Gamertell

Title: Deadly Creatures
System: Wii
Price: $49.99
Release Date: February 9, 2009
Publisher (Developer): THQ (Rainbow Studios)
ESRB Rating: “T”
Pros: Unique environment and gameplay, excellent graphics, nice mix of exploration and combat. Quite creepy.
Cons: Very linear, little replay value, ending is unforgivable.
Overall Score: One thumb up, one sideways; 82/100; B-; *** out of five.

I finished Deadly Creatures a week ago but am just now writing the review. Usually, I hop onto my MacBook the moment I finish a game so I can organize my thoughts while the experience is still fresh. With Deadly Creatures, I couldn’t do that. The ending was so bad and was such a huge letdown that I wanted to see if time would heal the wound it caused.

Thankfully, it did but consider that when reading this review.

Creatures of the Night

Straight off, understand that you spend this entire game controlling a tarantula and a scorpion that are very accurately depicted. If you have a phobia of either creature, this game will do nothing to allay that fear.

The creatures look and move just like they do in your nightmares and when I played it recently at my son’s birthday party, it gave many of the adult guests the creeps.

The kids, on the other hand, loved it. They couldn’t get enough of one of the boss battles (which I’ll get to in a bit), making me play it over and over again. I guess I’ll take that over having to watch Dora or Diego yell at me all afternoon.

Deadly Creatures consists of 10 levels, all set around a desert gas station inhabited by Dennis Hopper and Billy Bob Thornton. Well, their voices, anyway, as they’re just playing characters but I prefer to believe that Dennis and Billy are actually living together in a gas station somewhere in Arizona or something, catching rattlers and hitting each other shovels. I’d pay to see that movie. Depends on if Christina Ricci’s in it, too.

The levels alternate control between the tarantula and the scorpion and you end up traversing much of the same territory. Because each creature has unique abilities, however, the levels never play the same. The scorpion, for instance, can dig tunnels to access areas the tarantula can’t, whereas the tarantula can jump over obstacles and use its web to cross wide expanses.

Although each creature has its own fighting controls, they both end up as waggle-fests. The scorpion is actually the cooler of the two fighters, as you can pull of cinematic combo and finishing moves that make the game feel like Mortal Combat.

Dressed to Kill

Most of the fighting - which can be quite brutal - is against rats, lizards, other scorpions and spiders, etc. Early on, though, there a couple of great boss battles; the tarantula fights a rattle snake at the end of level one, and the scorpion has to evade some kind of big lizard (sorry, biology wasn’t my thing) at the end of level two. The boss battles are completely chucked out the window until the very end. Instead, you usually just end up fighting a larger number of whatever you’ve been fighting for the whole level. It’s a pretty big let-down, considering the potential for very unique combat that Deadly Creatures provides.

Even at the end when the boss battles return, the tarantula’s is an exact copy of level one, and the scorpion’s is just plain ridiculous. More on that in a bit.

Hot in the Shade

As cool as the creatures are, it’s the environment that actually deserves most of the attention and accolades. Rainbow Studios has created this wonderful little world that mostly stays true to nature but takes some light liberties to allow for the cool factor. Fighting on the ceiling of a gas station, for example, or amongst someone’s skeletal remains inside his own coffin. If there’s not a wide variety of enemies to fight, there is at least a wide variety of places to fight them.

The level progression is extremely linear but disorientation (especially as you climb walls and ceilings) often makes them feel more open they are. Yet, despite this linear approach, the exploration is as much fun as the fights. I attribute this to the simply gorgeous graphics and to the fact that this is a world we rarely see in video games.

This proves to be important, because Deadly Creatures offers little replay value. Completionists may want to go back through to get all the grubs and crickets scattered throughout the level but because the game will play the exact same way, only the varied environments will help prevent boredom from settling in.

Destroyer

As I mentioned earlier, however, the game ends so badly that you may never want to go back to it. It’s not quite as bad as the ending to Myst (which just may have been the inspiration for the term “Epic. Fail.”), but it comes close. Things started to go sour in the final battle when you, as the scorpion, suddenly had to do something that made no sense at all, and was obviously, thrown in as a joke. A bad joke. Told three times. Then, it’s set up for the fourth time, but it’s not carried through.

A screen hint tells you do perform a certain action but you can’t actually perform that action. You have to do the complete opposite, then a horribly rendered movie appears for a few seconds, then the game is over. The ending is so godawful and looks so horrible that it feels as if the developers were all fired and replaced by a high school computer class from 1995. Make sure you’ve got your WiiMote cover on so you don’t damage your TV when you throw the remote at it.

My advice, then, is that you definitely buy this game. You’ll have a blast with it.

However, when you reach what is obviously the final battle and are told to perform the same action for the fourth time, just shut the game off. Don’t proceed. Otherwise, you’ll hate the developers for what they did to you and you’ll hate yourself for not trusting me.

Site [Deadly Creatures]