Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories

Get ready for some hard-hitting Raw Danger as you traverse a falling bustling city after a massive catastrophic earthquake.

While Disaster Report 4 is a very stiff and jerky game, it is at least entertaining. Just don't try to play it twice.

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.

Without having been in one myself I can’t say with any authority that Disaster Report 4 isn’t an accurate representation of the kinds of things that happen after a real earthquake, but I’m willing to guess that it falls short of a true simulation. It’s certainly about as ridiculous as the unfolding apocalypse happening outside our own windows – where society has seemingly ejected its collective mind to stockpile eggs and demand that the army open fire on joggers – but it’s about as passive as our lockdown too. Disaster Report 4 depicts a strange and consequence-averse crisis, in which you’re u...

Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories is an absurd game that is rough around the edges but manages to pull itself together nice enough to tell a survival story unlike any other.

Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories is not a good game. Its design is archaic, its presentation is lacking, and its story is nonsensical. But anyone who enjoys janky, weird games will very likely have a good time with it. It might not be quality, but it's often very entertaining.

This curious title has a backstory that might actually be more interesting than the game itself. Disaster Report 4 Plus: Summer Memories is an adventure game about trying to escape a ruined city that just got hit by a massive earthquake. Ironically enough, this game was originally planned for a 2011 release for the PS3, but it had its development halted because of a massive earthquake that hit Japan that same year.

Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories is an odd title, isn't it? Ostensibly, the game is about surviving a gargantuan earthquake, so that's the "Disaster Report" bit covered. But "Summer Memories"? It sounds more like the name of a sickly sweet K-Pop song than anything to do with cracked pavement or crumbling buildings. As it turns out, the title perfectly sums this game up – a confusing, tonally inconsistent mess from start to finish, that tries to deal with heavy subject matter while letting you dress up like a saucy sailor to take the edge off.