game. Yes, really. I’m fine with supporting indie developers and I’m not mad that I paid this much, but this is a game that doesn’t really do a whole lot new. And while it is stylish in what it does, again…fifty bucks is high. I paid $25 for Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden (that’s a magnificent game; I highly recommend you buy that right now; it’s got a snarky duck in it who’s basically me; also buy the DLC—shameless advertising; shush your face) and that game had nearly twice as much content as this game. Even with the $15 DLC, it’s still cheaper than this game, and much more satisfying. Not that this game is bad! But it’s ehhhhhhh that damn price tag.
So would I recommend you buy this game? Yes, but later. Or at least rent it. I say buy this game when it’s $25, maybe $30 at most. But $50 is seriously high. Like I said, this game doesn’t do a whole lot new or special. But nevertheless, this game still essentially embraces what it is and has fun with itself. And sometimes that’s really all you need. I compare this game to Redeemer—a game that you can beat in about four or five hours. It’s a top-down beat ‘em up/shooter where you beat up mutants, cyborgs, and bad guys. You reach the boss, kill him, game ends. Still thoroughly enjoy that game though.
This game…I feel like this game out at the proper time. Because The Last of Us, Part II over-complicated itself simply for the sake of doing so and making players think the game’s more special than it actually is. It spent more time being stylish and groundbreaking as opposed to telling a great story that isn’t controversial. And now look where we are. This game came out a few days beforehand and basically everyone has overlooked it. This game doesn’t do anything groundbreaking because it wasn’t trying to. It was trying to make itself be an entertaining game. And that’s what it is! Sometimes that’s all a game needs to be: entertaining. A game is supposed to make you want to play it the further along you go, not make you realize that you’re doing the same shit over and over again until you get bored or realize you’re wasting your time playing it.
Jeremy Jahns said it best when he reviewed Grand Theft Auto V: I would rather play a three-hour game that makes me say “HOLY SHIT; THAT WAS AWESOME!” versus a 30+ hour game that makes me say “Why am I doing this? Why am I playing this? Why did I spend money on this?”
RATING: 7/10.
So while I was busy not playing a certain other game I don’t wanna talk about, I bought this game too! :D It’s a li’l sci-fi shooter made by an indie studio of about thirty people that feels a lot like Halo to an extent while also having some of the gameplay similar to a strategy command game. It’s the future, dozens of years after the beer virus has wiped out most of humanity. Basically scientists have found out how to have your brain transferred into robot bodies through a process known as “Integration.” You play as this cool celebrity of sorts who went around advertising about the whole process. Unfortunately, there’s a buncha red-eyed baddie robots who wanna exterminate humanity and everyone who believes in free will and free thinking and blah-blah-blah-blah. You get kidnapped by a nasty robot named Black Shuck, then you escape his prison facility, then you meet up with a gang of other robots, then you form a resistance with said robots and gain access to drive a floating motorcycle called a gravcycle. It has guns and shiz and it’s really cool. You go around with your crew shooting all the evil robots so you can save the world.
Now we have our game!
All right, so what I like about the game is that the gameplay is relatively simple. The tutorial is easy to follow, and once it’s over, boom. You’re right in. This isn’t like Halo in a sense that you just run around with rocket launchers and machine guns; each mission has you assigned to a couple members of your squad, and it’s up to you to assign them where to go, what to do, whether they can open up certain crates, etc. This isn’t a gimmick either; there’s several moments in game where you have to use your teammates to advance in the game, like using them to disable EMP towers or having them unlock doors and gates to get through. Or use ‘em to help out other teammates. Or simply use ‘em to take out enemies you can’t get to because you’re too damaged. That being said, you gotta make sure you protect said team with a gun that deploys health bullets and shiz, because if they die, you only got half a minute to resurrect them before you fail a mission.
Your team in question is actually pretty cool. You got the former cop who’s inside a bulky robot who fired giant missiles; you got a sassy black woman who isn’t afraid to blow shit up; you got the funny black guy who’s surprisingly very funny but also a total badass; there’s a colossal robot who’s basically the Hulk, and so on and so forth. There isn’t a whole lot of backstory given to your teammates, and that’s fine for the most part. You learn more about your team via their interactions between missions as well as how they behave and what they say/talk about on the battlefield. There’s no massive exposition dump or any crap like that—which makes it feel natural.
Plot’s basic. There’s evil robots doing bad shit around the country. Stop them. Okay there. Plot’s done. :D There’s a couple of twists halfway into the game, but nothing monumental, and nothing that is controversial and nothing that completely ruins the narrative. Like a certain other game! :D
Honestly most of the reason why I love this game is because of how simple it is. You fly around in a hoverbike-like vehicle shooting at robots, blowing robots up, instructing your badass crew to blow up robots, and defeating evil to help the resistance. It feels good floating around with your gravcycle wrecking shit. It’s wonderful taking on massive horde of enemies and blasting away all kinds of giant robots that can tear you to shreds. It’s cool watching your teammate Six-Oh-Two sprinting towards the enemy and literally beating them to death with his big-ass fists because he’s just that badass. What makes the game work is that with every other mission, they introduce a new kind of enemy or some new kind of challenge that either makes the missions harder, or makes the players strategize in advance as opposed to simply doing the same shit over and over again so it doesn’t feel monotonous. And by the time the game feels like it might go in that direction, it’s over.
This game isn’t above doing shocking shit either. There’s a point in the game where a major character dies. I had no idea this was going to happen; a cutscene starts, and then suddenly, boom. Character’s dead. It genuinely upset me and made me pissed off at the villain who killed him. And the best part about this whole scene is that it makes sense within the narrative. The game established earlier on that the character who dies is a bit reckless and stupid. So when he does something indirectly stupid that gets him in trouble, it bites him in the ass. And even though you can resurrect your teammates, the game even has a reason as to why you can’t: this character was killed miles away from you. By the time you reach his body, it’s already too late to revive him. Everything about this character’s death makes sense without seeming overly-forced and it felt like there was purpose behind it.
UNLIKE A CERTAIN OTHER GAME! :D
Of course since it’s an indie game, it does have some glitches in it. Some of the cutscenes do feel like the dialogue doesn’t synch up properly. Some of the lines are a bit cheesy or corny. The voice acting is surprisingly decent though—I’ll say that much. And like I said, it’s not in-depth. If you’re expecting SOMA levels of dialogue or existentialism, it’s not here. This ain’t that kind of game. And while the game knows what it is, it could’ve done a bit more with its plot and some of its characters, considering it felt like they were going in that direction but simply didn’t have the time.
My biggest criticism, believe it or not, is the price. You can beat the game in about ten hours—probably less than that if you aren’t trying to get all the achievements and challenges. I paid $50 for this game. Yes, really. I’m fine with supporting indie developers and I’m not mad that I paid this much, but this is a game that doesn’t really do a whole lot new. And while it is stylish in what it does, again…fifty bucks is high. I paid $25 for Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden (that’s a magnificent game; I highly recommend you buy that right now; it’s got a snarky duck in it who’s basically me; also buy the DLC—shameless advertising; shush your face) and that game had nearly twice as much content as this game. Even with the $15 DLC, it’s still cheaper than this game, and much more satisfying. Not that this game is bad! But it’s ehhhhhhh that damn price tag.
So would I recommend you buy this game? Yes, but later. Or at least rent it. I say buy this game when it’s $25, maybe $30 at most. But $50 is seriously high. Like I said, this game doesn’t do a whole lot new or special. But nevertheless, this game still essentially embraces what it is and has fun with itself. And sometimes that’s really all you need. I compare this game to Redeemer—a game that you can beat in about four or five hours. It’s a top-down beat ‘em up/shooter where you beat up mutants, cyborgs, and bad guys. You reach the boss, kill him, game ends. Still thoroughly enjoy that game though.
This game…I feel like this game out at the proper time. Because The Last of Us, Part II over-complicated itself simply for the sake of doing so and making players think the game’s more special than it actually is. It spent more time being stylish and groundbreaking as opposed to telling a great story that isn’t controversial. And now look where we are. This game came out a few days beforehand and basically everyone has overlooked it. This game doesn’t do anything groundbreaking because it wasn’t trying to. It was trying to make itself be an entertaining game. And that’s what it is! Sometimes that’s all a game needs to be: entertaining. A game is supposed to make you want to play it the further along you go, not make you realize that you’re doing the same shit over and over again until you get bored or realize you’re wasting your time playing it.
Jeremy Jahns said it best when he reviewed Grand Theft Auto V: I would rather play a three-hour game that makes me say “HOLY SHIT; THAT WAS AWESOME!” versus a 30+ hour game that makes me say “Why am I doing this? Why am I playing this? Why did I spend money on this?”
