Review: Deadly Creatures

written by Blain Newport on Saturday, August 1, 2009

Score 3 of 5

Deadly Creatures is a game with a novel concept. You play through the game as two arachnids, a spider and a scorpion, fighting other vermin. Parallel to your wandering and fighting, two men of dubious moral fiber (voiced by Billy Bob Thornton and Dennis Hopper) are looking for buried treasure. The game tries for a creepy tone throughout and largely succeeds thanks to the music. I guess if you have an inherent fear of creepy crawlies, that would play into it as well, but I guess I don't have that.

For me, the game was a mediocre brawler with insects as the main characters. It was also hard to get around sometimes, with invisible barriers impeding progress and certain glitchy areas making it easy to fall (occasionally to my death). The cool thing about the environments was that occasionally there'd be a surprise or flash of recognition as I'd suddenly realize I'd been crawling around on a very familiar object but hadn't realized it because of how different it looked up close.

Aesthetically, the game does well, but in terms of the gameplay, it's all rough edges. Enemies attack at random, meaning sometimes they'll wallop you constantly without giving you a chance to fight back and sometimes they'll seem like they're just standing around waiting to be killed. Also there are special moves that require particular Wiimote and nunchuck movements. If I flailed, they worked. If I tried to be precise and do only the motion as pictured, they didn't.

As the score indicates, I enjoyed the experience, but it was mostly the novelty of being tiny and focused production design / direction. If the gameplay had been interesting and well implemented, Deadly Creatures could have been one of those weird gems a core gamer would own a Wii for. Oh well.