You've never played a game like this before. http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/impressionsArt.cfm?artid=16463 As I left the Deadly Creatures demo at E3 2008, the word in my mind was "immersive", even though it was never uttered by the representatives showing the game. Deadly Creatures is a typical action game in some respects, but the story concepts and presentation are truly unique. You play alternative levels as either a tarantula or scorpion, and their stories intertwine at key points. Not only do you have the story of these creatures' survival and journeys, but there is a parallel crime saga going on with human characters. The cool thing is that you observe the human story entirely from the creatures' perspective, and eventually, you get involved in some way as the creatures emerge from their desert homes into human civilization.
The idea of everything happening from the creatures' perspective extends to the gameplay, as the entire game design fits within realistic environments and behaviors of the two main characters. There are no meters on the screen. Instead of collecting coins or musical notes, you find helpless larvae. You eat prey to regain health. Traditional game elements have been presented within the context of the creatures' world, and it makes a huge difference. You won't find this tarantula wearing sneakers or shooting web platforms to reach higher spaces.
I got to play the game myself for a few minutes, and the controls felt great. Rainbow Studios is being very smart with the controls, mapping the standard attacks to buttons and reserving motion controls for more specialized actions. Oddly enough, there are no camera controls – as with Super Mario Galaxy and Too Human, the intelligent camera follows your character automatically. I realized the magnitude of this achievement once the tarantula started crawling on the walls, because the camera never got confused and always showed the action from a useful angle.
The tarantula is a quick character, more agile in combat and able to crawl on the ceiling. The scorpion is limited to wall crawling and is slower, but its combat abilities include a pincer-enabled block and poison attacks from the stinger. These are the only two playable creatures in the game, but there are some cool bosses, including a huge rattlesnake that was the original inspiration for the game. We don't yet know if you'll get to fight humans, but it would be a battle of Colossus-like proportions from a scorpion's point of view. We did learn that Deadly Creatures will be a single-player game with light RPG elements (you can upgrade combat abilities), and the adventure is expected to last around eight to ten hours. This Wii exclusive is due out in the fourth quarter of 2008.
Topic: IMPRESSIONS: Deadly Creatures (Read 5050 times)
