A stunningly incompetent PS2-level game that cannot decide whether it wants to be comedic or deadly serious. In the middle of a cataclysmic earthquake that laid waste to Tokyo, characters will ramble on about trying their best to find jobs, or worry about what some random survivor thinks about their hair, or the stock market, or hitting on chicks, or again a myriad other things that should at the very least play second fiddle to survival instincts during a time of extreme danger and distress.
Originally slated for 2011, it was cancelled and kept in limbo for seven years due to an earthquake hitting Japan the day before its planned release. Eventually published in 2018, it revealed itself to be completely outaded under every point of view, even by 2011 standards.
Every single aspect of the game is poorly executed, from the moral choices which have no consequences (should you climb the ladder or carefully climb the ladder? Should you yell at the man who lost his job or comfort him? Who cares, it makes no difference anyway), to the atrocious level and puzzle design to the terrible writing and performance (dipping into single digit frame rates here and there)
Some gameplay elements are simply astonishing, such as baffling mechanics like being constantly on the hunt for a toilet to relieve oneself or the outlandish inventory management or the grotesque fixation with ridiculous alternate outfits or tacky skins for your compass, all of which shatter into a million pieces whatever immersion value the game had going for it.
Am I expected to take these people's tragedy seriously when the game encourages me to run around in a santa outfit, following the direction of an anime idol compass? The tonal inconsistency is mind-boggling and far from the careful balancing act between drama and comedy that products like the Yakuza series achieve: here it's just jarring and awkward.
The inherent nature of this setting and how realistically it's presented simply leaves no room for wacky shenanigans, and trying to force them in comes off as absolutely tone deaf.
And that's a shame, because some of the sidequests can be quite interesting, sometimes even touching on a human level, but it really feels like digging through the dirt to find what little good there is.
Emblematic of the gameplay is a lengthy section taking place around the halfway point, inside a flooded apartment building: an illogical timewaster of a maze made of blocked stairways, ledges to shimmy through and a few windows available to climb in and out of, back and forth doing insulting fetch quests, which in its complex is a microcosm of the worst early 2000s PS2 game design.
It was shortly after that area that I called it: even with a step by step walkthrough it is simply too much of a chore to proceed, especially when the game throws backtracking and repetition into the miix.
I really wanted to like Disaster Report 4, but ultimately it is not for me.
Originally slated for 2011, it was cancelled and kept in limbo for seven years due to an earthquake hitting Japan the day before its planned release. Eventually published in 2018, it revealed itself to be completely outaded under every point of view, even by 2011 standards.
Every single aspect of the game is poorly executed, from the moral choices which have no consequences (should you climb the ladder or carefully climb the ladder? Should you yell at the man who lost his job or comfort him? Who cares, it makes no difference anyway), to the atrocious level and puzzle design to the terrible writing and performance (dipping into single digit frame rates here and there)
Some gameplay elements are simply astonishing, such as baffling mechanics like being constantly on the hunt for a toilet to relieve oneself or the outlandish inventory management or the grotesque fixation with ridiculous alternate outfits or tacky skins for your compass, all of which shatter into a million pieces whatever immersion value the game had going for it.
Am I expected to take these people's tragedy seriously when the game encourages me to run around in a santa outfit, following the direction of an anime idol compass? The tonal inconsistency is mind-boggling and far from the careful balancing act between drama and comedy that products like the Yakuza series achieve: here it's just jarring and awkward.
The inherent nature of this setting and how realistically it's presented simply leaves no room for wacky shenanigans, and trying to force them in comes off as absolutely tone deaf.
And that's a shame, because some of the sidequests can be quite interesting, sometimes even touching on a human level, but it really feels like digging through the dirt to find what little good there is.
Emblematic of the gameplay is a lengthy section taking place around the halfway point, inside a flooded apartment building: an illogical timewaster of a maze made of blocked stairways, ledges to shimmy through and a few windows available to climb in and out of, back and forth doing insulting fetch quests, which in its complex is a microcosm of the worst early 2000s PS2 game design.
It was shortly after that area that I called it: even with a step by step walkthrough it is simply too much of a chore to proceed, especially when the game throws backtracking and repetition into the miix.
I really wanted to like Disaster Report 4, but ultimately it is not for me.