REVIEW : Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories (PC)
This game was expected to be about Japanese city being ruined with an earthquake to manage the subject matter very nicely and with a lot of pity and gravitas. Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories, however, doesn’t. This is a mysterious, dull game with lame controls, poor graphics, and completely archaic gameplay. But its stupid weirdness and ridiculous narrative trappings will make it worth playing for market who like wonky, cheap Japanese games. Anyone viewing for an impassioned game focused on survival and the power of humanity will likely just be appalled.
The Game Sets in early into character’s career, the journalist and former Wall Street dealer Michael Lewis issued a piece of what might be termed “uncertain nonfiction”, in which he envisioned, in awful detail, the results of a destructive earthquake on Tokyo. Fictional details in Lewis’s article were created to expand the influence of his old reporting, which argued that Tokyo was ill-prepared to manage such a sojourn. The Disaster Report series of video games, which originated in 2003, is rooted in spectacular entertainment, not meticulous journalism, but by putting you on the Tokyo roads during a destructive quake and its harsh aftershocks, the effect is evenly chastening.
In this latest, long-awaited entry to the lineup, you play as a young out-of-town service worker. The play opens on a compact bus, moments before grasshopper music of smartphone murmurs rouses up as the authority sends a city-wide text message signalling inhabitants to the incoming disaster. At this point you must decide how to react from different options: last to stand calmly in the aisle, not needing to humiliate yourself in front of visitors, or fall to hands and joints and steady yourself for the worst.
The quake hits, the bus flips, and you drag from the wreck into a city changed by the territory it already lasted firmly upon. As you choose your way within the city, earthquake caused buildings to fall, roads to crack open, fires to inflame and, of course, the demise toll to rise. Along the way you face a cast of characters who react in the specific variety of ways you might require in the aftermath of such a failure: the Instagrammers clicking shots for the feed, the store workers increasing the price of bottled water, the gawpers, the assistants, the wanderers, the purposeful.
The crucial thing to recollect with Disaster Report 4 is that it’s not just the low budget but was also formerly intended to be published on the PlayStation 3. As a result, the performance is shocking, even on PS4 Pro, with severe frame rate difficulties and frustrating loading series that sometimes seem to pop up nearly every second step.
And yet the visuals themselves are quite simple, while the pompous controls are frustrating and embarrassing – although somewhat less so given you’re managing a sound person and not any kind of action hero. Anyone’s that played the originals won’t be shocked by any of that, they may even be satisfied that it’s so evocative of the PlayStation 2 games, but what is remarkable is that this sequel carries itself a lot more severely than the earlier games. There is a lot of added talking and conversation options than the earlier games, as you witness people dropping to various perils without any risk you can help them. Many characters also act in a less than good manner, from those who solely refuse to help other people, to one guy attempting to make an illegal profit marketing drinks. Although the weak talk and characterisation choke most efforts to play things straight.
And yet for all these deficiencies, Disaster Report IV persists an extraordinary journey. As the thunder of an aftershock rolls in, the screams go up, and you frantically look round to see if and where the next wave of destruction is likely to occur, the game offers a compelling, terrifying glimpse of how it might sense to live through this particular natural disaster.
The coronavirus pandemic has revealed that beings find anticipation much harder to act upon than hindsight. Lewis-style thoughtful non-fiction based on experimental modelling or overlooked warnings from experts offered various, strong warnings of what we are living through now. It’s debatable that virtual games like Disaster Report have a role in training the public, something to expect, and how to sustain, and serve a useful role, as well as an inspiring one.
