- Publisher: NIS America
- Release Date: Apr 7, 2020
- Also On: PC, Switch
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- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
- Unscored
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Apr 1, 2020For all its technical issues, Disaster Report 4 is a truly astounding bit of video game art and a true reflection on something that is important to understand about the Japanese culture and mindset. It is nothing like the disaster stories and games that come from western creatives, and the more melancholic, sympathetic, and people-focused themes of the game might confuse those that expect a disaster experience at first. Embrace it for what it is, however, and the game is so much better than any of that blockbuster trash. There is something very subtle, but very powerful at the core of Disaster Report 4, and, even as I've had the likes of Animal Crossing and Resident Evil 3 to play this past two weeks, I've found myself coming back to this one, and reflecting on it to a far greater degree. It's not necessarily fun, in a traditional sense, but it's culturally insightful and intelligent, and that makes it valuable.
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Apr 8, 2020There are rough parts to Summer Memories, to be sure. Its visuals aren't the prettiest, its translation is awkward in places, and that crouching mechanic really does suck. Yet the experience of this game, the raw, primal thrill of being swept up in a whirlwind of danger and given the choice to either work with people or piss them off is unlike anything else on the market. It's a game that lives and dies on its interactions with the world and its inhabitants alone, and those interactions alone are worth the price of admission.
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Apr 2, 2020Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories is a fascinating and charming game. While it looks like a game from the past generation in technical terms, it's still a rather unique adventure. Combining a situation not often seen in video games with a cast of characters with memorable stories, this game really offers an experience that, once you get hooked, is very difficult to drop. The wait may have been too long, but Disaster Report 4 is totally worth it.
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Sep 14, 2020Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories is a hard-fought project that captures your attention thanks to interesting characters, violent scenes, well-written situations during a global disaster and great gameplay. So in this case the graphics and bugs doesn't matters.
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Apr 9, 2020Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories is not the most refined game you’ll find in 2020, falling short on multiple technical levels, but its blend of personal dramas and crisis management with slivers of wit and absurdity makes for a surprisingly impactful disaster movie-inspired experience that is arguably one that’s difficult to find elsewhere.
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Mar 31, 2020While poor performance often makes the repetition more of a chore than it needs to be, a truly interesting world, game design that understands its gameplay is repetitive and regularly finds new contexts for its loop, and fantastic atmosphere still kept me having a great time with Disaster Report 4. There were times when the game made me groan, but there was no point in its campaign where I didn't want to see what was coming next. Its a game I know I'll remember.
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Mar 31, 2020If you can look past the aesthetics of Disaster Report 4, there's a bunch of fun to be had escaping the broken city and helping out the residents as you struggle to survive and hopefully make your way home.
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May 18, 2020Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories is a perfect example of a beautiful story that falls short on execution. The creators seem to have put more effort into the characters than into the game itself. You also go through the game fairly quickly, if it does not crash. The appearance of the game is somewhat disappointing as well.
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Apr 13, 2020Disaster Report 4 is a shambles. But we love a lemon here at PSC and couldn't help but like it. It's almost so bad its good. We enjoyed ourselves despite the obvious shortfalls.
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Apr 20, 2020Disaster Report 4 feels like a game made ten years ago… and not particularly in a good way. There are some good ideas, but design and gameplay-wise it feels too obsolete.
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Apr 20, 2020This experience is technically outdated, too static and partially grotesquely unrealistic.
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Apr 16, 2020Disaster Report 4 Summer Memories fails both as a survival game and a visual novel. It suffers from many technical issues (sometimes it feels like a PS2 game) and a slow pace.
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Apr 13, 2020What players might expect out of Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories and what it actually is are two entirely different things. It markets itself as a serious yarn centered around a catastrophe where player choice matters, but it’s actually an intentional comedy that uses the drama of the situations to heighten the absurdity of it all. It’s weird, but in a fantastic and enthralling way. Players with patience and a great sense of humor will come away extremely pleased. Those that can’t abide a laundry list of technical imperfections would be well served staying away. Disaster Report 4 is heavily flawed with too many irritating parts to suffer past, but it still comes recommended for anyone that believes Weird Al’s “Dare to be Stupid” should be the national anthem.
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Apr 2, 2020Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories is a mess of a game. The use of an earthquake as a backdrop is wasted due to the lack of meaningful reactions from anyone in the story. All of the incidents you witness range from semi-normal to wildly ridiculous, but the cast of unlikeable characters punctuates each scenario. The mechanic of stumbling across major story beats makes it so that you'll only figure out things by dumb luck, while the solutions to some of the puzzles feel unsatisfying due to their bewildering solutions. The choice system is the game's real saving grace, but unless you're interested in seeing how much of a terrible person you can be in later runs or are just a massive fan of the series, there's little reason to check out this title.
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Apr 26, 2020Disaster Report 4, as it name suggests, is nothing more than a disaster. There are some good here and there throughout the game, but they are not enough to overcome the many shortcomings that the game is suffering from.
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May 11, 2020True to its name, Disaster Report 4 is a disaster to behold. Mostly in the audio and visuals department, though its gameplay isn't interesting enough to keep you playing either.
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Apr 24, 2020Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories has solid ideas, but very few that manifest themselves properly. There are snippets of charming, personal stories of regular people struggling in the face of catastrophe, and these moments can be incredibly powerful considering real world events. Unfortunately, they're all strung together with clunky exploration, unsatisfying gameplay and half-baked survival mechanics that fail to complement any of the positive aspects of this game. There are things here that lovers of obscure, Japanese passion projects might be able to appreciate, but it will require digging through the metric tons of rubble to find them.
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Apr 8, 2020For Disaster Report's grand return to the West, Disaster Report 4 puts its focus on humanity struggling for survival amidst the destruction. And it's here, that is unfortunately its greatest misstep, with long stretches of tedium and even moments that feel exploitative. In paring down the campy charm of the series before it, Disaster Report 4's more serious tone often crumbles like the very buildings you find yourself running away from.
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Apr 8, 2020Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories could have been an interesting game about earthquakes if it didn't feel like it was made 15 years ago, as the visuals are appalling.
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Apr 6, 2020Even though it’s arrived nine years later than planned (it was cancelled and later resurrected due to the 2011 Japanese earthquake) this is a step back for the Disaster Report/Zettai Zetsumei Toshi series. There are a few highlights, but Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories has so many rough edges, broken mechanics and frustrating, counter-intuitive elements that it’s anything but memorable.
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Apr 5, 2020With the game finally completed and released to the world after nine long years, Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories marks the return of Granzella’s cult classic series about surviving natural disasters. This time around, the team has traded action set pieces in for a more personal look at the human toll of horrific events—but they’ve done so without injecting enough humanity into that new direction to make it truly work.
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Apr 7, 2020For a title that’s ostensibly about surviving in the middle of a disaster, Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories is incredibly slow, incredibly boring, incredibly outdated and incredibly frustrating – it fails at both its human side and its action side, and ultimately has nothing to offer fans of either. For anyone interested in the concepts or subject material, I’d recommend either Disaster Report (PS2, 2003) or Raw Danger! (PS2, 2006) over this crumbling mess.
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Apr 9, 2020There are still glimpses of the original’s charm, and the potential of an earthquake-surviving simulator is made clear, but this tonally awkward, disaster of a game doesn’t get close to realising it.
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Apr 6, 2020Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories is an absolute mess from start to finish. The puzzles that stand in the way of your progress are almost universally illogical leading to an experience that frustrates throughout. This would perhaps – at a push – be worth persevering with if the story were engaging enough, but the tale told here is so silly that it could have been generated by pulling plot twists out of a hat. Throw in a creepy vibe, crummy production values, and dodgy controls, and you're left with an unmitigated disasterpiece that you should avoid like it's got the coronavirus.
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Mar 31, 2020Disaster 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.
| This publication does not provide a score for their reviews. | |
| This publication has not posted a final review score yet. | |
| These unscored reviews do not factor into the Metascore calculation. | |
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Apr 3, 2020Just like the tonal balance between a businessman in a maid outfit trying to escape an earthquake while making a life or death decision, Disaster Report 4: Summer Memoires can feel like an odd tightrope walk. Despite its problems, I was hooked. Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories is a unique, sometimes earth-shattering experience. It doesn’t get everything right but it’s the nearest you’ll ever want to get to an earthquake and that works for me.
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May 15, 2020There’s a good chance you’ll play Disaster Report 4 and write it off as a mess that shouldn’t have been put out in 2020. But there’s also a chance it’ll connect with you on a personal level and reinforce why Irem was one of the most beloved developers of the PS2 era. Granzella’s next game, the paradoxically titled R-Type Final 2, will be one to watch.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 17 out of 35
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Mixed: 6 out of 35
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Negative: 12 out of 35
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Apr 8, 2020
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Jan 3, 2021
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Jun 26, 2020