What’s so deadly about these creatures?
This is the second of 3 THQ Previews. Now we are going to take a look at the Wii-exclusive title, Deadly Creatures…
Deadly Creatures is a unique title for the Wii. In it you play as both a tarantula and scorpion as you switch from level to level. The game has a human side-story of two people hunting for gold, voiced by Billy Bob Thornton and Dennis Hopper. It seems an odd role for the two actors to take, but it does fit well as you progress through the game.
For example, as you are walking along underground you may hear them chatting above you. Your objective however is quite different from discovering shiny pieces of gold. You have to traverse through a treacherous area and try and kill your enemies with your natural abilities. The tarantula can jump from web to web, cover its enemy in a web and shoot venom at it. While the scorpion can block, jab an enemy with its pincer, it can bury itself and jump out and even attack while leaping.
There are bosses like rattlesnakes and lizards to defeat and they aren’t easy either. You’ll bump into these enemies more than once and of course, you will fight your alternate character now and again, resulting in a Scorpion vs. Tarantula battle. The good thing about Deadly Creatures is that the game stays fresh by adding new abilities, enemies and areas to stop things from getting tedious.
The Wii controls work incredibly well and it’s clear that the game couldn’t have been made for another platform. You can use the pointer to choose where to leap, swing the remote to attack and the nunchuk for a quick burst of speed. The options vary on the creature you are, but it does a good job on representing the moves of the creature. There are a few quicktime events that require you to swing both the remote and nunchuk in a bunch of directions to progress, but I had trouble making moves register and died many, many times as a result. Hopefully, the final game will be more forgiving.
Having played the game for a few hours, I can say that the scorpion is the stronger of the two, but of course can’t wall-climb like the tarantula. Somehow, they are evenly matched. The build I was playing wasn’t the final code, so there were a few problems like areas without music and so on. It wasn’t anything terrible, it just made the game seem empty…imagine if something like Halo or Zelda had no music at all? Imagine that and you’ll see what I mean. Let’s hope it’s fixed when the game releases at the end of the week.
The visuals for Deadly Creatures won’t win any awards, but it does look good for a Wii title. Despite the regular loading moments and brown-ish looking game, I hear that the final version looks much better…but time will tell if that really is the case. I’m optimistic for the game as I really enjoyed it, despite getting disorientated at times with the tarantula. Look out for the full review later this month.