Let me first off state that this is a regular blog entry, not an April Fool's Day joke.
I am totally ignoring all the junk that get's passed off as "news" as a "Surprise! April Fool's Day!" Joke. For the record, I hate April Fool's.


The boxart is sure nice-looking

Anyway, for the past 3 nights or so, when Baby Laura is snug in her crib, I have been watching my husband play Deadly Creatures. It took him all of about 3 nights playing just a few hours each to beat the game. (It only has 10 chapters.)


The tarantula waits for the humans to leave before moving on.

My initial thoughts were: "Wow! Look at the hairy detail on that Tarantula's leg!" or "Cool! We get to learn how to fight as a scorpion or tarantula!" Unfortunately, to borrow a phrase from Nintendo Power, "Arachnid-Fu" just isn't all that much fun. It's tedious to pull off combos and sometimes the controls didn't respond at all. It could get quite frustrating. Plus, the game has a 30 sec- 2+ min loading time each time you start from a new chapter. (Having never played a wii game with loading times, I found this annoying.) The most irritating thing, though was the area loads. The game would be playing just fine, then you go up against a pair of rats and suddenly RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF BATTLE the game pauses for several seconds to load. More often then not, he'd end up dead and have to re-start the area.

Then during exploration, the game shows itself as quite linear. You'd think: "Hmm, wonder what's under here?", only to find the game prevents you from exploring that area. Some of it was fun, like getting the ability to dig, then exploring a previously unreachable zone; however, a lot of the game remains frustratingly un-reachable no matter what moves you have.
(Also, it can be quite jarring to be playing as one critter, get used to his moves then the next chapter being the other.)

One thing that bugged (pardon the lame pun) both of us: You learn lots of neat moves in this game whether you play as the spider or scorpion; however, combat is very fast-paced and you don't often have time to charge up a poison sting before you get knocked flat on your back by a scrawny rat or giant wasp! In other words, even though there must be a dozen moves per creature (spider and scorpion) you may only use a handful because it's easier and faster to kill other creatures with it.
The spider can jump, shoot webs to "muzzle" enemies briefly and swing from webs (think link's hookshot in Ocarina of Time and you've got the idea). He was a bit weak, though. The scorpion felt a bit stonger, and could whip his tail to trip enemies, stab them, "punch" (eh, whatever) with his pincers, burrow to attack and dig holes. His finishing moves were the most violent, often ending with him stabbing some critter in the throat or abdomen with his poisonous stinger.


Ambushed by a gang of Black Widows!

Some of the moves were pure genius: Burrowing underground required you to turn the wii remote upside down, then flicking it upward to leap out and attack. Finishing moves you could do when you got your enemy down low enough and these are flashy, often brutal moves. For example, In one, the scorpion would whip his tail to trip his enemy (in this case a large praying mantis), grap it by one arm, ram it's scythe-like claw into it's chest, then the scorpion would use it's own pincers to "nail" the claw deep, with a spray of blood! Nasty!


Dig, Dig, Dig

The game is quite pretty, and as mentioned there is lots of detail. The "story" takes place in a desert near an abandoned, run-down gas station. There are, appropriately, rats and other sorts of unsavory critters you have to fight, and the many "Boss-battles" sure made us think. Though all it really took was lots of watching to get the pattern down, then "Simon says" where you have to push the same buttons shown onscreen quickly. (I have always hated timed button presses.) As mentioned, these didn't always respond well and often he would end up dead, then staring at a loading screen for a bit till he could get back in the game.


Get used to seeing the loading screen

However, the game up until the last couple of levels, is a cakewalk. David didn't even die until he was three quarters of the way into the game. Then, on the final two levels, he died nearly every checkpoint. What was WITH the difficulty?!

I think that because the game was delayed so many times, they sort of rushed through it to get it out. In the final chapters, the game starts to show graphical glitches, control issues and other such hiccups that were barely noticeable in the early game. That's a shame, really, because had it had a bit more time, it could have been quite a nice game.
One final note: The music in game was suitably creepy and atmospheric, and the story, which we'd see bits of as we scuttled around, was quite okay, though it felt anticlimactic at the end.

A nice weekend rental, but not one we'd buy. After watching him play it, I saw enough to know I won't be playing my own file anytime soon.
As David put it, "It was fun enough to want to see the ending, but nothing I'd play again."