Some people get shocked by bugs. Me, I'm just shocked that I liked this game as much as I did.
Deadly Creatures is an action game released for the Wii where you take control of a tarantula and a scorpion in the Mojave Desert off Route 66, using their abilities to survive fierce combat encounters with other bugs and reptiles. While they do this, we follow two human characters, played by Billy Bob Thornton and the late Dennis Hopper, searching the desert for a hidden treasure. Between the thrill of the combat and the twists of the story following the two treasure hunters, Deadly Creatures offers a lot to intrigue players.
Throughout the adventure, you play as both a tarantula and a scorpion, switching between the two with each passing stage. There's 10 stages total, so you get to play as both creatures an equal amount of time, allowing the player to be fully immersed in each creature's unique play style.
The tarantula is agile, being able to jump high in the air to dodge attacks and zip to nearby webs. Combat-wise, the tarantula is all about setups. When you unlock the ability to shoot web at enemies, this becomes your go-to way to retaliate against foes. While they're webbed, you can go in for a quick combo or pounce on them, injecting them with a lethal poison. I feel that you have a lot of creative freedom with how you play the tarantula, and figuring out combat strategies to take advantage of stunned foes is highly satisfying.
The scorpion is slow and bulky, but they are very versatile with their pincers and stinger. They're more combo-focused, punishing enemies with their pincers and ending combos with stinger strikes. Exclusive to the scorpion are finishing moves. When an enemy is weak, you'll get a prompt to begin a finishing quick-time event (I'll be referring to these as QUE's from here on out). By swinging the controllers as the prompts show up, you'll be able to finish off enemies stylishly while also regaining some health. The developers were also merciful enough to give no penalty for failing a QTE outside of having to re-do the finisher. The finishing moves are all really cool, by the way. You'll have some where you slam an enemy into the ground and then dig your pincers into them, or you'll flip them over and shove your stinger down their throat. It's way cooler than it has any right to be.
If I had to pick a favorite playstyle, it would have to be the tarantula. As much as I like the combos and finishers of the scorpion, being able to dance around foes and punish them by webbing them up and following with powerful moves was always a thrill.
Now, you don't have all of these moves from the beginning. You unlock moves by gaining points, which are earned from defeating enemies and completing story objectives. Earn enough points and you automatically unlock more moves to try out in combat. It's very simple and non-intrusive. Outside of that, as you explore stages you'll find grubs, which unlock galleries full of cool concept art, as well as leaf crickets, which will increase your health when you find enough of them.
You encounter a decent variety of enemies in this game, each with their own abilities that they'll use to try to assert their place in the food chain. Outside of regular enemies, boss encounters are scarce, with there only being a small handful of them in the game. You also get to have rival matches between the scorpion and the tarantula, which gets exciting as you play, since after a while you know how they both work, and now have to figure out how you're going to counter their cool moves.
As much as I enjoyed this game, I do have some criticisms to raise. Firstly, the subtitles. In the options menu you can enable subtitles to help you follow along with what the human characters are saying. Sadly, though, these aren't always present. There are a handful of dialogue exchanges that just aren't subtitled, and it's a shame because it makes you feel like you're missing pieces of the story while the sounds of exploration and combat are happening.
My other complaints stem from this game being both a 7th Gen game and being released on the Wii. Firstly, as with many 7th Gen games at the time of this game's release, the framerate is highly inconsistent, dipping very low during many enemy encounters. This can be frustrating, especially as this effects your inputs. Games just feel less responsive when running poorly, and sadly Deadly Creatures suffers because of this. It's not game-breaking, but it is annoying.
Lastly, we need to talk about the motion controls. You're going to be pointing the wiimote at the screen for things like lining up web shots and zipping to other webs as the tarantula, which feels fine. What doesn't feel fine is when you're playing as the scorpion and you need to use motion controls for finishers. Maybe it's because my wiimotes are over 15 years old at this point, but following the prompts to move the wiimote and nunchuk for finishers feels so broken. I'll do the moves and unless I'm waving them wildly in the directions they want, they aren't going to register. It becomes infuriating when you're doing the same moves over and over again and they aren't reading to allow you to finish QTEs. There's also motion controls involved in moves outside QTEs, like combo finishers for the scorpion and follow-up moves for the tarantula. The scorpion also has environment traversal moves that require you to waggle the controllers. It's exhausting after a while, and I feel that it kinda brings down the game slightly.
Overall, I loved this game. I enjoyed following the plot of the treasure hunters, I loved playing as the tarantula and scorpion, and I greatly enjoyed checking out the concept art I unlocked, as well as interviews with Billy Bob Thornton and Dennis Hopper where they talk about the game and their interest in bugs and reptiles. However, outside of the arachnophobia that some players may suffer from, there are barriers to the experience, such as the framerate issues and motion control implementation. It's probably a long-shot, but I would really like to see this game get a remaster one day that fixes the issues I had. Being able to use button presses in place of the motion controls, having a stable framerate and having consistent subtitles would absolutely bring this game up immensely.
If you don't have arachnophobia and are cool with virtual bug antics, then I highly recommend this game. You'll be humming Devil Trigger from Devil May Cry 5 while stinging bad bugs where the sun don't shine before you know it.
Deadly Creatures is an action game released for the Wii where you take control of a tarantula and a scorpion in the Mojave Desert off Route 66, using their abilities to survive fierce combat encounters with other bugs and reptiles. While they do this, we follow two human characters, played by Billy Bob Thornton and the late Dennis Hopper, searching the desert for a hidden treasure. Between the thrill of the combat and the twists of the story following the two treasure hunters, Deadly Creatures offers a lot to intrigue players.
Throughout the adventure, you play as both a tarantula and a scorpion, switching between the two with each passing stage. There's 10 stages total, so you get to play as both creatures an equal amount of time, allowing the player to be fully immersed in each creature's unique play style.
The tarantula is agile, being able to jump high in the air to dodge attacks and zip to nearby webs. Combat-wise, the tarantula is all about setups. When you unlock the ability to shoot web at enemies, this becomes your go-to way to retaliate against foes. While they're webbed, you can go in for a quick combo or pounce on them, injecting them with a lethal poison. I feel that you have a lot of creative freedom with how you play the tarantula, and figuring out combat strategies to take advantage of stunned foes is highly satisfying.
The scorpion is slow and bulky, but they are very versatile with their pincers and stinger. They're more combo-focused, punishing enemies with their pincers and ending combos with stinger strikes. Exclusive to the scorpion are finishing moves. When an enemy is weak, you'll get a prompt to begin a finishing quick-time event (I'll be referring to these as QUE's from here on out). By swinging the controllers as the prompts show up, you'll be able to finish off enemies stylishly while also regaining some health. The developers were also merciful enough to give no penalty for failing a QTE outside of having to re-do the finisher. The finishing moves are all really cool, by the way. You'll have some where you slam an enemy into the ground and then dig your pincers into them, or you'll flip them over and shove your stinger down their throat. It's way cooler than it has any right to be.
If I had to pick a favorite playstyle, it would have to be the tarantula. As much as I like the combos and finishers of the scorpion, being able to dance around foes and punish them by webbing them up and following with powerful moves was always a thrill.
Now, you don't have all of these moves from the beginning. You unlock moves by gaining points, which are earned from defeating enemies and completing story objectives. Earn enough points and you automatically unlock more moves to try out in combat. It's very simple and non-intrusive. Outside of that, as you explore stages you'll find grubs, which unlock galleries full of cool concept art, as well as leaf crickets, which will increase your health when you find enough of them.
You encounter a decent variety of enemies in this game, each with their own abilities that they'll use to try to assert their place in the food chain. Outside of regular enemies, boss encounters are scarce, with there only being a small handful of them in the game. You also get to have rival matches between the scorpion and the tarantula, which gets exciting as you play, since after a while you know how they both work, and now have to figure out how you're going to counter their cool moves.
As much as I enjoyed this game, I do have some criticisms to raise. Firstly, the subtitles. In the options menu you can enable subtitles to help you follow along with what the human characters are saying. Sadly, though, these aren't always present. There are a handful of dialogue exchanges that just aren't subtitled, and it's a shame because it makes you feel like you're missing pieces of the story while the sounds of exploration and combat are happening.
My other complaints stem from this game being both a 7th Gen game and being released on the Wii. Firstly, as with many 7th Gen games at the time of this game's release, the framerate is highly inconsistent, dipping very low during many enemy encounters. This can be frustrating, especially as this effects your inputs. Games just feel less responsive when running poorly, and sadly Deadly Creatures suffers because of this. It's not game-breaking, but it is annoying.
Lastly, we need to talk about the motion controls. You're going to be pointing the wiimote at the screen for things like lining up web shots and zipping to other webs as the tarantula, which feels fine. What doesn't feel fine is when you're playing as the scorpion and you need to use motion controls for finishers. Maybe it's because my wiimotes are over 15 years old at this point, but following the prompts to move the wiimote and nunchuk for finishers feels so broken. I'll do the moves and unless I'm waving them wildly in the directions they want, they aren't going to register. It becomes infuriating when you're doing the same moves over and over again and they aren't reading to allow you to finish QTEs. There's also motion controls involved in moves outside QTEs, like combo finishers for the scorpion and follow-up moves for the tarantula. The scorpion also has environment traversal moves that require you to waggle the controllers. It's exhausting after a while, and I feel that it kinda brings down the game slightly.
Overall, I loved this game. I enjoyed following the plot of the treasure hunters, I loved playing as the tarantula and scorpion, and I greatly enjoyed checking out the concept art I unlocked, as well as interviews with Billy Bob Thornton and Dennis Hopper where they talk about the game and their interest in bugs and reptiles. However, outside of the arachnophobia that some players may suffer from, there are barriers to the experience, such as the framerate issues and motion control implementation. It's probably a long-shot, but I would really like to see this game get a remaster one day that fixes the issues I had. Being able to use button presses in place of the motion controls, having a stable framerate and having consistent subtitles would absolutely bring this game up immensely.
If you don't have arachnophobia and are cool with virtual bug antics, then I highly recommend this game. You'll be humming Devil Trigger from Devil May Cry 5 while stinging bad bugs where the sun don't shine before you know it.
4 Comments
@FallenGrace I get that. Honestly for the most part, bugs kind of freak me out in real life. In games, though, they don't really bother me as much, thankfully.
@UrLocalBanktoad that makes two of us, cannot handle bugs in real life, in games though it's perfectly fine. Sounds like a really interesting game I've never heard of before, will definitely check this out some more.
@QuentTheSlayer glad to see I'm not alone there. I hope you have a good time with it whenever you try it out!
FallenGrace
1 month ago