i:When the Wii was first unvailed and showcased at E3 2006, A little title caught people’s attention and since then Disaster Day of Crisis has taken 3 years to finally release in Europe. The tittle by Monolith Soft (No relation to Monolith Studios) has crafted a tale that is both intriging and strangely addictive. The game showcased some of wii’s more impressive visuals and got many to anticipate the title’s arrival. The game was thought to be on indefinite hold after E3 as no news on it was made right up until 3 months before the title’s launch date. Disaster Day of Crisis brings all of mother nature’s Wrath into one day, but is that day exciting or is it a disaster?
The story starts off as you play Ray, a former member of the Search and rescue team along with his partner Steve on top of a volcanic mountain. Things however don’t go as planned and the volcano starts to erupt sending lava to flow down the side of the mountain. As the pair make their way down, Steve injures his leg and falls off the side of a cliff as Ray tries to save him. Steve however saves his friend by scarificing himself as he makes Ray promise to protect his Sister Lisa. 1 Year later, Ray, now in mourning for his friend finds out that terrorists have kidnapped a siecismologist and his assisstant who just happens to be Lisa. Ray now sets out to protect and keep a promise. The plot has a number of twist and turns and there seems to some melodrama involved and the style plays out similar to an action movie. The characters themselves never try to be serious about themselves and the plot for itself played out pretty well. There wasn’t a moment where one would feel bored. The range of disasters and how they work into the plot is actually pretty impresive. You’ll experience flash floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes and the list goes on and none of them ever feels out of place which is partly due to the storyline.
The gameplay is a mixed experience. One point, you’ll be facing seveal bouts of action gun shooting sequences similar to “Time Crisis” where the aciton is basically an on rail shooter and the next you’ll be running around finding citizens to save. Most of time you’ll be walking around bashing open crates and saving citizens as seen in the trailers. The rescue portion is fairly initutive and innovative using the Wii Remote for actions such as wrapping bandages and performing CPR. They are however limited and I hoped to see more variety with them but the Wii mote actions do appear in other portions of the game. The gun shooting sequences plays out way too much and the repetitive of it may make some plays fustrated. The problem is that the ememies are crack shots, they’ll hit you perfectly until you hide and wait for them to reload draining much of your health. However, there are crates and barrels you can shoot to replenish some of that lost health. One of the biggest gripes, is the car driving portions. The problem is that the the driving mechanics are based on tilting the wii mote and due to the poor car physics engine,crashing into walls will either flip your car entirely or send you heading towards the wrong direction. At one point I had a problem distingushing a street from stairs, there was just that much happening with debris flying at the windscreen.
Boss battles are mixed however, the first few,play out like a puzzle game requiring you to work out ways to defeat them usually very obvious by a purple circle appearing to show their weakness. Later you’ll be faced with quick action sequences which require a gesture of the Wii Remote to act upon. The variety of boss battles aid in helping an otherwise repetitive experience from taking down helicoptors to a large mechanical robot.
The Controls are generally okay, using the control stick to run around and the A Button to check items in the adventuring sequences. A simple waggle of the wii mote in front of barrels and cates destorys them open. Car driving portions however is an utter disgrace. Holding the wiimote horizontally, a la Mario Kart, steering is controlled by tilting the controller from side to side but handbraking is performed by the A button which is no where near intuitive. Why couldn’t they make it the 1 Button? We use the handbrake more than the useless brake anyway and there seems to be issues with detecting the tilting involved when doing turns which is hard to judge the right amount of tilt for. The on rail shooting plays out as expected from an arcade shooter. The B button controls your trigger, the directional pad lets you change weapons and the nunchuck is used for ducking with Z and C button for Focusing more accurate shots.
Visually the game looks impressive when depicting the natural disasters but grainy in some areas. You’ll see a gigantic tsunami that looks terrifying to red hot lava flowing and destorying everything in it’s path. You’ll be impressed with what the wii manages to push out and the experience is worth while.
The audio in Disaster is fairly average. Dialogue is mostly by text but there’s voice overs in all cutscenes and the actors play their part decently.The music for the game brings out the drama of each disaster well, but that’s about it to it. Other than that, you’ll get the normal gunshot sounds and effects. There isn’t any problems with audio quality so I don’t know why Reggie would think the audio quality is subpar.
Upon finishing the game once, you’ll be enjoying various extras being able to reply cutscenes and replaying the game with all your unlocked weapons and collected items. Other than that, there’s costumes you can collect through various playthroughs though i wouldnt expect many would.
Disaster Day of Crisis has taken 3 years to finally release and the experience is worthwhile. The game brings new meaning to mesh gameplay but also delivers in it’s presentation. the game is definitely addicting but there are some flaws that keep it from achieving the potiential that it should be. The gameplay though a mesh of 3 genres, never seems to fully expand on any of them and the atroucious car driving seqences and the drawn-out shooter gameplay definitely gets uninteresting. But the experience is still there and is definitely worth a look.
Story: 8.0
Gameplay: 6.0
Video: 8.0
Audio:7.5
Replayability:6.5
Overall:7.5
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