Raw Danger, the second entry in the Disaster Report series, still stands to me as the perfect example of what a survival game should be. Don’t get me wrong, there are already tons of survival games out there, like Grounded 2 or The Forest, but both of these games look at survival as the secondary aspect of their game.
We have genres mixed in, like survival horror, or worlds where you survive by building a base and fending off your enemies in a vast open-world map. Raw Danger is pure story-driven survival, where you either make it to the end with all your faculties intact or you don’t make it at all.
Disaster Report
Instead of surviving against zombies or dangerous jungle cannibals, Raw Danger pits you against the scariest enemy known to man: Mother Nature. Raw Danger puts you in the middle of a disaster involving intense floods and collapsing buildings, all the while throwing difficult choices at you to see how you react. You can’t really stop rain or floods, and it’s this sense of helplessness that hooked me on the series.
The game also featured multiple protagonists, each with their own intertwined storyline, and each choice you made could affect the other characters you played.
Raw Danger was just that: Raw. There were numerous mechanics in the game that were released underdeveloped and required significant time to mature. I don’t blame the developers for this. I can see that the game was definitely ambitious in terms of mechanics and graphics, but what I considered smooth gameplay at the time was actually a clunky mess of mechanics. Given that the game was released during the PS2 era, when developers had to be particularly creative with their code to maximize the potential of their game.
Sure, there were a few technical hiccups here and there, but the game was at least functional. Now imagine my surprise when Disaster Report 4 was released years later on the PS4, a console with such a huge leap in hardware power, only to find the game still playing like a clunky mess. I am still praying that competent developers get their hands on this franchise. I just know there’s something there, and after this article, I hope you see it too.
Survival Skills
The game itself featured a significant amount of resource management, much like other survival games. Being in the middle of a blizzard and a thunderstorm can do horrible things to a human’s body, so warmth had to come front and center. There was a need to craft, dry, and scavenge for any available supplies. Food, water, clothing, and medicine were all rare commodities in this crumbling city, where every choice you made felt like it could be your last. Exploration also played a significant role in this game, allowing players to navigate through a disaster zone at their own pace, as long as they remained warm and dry.
But in most disaster scenarios of this scale, the most challenging aspect is considering the needs of other survivors. People are trying to get by, asking for any supplies you can share with them, and sometimes you just don’t have any. It’s these types of decisions that echo into your other playthroughs, sometimes leaving another character in the story with not much to work with. This, to me, would be a breath of fresh air compared to other craft-and-survive games that feel like they have an infinite amount of supplies that only depend on how much effort you’re willing to put in.
Survival is the Action
As I’m writing this article, I've asked myself: what made this so exciting in the first place? I’m not fighting zombies like in Resident Evil or Dead Space, and I’m not building bases like in Minecraft, so why is my heart pumping? There’s no threat lurking around trying to kill me like Mr. X, and that’s when it hit me. In Raw Danger, I am always under the threat of dying a slow death. If the collapsing buildings won’t end my playthrough, then the chilling cold will. I’m left with my hands sweating, thinking I’m going to have to ruin my dry clothes if I choose to head out with my broken umbrella, and still choosing to go out because I don’t have a choice. I am cold, starving, and I am in Raw Danger.
I’m a firm believer that this franchise has potential and could leave a lasting legacy, but only time will tell if studios are still willing to pick up this gem. The last Disaster Report dealt with earthquakes and floods, but there is still a plethora of natural disasters we could step into from the safety of our desktop or console. Maybe something like This War of Mine.
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