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Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories shakes things up on PC next year

Quake, too?

Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories is a game I never thought I'd see released, let alone localised and headed to PC. The latest in Irem's quirky series of disaster survival adventures, Disaster Report 4 was originally canned late in production after the 2011 earthquakes in Japan, due to its subject matter. Revived by ex-Irem team Granzella and now to be localised by NIS America, they confirmed today that there's a PC version on the way too, due in "early 2020". Below, an English debut trailer featuring ordinary people coping with nature's catastrophic indifference.

Weirdly enough, the closest point of reference I have for the Disaster Report games is the Yakuza series - they've got an oddly similar feel. Mostly set in modern-day Japan (unless they've been awfully localised as Raw Danger), they're high-drama adventure-RPGs. While in Yakuza the action took the form of punching people, in this one it's identifying dangers, avoiding injury, providing aid to people and picking responsible, grown-up dialogue options. This one casts the player as a job-seeking newcomer, caught in the middle of a destructive earthquake and its ongoing aftershocks.

Cover image for YouTube video

I'm especially excited for the PC version of Disaster Report 4 because the original Japanese version ran terribly on PS4. Whether due to optimisation issues or the game just being too ambitious for the console hardware, it would often turn into a stuttering mess. I'm confident that a modern PC should be able to brute force its way through whatever hardware bottlenecks the original console had, and give us the best version of the game possible. The PS4 version of the game supported PSVR, so here's hoping for VR support on PC.

Here's hoping that Granzella's series spin-off - City Shrouded In Shadow - makes it to PC as well, although licensing issues (it's an Ultraman/Godzilla/Evangelion crossover) may prevent that.

There's no release date for Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories beyond "early 2020", but you can read a bit more on its original page here and NIS America's new site here.

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Dominic Tarason

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