THE TRUE DISASTER IS THIS GAME.

There was a time on the PS2 where the oddest games had the opportunity to flourish. A large number of experimental titles came out, and some of those developed heavy cult followings. Monster Hunter and Earth Defense Force are probably the two most well known of these, as they continue to have titles released to this day. Others like Mister Mosquito and Robotic Alchemic Drive never saw a life outside of the PS2. It was a time where big and small developers alike could test these new bold ideas. Disaster Report was one of those bold ideas; a game where the only goal was to escape a sinking island. It was like playing in a Roland Emmerich movie, and for the most part it was successful if not maybe too simplistic. It did well enough for a sequel though, and it got released as Raw Danger (terrible name) and that furthered the survival elements to become something greater than its predecessor. Then the third game on PSP never left Japan and the fourth game was seemingly canned after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that ravaged Japan.

I sort of wish they never revived this project after it was dead. I’m not going to sugarcoat it; this game is bad. It is so bad that I am going to go into detail of why I think this game is terrible and that means spoiling parts of the story. Don’t play this game.

PLATFORMS: PS4, SWITCH, PC
MSRP: $59.99
PRICE I’D PAY: $14.99

Disaster Report 4 is not a survival game. In fact, the earthquake is seemingly just a backdrop for the melodramatic nonsense that is the story of Disaster Report 4. No, Disaster Report 4 is at best one of the worst visual novels I have ever played, and at worst one of the most unfocused scrambling of mechanics I have ever seen in a video game. A forced stealth section, hunger, thirst and bathroom meters that seemingly don’t matter, an inventory that is rarely used other than for costumes, and a mechanic to combine items together that is used a whole two times in the game. That would be fine if the game had a narrative that the player felt like they hadany agency over, but as I will explain, that is seemingly not the case.

As the earthquake happens, the main character (regardless of what the player chooses in character creation) is in a bus roll over. After escaping I wandered around and hit the story points the game wanted me to, which included finding three young female students for their teacher. I did this part twice out of curiosity, and no matter what I chose as my dialog option I still had to find the students. Why give me the option then? Why am I allowed to say “No. I do not want to help.” if the game will force me to help regardless? Speaking of which, after finding said students, a part of the world moved so I could proceed into the next area.

The concept of two unconnected events happening is consistent in this game. Buildings won’t fall until I’ve talked to the right person. The door won’t unlock until I’ve talked to the man about how I look like someone’s son, despite the fact I should just be able to go through said door anyways. These events aren’t connected by any logic and therefore should have no real effect on each other, which means I did a lot of wandering at times trying to figure out why I couldn’t progress only to find out I didn’t wander into the exact spot for an event to take place. That’s terrible game design.

Both the lack of any impact of choice and having to wander around like a bumbling fool are consistent throughout the entire game. At one point in the story I was forced into rivalries between a poor section and rich section of town and the two younger lovers caught in between this feud. The whole section is extremely stupid, because it’s long and is antithetical to the idea of escaping the city and the destruction that has been clear up until this point in the game. This plays out like a bad soap opera, and really drives home the aforementioned bumbling around and lack of choices. It also makes it very clear that the writer/s wanted players to care for their characters, but they are all so uninteresting and bland. I thought at this point it couldn’t get worse but it did.

Shortly after being forced to deal with family drama I was recruited to a cult despite purposefully choosing to not trust them when given the option. Then the cult members make me recruit others. It needs to be noted I did everything I could to not join and not recruit members but the game needed me to do this to progress. So I recruit someone and the game gives me some Moral Points. Moral Points are an arbitrary score system that also doesn’t seem to do anything other than guilt the player into doing the right thing. That means this game thinks tricking people into joining the cult is a good thing. After being forced to recruit two more people the leader of said cult asked to talk to me. Whether I confront him on being a liar, praise him, or say nothing he will ask to take over the cult (please note this has been maybe 10 minutes of gameplay from meeting the cult to getting three members) . If I refuse the game will kick me back out of the room and expect me to come back and accept. Again, why give me the choice?

So as new cult leader I now have access to a safe inside the leader’s room. I look inside and find a sapphire ring. Earlier in the game I heard about a stolen sapphire ring so I took it with plans to return it to the owner. I received 100 Immoral Points for that action, meaning that this game says it is a good thing to lead people to a life ruining situation of being in a cult but then stealing from said cult who demands servitude from its members is a bad thing.

I should expect no less from a game that at one point took every bit of money I had for trying to do the right thing and left me penniless for the rest of the game. I should expect no less from a game that had me save a character from a building that is falling apart early on only to have that character suffer physical and sexual abuse if not worse later on for no benefit to the story. None. That character is a victim of sexual violence and it serves zero function on the story. I try not to get on a moral soapbox in reviews but I would really like one of the writers of the game to defend that in any way.

Top this game off with being captured by a human trafficking ring to really show off how classy it is. A guy who was supposed to be good the entire game was really a bad guy and the bad guy was really good? No way! The best part of this section is that the earlier stealth section where the character is tied up wasn’t terrible. I sneaked past the bad guys (who are the eventual predators who assault the young woman I save) and get into a shop where I cut the binding with the sharp edge of a tape dispenser. With this section, they decide to just have a lone tape dispenser on the floor in one room for no reason to once again cut the bindings. There’s no stealth here either as there are no bad guys. It’s dumb. Right after this I MacGyver a timer for a bomb (one of two times I both collected an actual item for inventory and combined items in my inventory) which once planted gives me Immoral Points.

Take a moment there.

My character and all the NPCs with them escape. None of the human traffickers die. The boat they use for human trafficking is now gone. I’m the bad guy.

On no planet is that a bad move. This game has a terrible morality system (thankfully used for nothing important) and I am curious to know what monster wrote this game. I can’t fathom the messed up individual who would ever think damaging the property of a human trafficker is a bad thing, especially by victims of the human trafficker.

The whole story is just trying to top itself with how terrible it can be. At one point I promised to get someone medical aid but couldn’t find a single person to help. Even the paramedic wouldn’t give an option to help. Fantastic. Great design. I’m so glad that every bad event is forced upon me despite my choices otherwise. So glad. I’m also glad the game inundated me with mechanics that were either barely used or unnecessary. Buying food and water is seemingly pointless, as the places to buy food and drink are generally so far apart I would have the hunger and thirst icons pop up, but they didn’t seem to affect gameplay at all. The same would go for my bathroom meter. I could understand if those increased stress but they don’t, meaning that almost nothing raises stress in this game, which makes that another barely used half cooked system. Need money to buy a key item? Well unless there’s a dialog option with someone to get money there’s no way to get it other than selling items, and there are a whole two people (maybe three) who will buy stuff from the player and they are only accessible in certain parts of the game. Why bother doing all this useless development if nothing is going to be done with it? I suppose that can also be said about the dialog choices.

On the technical side of things the game isn’t great either. Both in third person and first person I found the motion blur when turning the camera sickening. I know the game started off as a PS3 game but the visuals don’t look all that great; sometimes I felt like I was playing a PS4 game and other times I felt like I was playing an early PS3 title. Loading screens also plague the experience, which is always fun. This isn’t fast travel either. Just cutscenes, moving from one area to another, and a few other activities will trigger a loading screen. They aren’t the worst but for what they are loading it is a bit absurd. In the Romeo & Juliet section I mentioned earlier it was clear the game had loaded too much stuff simultaneously as the frame rate tanked only in that section. Some actions the character makes are done by simply fading to black and then going back to the game. Also for those not wanting to read, there’s no English dub here. There is this feeling that this game was made to be cheap and it feels it, but they are still charging $60 for this game which is bonkers.

There’s also a VR mode that unlocks as the main game is completed. The main gameplay is walking around searching for pieces of the Disaster Report 4 logo. Sometimes earthquakes happen. It’s actually not terrible in concept. By finding all of the logo pieces in the different scenarios there are items for the main game unlocked. I played a few of the scenarios and found myself having slight motion sickness, potentially from having to rotate my head around to look behind me constantly to exit rooms and go back to previous areas. By far it is the most fun I had with Disaster Report 4, which is really saying something when it made me ill.

Disaster Report 4 should be avoided. If looked at as a survival game it fails even on the merits of past titles in the series. If looked at as a visual novel it fails on the fact it is not compelling, poorly written, and lacks any sort of gameplay hook to engage the player. I am unsure who this is for, but for people like myself who found entertainment in Disaster Report and Raw Danger this is nowhere near as good as either of those games. If I had to sum up this game in one word the best I could do is two words and a hyphen: half-baked.

Review copy of game provided by publisher.