Game Reviews Roundup

New video games have been piling up. Thoughts on three:

Deadly Creatures (Wii): I’ll get to the game in a second, but I have to ask: Why does its box look like something on a guy’s T-shirt at the Puyallup Fair?

This looks like bargain-bin crap. Not sure why THQ didn’t try adding in-game actors Billy Bob Thornton and Dennis Hopper‘s names to the cover, or touting some good reviews, or showing a better representation of the solid in-game art… anything other than this promo shot from a Sci-Fi Channel TV movie.

I dwell because there’s an interesting game here, and I hope it won’t be ignored among the glut of crap on Wii shelves. The short of it—you control a tarantula (and later a scorpion). You crawl around some podunk wasteland while eating and killing whatever you can, and occasionally, Thornton and Hopper’s characters walk above you and talk about podunk, treasure-huntin’ shit.

This is the ultimate video game for your growing cretin. Seriously, what young boy doesn’t want to lead a scorpion through skeleton-riddled crawlways while killing roaches and pillbugs? Full-grown cretins, meanwhile, will also get into the really impressive art direction and sound design. Everything about this game feels believably huge, gross, and dangerous—heck, push the control stick realllly slowly, and you’ll see your tarantula’s little hairy legs slither one at a time toward its grub prey. Yum. Plus, it’s nice to have decent voice acting in a video game for once.

Dunno that DC adds up to $50 of play—though it’s there if you want to replay levels and find hidden grubs. Would’ve been nice if they’d tossed in some party modes where friends battled for bugs or something, and the game as-is is relatively straightforward, aside from the obvious boon of its atmosphere. Still, a long rental’s in order for any bored Wii owners.

The Maw (Xbox 360): Same goal as Deadly Creatures: lead a creature around, make it eat stuff. The difference is that the Maw is a lunatic blob of teeth in playland; Barney’s gone AWOL. What I liked most about this in my August test was the ridiculous amount of charisma. You don’t actually control the Maw; instead, you’re forced to drag it around like a pet to get through the game. Half the time, he resisted the dragging, or he’d run off to admire and/or eat something around the corner. He’d laugh, shudder, roar, and generally react to everything.

That didn’t translate to the final product. Your mega-pet is more obedient here, both in action and reaction, than I may have foolishly expected. Perhaps players wanted to play the game rather than interact with this guy, so they switched it? I wanted it the other way around, to have the core experience revolve around placating this moody yet lively beast.

As it stands, this Maw bugger is still amusing, memorable, and well animated, but I was originally willing to forgive pedestrian puzzles because of it. Now, not as much, especially when half the puzzles are padded by how damned slow my character moves. (Also, while the Maw looks great, the rest of the game is pretty average, especially since nobody bothered making levels look different from each other.) Worth noting, this is a way better children’s game than Spongebob or Avatar drek, and if you have a kid, he/she will play this over and over again, so you’ll get your $10 worth.

R-Type Dimensions (Xbox 360): Microsoft wrote to let me know this was released by Tozai, a publisher based in Bellevue. So, uh, hi, guys. What Microsoft didn’t tell me in their e-mail was that Tozai reportedly had to rebuild this arcade classic from the ground-up, left without the original source code from R-Type and R-Type 2’s ’80s releases.

Weird, since this is the umpteenth time R-Type has been released. In fact, you can nab the old games for $6 together on the PlayStation 3’s online store, which makes it a bit harder to justify $15 for the Xbox’s shiny new version. It’s still a damned near impossible shoot-’em-up game, in which you pilot a ship while flying left-to-right through alien worlds, with help from a little pod that sticks to either the front or back of your ship.

The major change isn’t so much the updated art, but the “infinite” mode. Deaths no longer halt the action, so keep shooting through your deaths, get through the game, and your Xbox will tell you afterward how awful you are. All nostalgic game releases should come with an optional “infinite” mode, especially one as punishing as R-Type, so I hope this starts a trend. Otherwise, even with a welcome co-op option, and the fact that this game was rebuilt from the ground-up, you’ll know whether you want to buy this or not after one run-through of the free demo. R-Type’s challenge comes not from quick reflexes in a blasty world, but from memorizing exact places to fly your plane in these levels. If you’re a glutton for virtual punishment, have at it.

Coming soon in reviews: House of the Dead Overkill, a Wii shooter that wants desperately to be an exploitation movie (complete with bad actors, ’70s funk tunes, and non-stop use of the word “motherfucker”). Flower, a PS3 art-game. Halo Wars. A (sorta) new version of Pikmin for the Wii. And Street Fighter IV.