It is exciting to play a shooter, it is a satisfying to play strategy game. Doing both things at the same time, it is just glorious. Disintegration is extremely balanced for being the first take at this new genre, and it is very well polished, too. The worldbuilding is fascinating, the story is not too bad, but the writing of characters and dialogues is terrible. Luckily the game is just so good.

Disintegration provides a pleasant breath of oxygen to a genre, such as that of first person shooters, often rooted in consolidated archetypes. Unfortunately, the technical realization betrays the limitations of a budget that would have been better conveyed only on the single player campaign, instead of concentrating a good part of the forces in anything but satisfactory multiplayer.

Disintegration could have been a lot worse than an “alright” campaign and a decent multiplayer mode. Given V1 Interactive tried something novel and tried to blend genres and it could have been a directionless mess. What we got, however, was a neat idea with a lot of potential to be something greater, with an execution good enough to prove the concept works. The multiplayer is much better than the campaign, if only because it’s not bogged down with the same design choices as a single-player mode. In saying that, it’s still worth checking out for what could very well end up being the first emergence of a great new genre.

Disintegration at least proves that, when properly tuned, the vehicle-based gameplay that’s normally presented as a one-off setpiece in most other FPS titles is capable of anchoring an entire game, especially when it’s paired off with a little RTS unit management. Unfortunately, in Disintegration’s case, that unique gameplay model isn’t strong enough to outshine the game’s lack of visual and functional polish.

Disintegration offers a mid-level gaming experience with poor story presentation below my expectations and unfulfilled gameplay of the RTS part of the game. The multiplayer part, which has a great potential, is spent due to the low number of customization options and low number of players.

Disintegration aims high, but it doesn’t quite hit the right points. There’s fun to be had in this shooter/strategy hybrid, but you’ll have to survive unbalanced combat, a poorly explained narrative and some occasionally unreliable AI teammates to get there.

An unsatisfying mix of shallow strategy and low-energy shooting, Disintegration is hard to recommend to fans of either genre.