Deadly Creatures - A troll to "hardcore" games everywhereRemember in articles where the developer and THQ claimed that this game was in fact a hardcore game, and everyone should support it because they would have to fall back on minigames to stay afloat? (
link) I thought, ok I can give them a break, with something like MadWorld coming out, I figured maybe it's time to give it a chance. Maybe they're right. Maybe a game based around insects fighting each other is cool and hardcore. (spider: the videogame omg) I was down with that. So I rented Deadly Creatures from GameFly, and made it my weekend rental.
Deadly Creatures didn't even last a whole day. This game is epic failure trainwreck from the getgo. When I turned on the game, I was introduced to a title screen that had a FMV playing in the background. So I check the extras, and all I'm given are concept art (barf) and two interviews with Billy Bob Thornton and Dennis Hopper. A+ talent, so I'm thinking maybe they went all out for this. What they failed to mention was that both actors have at most... 4 lines each.
So the premise of Deadly Creatures is that it prefaces the story about a man who survived a gas station explosion he was in. He mumbles about "deadly creatures" and goes into a coma. It was blamed on some spanish gold (i know, right). So, ok, now we go into the past into the eyes of two characters - a spider, and a scorpion. Throughout the game, both of these bugs will navigate horrible ps2-quality linear environments (which are kind of cool, such as finding a skeleton hand in a dirt tunnel, and winding up inside of a coffin. or navigating the inside of a broken down truck.) and usually cross the same paths the other insect took. The game has zero direction, and you're often wondering "wtf am i supposed to be doing?" and as you go through you overhear billy bob and dennis talking to each other - they're two random guys searching for some buried treasure. the insects are witness to all that happens to these two, especially the greed of one, who baps the other with the shovel when the gold is found.
During the game, there are little grubs you can collect, which do absolutely nothing besides unlock horrible concept art after certain intervals. You can also collect green crickets, which increase your health bar. You will very often fight random insects and animals, such as rats, lizards, spiders, flies, etc. - and you'll do the same flick-motion attack against them. It gets tiresome, and frustrating, because both insects move at a SNAILS PACE, and you are often juggled and beaten down before you get the chance to do anything. When you (finally) weaken the enemies, you get the option to do an insta-kill move via QTE, which boggles the mind as you watch a scorpion bodyslam a lizard, then do a karate chop to its abdomen. With lizards, it literally breaks its neck. It's like they're suddenly mutant karate bugs.
So that about sums up the combat, let's talk about the story. As the spider and scorpion play their levels, they come across each other a grand total of about... 3 times? So you think they have this rivalry going on. Nope. The real rivalries are in the seperate stories. For the spider, you will fight off against a rattlesnake. The scorpion... uh, I guess the greedy man. It really doesnt make sense. Eventually, both insects wind up at the gas station in question, and the spider faces off in one final fight against the snake, and the scorpion fights the human. You defeat the human by stinging its nuts. You never get to see what happens to the snake.
When you defeat the human, you are treated to a literally - literally - sub-quality FMV of the final scene. I tried to look it up, but nothing comes up. The Wii can't even render a cutscene that's viewable to wrap up this sham of a game. What's this, you say - the scorpion and spider have one epic final battle? Not so, says the "hardcore" developers - both insects simply walk away, with a gold coin rolling towards the screen, a symbol that means absolutely nothing for the time I wasted playing this game.
After playing this game, I am convinced that even developers don't know how to either a) make a "hardcore" game or b) convince the general public that they made a "hardcore" game.
If I were to rate this game on the Wii suckness scale, I would rate it a 4 out of 30, and it's better than Super Smash Brothers Brawl
