User Reviews (1 - 11 of 12)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

Survive an earthquake!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 11 / 11
Date: March 15, 2003
Author: Amazon User

"Disaster Report" is a variant of the survival horror genre, but in this case, you are trying to escape from a natural disaster rather than zombies or monsters.
Playing as a new reporter arriving on the huge island city, you begin the game stranded on a long bridge as the first tremor strikes the island. What follows is a precarious attempt to make your way throught the destroyed city to find a place of safety.
The most impressive thing about the game is the sense of scale. The city is genuinely huge, towering buildings can be seen stretching into the distance, as well as raised freeways and public spaces-all of which can shake and crumble away at any time! The excitement of playing comes when a tremor suddenly hits as you are teetering across a narrow ledge, or running under a swaying office block, and the game designers have thought of many novel ways of putting your character in jeopardy, often springing cruel surprises on you when least expected. As the main character you have a variety of moves, although there is no way to attack, but as the danger is purely a natural one, there would appear to be no use for this...until the last third of the game when you suddenly find yourself under threat from armed thugs, and an element of stealth and avoidance joins in with the general escape mission. This last part of the game is by far the best, and the tension really mounts up in the climax as what remains of the city starts to sink ever more rapidly into the sea, and time begins running out. It makes up for the initial parts of the game, where some of the trials and puzzles can get a little repetitive.
You also meet various characters along the way, and the choices you make with them can lead you to any of 7 different endings.
All in all, this is a game to be recommended. It's certainly a new slant on the survival adventure type of game, and, despite being rather short, its an entertaining enough experience to warrant a purchase, as well as a couple of replays to see what you missed.

Disaster Report- no disaster here!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: August 15, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Who's ever heard of Disaster Report? "Disaster Report, is that a name of a band?" No it's the name of a very underrated game. The game consists of you, playing the part of a reporter, scrambling across bridges, cities, anywhere! The very great animation to make up the city includes many building towering over you, ready to fall, bridges about to collapse, and much more.
The excitement comes where anything could happen at any moment, when you fell the shocks coming, the floor in front of you could collapse into the ocean below you, or you could fall onto the street below.
This game requires lots of thinking and strategy. Sometimes you have to assemlbe something out of 2 or 3 different items. That part is very challenging. You also have to find your ay through the city.
The city itself is huge and endless. All the different parts that make it realistic is the broken bridges, smashed cars, and sometimes even dead bodies. It is pretty depressing.
I haven't beaten the game yet, though I am pretty close. I am on the part where you are hiding from a group of thugs. Though totally random and having nothing to do with the game, this part may be the best of all.
All in all this is a surprisingly great game that I think should be advertised more and more recognized. If this game was made by namco or some other huge company, this might be one of the top sellers. If you like puzzle games, and you like to think, buy it. If you are a fat slob and don't know sh*t, then, well, don't buy it. Agetec did a great job with this game.

Not so much "Survival Horror" as just "Survival."

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: March 09, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Let me start by saying that I enjoyed this game, though much of my review pinpoints its flaws, as there were many. The concept is great, second to none and wholly original for a console game. The idea of a quake-riddled city with dynamic, ever-changing environs and the constant worry of being crushed/dropped/unable to find sources of drinkable water/trapped by debris... well, it sounded like it could be the next Ico (if you have yet to play Ico, stop, walk away from your computer and do whatever is necessary to rectify. I'll wait).

But the execution of this great concept is flawed, and in numerous ways. Firstly, this is not a horror-based game as many are dubbing it. This brand of "It's Silent Hill without the monsters!" hype is bound to set players up for disappointment. The collapse of Capital City is a parade of scripted events; every piece of falling rubble or quickly-eroding walkway happens the same way for all who play it, limiting replay value and hampering any sort of surprise for future playthroughs, of which there are many. Or at least that's what the game designers want you to think; there are 7 endings, though many are indistinct from each other (ending 2 is much the same as ending 1, but with a different supporting character standing next to you based on in-game decisions, etc.).

As well, the hydration system of searching for clean water is diluted to meaninglessness by the stunning availability of water. At no point will you EVER need to backtrack to a previous water source, as they're each spaced roughly five game minutes apart. Further, you accumulate water bottles you can keep full in the event that you can't find a working spigot, so the threat of thirsting to death is nil. The other items you collect are of three varieties: dress-up accessories like hats and gloves to ostensibly better protect you from environmental hazards (I couldn't discern a difference in my health toll while 'protected' by these accoutrements), key items you will immediately need to solve a puzzle that's often virtually in the next room (which, once the puzzle is solved, are rendered instantly useless), and a vast and stunning array of useless trinketeria ranging from the obviously pointless (35 different compasses, not that you need even one of them) to the "maybe I'd better hold on to this, but probably not" variety (magnifying glass, flares, and legions of other things that don't end up as anything but backpack fodder, at least for me). Health items are bountiful but needless, as nearly all challenges are either do or die, and if you happen to perish you'll regenerate no more than a few feet from your dying spot with full health and hydration.

(Exceedingly minor SPOILERS HEREAFTER)

Plot is a mixed bag. There is an attempt at conspiracy theory amongst the big bad corporate entity that owns this manmade collapsing city, and as you play the role of reporter, the game tries to make you An Important Part of Unearthing the Truth. The game shifts tones somewhat radically near the end, as the idea of finding a path over/under/through the rubble and peril of the city is supplanted by random stealth elements in avoiding goons with guns. Your character is apparently a lover, not a fighter, and if he's so much as seen from afar you must retry without even a chance to choose between fight or flight. An environmental hazard of a completely new type invigorates the very late levels, depending on your choices, but the sudden and late attempt to inject an antagonist feels forced.

What to say about the voice acting? There's certainly been worse, but this game won't be singled out by many for its quality in this area. Much of the readings are flat monotone, which makes for unintentional laughs when you run across a radio with its relentlessly and eerily chipper newscaster detailing the rescue effort and the death tolls in the city. Odd. As for the remaining sounds, there's no music for much of the game, as (limited) ambient sound and your footfalls are all you have to hear between stilted bursts of voice acting.

Truly, the whole experience feels like it's over before it's begun; my first playthrough, obtaining the 'best' ending, took 5 and 1/2 hours; my roommate managed to get the 'worst' ending in only 2:53, though it was truly awful, and a disservice to the word 'ending.' None of the endings are what you'd hope for in this age of cinematics and grand sweeping denouement, but in this type of game it's the journey that keeps you playing, not the destination.

So why three stars? Simply put, I was taken by the strength of the concept and some of the set pieces, and that was enough to keep me playing even if only for 5 1/2 hours. Rent it and take some time to play with the in-game choices that determine your different endings (don't fret, they're obvious; you'll know these influential decisions when you see them), and I imagine you'll get about all you'd want from Disaster Report. Sink fifty bucks into it and I imagine you'll feel a bit cheated, unless the idea of searching the rubble for 35 compasses and a ridiculous purse in which to carry your items is your idea of a completists dream. This type of game is one that will fall under most gamers' radars, and shortly you'll be able to find it somewhere drastically marked down in price. ....

Flawed fun, to be sure, but fun nonetheless, and not much else like it.

Loads of fun, great characters, and top re-play value.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: June 17, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Amazing game, great effects, wonderful draw distance, amazing areas of the city to explore including a fun park, residential areas, business areas, huge bridges, shopping centers, high rise offices, parks, and so on. The city island is huge and wonderful to explore!

Interesting story with a branching story line and multiple endings, great puzzles, and a real sense of fear which builds up over the course of the game.

Deal with earth tremours, flooding, and the realisation that someone wants to kill you because of what you know.

A must have game for the PS2, what I wouldn't give for a sequel! 5 well earnt stars! The best sleeper hit on the PS2 asides from the incredible Ico.

The Best of Survival Horror Without the Horror

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: February 24, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I am a big fan of Survival Horror.

I have managed to find everything from Resident Evil to Clock Tower to Silent Hil to be immersive, engaging, and entertaining. I have come to learn that it is all in the blend. You need just the right mix of visuals and story, of camp and chills, of puzzle solving and adventure. But never would I have expected to find these traits in a game as unique as Disaster Report.

In this unexpected title from Agetec, you play the role of Keith, a 20-something reporter on his way to his first day of work with the leading paper of Capitol City. As you stare out the window of the train at the Sky Scapers of this city perched upon a narrow man-made (read experimental) island a huge earthquake shatters your day dreams and brings you back into reality; but a twisted reality where huge buildings can fall on you at any second, where explosions send city buses hurdling at you, where you must climb, crawl, and run through a disaster zone so unstable that virtually everything is either a threat or a tool. As you run from area to area, collecting survivors and information you quickly discover that not all earth-quakes are what they seem.

There are times in this game where the earth shattering rumbles alone send you into a panic. There are other more subtle touches where mysterious characters or events draw you in. But every visual, every sound, and every effect will have evoke the same type of chills as a good Survival Horror game.
A good story, with interesting characters, and a perfect blend of puzzles and action round the game out quite nicely. The only flaws: occasional slow time, B Grade voice talent, and some odd load screens, are quickly forgotten when you are monkey-barring it two stories above a fiery pit on a ladder that broke while city buses teeter threateningly above your head or when the building you just left falls off the side of the bridge, plunging into the surrounding water and douses you with a huge spray of foam. Heck, just the feel of the dual shock rumbling along with the unbelievable sound will surpass most of the games shortcomings!

If you have ever wanted to play a disaster movie, now's your chance!

Unique and fairly fun

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: January 28, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I had a friend a few years ago who would make his own games, his own 3D games. This game reminds me of those...erm, "efforts" of his. Camera can be pretty frustrating, graphics are a little "dated", and major slowdown happens if you dare do something action-packed like "running."

But once you accept the fact that the game was made in somebody's basement, it's really not so bad and kind of interesting. I like the way you need to have water (adds to the whole "disaster" feel), but they have enough in the game to keep it "fun" not "frustrating." The tremors that keep going on are kind of neat, but most of the time they just feel like plot devices ("I think I'll bypass the restauraunt and go THIS way instead...WOW, the whole road just gave out! ...Guess I have to go through the restauraunt after all!").

They also do a great job handling items in this game. Your backpack really does have limits, although you can mix some items together to make more room. You can also throw out any item you don't need, so it's not especially frustrating - it just adds a nice, realistic touch to the game. It's also neat the way the things you equip to your character show up when you play - sunglasses, gloves, etc. Nice touch.

So if you're looking for a mildly entertaining bargain-bin game that offers something a little different...and you've already played all the lost gems you'll find there, you could do worse than Disaster Report

Disaster Report

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 12
Date: July 19, 2003
Author: Amazon User

The survival horror genre has definitely seen its ups and downs over the years, especially in the eyes of devoted fans like myself. From the brilliance of Pony Canyon's PC masterpiece Alone in the Dark to the terrible failure that was Infogrames' psychological mess known as The Ring, it's been an interesting ride to say the least -- and one that has seen all manner of premises, backdrops, and unexpected story twists. Amazingly enough one angle that hasn't been tried is to move away from the horror aspect of the genre altogether, and focus on the survival segment alone. That is, until now.

Originally known as Zettai Zetsumei Toshi in Japan and to be called S.O.S. Escape when it's released in Europe, Irem's Disaster Report is the type of project that says a lot about its designers. Innovative, creative, complex, and overly ambitious, D-Report has the makings of something that could end up becoming quite the special dish. And though it borrows the familiar "deserted island" ideal from older inspirations like Blue Stinger and Code: Veronica, all other remaining comparisons can stop right there. As this time around your hero isn't protecting himself from rabid flesh-eating zombies or oversized wasp creatures -- not at all. It's Mother Nature who has your number in this installment. And a series of powerful, destructive earthquakes the means by which she seeks to destroy you.

Unfortunately the game has other enemies out to destroy you as well: it's just too bad they're all unintentional. Poor play mechanics and dreadful visual presentation can upstage even the greatest of ideas after all, and with the competition tossing out its elaborate scare-fests left and right (re: Capcom and Konami), it's going to take a lot more than a few interesting approaches to win the hands of thousands of dedicated gamers.

Gameplay
Disaster Report has been tagged as a combination of ICO and Blue Stinger, and in all fairness, that's a pretty good comparison (though it's definitely closer to the former in terms of concept). Encouraging the player to move in unison with your companion Karen while traveling from place to place, your main goal is to survive each section without killing yourself or your partner. You can press the "shout" button for instance, in order to remind her to follow you or find other people while picking up items and keys as you go along. It's all pretty familiar really, and to say that Disaster Report gives the player a distinct feeling of déjà vu is quite the understatement.

How the developers have tried to make the experience a little bit different, however, is what makes the game stand out above everything else. To begin with, your main character is given two meters instead of the usual one. The standard health bar chimes in as one of them obviously, but the second is an innovative number called the thirst gauge. Depleted as your character expends energy and dashes from place to place, the thirst gauge can only be replenished by drinking water before you run out. Get lazy and allow your character to lose his hydration, and your character can no longer sprint and will slowly lose health until he drinks again. It's a cool idea and one that is sure to catch on in various other forms from now on.

Another interesting addition is the ability to form your own tools out of rogue equipment. In one section of the game for instance, you'll need to build a raft in order to traverse the waterway. Collect a rope, bench wood, oil drum, and a few other specific items and you can assemble them for a makeshift boat. Keep in mind, this is only one example of the types of things you can create throughout your adventure, but you get the general idea. The designers definitely deserve a pat on the back for that one.

Unfortunately Disaster Report is riddled with problems and reasons to get angry. Amazingly sluggish and unresponsive, Keith moves around as though he were bumping into invisible walls. Even when engaged in a full sprint, turning another direction or hopping over a small obstacle stops your model immediately as it slowly moves through its transition animation. Once the animation has finished, your character will surprisingly start running again as though nothing had ever happened -- and if sounds bizarre to imagine while playing, it feels about the same way on your Dual Shock. In fact, the only moment where Disaster Report even comes close to paying attention to what you're doing on the controller is when you have to catch yourself from falling; only then does it react with lightning-fast reflexes. Performing every day activities like walking back and forth, turning to your right and left, or stopping to grab an item mid-stride proves far too taxing for the game to handle at a normal speed. Reality-based interaction is apparently too intense for the engine to handle.

Other big problems center on the game's difficulty; easily beaten in just a few hours, the simplistic puzzles and obvious solutions to each dilemma don't do much in discouraging you from keeping this as a rental only. Even when played in hard mode Disaster Report is nothing more than your basic exercise in trial and error mind challenges that allows you to continue almost immediately where you left off. Why even need to save the game if you can just go ahead and pick up where you died regardless of the circumstances? Come to think of it, why are there so many save spots to begin with? Giving the player no penalty at all for an overuse of saves and far too generous in terms of memory cars spots, there's no need to worry about saving your game at all -- especially since the game can be defeated in the span of a short afternoon. We can only imagine that it's because of the multiple story paths and seven varied endings, but even then, is there reason enough to play through this sucker seven different times? Once or twice through sure, but more than that and the control scheme could frustrate you into suicidal tendencies.

Graphics
To put it as delicately as possible the visuals in Disaster Report are borderline terrible. Washed out in a sea of stone color and gray undertones, the pale, almost soupy graphics dissolve away in comparison to just about every single survival horror game out there. If you're familiar with the original PSX version of Silent Hill for instance, you might find some semblance of reference; but even in that last-generation effort, there was at least an attempt at changing the palette to avoid the monochromatic merry-go-round that you'll find here.

The culprits of course are the terribly realized polygonal models. Horrifically basic and detailed with fewer textures than first-generation Saturn games, the characters in Disaster Report are incredibly bad; as are the animations they're presented with. Running at just one notch above slow motion, the lackadaisical movements of the main protagonists are so labored that I often wondered if there was a problem with the PlayStation 2. But to no surprise, it wasn't.

The first-person camera also posed somewhat of a problem. Needed to find some of the more difficult items and hidden goodies throughout the debris, it's an indispensable asset when it comes to locating some of the better tool pieces. Sadly, it's hard to aim it in the direction you'd most like to explore and makes the poor texture work even more apparent at close range. Speaking of cameras, the third-person version isn't too hot either -- as it will frequently get caught behind obstacles, tilt the wrong way, and display a good number of bothersome glitches.

Sound
There isn't much to speak of in this department as the soundtrack is practically non-existent with almost no music to accompany the player. Understandably it's a clever design choice to emphasize the lonely surroundings of our heroes Keith and Karen, and it's a move I approve of whole-heartedly. Gamers who can't stand uncomfortable silences, however, may not like it in the least.

Vocals on the other hand are downright awful and hearken back to the days of the Sega CD and its invasion of B-level narration. Repetitive and simple, the vocal iterations that we're treated to can be counted with less than all ten fingers, and other than radio broadcasts and a few story-related cut scenes, offer up very little in terms of character direction. Disaster Report is a quiet, quiet game my friends. But at least the ambient special effects and frequent rumbling sounds great

What could have been one of the most refreshing titles on the PlayStation 2 ultimately ends up becoming one of its most disappointing. While it's visuals give new meaning to the words eyesore and the mechanics leave a lot to be desired, it's still feasible that fans of the genre will get into it (even after discovering all of its shortcomings I was still intrigued by it somehow), and the multiple story paths and seven endings should help a lot too (which it needs, since the game only offers around four hours of exploration or so).
What it all boils down to, though, is that Disaster Report is a premise unrealized; Clunky, ugly, and yet bizarrely progressive, Irem's latest survival attempt earns a couple of points for ingenuity and a handful of legitimate thrill-ride type moments. What it doesn't earn, however, is my recommendation. I just pray that Irem doesn't give up on the idea and goes back to fix D-Report's shortcomings in a sequel. -- Because if there was ever a title that deserved a second chance in this crazy videogame world of ours, it's definitely this one.

2.5 stars

Watch out a buildings gonna fall on your head!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: April 27, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This is the 2nd best game I have played all year right after Vice City, It is so varied in what you can do with all the different decisions to make, it is extremely tense because the floor could collapse or you could get crushed by a building at any second, highly underated and underadvertised.

Bad controls ruin this game

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: September 03, 2007
Author: Amazon User

First off, let me start by saying I love the premise for this game. Running around a crumbling city saving survivors? Yes please. However, this game has a tragic and fatal flaw. With most games of this nature (third person exploration) the camera is controlled with the right thumbstick. Not so in this game. Moving the camera around involves shifting to a cumbersome first person view, or simple pressing a button to move the camera behind you. Not such a problem? Well, when an aftershock occurs and you're in the middle of several tall buildings, how does one look up? By stopping moving, entering first person, then panning the camera up. This gives a falling piece of rubble plenty of time to fall from the sky and kill you, without you even knowing where it came from. After spending several frustrating hours playing the game until an unforseen chunk of rubble killed me, then restoring and playing back to the same part to avoid said piece of rubble by experience, I had had enough. There is no excuse for designing a control scheme that goes counter to the industry standard.

basically... it just sucks

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 10
Date: December 22, 2006
Author: Amazon User

how else can i put it? it just sucks. of course if you want to find out for yourself, feel free to play it and you'll probably feel the same way.

Review Page: 1 2 Next 

Actions