As any Nintendoid will know, developers Monolith Soft have been working on a title for our beloved platform, the Wii. The project is part of a larger scheme by MS to create more titles for the latest Nintendo platform.

The headline title right now is the game Disaster: Day of Crisis, a mixed-genre title that revolves around a series of natural catastrophes (with a twist!) and the wider consequences that they entail. We here at WiiDS were invited to attend a preview of the game as a work-in-progress at a location in central London and this is what we thought!

The game revolves around Raymond Bryce, a former US Marine and International Rescue Team member, now living the quiet life of a public servant. When terrorist organization SURGE (STORM in Japan) steal a nuclear weapon and kidnaps the sister of his late best friend, Ray takes the initiative to go after the group while also trying to survive various natural disasters and threats such as earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, volcanoes and wild animals that the terrorists have taken advantage of to cover their escape.

The version we were shown had Raymond (Ray) on a mountain side looking for people in need of rescue following an aircraft crash. The initial set of tasks are designed to get the player used to the feel of the game, to offer a brief tutorial of the controls of the game and how to go navigate one’s self through the environment. You are required to perform a variety of feats which guide you through a story involving cut-scenes at key locations and various other points. This helps to lay out the backgrounds of each character and also aid in unfolding the immediate storyline.

Immediately, we saw that the game sets out to be an intense affair with epic events occurring left, right and centre and strong undertones of conspiratorial foul play. The graphics and physics of the game, whilst still not refined and touched up to release standard, look to push the Wii for all it’s worth. It won’t have the powerhouse GFX of the PS3 or Xbox but nonetheless, it looks to be a sharp title with strong dynamic images and a highly detailed environment. Characters seem to be equally well designed with such dermatological attributes as freckles and scars all being part and parcel of what defines each character. We see some tatooage and the odd bit of designer stubble thrown into the mix as well. All in all the game certainly packs a visual punch, especially considering the feisty Wii GFX unit.

The gameplay is a mixed bag for a few different reasons. DDoC makes good use of the functional aspects of the Wii-mote, chucking in various opportunities to shake, rattle and roll your hands in accordance to the task at hand. It was responsive and astute when it came to employing the motion of one’s arms and to this end, DDoC heightened gamer interactivity and enjoyment.
Where it may need some improving is the shooting aspects. (Though I must unhesitatingly add that my aim sucks!) The shooting scenes, a-la arcade shoot-em-ups were a little tough to get used to and lacked a little realism in terms of the amount of bullets both the baddies and the player could take.

The scene would change and it became a little bit Gears-of-Waresque in that you had to primary actions. Take cover or take aim and shoot. To aim, you need to point the Wii-mote at the screen and navigate accordingly. Shooting and reloading is easy enough and quite fun too. A little shake of the nun-chuck would reload the gun. Although in the version we played there seemed to be an endless supply of ammo meaning we just got pretty trigger happy. We were not informed whether this would be the case for the released title.

Shooting, whilst a lot of fun, was not without issue though. At one point I’m sure I popped about 50 caps in some dirtbag’s *$% and he just smiled at me and kept on firing. Whilst I’m willing to admit the reason behind this was that my I couldn’t hit a cow from a pace away it was still rather infuriating. And therein lies a difficulty. My aim is a little shaky, granted, but the best of hands tend to jitter around a bit and MG takes this into account. They compensate for this by offering differing difficulty levels but on normal mode the game goes a little slowly to keep up with the epic-ness of the music score or the immediacy of what is actually taking place at the time.

For instance, at one point my character was attempting to save a girl via blasting his way through a dozen ’super trained’ baddies. Various friendly AI characters would make comments a long the lines of “damn these guys are good” yet when you face them it takes them a good 15 shots to even hit you. Cynical? Perhaps, but it does effect the mood of the game a little. Fear not though, these are only the early stages of development and the game still looks very promising.

The sound effect are pretty tight, and the score whilst being intense, never crosses the line to overbearing and the voice acting is strong if a little bit of the American cheese side. It works in this context though as the game focuses on …..America. The visuals still have a little bit of work to do. Object contact was a little pixelated and jerky, shots involving a lot of camera movement created rough lines in the background, and complicated animation such as fire and smoke could use a little touching up.

So far though the game does seem to be living up to its hype and we hope to see a very strong title in the not too distant future!