I am a killing machine, ruthless and cold blooded. I kill without thought or remorse, my only purpose is to turn my enemies into smears on the pavement. And when I’ve killed them, I peel away their brittle skin and gorge on their insides.
Forget all those games with shotgun wielding gangsters or ray gun wielding space marines; if you want to play a really tough character, try the scorpion or tarantula that co-star in Deadly Creatures, an electrifying action game from Rainbow Studios that gives players a bug’s-eye-view of desert life.
The Feel: Atmospheric and Engrossing
Starting out as a tarantula, the player explores the desert, battling it out with a series of beetles and hostile arachnids. You will also fight a scorpion, only to discover in chapter two that you get to play as that same scorpion. Tarantula and scorpion trade off chapters, exploring the same locations at different times but only occasionally coming face to face.
These are not anthropomorphized creatures. They don’t talk, they aren’t cute and their only goal is to stay alive.
The game’s story is supplied by two treasure hunters, voiced by Billy Bob Thornton and Dennis Hopper, who are occasionally happened upon by the game’s protagonists as digging holes and arguing. It’s a simply but brilliant device, letting the player watch the human drama unfold while anticipating the moment when man meets bug at last.
The game’s visuals are among the best of any Wii game; atmospheric and eerily realistic. The leavings of man, such as pizza boxes and gasoline cans, are like huge monuments in the desert. The inside of a mattress becomes a creepy maze of giant springs. Even a human skeleton seems like part of the scenery to a spider; a skeletal hand was so large that at first I didn’t even realize what it was.
The game is just as spooky underground, as a spider’s mummified victims hang overhead and a small lizard struggles in a nearby web. The game’s minimalist score and simple sound design add to the sense of being in a strange, mysterious world.
Gameplay: Battle Vermin
Deadly Creatures gameplay consists of exploring the desert and battling creeping and flying insects, lizards and mice and sometimes your fellow scorpions and tarantulas. The game does a wonderful job of making these tiny creatures big and terrifying; a two-inch long lizard seems like a vicious monster, filling you with fear and dread.
Fighting consists of pushing buttons and swinging the Wii remote. As the game progresses, you unlock various fighting moves; the spider can shoot webbing into an enemy’s eyes and the scorpion can dig into the ground then leap up under its opponent. Both creatures can use poison in combat, although they need a little time to prepare their attack.
As you fight, you can see creatures react to their wounds, most obviously in the case of flying insects that land more frequently the more damaged they become.
If your victim is near death you can perform a finishing move, which involves hitting specific buttons or waving your remote in a specified way according to onscreen cues. This is generally referred to in gaming as a Quick Time Event.
Quick Time Events are frustrating, both because gestures aren’t always recognized and because the excessive pause before the game recognizes your move breaks the sense that your actions are part of the fight. There are a few places where the player is required to complete a longer sequence of Quick Time Events, and these sections magnify the problem; I had a miserable time with one of the final battles because the game simply refused to recognize my actions.
Controls: Mixed
There is in general a problem with Wii remote gestures. For example, the scorpion can do a quick dash if you flick the nunchuk while moving, and in certain places you cannot survive without this action. But half the time it just doesn’t work; I would flick the nunchuk and the scorpion would stop and do an attack move, even though there was nothing to attack. This became a huge problem in the very last fight, and I thought I would never finish the game until I discovered that if you restart you can change the difficulty setting from your last save point. On easy I just managed to survive even though I was hit by about 5 shotgun shells.
For the most part the controls do work, but they should have been tweaked a bit.
There are a few other flaws. While save points are well spaced for most of the game, towards the end they are few and far between, and you might have several difficult battles from one to the next. You can't skip cut scenes, although they are happily brief. Crickets, which can replenish your health if eaten, are sometimes so close to save points that when you press A to attack one you save your game instead; once I saved my game 8 times trying to eat one lousy cricket.
Conclusion: Unique and Impressive, a Must Buy
Still, most of Deadly Creatures is done well, from big things like the realistic movement of the creatures (at times it feels like you’re living through a nature documentary) to little things like the ability to bring up an arrow telling you which way to go (crucial since the ability to climb on walls and ceilings can leave you disoriented). The action is fun, the graphics are stunning and the slight story is engaging. And the finale is a real blast.
Clever and original, Deadly Creatures is one of the best games yet released for the Wii. It is also a game that makes me far less afraid of space marines and gangsters, and far more afraid of anything with yellow blood and too many legs.
