Luckily, you'll most likely be too busy marveling at the levels to worry too much at the camera controls as the game sports some of the best level design around. The act of taking everyday objects and turning them into insect playgrounds allowed the level designers to come up with new ways of presenting household items. A pizza box becomes a massive ramp, a discarded dollhouse becomes an apartment sized dwelling, a skeletonized body becomes a mass of fossilized on and off-ramps. When you throw in the ability to have the bugs move vertically as well as horizontally, it presents an even greater range of new ways to design a level. The best compliment I can give about the level design is that there are several levels repeated throughout the game, however because you'll play it once as the tarantula, who can jump from web to web, and once as the scorpion, who is tethered to the ground, the same level feels like two completely different experiences. Unfortunately all of this detail comes at a price as the game will frequently pause to load up the next section of the level, which is slightly annoying when simply scurrying along, but even more annoying when you're in the middle of delivering a right hook to a pill bug. I guess that would be four right hooks.

The game won't take you very long to get through, maybe seven to eight hours tops, unless you stop along the way to find each of the game's 450 grubs and 17 green crickets. Green crickets replenish your health as well as raise your maximum health which gives some tangible purpose to finding them; however grubs only replenish a little health and unlock concept art. Given how many there are, and how tricky they can be to find, you'd think that there would be a better reward for finding all of them other than some pictures of unused box art. You can extend your playing time by upping the difficulty if you're both a value seeker and a glutton for punishment.

Still, even with the short playing time, it's hard not to recommend Deadly Creatures. The level design is top notch, the animations of the various bugs are downright creepy and the combat is oddly satisfying. The game also hosts some interesting boss battles which take into account the fact that the bosses are usually much, much bigger than you, meaning that the best way to win is to simply survive. It's a shame that the control and camera issues weigh the game down, and the unskippable cut scenes for the final boss make retrying that battle more annoying than it needs to be, but they shouldn't stop you from experiencing a fun and decidedly creepy action game on the Wii. Just make sure to play with the lights on, or at least with a can of Raid nearby. That tarantula has a mean jump.

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