Unfortunately, the Wii had a waning presence at this year’s E3, and this was visible at the booths of companies such as Atari. While Atari had a few big titles on display, such as The Witcher 2, there was only one Wii title available for play: a new entry in the classic Centipede series called Centipede Infestation.
Like the original, Infestation is based on a simple premise: bug-like enemies are heading your way, and you need to shoot them with your gun. Unlike the original Centipede, however, the action takes place in a few different environments, and you’re able to aim in all different directions instead of just one. You take control of a young boy or girl with a sweet gun, and enemies will burrow out of the ground and slowly advance toward you. Occasionally, larger enemies will head your way that take more hits, but defeating them will cause a turret to be planted that shoots enemies for you; the development team was inspired by the original game, and how shooting a piece of the centipede created a mushroom that aided you also.
You aim using the Wii Remote’s IR pointer, pointing at the part of the screen that you wish to fire upon. The controls so far are accurate and not at all sluggish, and I never felt I had to wrestle with them in order to destroy my enemies. It did take me a few minutes to figure out how to switch to my alternate weapons, which you can pick up as powerups and use until they disappear, but I soon had some grip on that as well, and by the time I was finally dead I was taking out waves of bugs fairly easily. That said, the whole death thing is still being worked on; in the game’s early state, you can be killed with a single hit, but I was told this would change as development gets further along.
It’s a bit too early in development to make any judgment calls on Centipede Infestation as a complete package, as only the core gameplay has been implemented, but what’s there is done quite well. It’s a simple yet addictive gameplay concept, and the controls are very quick and responsive, so there’s not much there to impede you in your goal of shooting evil bug enemies that are trying to kill you. In its current state, I would say that it would make an excellent downloadable title, but I’d like to see what else they intend to do with the game.
Stay tuned to Nintendo Gal for more E3 impressions as the week goes on.
