Hands-on: Disaster: Day of Crisis

September 25, 2008 - When you name your game "Disaster," and end up taking years and years to make it, you're just asking for trouble. The final Japanese import in hand, and we're pleased to report that Monolith's first title as an internal Nintendo studio may not be much of a disaster at all.

The question everyone has probably been wondering is what took the studio, responsible for such classics as Baten Kaitos and Xenosaga, so long to get the game out. The answer will be clear once you've played the prologue and first chapter: they've been making not just one, but two, and possibly three games. Disaster is part adventure and part gun shooting, with a bit of driving sprinkled in. All three areas appear to be quite developed, and from what we've seen so far, you switch off between them frequently.

The game is split into clear stages. A typical stage in our play time had us leading main character Ray freely about a section of a city or building, searching for items and survivors in the aftermath of a disaster. When you reach hot spots in the stage, the game switches to a rails shooting game, similar to something like Time Crisis. Once you've defeated all the enemies, it switches back to the adventure mode.

Control over Ray during the free roaming sequences is solid, with just a few camera issues bugging us at the moment. You move Ray around with the nunchuk's analog stick, jumping over chasms and up onto heightened areas with A, and sending Ray into a sprint with B. The camera can be controlled with the D-pad, or you can let the auto camera do its thing and press C to snap the camera back to Ray's back whenever things go awry. The auto camera is a bit slow in reacting to movement, so don't be surprised if you end up using the D-pad for adjustments.

The game also has swimming controls, but we haven't encountered a water environment yet.

The areas of play are in constant flux due to disasters. In the opening areas that we've played, a 9.0 earthquake has already left the city aflame, and now periodic aftershocks are destroying what's left. As you move about, you'll see buildings collapse, sometimes leading to new paths. When things happen around you, you can press C to turn Ray's attention to whatever demands it at the time.

You have to keep Ray's health in mind as you move about. You're presented with four vital pieces of information: a life meter, a stamina meter, a heart meter, and a lung meter. The stamina meter goes down as you move and can be replenished through food items found by destroying boxes (and even garbage bins!). The heart meter rises as you run, and if you run too much, it bursts, leaving Ray leaning over to catch his breath and knocking his stamina meter down half way. The lung meter rises as Ray inhales smoke.

Given that you're moving about through a disaster area, Ray is constantly surrounded by danger. You'll have to climb through burning areas, shaking yourself free of flames with a quick Wiimote and nunchuk shake, and pressing Z when in the clear to replenish your lung meter with a deep breath. In some areas, Ray finds himself directly under collapsing buildings. The game turns cinematic here, showing Ray escaping as things collapse around him. In these sequences, you have to shake the Wiimote and nunchuck as if you're running, or Ray won't make it out alive.

Outside of getting to the next area, your goal in the free roaming areas of the game is to rescue victims. You'll see people lying about here and there. You can even have Ray call out to see if anyone reacts.

Rescuing people triggers brief mini games which you must complete before the victim's stamina runs out and he dies. Some sequences require that you drag or carry the victim to an area of the map marked with a safety icon. Others require that you perform first aid, applying water to dirty areas of the person's body as you search for a wound to which to apply a bandage. You'll also be reaching down ledges to grab people, here giving the Wiimote a nudge in the direction of the victim in order to make Ray reach over at the perfect moment.

Some victims don't require a mini game, but do require that you give them one of your precious food or medicine items.

You don't have to save people, but doing so earns you SP, a currency that can be used between stages to upgrade Ray's abilities and buy new weapons.

Those weapons come into play during the shooting sequences. These pop up at hot points in the stage. Your goal is to simply kill out all the enemies who appear through a scripted sequence.

With the first-person perspective, complete with Wiimote IR aiming, and the presence of a "pedal" (just the Z button on the nunchuck) for ducking out of harms way, there's a lot of Time Crisis in here. Your best bet is to aim for the head, which does most damage, or you can chose to zoom in for a close concentration shot, which does double damage, by tapping C. Reloading defaults to a nunchuk shake, although this can be switched in the options to a button. To switch weapons, you select from pre-assigned slots on the D-pad.

We're going to have to play the shooting sequences a bit more before determining how much we like them. One thing's for certain -- this is a major part of the game rather than just some side diversion. In some areas, there seems to be more shooting than adventuring.

As for those driving sequences, we've only been through one so far as part of an event sequence opening up the second stage of play. You're placed on a linear path as you flee enemy combatants. Go too slowly and they'll catch up to you and start firing. You have to jam through as fast as possible, avoiding the dead cars and trucks lining the road. Your car has a life meter which depletes with every nudge that you take.

Ram into something and your car will flip over. You'll automatically be placed back on the road, but with lots of damage, and with those enemy troopers firing at you from the front!

Controls are handled entirely through Wiimote in horizontal steering wheel mode. It's the only way to control the action, and it seems to get the job done. We'll have to wait for a more complicated sequence before saying more.

Tying everything together is a story that will make you think Capcom had a role in this project. It's got the silly English dialog and wanna-be big budget Hollywood blockbuster drama that Capcom mastered long ago with games like Resident Evil. It even has lots of foul language, which we're wondering how Nintendo of America is going to handle (for some reason, we're expecting to hear Ray say "Shoot" or -- even better -- "Shucks" a whole lot).

We're not ragging on the story. As with those Capcom titles of old, the story, as silly as it is, looks like it's going to be be a big driving force for the game. You'll want to find out what happens next, even if everything is accompanied by cheesy dialog and situations.

While we're going to have to play through all of Disaster to see how will all these gameplay systems come together, the game does some things very nicely from the start. Presentation is top class, with detailed in-game visuals making this among the top looking Wii games. There are also plenty of cut-scenes, which appear to be pre-rendered but using in-game assets (these cut-scenes are different from the CG digest intro movie that you'll find on our media pages.

The aural side of the game has a blockbuster movie feel to it. Actually, there's a bit of low tech assistance here. The game uses the Wiimote's internal speaker to play back emergency radio broadcasts that you hear as you move about the city. Given the low quality of the Wiimote's audio playback, the broadcasts really sound like something you might here coming from an an emergency worker's radio. For those who prefer their sound through the television, all Wiimote audio can be switched over to the television speaker in the options menu.

Outside of the presentation, Disaster appears to be optimized for no-hassle replay. Once you've cleared a stage, you gain access to it for free play, allowing you to find survivors that you might have missed. As you work through the stages, you can, at any point, select to restart from any past checkpoint, so mistakes can be easily corrected.

We're still out on how much of a success Disaster is at blending all its genres together, but from what we've seen so far, it's definitely not a disaster. We'll be sure and play through the game and have the final word for you when (or, perhaps, if) it sees a stateside release.

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Good to hear that it's coming along well-the Time Crisis parts sound more fun thatn I thought!

"not a disaster" isn't the first impression I was hoping for.

He doesn't seem too convinced. I hope it's because he's just being stubborn. I can't wait to get this.

He is probably just trying not to be too optimistic about the game

The game does sound interesting and something I certainly want to see a lot more of and hear more info about. This is definitely looking like it could be a big great game for the hardcore Wii owners.

i think it would have been cooler if it replaced the rails shooter elements for heavy FPSor TPS elements.

also they better have some significant rpg leveling otherwise its gonna lack the meat.

U gotta appreciate their will to blend so many genres together though--successfully or not, we still don't know. But the game looks great. I like were monolith and nintendo are going with this. And if does well enough, imagine how well number 2 can be :)

@coonana
well, it said that by saving victims you earn SP, which can help you get upgrades. Isnt that RPG-like?? :)

Man the guy playing the driving video hits just about every car on the road.

I think the game looks good but yeah the previewer seems skeptical.

Understandable considering all the nonsense being released, but he can at least say, "What we've played is good," and emphasize that he's only played a small portion of the game. Instead he says, "from what we've seen so far, it's definitely not a disaster," which leads me to believe that it's more crap than good. What I infer (I tend to infer a lot, which is probably a bad thing) is this: "Oh it's not terrible, but nothing made it great."

Or he could just be making a pun on the title of the game. Y'know.