Buggy in More Ways Than One...
When Wii first launched I had a few expectations of the console. The first was that classic franchises and genres could be improved and somewhat reinvented with the new controller and that we'd see a bunch of innovative and fresh ideas on the system. Deadly Creatures certainly falls into that latter category.
The game puts you in control of a tarantula and a scorpion as you alternate between the two with each of the 10 chapters. The spider is quick, can jump, has the ability to shoot webbing at enemies, and also crawl upside down. The scorpion is your power character. It is slower but I found it can string together better combos than the tarantula, and it makes up for it's lack of speed with the ability to block.
I came into Deadly Creatures with every intention of loving what seemed like a solid original effort from a third party for Wii, but I came out of it feeling very disappointed. The visuals and especially the audio are all great and the combat is solid for the most part, with a few annoyances popping up here and there.
Thankfully Rainbow Studios chose to limit just how much waggle would be put into the combat portions of the game. The A button takes on the role of regular attacks and stringing together combos, while motion is in place for special attacks and for the great cinematic finishing moves and those parts work together wonderfully.
My major issue is simply with some of the battles in the game. If you're going up against an enemy 1v1 with the scorpion it can be pretty easy to win by just mashing A and never giving your opponent a chance to attack. But when you've got more than one creature to go up against things can get pretty challenging. The times that you're cornered by 2 or 3 enemies can be extremely frustrating. You either try and attack one of them only to be hit by one of the others, or you try to rush your way out of there, taking more than a few hits along the way. Dying in such a way can be extremely frustrating.
The visuals in the game are all very crisp and clean, and apart from a few weird things happening with shadows it all looks very nice. All the animals in the game animate very, very well and the game looks great when in motion. While some of the environments through the first half of the game look very similar with that dark, brown color scheme that seems to recently afflict all these gritty games, it fits with it's underground settings.
The audio is by far the game's strong point, with wonderful mood setting music and creepy sound effects. The music will change dynamically depending on your surroundings and the proximity of enemies. The growls and hisses from enemies all sound very natural as well.
My biggest problem with the game is the camera which was almost unbearable at points in the game, making some fights nearly impossible, and sometimes whipping around completely disorienting the player and then refusing to re-adjust. It led to me dying more than a few times, made increasingly frustrating by the lack of a checkpoint system and that save points seem to be few and far between. Along with dying in what felt like completely unfair fights with multiple enemies there were points where the game actually became a test of anger management.
Having crickets act as the creatures' means of restoring health is neat from a creative stand point, however there are times when you'll have a cricket hopping around a battleground and as you're trying to catch it to restore some health, you'll be hit and eventually killed by enemies. This is especially true with the scorpion who can't jump at the crickets and is also a tad slower than they are.
The story is also incredibly boring and is barely present at all. While the humans may make an appearance every so often, you never get that sense of actually taking part in it and influencing the outcome at all. It simply goes on regardless of anything you do and only in the very last part of the final level do you do anything at all with the humans. Thought there was certainly a potential for some sort of mysterious story involving an ancient treasure and exploiting the greed of others, it never quite hits home and you find yourself moving from one end of a level to another not because you're driven by any kind of narrative but only because the game tells you to.
Why exactly a spider or a scorpion would be so interested as to explore a hornets nest, or reach the front porch of a house as opposed to simply scuttling off into the wilderness I don't know, but the game never gives you a reason as to why the tarantula and scorpion do what they do.
The most fun I had with the game was simply exploring all of the environments, searching for the collectible grubs and leaf crickets. They give off a very Metroid vibe with the exploration, along with the acquisition of new abilities which will allow you to explore new areas. The grubs and crickets could keep the completionist coming back to the game again to collect them all but I found myself simply being too disinterested to go back for a second play through.
The game also ends on a very anti-climactic note. The few true boss battles that there are have an epic feel to them, however they simply don't occur often enough, with a few chapters ending without any major confrontation. The game's ending also feels like a kick to the balls, ending suddenly without any real feel of closure.
In the end, Deadly Creatures emerges as a missed opportunity. What could have been a great and fresh new Wii game falls perhaps a few months of polish short of being truly great. The bugs and nagging problems hurt the game quite a bit and really take away from the experience. If you get a chance to try the game for yourself before buying I'd recommend you do that, but the game is certainly worth a look and a rental.
