Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories

True 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.

Disaster 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.

For 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.

Disaster 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.

Even 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.

With 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.

For 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in the middle of a disaster, Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories is incredibly slow, incredibly boring, incredibly outdated and incredibly frustrating – it fails at both its human side and its action side, and ultimately has nothing to offer fans of either.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.

There 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.

Disaster 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.