Wii Game Review – Deadly Creatures

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I have been a big Nintendo Wii supporter and enjoy the console enormously, but one of my biggest complaints was a lack of thoroughly engaging “adult” oriented games or games with less cute characters and more grim feel. Deadly Creatures was one the most recent games I rented with my Gamefly subscription and turned out to be so much better than I anticipated.

First of all I live in the Arizona desert, I find and kill scorpions in my house on a weekly basis and this game was pretty much set in the AZ desert right outside my home. All of the critters found in this game are ones that I recognize from the parks and area’s around where I live from the Tarantula, Scorpion, Beetles, Tarantula Hawks (I have actually seen one in person and they are huge wasps).

In this game you play the alternating role of both a Tarantula on odd number levels and a Scorpion on even numbered levels, each creature is controlled in basic Wii game fashion you move with the control stick on the nunchuck and make attacks or moves with various gestures and buttons on both devices. What is interesting is how unique it is to play each creature, and they both don’t have the same attack or abilities so it adds a unique feeling when bouncing back and forth between the levels.

The game is ideally suited for boys and teenagers as the whole bugs theme and creepy crawlers more fits with a male audience, the game would appeal to younger viewers except it actually has some language and a little too much blood and violence for littler kids. Though the blood is all related to killing snakes, lizards and rats in the game there still is quite a bit of it that may disturb younger kids. The language comes from the humans that the creatures crawl around and some of the speech that is heard during cut scenes and such.

Image courtesy of IGN.con

The game is just downright fun though, and crawling sideways and upside down on ceilings can really give you vertigo, combined with the lighting fast jumps of the Tarantula and the ability to shoot webs and pull yourself to various points you can really appreciate the complexity of the level designs. The boss fights are very difficult and having to dodge a rattlesnake or a Lizard requires quick reflexes. Also the game doesn’t pretend a Tarantula can kill a rattlesnake, you merely have to avoid its attacks until it tires or you can find a path to escape. So it has a sense of realism that keeps it interesting, though it is unrealistic in some of the Scorpions movements where it can grab a lizard and pry its jaws apart with its claws.

Some of the only issues I had with the game are related to camera and controls, in some tight spots the camera can get flaky and block your view by a wall, you can try to rotate, but sometimes you just have to move for your camera to readjust. In addition there are some motions you have to do with the WiiMote and Nunchuck and you have to do them right immediately, failure means you can die and lose a sequence, and some of the gestures like turning the WiiMote upside down to burrow and then snap it upward to spring up don’t always trigger correctly on the first try.

But the game has frequent save points and even if you die, you are only a few minutes from where you were at any point in the level. I would have to rate the game a 4 out of 5 for Wii Games and though I dont like first player perspective games as much, I enjoyed this one as much as Metroid Prime: Corruption and is easily one of the best games I have played for the Wii in the last year.

Also, if you are still buying Wii or any other console games at a rate of more than 1 every two months, I found it way better to rent games via Gamefly instead of purchasing them. Unless they are games you will keep and play for years, most games I play and I beat and they collect dust on shelves or are used for a trade at some later point.

-Dragon Blogger