MART 590e - Raw Danger!

So I'm taking this Media Arts class where one of our assignments is to play a video game every week and then write about it. Might as well use this blog since it already exists, so yeah.

This week: Raw Danger!, a PS2 budget title from Agetec.



I first heard about this game on the Something Awful forums, and what I'm writing here simply echoes much of what's already been said.

Raw Danger! is actually the sequel to 2003's Disaster Report, a game where players had to escape a city hit by an earthquake. This time around, however, it's all about escaping the safest and most advanced city in the world as it faces a flood disaster. In order to survive, players have to avoid water and keep their body temperature up while climbing, jumping, and crawling their way to safety, all while keeping an ear out for emergency broadcasts and crossing paths with other flood victims. Sound familiar? Oh, right.

First of all, Raw Danger! does more things right than it does wrong, and that's what makes it special™.

You can play as 6 different characters whose paths all cross, and where the decisions you make affect the lives of each character. Do you help your coworker or do you leave her to drown because she has an annoying voice? The choices can actually be much deeper than that, but they don't have to be. The sheer amount of options is impressive. The game can be the ultimate be-a-dick simulator or white-knight story, and while certain games never escape these two extremes, Raw Danger! allows for a lot of grey area simply due to the overlapping stories. One character may leave someone to die, but as you play the next character, she may find the co-worker from another perspective, and have to make a decision based on some other character's choices. It doesn't necessarily play out as if you have to continually outsmart yourself the entire game, but it does flirt with the concept a bit.

The most interesting aspect of the game? None of it involves combat. You explore the city, talk to people, drive vehicles, create makeshift survival tools from items you scavenge throughout the game, solve puzzles to reach safety, and (oh, no) collect fragments of your memory to rebuild your identity. Okay, so that's one strike against the game.

Mechanically, though, there isn't much to argue about. The biggest complaint is the lack of polish and production value. Oh, and the localization is kind of funny:




In the future, everyone in America is blonde. Call me a temporal conformist.

Anyway, Mass Effect can go to hell. Raw Danger! is the deepest game I've played this year. You want character interaction and choices with consequences? You want branching paths and multiple endings for EACH character in the game? Then hop to, and drop $10 on Raw Danger!

Also, I didn't really mean that about Mass Effect. I'm sorry, baby.