Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories

Genre: Graphic Adventure

Players: 1

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Review:

Disaster Report 4 is a Graphic Adventure where players take the role of a visitor to a city in Japan as it is caught in the middle of a massive, catastrophic earthquake. This is a series that began on the PlayStation 2 in 2002, and with this fourth game finally seeing release on multiple platforms in 2020 after nearly a decade in development – it was originally intended for release on the PlayStation 3.

Given how long this game was in development, the presentation here is surprising, in more ways than one. On the one hand, you have some nice character models (mixed with some pretty ugly ones) and some detailed environments that seem like a more modern release, and there are even some in-game events like collapsing buildings that are a decent spectacle… however, all of this come at a pretty terrible price. The framerates in the Nintendo Switch version of the game are absolutely atrocious, and make this game an ordeal to play through. And while the Japanese-only voice-acting seems decent and the sound design here is actually pretty good, these terrible framerates keep making it very hard to appreciate anything else about this game.

There are problems beyond the framerates, though. This game suffers from some pretty terrible game design that makes it difficult to know just where you’re supposed to go next. Often, you’ll need to talk to a specific person in the crowd of people mulling about the place, and there’s no clear indication who you need to chat with to move the story forward, nor any significant indication where you even need to go.

And while the game does have an interesting dynamic of risk to it whenever an after-shock hits and you need to decide whether to buckle down to avoid falling and hurting yourself, or running to get away from stuff that could fall on you, it doesn’t do a good job of explaining these systems and mechanics to the player, nor how health and stress work.

It’s a shame that so much of Disaster Report 4 is broken (and not by the Earthquake), because the themes of interacting with people during a stressful emergency situation can make for some gripping drama. However, between the horribly framerates and unclear goals of the game, this is one disaster best avoided.

tl;dr – Disaster Report 4 is a Graphic Adventure that has you making your way through a Japanese city and helping people in the wake of a terrible earthquake. Unfortunately, the game suffers from horrendous framerate problems, and the unclear goal structure means you’ll often be wandering trying to figure out just what you’re supposed to be doing. The result is a game with a great premise that is absolutely not fun to play.

Grade: D

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