Disaster Report Diaries (SOS: The Final Escape) Part One

Living in England means that there are few natural disasters that are likely to occur, as such them happening in fiction has always interested me. Unfortunately, SOS: The Final Escape (AKA Disaster Report, AKA Zettai Zetsumei Toshi) arrived when I was splitting my gaming between the PlayStation 2 and GameCube, so it was one of the many games I wound up missing out on at the time.

The series has you playing as a survivor during a natural disaster, trying to reach safety. Each game features something different, with SOS: The Final Escape having you trying to survive an earthquake. It was released on PlayStation 2 in 2002 in Japan, then in 2003 in the rest of the world, and honestly, I actually intended on starting this diary last year to coincide with its 20th anniversary, but the best laid plans of mice and men… So, let’s see how much of a disaster this game was!

This is my exploration of the Disaster Report series where I will chronicle my playthrough like a text-based Let’s Play. Now let’s begin SOS: The Final Escape…

21st June 2005, 1:13pm local time, Keith Helm was on his way to the offices of the Town Crier Newspaper in Capital City on Stiver Island to start his new job. Without warning, a 6.0 magnitude earthquake hits, resulting in up to 2,000 people missing or dead. Stiver Island is an artificial island, connected via train to an airport on another island imaginatively named Airport Island. The train is where Keith was when the earthquake hit and he lost consciousness.

Waking in a now-empty train, the sound of a helicopter came clearly through the open doors, so I climbed out and was surprised by a coach slipping off of the road above and onto the rails nearby. Two train cars were stacked on top of one another, allowing me to reach the road and look for a way to get to the helicopter which I could see across a gap in the bridge. It was an orange and white rescue helicopter, but as a handful of people climbed aboard and it began to take off, the road below it collapsed into the Pacific Ocean below.

Thankfully, they spotted me and while they had no way to reach me they did toss a backpack out for me to catch. Unfortunately, they were too high up and it landed on the bonnet of a car on their side of the gap… I had to go down a broken piece of road to reach a precariously placed metal beam and cross it, while aftershocks continued to rock everything. It connected to some stairs which had a maintenance ladder allowing me to reach the upper level, but another tremor shook the gantry and knocked a vehicle onto it which made me fall over and hurt myself…

After squeezing past the new obstacle and grabbing hold of the next ladder, the gantry fell beneath me as another tremor hit! At the top I found a tap with clean water, so I took a drink before looking around for a way over to the backpack. Luckily, it was just across the road from the stairs I was near. Carefully and with haste, I grabbed the Rescue Pack and jumped off of the car as it fell into the ocean.

Inside the pack was a Bottle S and a note from Marine Rescue Team No. 4 telling me to evacuate to the north, and to get off of the bridge. Apparently, there was a restaurant nearby, and the owner had told them where there was a key hidden so that I could enter and grab whatever was inside. Going up the stairs next to the tap, I had to jump across a gap and pull myself up, where I found the restaurant: Angelino. I found the key under a plant beside the restaurant and went inside just as a tremor took the floor from behind me! The bridge was literally falling apart behind me…

The building shook and a pillar destroyed the aquarium in front of me, so I started to carefully walk across the floor only for some of it to drop the instant I made contact with it! I barely managed to grab hold of the floor behind me as I fell, and pulled myself up before cautiously walking across the rest of the restaurant — which began slipping and falling! I ran and grabbed a P Lighter, then kept going through a gap created by a falling refrigerator where I found another safe tap and took a drink. In the next room I found a Bottle M and overheard a radio news report about the earthquake. Apparently, rescue operations were proceeding smoothly, and without anything more earthquake-related to talk about they moved on to violence and videogames.

While I wasn’t sure what the time was, it suddenly struck me that the news report said that the earthquake happened the day before! I was unconscious on the train for so many hours… No wonder I hadn’t seen anyone else.

There was a hole in the wall, so after filling up my new water bottle, I crawled through and then climbed out of a window onto the terrace — well, the bits of terrace which remained after the rest of it fell… Speaking of, as I made my way to the stairs, the restaurant collapsed into the ocean, causing a chain reaction along the bridge! I ran until things stopped shaking, finding myself near another coach which was mostly on a collapsed section of road. I could hear someone calling for help, so I climbed on top of the coach and as I reached the front of it, the rear fell the short distance and knocked me off of my feet. I dropped down onto a nearby car, then onto the road before trying to find where the voice was calling from.

Two train cars hung precariously over the edge of the broken bridge, but a fire blocked my direct route. I walked onto a different train car and it began to roll, landing on its side with me on my backside… That did open the door for me to reach the woman, though she told me to get back. With how everything had been shaking, I didn’t even notice the train car I toppled falling off the track after I left it, but I went back that way because I could see a rope hung on a railing nearby. I almost fell while making my way over to it, and because of how the railing had fallen, I risked toppling it one way or the other as I walked across it to the rope, then jumped to the tracks. Definitely safer than attempting to go back the way I had come…

Back at the train car, I tied off the rope to a seat and backed my way down towards the woman, managing to get hold of her as the car fell around us. We climbed up and caught our breath before introducing ourselves. She was Karen Morris, and was on her way to Airport Island for a holiday by car when the earthquake hit. I had a drink from a nearby tap, then we went up to a bridge section that neither of us was tall enough to climb by ourselves, so Karen asked to stand on my back so that she could find something to get me up.

Karen disappeared for a while and I honestly thought that she had left me before she finally returned with a rope, and I climbed up. The rest of the bridge appeared intact, at least the half a mile or so that we could see, so we began walking. We spotted five helicopters flying past as we approached the Capital City end of the bridge, but they didn’t see us. Karen was just a little bit crushed by that, falling to her knees, so I encouraged her and she got up.

More tremors shook the bridge and with no way forward we had to backtrack to some stairs and a ladder down to the ground. Karen showed me her plane ticket and I noted that it was dated 20th instead of 21st — it was the 22nd and she thought that she was flying the day that the earthquake hit. She didn’t try to puzzle that out though, as she suddenly remembered that she had a dog who she had left with a neighbour, so was probably still in the city.

Next to a nearby bench I found a Magnifier, so I shoved it in my backpack, then in an ambulance I found gauze and some gloves which I put on. Another report came through on the radio saying that experts were doubting the government press release on the severity of the earthquake, but 280 citizens had been rescued. Exiting the ambulance and entering an open truck trailer, I found a crowbar, then towards the seafront I found a Turtle Compass which I used to bring some levity to this dire situation. Following the waterfront around, I located some drinking water and a flare.

Approaching a broken fence leading into an area beneath the bridge, Karen asked to see my map (drawn in my notebook), so that she could add a sticker to point out where a convenience store was. I used my crowbar to open a busted coach door and found some Juice inside. However, before I could take another step, a police car manoeuvred and then tore off down the street! We had missed another survivor by moments…