Deadly Creatures

Deadly Creatures opens with, surprisingly, a shades-of-noir narrative from Billy Bob Thornton. But truck into your local gamestop and you’ll probably look right past its box art, depicting a fearsome tarantula locked in mortal combat with a wily rattlesnake.

To say that the game is unassuming at first glance is an understatement, especially given the already-bloated Wii market fattening up store shelves. Even the name “Deadly Creatures” is misguiding, since it sounds generic. Hell, I thought it was generic until bits started popping up about it online. Then suddenly I changed my mind. Don’t be fooled—this game not only has sleeper hit written all over it, but also carries the potential weight of a lasting legacy in the annals of game design.

That’s not a statement I make lightly. Deadly Creatures’ chances are certainly helped by solid performances from Thornton and the wonderfully slimy Dennis Hopper, but as we all have learned from countless licensed comic book movie tie-ins, top tier voice acting does not a great game make. In part, Deadly Creatures differentiates itself by a matter of perspective, as Billy Bob and Dennis, as great as they are, aren’t the game’s main attraction. The real stars are eight-legged critters found on the desert floor: the tarantula and the scorpion.

The unusual decision Rainbow made here—to thrust two fearsome arachnid predators of the Sonoran into the spotlight—is, quite simply, brilliant. Throughout the game’s 10 chapters, you alternate between the two titular deadly creatures, crawling through the otherworldly landscape of the desert. The two men played by Thornton and Hopper —Wade and Struggs, respectively, are only present in the background as you skitter about, eating grubs and doing battle with other arachnids, insects and a smattering of natural predators.

Occasional “encounters” with the two men drive the game’s dark narrative forward as you observe events, involving lost confederate gold buried somewhere in the desert, unfold between them. Like the game itself, Deadly Creature’s plot seems small and unassuming, but in reality it’s a taut, grim little microcosm of human nature.

This is exactly what’s so great about Deadly Creatures. Unafraid to take risks, Rainbow has pushed the narrative envelope through these interactions, or lack thereof, between arachnid and man. As you crawl over dead logs and through tunnels of sand, you’ll occasionally hear the two men’s voices seep in from aboveground. From time to time you’ll find a distant line of sight to Wade and Struggs, and can watch the plot thicken from the base of a cliff or a hollow, and since the scorpion and tarantula are in different places throughout the game, each witnesses the events of the plot from a different point of view. By simply having the two arachnids act naturally, the story progression develops organically—an idea that probably would’ve been shot to hell at most pitch meetings.

And if Deadly Creatures’ story is dark, its world is magnified tenfold. Even under the hot Sonoran sun, the game has a pervasive, unsettling atmosphere. From the eyes of a tarantula or scorpion, an ordinary patch of thorny brambles becomes an elaborate mass of barbed tentacles; a regular sewage route is a rocky, steam pipe wasteland. Wade and Struggs, for their part, appear like titans. The game’s distorted perspective adds a lot to the overall feeling of dread, although you’ll be so awestruck by the visuals you’ll barely notice. (This is definitely a Wii showcase game, sporting some of the best third party graphics I’ve seen on the system). The game exudes a gradual, creeping effect, as if a massive spider was softly tracking you down every path, keeping to the shadows. Rainbow did such a great job with Deadly Creatures’ moody aesthetic that on the occasion you see your eight-legged shadow flash wildly across a two-by-four or the hot plate of a rock (generally a glitch, admittedly) you may actually jump—I did. While we’re on the subject, a few other glitches occasionally pop up, like hitches in frame rate, or wonky object interaction, but I found them to be pretty minor, and didn’t ruin the game’s sense of unease, which is further heightened by the game’s combat.

Kill-or-be-killed is nature’s law, and Deadly Creatures has plenty of combat whose unsettling effect owes equally to the extremely well-detailed animal modeling as it does to the sheer terror of watching groups of arthropods beat hell out of each other. Rainbow’s attention to detail here is most evident in the tarantula and the scorpion—the tarantula’s wooly legs even twitch involuntarily when not moving, which may indicate the possibility the beastie recently molted (I learned more about them in my research for this review than I care to think about).

The tarantula and the scorpion both have a unique set of attacks to use with the Wiimote’s nunchuck and controller: the tarantula can sideswipe, stealth pounce, blind with webshots, attack with a venomous bite, and eventually feed on struggling overturned enemies; the scorpion, more of a heavyweight, can whip its tail around, jab, sting, and my personal favorite, burrow underground for a ‘surprise’ upward strike. For once, motion controls work well and are pretty responsive, which helps to maintain the tense feeling you get when fighting off swarms of creepy crawlies. Things only get worse, particularly for arachnophobes, when encountering a cluster of enemies, and the documentary-like scenes of arachnids and other scurrying quickly toward you, writhing in their death throes, or eating their foes may be too tough to watch, let alone play, for the more squeamish.

(cont...)

• Showing Page 1 ( of 2 )
• 1
• 2

blog comments powered by Disqus