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Joystiq hands-on: Deadly Creatures (Wii)
Deadly Creatures has both kinds of critters: creepies and crawlies. In this Wii action/adventure, gamers swap between a scorpion and tarantula, moving through claustrophobic settings. I played an in-development version at a recent THQ event, and the title has an interesting concept, but I wasn't hooked by the limited area I explored. Hopefully the plot and fun-sounding other settings will change my opinion with the game's Fall release.In the beginning of the game, players see the aftermath of a man wildly claiming that a scorpion and tarantula blew up a gas station. Your control flashes back a day before that event, and the game's story leads up to that moment.Developers compared Deadly Creatures to Bad Mojo, but the connection was loose in the area I played. Bad Mojo appealed to me because players controlled a cockroach through human areas, but my scorpion-character demo was completely underground.%Gallery-19882%
Razer Tarantula Gaming Keyboard reviewed
We're still not sure exactly how popular these "gamer keyboards" really are, but nevertheless, it appears that Razer wants in on some of the action. This keyboard, which has been talked about for nearly a year, is due to finally hit the streets next month for somewhere in the neighborhood of $100, but those crafty folks at XYZ Computing managed to get their typing paws all over one. The Tarantula apparently claims be one of the world's first extremely-low-latency keyboards on the market, with a response time of less than eight milliseconds. You can also set up to five keyboard profiles, plug in to the USB 2.0 port, or the audio in / out jack. XYZ found that under normal use (word processing, surfing the internet, etc.) that it "works well enough, but is nothing special." But what about under Red Bull-fueled late-night gaming conditions? XYZ dinged the Tarantula for its large footprint, and the fact that you can't shut the LEDs off, but said that it could be "a power tool in the hands of a dedicated gamer." That's not exactly a stunning endorsement, but we'll take it. We'd still like to see how this keyboard handles days-upon-days of hardcore blogging -- that'd be the real test.
