For anyone not yet aware, the Disaster Report 4 demo is now available in the PlayStation Store. Oddly, though, the physical version seems to have been pulled from Amazon despite having been available for pre-order for a while now. (I didn’t pre-order it.)
Past games in this series have been bargain titles on release, but apparently not this one. And I don’t think the demo convinced me to buy the game at full price. But despite the demo being
in some ways (or at least somewhat lackluster), I am still interested in playing the full game.
One thing that surprised me in playing the demo is how old-fashioned some of the design sensibilities are. For example, to trigger each new story event you must wander aimlessly in search of the next required action. Part of the reason for this, I think, is so that you’ll wander through areas and experience the aftershocks and collapsing buildings (one of which instantly killed me because I wasn’t sure exactly what was happening). These changes to the environment are fun to see.
The inventory system also feels very much like something you’d find in a PS2 game. (Not that this is necessarily a bad thing.)
You are given many options when interacting with people. Although I didn’t try it, I think you can be a bad guy if you want. Also, not everyone in the city is blond this time.
I didn’t get to try the VR mode because someone is borrowing my VR equipment right now. Given the current state of things, I might not get it back for a while.
iirc, isn’t this the canned follow-up to the Vita-game that should have been released in 2011? It certainly feels this way, tbh, and it’s as cranky as irem titles used to be last decade.
Which is, indeed, making this feel old in a lot of ways, even for someone that absolutely loves that company, gameplay and take on games.
The end of the demo is handled in such a - idk how to put it, honestly, so let’s just say - naive way that makes me not exactly sure how the rest will pan out, and whether it gets less janky down the road.
What to look forward to:
I expect a bizarre comedy handling driving bit in this game, which will feel so out of place that you’d be forgiven thinking you are playing driving emotion type-S (j/k, it’s actually worse), paired with quite obvious moral choices, which will be overshadowed by inadvertently running into story triggers because PS2 plotpoint-flags, and a lot of unbearable dorky character-traits that make cardboard-cutout-stereotypes feel alive.
All that's left to say is:
How much is this game, and when can i get crushed by an office building (instead of getting a crush on dorky anime stereotype character 3)?
I played the demo on Switch and it did NOT run well. Like, I am really not a framerate guy, but just walking around town was noticeably laggy and frameskippy. It felt like I was wading through beef stew. Maybe the PS4 version is better about this.
Aside from that, I thought it was weird how slowly your person walks. Like, you can either creep along at a snail’s pace or hold the run button to blast through everything. It’s a strange decision that made the demo feel even worse in the hands. This is such a basic and old-school style of gameplay, so it is amazing to me how badly they messed it up. It’s like nails on a chalkboard just to walk around.
I liked the wide array of dialogue options, and I liked that some of them were weird and jokey. I was able to get my character to decide that the pathetic, lying, down-and-out salary man in the park was like the coolest guy he’d ever seen. That was fun. I wish there were more straight-up surreal options like that, but most of the comedy ones were just about your character being a giant asshole, and I never want to pick those.
I’ve actually never played a Disaster Report game before, though I’ve always meant to. Please tell me the old ones were better than this demo.
Yes, the normal walking speed is too slow. I ran most of the time.
On PS4 (not Pro), I didn’t notice obvious performance issues. That said, the PS2 titles could certainly get choppy at times. Especially during large-scale destruction scenes.
If I were to recommend just one game to try between the two PS2 games and this demo, I would probably recommend Raw Danger. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s playable in an emulator. Unless that has changed in the past few years.
yeah, i do not think this game demos well. i’ll probably wait till i can pick it up a bit cheaper. i didn’t have a bad time with the demo, and am always up for more of these.
You can’t tell easily from the videos I tried to take, but the way the the game handles varying levels of detail on PSVR is crazy. Kind of fun in its own way to move your head left and right to watch a sign and the floor phase in and out of sharpness. Same with the windows on the building. I can’t find much consistency on why something gets a higher level of detail or not. It’s definitely not based on whether you’re looking directly at it, because often times the detail increases as you turn your head away.
Some additional content for this game is (temporarily?) free. Mostly random costumes, but there are also a couple “epilogues.” Oddly, the first of these is free on its own but the second is not. However, there is a free bundle containing the second one.
Full list:
I’m planning to wait for a price drop to pick up the game itself.
This game allows you to be a creep towards women (and I assume only women) and it feels completely surreal when you’ve chosen a ~25 year old japanese salarywoman as the main character
One of my favorite things about the demo (and presumably the full game) is that it starts with Christmas music and abstract falling snow despite the story taking place in the middle of the summer. And this trailer continues that theme.
The Santa Claus costume is one of the free ones. I went ahead and grabbed that.
