Disaster Report

"Trapped on an island with nothing but your wits and a whiny chick..."

Survival Horror games usually come with one of two names attached to it in the form of Resident Evil and Dino Crisis. With the addition of this title, you’ll find that you’re not trying to outrun zombies, killer dogs, or even huge dinosaurs, but the surrounds around you that are trying to crush and kill you at every point. The actual premise of the game is pretty cool in which you have to lead survivors out of an earthquake struck city, all while picking and choosing your path carefully. While the premise is done with suspense in mind, the overall presentation of the game in all areas is lackluster at best with no enemies, no real weapons and only your wits and a little luck to guide you through.

While out getting a news story for the local paper, you’re caught in the middle of a natural disaster of epic proportions. With the world seemingly coming down around you at all points, you find yourself alone in a deserted city, surrounding by tall buildings and pitfalls that appear in the street. Having nothing but a strong sense of preservation, you decide to get yourself out of the city and off the island before something really bad happens to you and you can’t tell the rest of the world about it. During your travels, you’ll meet other people who are also trapped on the huge island, and it is up to you, an average man to become a superhero and lead them to safety.

The story of the game starts out pretty strong with plenty of drama and suspense attached to it, but the plot holes that are apparent from the start really hinder your ability to set yourself into the world of Disaster Report. The game play isn’t all that you might be thinking in either, in which you mainly have to make choices based on what you have ahead of you and make the correct one. Dying in Disaster Report is easy to do, but not because you can’t avoid the various obstacles or buildings that are looking to squish you, but because the control doesn’t hold up to the constant moving around that you do. A touchy camera that you have literally no control over also does wonders to killing you when you walk into a hazard simply because the camera looked in that direction.

Control is the main factor here and you’ll do plenty of cursing once you’ve gotten started in the game. Your character doesn’t always move fast enough for you to get out of the way of an oncoming death, so you have to be lightening quick with the direction of your character in order to get yourself out of harms way. Now, if you add this into the fact that you have tag-along people with you, you’ll find yourself falling into the Ico-Syndrome where you have to wait for your friend to hurry up and reach you, all while making sure that person doesn’t get killed. Although I had fun with Ico, there is something lacking here in terms of other things to do besides make choices and work on not getting whacked in the process.

Visually, Disaster Report has some of the most impressive background locations that I’ve seen in a suspense game in a long time. The buildings seem taller than they should be and the shadow effects are wonderful as are the explosions and fire features. However, the downside to all of this is the fact that the character designs are clumsy and they don’t move with a natural grace, as if the characters had been glued onto the backdrops themselves. Dark and un-remitting, you’ll find that there are place in Disaster Report that you might be on the edge of your seat to travel into, but there are other places that just don’t seem like they belong, which breaks the illusion of adventure in a quick way.

Another careless feature of the visuals that you’ll notice in spades is the way that the camera angle moves without being prompted. Almost like Silent Hill, there is plenty here that you’ll find that tries to give you the feeling that you’re someplace that you shouldn’t be or that something back is going to happen. However, when you get this, you end up with a camera that will ultimately screw your controls up and cause an untimely death. While this adds challenge to the game, the angles that you have thrown at you at any given moment don’t seem to make too much sense and will probably disorient you if you’re eyes are glued to one particular portion of the stage.

The audio is quiet and really doesn’t make much of an impact on you until something happens to you or is about to happen. Key moments in the game seem to be framed with more pressing and urgent sets of music, but for the most part, there isn’t anything that you have to listen to other than your own footsteps and the occasional sound effect of something exploding or something that’s on fire. The element of surprise with the music is good in all respects, because it’ll make you jump, but the sound effects when buildings come down seem muted and almost unimaginative.

Disaster Report tries hard to be something that it isn’t, but not because of a storyline problem or even a game play problem. What it suffers from is poor mismanagement of control and of camera angles, which lead to unfair game play difficulty. With that in mind, the visual backgrounds are excellently detailed, but the character designs are flawed with stiff movement and little or no imagination. Camera angles attempt to give you the suspense that you’re looking for, but the execution actually makes dying ten times easier than it already is. With all of that in mind, if you’re looking for something that isn’t a Resident Evil product, then you can take a look for a couple of days, but only if you’re into wasting your money should you buy into this Disaster Report.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 03/17/03, Updated 03/17/03