Disaster Report is much like the island it takes place on: shaky, uneven, full of cracks, and a man-made wonder. It's about as standard an adventure game as they come; walk around, find an item, use item on "door," repeat. Characters are all one-note, with lines of dialogue delivered in wildly different tones and volumes within a single conversation. Time is split between wandering around looking for a single key item to progress and running away from collapsing rubble, rushing waves, or tumbling trucks, and it's all achieved with not-the-jankiest-but-damn-close controls from the generation. The lack of direct camera control will kill you more than any natural disaster. You have the ability to call out to NPCs, which makes them wave at you and literally nothing else. You have to drink water to do actions and maintain health, but on Normal difficulty water is in such high supply that you will only ever die from one-hit "event" kills rather than taking damage from the world around you. Fortunately, checkpoints are frequent, so you're never losing too much progress whenever you think you're watching a cutscene but were, in fact, supposed to be running away from the random tsunami.
Despite the uneven experience of actually playing it, it all strangely works together to make a unique and charming game. The story is revealed in little chunks that are paced out pretty well, adding mystery to what was originally just a survival story. Of course for every reveal there is something that makes absolutely no sense (like villains inexplicably refusing to spend a bullet on your character because it will "take too long") that adds to the wacky tone and nature of the whole experience. There are multiple endings depending on certain actions you take, complete with a path-split decision halfway through the game to follow different characters, and they range from ridiculous to abrupt to depressing.
There is a lot of love put into Disaster Report, and as a result there is a lot to love about it. Everything moves along at a decent pace, characters are simultaneously over the top and endearing, and there's very little of the game that's outright busted so much as just unpolished. In all honesty, the game gets more of a 2.5 star rating from a gameplay perspective, but I'm awarding it a full extra star for including the most insane cutscene involving two old men on a rooftop to ever be portrayed in media.
Despite the uneven experience of actually playing it, it all strangely works together to make a unique and charming game. The story is revealed in little chunks that are paced out pretty well, adding mystery to what was originally just a survival story. Of course for every reveal there is something that makes absolutely no sense (like villains inexplicably refusing to spend a bullet on your character because it will "take too long") that adds to the wacky tone and nature of the whole experience. There are multiple endings depending on certain actions you take, complete with a path-split decision halfway through the game to follow different characters, and they range from ridiculous to abrupt to depressing.
There is a lot of love put into Disaster Report, and as a result there is a lot to love about it. Everything moves along at a decent pace, characters are simultaneously over the top and endearing, and there's very little of the game that's outright busted so much as just unpolished. In all honesty, the game gets more of a 2.5 star rating from a gameplay perspective, but I'm awarding it a full extra star for including the most insane cutscene involving two old men on a rooftop to ever be portrayed in media.