Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories has a strange and unfortunate history. Originally it was meant to come out in 2011, at the same time the Tōhoku earthquake hit Japan. Being a game about Japan being torn up by earthquakes, the game was not released and eventually cancelled. In 2018, a redeveloped game was released on more modern consoles under the current name. It is now 2020 and the game has gotten its English release, which means it is time to see if the 2020 worldwide pandemic is a better time to play Disaster Report. 

Disaster Report 4 is a third person action/adventure game, with plenty of dialogue choices along the way. To begin, you choose a gender with a few customisation options. You need to answer some personality quiz-style questions and then you’re on your way. You are on the bus travelling into the city for a job interview. Before you arrive, a massive earthquake hits the city and your bus is caught up in it. The city around you is unstable. Buildings have already toppled, and aftershocks and further earthquakes will bring even more down. Your goal is to get back home safely in this third person a, and the only way out of the city is full of falling buildings, jerks, and fake convenience store managers. When you do complete the main story you can come back and play the epilogue, originally DLC this epilogue picks up some time after the events of the story. 

First up, the story of Disaster Report 4 is all over the place -it’s a tonal disaster! Everywhere you go there’s aftershocks and environmental dangers from falling/collapsing/sinking structures, and people do die in this game. I’ve read that the Disaster Report games are meant to be silly, if I was familiar with the series I'd know that there is at least one return character. So what are these games meant to be then? Quirky characters and situations in the middle of a town-levelling disaster? This is a game set in Japan where earthquakes have killed many people, the disaster that impacted this game originally being a big example. Then you’re dealing with comedic conmen, corporate dramas, wacky cults and sexual assault?! I don’t know if you have to have a history with this franchise to get what they’re trying to do, but it just comes across as poor taste. I get that I am coming into all this very seriously, but this game is centred around a very serious situation. The sillier elements could exist in their own slice of life game, but as it stands it just comes across as making light of a horrible natural disaster and other unsavoury elements. 

With every situation you’re given multiple options for dialogue or reactions. This isn’t the Paragon/Renegade morality system, most decisions are between at least 4-5 choices. Some earn morality points, but be a jerk and you’ll net immortality points (not that it changes what you actually have to do). Immoral choices are usually so immoral there is no in-game or real life justification to play it in that way. Especially when it gets creepy, only 20 minutes into the game I’m given a choice to hit on a panicked school teacher looking for her students. One of the other dialogue options implies you want to help because they’re high school students and that’s desirable. Throughout the story you’re given the chance to try and flirt with women who have only just survived horrible situations, including with said high school students. While you’re not forced to choose those options, it feels pretty inappropriate to have included the option at all. The game makes itself very clear that it’s not a disaster survival game, so you could hardly claim that it is exploring the scenario where you’re a letch in the middle of a natural disaster. Unfortunately the further into the game you go the worse it gets.

The world is filled with people who are all reacting in different ways. Some are taking photos, some are talking about the earthquakes and some are just standing there. Most people are labeled with a basic description, so it doesn’t have to be communicated when you talk to them. When you do talk to them you’ll usually get one sentence that could be interchangeable with any other NPC in the world. The only people who actually do have something to say the majority of the time will be indicated by a brief loading screen before there’s a conversation. When you get into the conversation they’re not much better than the one-line people wandering around. 

Other events that happen through the story feel hollow, for example coming across a murdered jeweller with the culprit still present and busy stealing what she can. The first thing you think you would do is tell the police just outside of the building, but no, you do nothing. This is the same for a fake convenience store employee charging exorbitant prices to people in need. Disaster Report 4 is built around how people respond to a catastrophic event like this. Well, how a few people respond while you do nothing about it. Early on you’ll see people taking advantage of the situation and trying to exploit others. At one point you’ll come across some sinister thugs looking to do horrible things to a woman you helped. This only escalates in some ridiculous and serious ways when you get involved with a corporate espionage side story and get in deep with a cult. When things do get serious there’s some real tonal whiplash, at odds with the goofiness and over the top moments for the majority of the game. 

For some reason the more serious moments often result in something terrible happening to the female characters in the game, involving either death, the threat of sexual assault as well as actual sexual assualt. Combining this with the ‘immoral’ decisions you can make along the way where not only can you flirt with these characters during moments of duress, you can also hit on school girls. Now the dialogue choices are entirely up to you, I do get that they’re there to be bad options, but it feels needlessly gross that they’re there at all. It’s not helped that situations such as the sexual assault serves the story in no real way. Even if it was to highlight the awful ways some people can take advantage of a catastrophe, it got the point across when it was only threatened. If sexual assault used as a plot device makes you feel uncomfortable it would be best to avoid this game altogther, especially when the rest of the story is like a badly-written soap opera or plays it tongue in cheek.    

If you do stick with the game, the further in you go the more the story goes off the rails, leaning into comedic and absurd situations. Where the story goes will appeal to people who like to intentionally play ‘bad’ games, but after everything leading up to the last stretch it already leaves such a bad taste.   

The game runs poorly at all times. The framerate struggles to handle you walking down the street, hell, it doesn’t even handle moving the camera. It only gets worse when things actually happen, when earthquakes hit you’re fighting the frame rate as well as the falling debris. Most of the time you won’t actually see what building is falling or if you’re in its path until it's killed you, so every sequence like this usually involves dying until you can finally see where it’s coming from before it lands on you. 

There’s no mistaking that this game in some form was a PS3 game. The visuals and clunkiness that permeates every part of this game screams that it isn’t from anywhere near 2020. Strangely, this game was apparently redesigned since the original version so it’s unclear how it can still be so aged. One of the early clunky moments was when there was a busy street of citizens just walking around like the overpass right near them wasn’t on its side. At the start of the area you can see straight away that all of the people are on a loop, walking to the end of the path, turning around and then walking back in perpetuity. Sometimes the game feels like it's holding together with gaffer tape and wishful thinking. Another example is when a building collapsed. After walking up to the remains to see if I could help, a woman casually walks through the rubble unharmed and spouts off the usual one line she gets. When these big moments of destruction happen it doesn’t feel like it has any real impact in the world. Sure it will change how you progress forward, but there are very few moments with any stakes for the people around you. When there are any, they’re extreme.

Getting around Japan in Disaster Report 4 is already a chore when the earthquakes aren’t bringing down the world around you. Each area is essentially running around doing side quests or finding the location that sets off the next earthquake. Inside buildings is a nightmare, navigation through them is horrible and worse if you have to open up doors. When you are exploring the buildings the camera angle changes and becomes disorientating, and usually the rooms have nothing going on. Most buildings have at least one thing happening in it, sometimes there’s also a backpack or compass. Sometimes the trigger for the game to continue is within these buildings, so you have to poke around everywhere. It turns out it can get worse than walking around indoors, you can be stuck crawling or having to scoot around tied up. These moments move at an absolute snails pace. It’s true that crawling is generally slow, but the sequence where you find yourself tied up and shuffling around is true torture.

At the start of the game I came across toilets. You can use them, there’s even an indicator if you are in need of a toilet or not. It turns out however it doesn’t matter, you can ignore the indicators on your HUD and it didn’t do a thing. There’s not just a meter for how much you need the toilet, there’s also hunger, thirst and stress. You can alleviate them, but there’s absolutely no reason to. I get this isn’t a AAA game, it’s not even a game you would expect in 2018, but when most of the mechanics in this game have no impact on the game it feels either broken or unfinished.  

If you’ve been waiting forever for the glorious return of the Disaster Report franchise then it doesn’t matter what I think, chances are you know exactly what you’re in for. If you’re curious about a game where it’s implied you’ll be trying to survive a natural disaster, this isn’t the game for you. If questionable treatment of females along with sexual assault being used as a plot device is uncomfortable for you or a hard limit, then this game isn’t for you. I would have trouble recommending this game to people who like a fun bad game to play because to get to the ‘bad’ parts you still have to play this mess. If you need a further incentive to avoid this game hopefully the price tag of over $90 will deter you for what is essentially a budget title. While your character survives Disaster Report 4, it doesn’t extend the same mercy to the player.

Review code supplied by NIS America