MODERN GAMING
Disaster: Day of Crisis
Developer:  Monolith Soft
Publisher:  Nintendo
Genre:  Action-Adventure
Year:  2008
System:  Wii

Many wish fulfilments and what if scenarios play out in videogames in order to make up for the thankful fact most of us gamers have not experienced, such as being in a war, escaping from totalitarian governments or relationships.  But then comes a game which has decided to take a shot at an idea that has only rarely been attempted before.  Disaster survival.  We all wonder this sometimes, how could we handle a natural disaster?  Or what about a terrorist attack?  Well this game will answer that through the modern convenience of electronic entertainment!

Story - You are Raymond Bryce, former Marine and ex-member of the International Rescue Team who quit the job after his best friend died in a volcanic eruption in South America, now working for the FBI's Blue Ridge City division, a fictional city on the east coast of the USA.  A report comes in that a Special Forces Terrorist group called SURGE have stolen several nuclear warheads as well as kidnapped a noted seismologist and his assistant, the sister of Raymond's deceased friend.  Still feeling cut up about his friend's death, he endeavours to save the girl and put an end to the terrorist threat before the White House gives in to their demands.

Unfortunately right when this happens, an entire goddamn apocalyptic chain of natural disasters happen.  An earthquake in the city, a tsunami along the coast, fire tornadoes in the city centre, volcanic eruptions with ash storms in the mountain regions, flash floods in the nearby city of Bainsville and finally a goddamn hurricane at Port Alex.  This is 24 meets EVERY SINGLE DISASTER MOVIE EVER.  And it is awesome.


Graphics - Here we have a game that really puts up the graphics of the Wii to standard.  The water effects are fantastic for a start and in this day and age you would expect water effects to make water LOOK like water and there have been a lot of Wii games that haven't really done it good mainly because it is the most underpowered system in this generation.  But at least this game has goddamn tried unlike the Wii port of The Force Unleashed.  As I remarked in the review on Force Unleashed, the graphics suffered at PS2 quality, especially when people had ham-like faces.  Not in this game, people have faces as good looking as Metal Gear Solid 3.

The graphics manage to bring out the impression you are living through these disasters, it's covered a wide range of the basic elements to animate from the screaming winds of the hurricane that tugs hard at trees and billboards to the huge rushings of occasional floods in subways and Bainsville, and right up to the thick cloying volcanish ash in the mountains.  When buildings collapse and there's fire and smoke everywhere, it may not be as awesome looking as anything on the 360 but for the Wii owners, it's gonna be damn impressive by their standards.


Gameplay - There are two main parts of the game.  Battle and non-battle.  This game seems to cover quite a few genres in the amount of things you have to do.  Firstly the battle which is exactly like the arcade shooters.  You shoot at the enemies and move on, occasionally getting a boss.  You get extra points for headshots or clever shots which is when you use the environment to deal with enemies instead like explosive barrels, and you can also rack up a combo of shots so long as you don't miss.  You get warning targets when an enemy is about to shoot, much like the Virtua Cop series and there is also the occasional Special Shot, where a purple target appears to cause extra damage to an enemy or a special attack you must take down, such as knives being thrown.
You also will get a wide range of weaponry from the basic handgun to the rocket launcher, and carry up to four of them, changing them at intermission screens inbetween stages.  You also will collect Battle Points or BP from the battles which you can spend on upgrading and buying weaponry.


Now outside of battle the game has quite a few tricks up its sleeve.  First and foremost you explore a linear path along an area with the main objective of surviving, and the secondary (but just as important) objective of saving other people.  Various survivors are left behind in the wake of the day's events and you have to save them through using the wiimote and nunchuk in various ways.
These range from aiming the wiimote like a hose to take out fires, tapping A rapidly to build up strength and lifting the wiimote to lift a rock, reaching the wiimote out like a hand to grab someone dangling off a cliff, or even pushing the wiimote down with two hands to mimic CPR on people.
These sort of tasks reward you with Action Points or AP which you can use to upgrade Raymond's personal stats.  Also to keep you busy are shooting ranges for various weaponry which cost BP but you get some back in return depending on how well you do, the Stamina Challenges which is replaying the level again but trying to find special flyers for extra AP, three difficulty modes and lastly Titles, which are basically the Achievements of this game, except you get no point reward for them.

The wide range of actions you do on survivors alone is fantastic, finally a Wii game that takes real use of the wiimote and actually does it competently.  There's never really been a moment in the game where the wiimote did not register what I wanted it to do, the game is almost perfectly attuned to it (and my wiimote doesn't have this 1:1 upgrade folks).
Not even counting the wiimote actions on survivors, there's the survival you have to do as well involving the Mario&Sonic Olympics-style running action when you have to escape floods, or the odd dodging of falling debris.  This is one of the few games that Quick Time Events are actually enjoyable and feel a real part of the gameplay rather than just crowbarred in for sake of popularity, due to the unpredictability of natural disasters in themselves it feels logical to have Quick Time Events in this game.


Not only that but there is also the matter of your own health which can be affected in various realistic ways.  Firstly as well as your normal health, you have your stamina, which goes down regularly as time passes but will go down faster if you're running, or if you're in a cold or hot area such as the floods or the firestorms.
If your stamina runs out, your health will slowly decrease, but stamina can be regained by food lying around in good old Streets of Rage fashion by breaking open trashcans or containers or what have you.  You can also pick up four items.  Bandages which recover 1/4 of your health, First Aid Kits which recover half your health, Crackers which give back some stamina and Stamina 30 which temporarily halts your stamina gauge from decreasing.
Lastly there is your heart and lungs which you must look after.  If you run too much your heart rate decreases and it won't be long before you run out of breath which saps a LOT of stamina from you.  The lungs have to be kept free of smoke and water, otherwise if they're completely filled up, you die right there choking to death.

The only real bad part of this game is the driving.  Yes they even covered driving in this.  They handled platforming, shooting, action/adventure, survival and now it's the driving.  You drive with the wiimote on its side of course and the controls are very basic.  But I dunno if it's just me that sucks at driving or the controls seem a little bit slippery when moving around.  If you're not brilliant at driving games, yer gonna crash quite a bit.  And sometimes you'll be fucked if you do because usually these driving missions happen when you're ESCAPING something, like a tsunami.
It's a lil crazy and no the Wii Wheel does not work with this, in fact if it did I daresay it might make the controls even worse, judging from my experience with it in Mario Kart Wii.


Music/Sound - The music is surprisingly good for this game, bringing in the real feel of an epic disaster movie (and by that I do NOT mean Epic {Fail} Movie or Disaster Movie, the most aptly named title of any film in existence), stirring orchestral pieces ranging from the dramatic main theme to the slow waltz-like sadder theme and my personal favourite, the pumping battle theme against SURGE.  It is a great soundtrack surprisingly so among the new games to perfectly bring you into the idea you're living out every single disaster movie ever.

So all in all this game is great.  It may be a very linear path with no real variations other than difficulty in each playthrough but what a ride you'll get as well as the amount of stuff to do in rescuing everyone, finding the stamina flyers, upgrading and buying all weapons and finding all 100 Titles in the game and the secret items too.  You'll enjoy this game for a while and if you enjoy the idea of trying to survive all of this shit with some arcade-style shooting and saving people, go right ahead because it's one of the best recent games you're ever gonna get on the Wii.
It makes a change from whatever third-party arsewipe Imagine shit you'll get on it where they insist things to be spelt with a Z after all.

Fun and Innovation - 3
Replayability - 3
Gameplay - 4
Presentation - 4

Well I wasn't sure if I could put up the Disaster review since it'd been out since October over here but you guys haven't got it yet, and I was lazy in giving you all a Classic review, sorry about that.  I'm gonna be better next month for you lot with a totally brand new game we're getting first.

Also, thanks, I wasn't sure the joke'd work, but good it did!