Video-game junkies fight for survival

Those looking for a slick state-of-the art game with gorgeous graphics and Hollywood-style cinematics would be advised to stay far away from Irem's action-adventure game Disaster Report. With indifferent graphics and acting, an increasingly ridiculous plot and the worst sound of any game in recent memory, Disaster Report is easy to overlook.

It's also the best game I've played this year.

In Disaster Report, a journalist named Keith Helm travels to Capital City, a metropolis built on a man-made island. Arriving just as an earthquake hits, he tries to reach an evacuation point, a goal made more difficult by a series of aftershocks that continue to bring the city down around him.

It's difficult to know how to describe Disaster Report because nothing else quite like it exists. It has elements seen in other games -- inventory-based puzzles, exploration and action sequences (consisting mainly of running away from disaster) -- but the overall effect is unique. Some players have described it as a survival-horror game without the horror. Yet it is probably closest in game play to "Tomb Raider," although Keith does not carry a gun, discover treasures or wear skin-tight clothes.

Disaster Report effectively conveys the experience of exploring a ruined, collapsing city. Twisted girders precariously hold up broken highways, cracked streets are littered with deserted cars, and half-destroyed office buildings expose their insides to the elements. As the city continues to crumble around Keith, there are moments of high drama. When he begins to climb a ladder, the platform he has just vacated falls 30m below him; a highway gives way section by section as Keith runs just ahead.

The game's designers are so concerned with the details of Keith's situation that the game sometimes seems like a tutorial on how to survive a disaster.

Lesson 1 is to stay hydrated; water is an important element of the game, and Keith must drink fluids to guard his health. He can also protect himself from the elements by wearing hats and sunglasses he finds along the way.

The early part of the game has a wonderful simplicity, as an increasingly disheveled Keith crosses a partly collapsed bridge and saves Karen, a girl trapped on a subway car that is precariously balanced on a ledge. Characters have interesting, utterly human reactions to their situations: When Keith gives the girl a boost over some rubble in the hope she can find a way to haul him up, he stands there wondering if she will come back. While exploring, Keith can hear fragments of a mundane conversation between Karen and a photojournalist who needs help.

As the story progresses, simplicity is tossed aside as Keith discovers a conspiracy surrounding the earthquake, and mysterious men with guns try and kill him. This development results in several entertaining sequences as Keith tries to sneak past thugs and deals with a missile-equipped helicopter, but the story becomes a mess, with an absurd denouement. In terms of drama, the game would have been far more satisfying had it remained a simple story of survival.

Disaster Report is short, but there are a few places where the action branches off, so after playing the game through once I went back to a save point to play an alternative section.

There are seven different endings, including some in which traveling companions die or are deserted by Keith, who can lie to a rescue worker to save himself.