YouTube is full of videos featuring hot ‘arachnid on arachnid action’.
Don’t believe me? Go do a search.
In the meantime, here’s my review about a game that had the guts to let you live out your wildest spider vs. spider dreams.
Here’s the premise: It’s a third-person action title where you alternate between playing a spider and a scorpion. There’s a loose story involving these critters, and essentially each one is stalking the other.
Along the way you’ll encounter various ‘boss battles’ involving ridiculous odds and some other rather large beasties (like when you face a rattlesnake, playing as a spider). You’ll also get bits and pieces of a separate story involving a couple of small-time crooks who are engaged in some skullduggery in the desert.
At one point, the storylines collide and… well… that would be a spoiler.
The game looks remarkable considering it’s in Standard Def, and controls are pretty damn good.
Except the camera.
There are times when it gets locked behind a stone outcropping or even outside of the geometry of the map. It’s not often, but it does happen enough to get annoying. I wouldn’t call it game-breaking.
As you play through the story, different moves are unlocked for each of your creepy crawlers, but these new moves rarely alter the basic gameplay. The spider gets the ability to shoot webs at a distance (temporarily disabling foes) and gets better at clinging to walls (ultimately you can hang upside down), but the scorpion gets nothing even close to groundbreaking.
The voicework of the ‘background’ humans is spectacular; Billy Bob Thorton and Dennis Hopper make an appearance in the game as the crooks, and perhaps the best part of the game is the unique storytelling surrounding them. It’s a little like witnessing a Leonard Elmore novel from ground level.
It’s absolutely the best part of the game.
I found myself completely enthralled for the first hour of gameplay, but soon found that the repititive action and all-too-similar levels soured the experience for me. What kept me playing the game was finding out what was going on with the humans.
Overall, I felt the game was a squandered opportunity to do something completely new with interactive storytelling, and while it was entertaining to a point… there really needed to be a stronger GAME behind the story.
I don’t feel ripped off, and I’m certainly glad I played the game, but the best I can say is it’s a VERY strong RENT IT, or perhaps a BUY IT if you can find a discounted copy.
Matt Ellis is co-founder and Senior Editor at Bag Of Mad Bastards, and co-host of the Drunken Monkey Tech podcast. He can be reached at matt@bagofmadbastards.com.
Want to buy this game? Deadly Creatures
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