‘The House of the Dead: Overkill’

‘The House of the Dead: Overkill’

(Sega) for Wii

Genre: Shooter; Rating: M

Grade: B

Call me demented, but, holy cow, if I didn’t laugh out loud and thoroughly enjoy myself while blazing my guns through “Overkill.”

To truly appreciate this first-person shooter on the Wii, you need to be a fan of the Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez double feature “Grindhouse.” “Overkill” looks, sounds and plays like a missing third film in the series.

Featuring campy music, copious amounts of zombie gore and “colorful” language not suitable for kids, it’s one of the best games for the Wii.

You’ll play as either Agent G or Isaac Washington, and either way you are going to be entertained. Clearly some time was spent on the writing, pacing and overall story, and this helps keep the action fresh even though the game’s highly repetitive. This one is on rails, so you don’t really control where you are going. Just sit back and blast away at anything that’s undead and moving.

The guns are plenty powerful, and you can continue to upgrade them to make yourself truly unstoppable. Heck, even the bosses you face are funnier than they are difficult to defeat. The game has some frustrating frame-rate and clipping issues that slow the action, but they’re not terribly burdensome.

What makes “Overkill” truly stand apart from other games on the Wii is its insistence on not being like every other “House of the Dead” game, or any previous FPS, for that matter. “Overkill” breaks from the franchise’s typical look and feel. Without the words being in the title, you’d likely not even realize you were playing a “House of the Dead” game.

“Overkill” is an apt title. The cursing, blood splatter, high comedy and soundtrack all go for excess and leave nothing on the cutting-room floor. Congrats to Sega for giving older Wii gamers something to cheer about: a game that is loads of fun and doesn’t involve tending to a fake dog, cooking a pie or shepherding cute, colorful blobs. Sometimes we just want to take out our frustrations on some flesh-craving mutants. This is a must-buy for Wii owners.

‘Deadly Creatures’

(THQ) for Wii

Genre: Platformer

Rating: T

Grade: C

I am probably the last reviewer THQ wants to write about its new game, “Deadly Creatures.” You see, I have an insane fear of snakes, spiders and pretty much anything else in the insect/creepy-crawly realm. So playing a game designed entirely around these creatures is a sure way to freak me out and give me nightmares for days on end. But for you all, my lovely readers, I submitted. Don’t ever say I don’t care.

In this game you control the fate of two main characters, a tarantula and a scorpion. (At least it wasn’t a snake.) “Deadly” tries to depict life as realistically as possible, although I doubt these guys face this much adversity every day, or the stress alone would overwhelm them. The only two humans in the game show up periodically to talk about buried treasure, but beyond that there doesn’t seem to be much of a story. Besides, what the hell is a tarantula going to do with gold, anyway?

Using the Wii controllers, you will guide your scorpion or tarantula through desert locales and dusty shacks and houses, all the while encountering mole rats, wasps and whatever else gets in your path, as well as the aforementioned snake. The graphics are detailed enough to give you a good representation of life as viewed from the ground.

The action itself gets repetitive, but if you have a hankering for venomous kill strikes, “Deadly Creatures” has them aplenty. Slow-motion set pieces will allow you to flip over your victim and jam your scorpion tail into its head or other body part.

While you may find this game fun, I don’t. I’ve dreamed about this game three times and each time been jolted awake thinking I was being attacked. Not cool. But I can’t deny that “Deadly Creatures” offers an interesting diversion from the normal action-adventure fare dished out by game companies. Tread carefully, but don’t hesitate to give this game a shot.

—Chris Campbell, Scripps Howard