Disaster Report
is a different kind of survival game. Not unlike a survival/horror game,
Disaster Report takes place in a giant city, but zombies are nowhere to be
found. There are no horrific elements whatsoever. And you don’t have any
enemies to battle, except for Mother Nature. There is, however, the element
of terror. Terror that you’re going to spend the last few moments of your
life trapped in a demolished city. Terror that a car is going to fall off a
ledge and squash you like a bug. Terror that the weak piece of concrete that
you’re standing on will break away and fall into the water more than a hundred
feet below. In Disaster Report, your only real objective is to make it out
alive.
This is
accomplished through severe avoidance. The whole city appears to be one
gigantic obstacle course, one that’s filled with enough booby-traps to fool
even the most cautious players. When cracks appear in the pavement below, or
when dust is being shot from the platform above, something bad is going to
happen. Sometimes bad situations are inevitable (this game is called Disaster
Report, after all).
Early on in the
game you’ll find a key under a pot (Resident Evil-ish, no?) that unlocks the
doors to an abandoned restaurant. Inside the restaurant you’ll find some
health items (empty water bottles, which can be filled with fresh water
whenever you find a sink or a fountain). Eventually you must make your way
through the back of the building and that’s when things get tricky. As you
move closer to the exit, the floor begins to cave! It caves in more suddenly
than any prior to this point in the game, putting an end to anyone foolish
enough to run along the unstable area. Since the floor turns on its side as
it begins to cave, the only option to is to carefully walk around the damaged
area and hope you don’t fall. It wasn’t that difficult to conquer after dying
the first time (thus the game revealed the location of every crack in the
floor/bridge), but it was a tad startling, and exciting to see the effects of
what happens when a person walks into a building that’s about to collapse.
Certainly the character in the game doesn’t know what’s going to happen, and
as a player seeing it for the first time, you don’t either.
That is the
essence of the game — shocking, startling scenarios that one would not expect
to occur. Shortly after surviving the restaurant, you’ll be faced with an
even more challenging puzzle: save a damsel in distress. She’s trapped in a
broken subway car, which is hanging over the ledge of the broken bridge! It
sways back and forth, increasing the possibility for failure. If you go to
the end of the subway car and attempt to grab the woman’s hand, the weight of
the car will shift too fast, pushing it off the edge. Game Over. Here the
only solution is to use a rope, which is located near the subway, but it’s a
littler trickier than you’d expect.
These startling
moments are enhanced by the game’s brief use of cinematic animation effects
and a few decent camera angles. When not in a special situation, the camera
sticks to a standard behind-the-character view. It’s a little awkward to use,
especially when it moves above the character’s head (which it does fairly
often). This may be fixed in the final version though, so it’s not too much
of a concern at this time.
It’s hard to
tell exactly how the gameplay will turn out, but at this point it appears to
be coming along very nicely. Not only is the concept unique, but the gameplay
is as well. The controls are very basic (walk, run, jump, etc.), but the
destructive city adds depth to this game’s simplicity. Never before has a
player had to wander through an area so carefully because he was worried about
being trampled by pieces of a falling building.
I honestly
didn’t know what to expect from Disaster Report, and you know what? I’m
glad. It’s really nice to be able to play a new kind of game, especially one
as Japanese-y as this one. The lack of monsters to shoot may turn off some
gamers, but I am looking forward to playing through the final version of this
unique and original title.
