Animales De La Muerte

This is a in development Wiiware game from High Voltage software, the devopers of the conduit.
The game looks like a warped cross between Viva Pinata and Resident Evil. It's called Animales De La Muerte (Animals of the Dead) and it's one of the most exciting titles scheduled for Nintendo's download service. You might want to sit down as we explain the premise, especially if you fancy yourself a gamer with bloodlust.

It all starts "down in Mexico," where the Valle De La Sol Public Zoo, run by the charismatic geezer Don Eduardo Mendoza, has found itself in crisis mode. The animals -- elephants, monkeys, warthogs, and walruses, to name a few -- have begun dying only to be reborn as flesh-eating zombies. High Voltage elaborates, "Now, wandering freely through the zoo, the rotting beasts are no longer content with eating visitor scraps they get tossed into their cages -- instead they prefer to eat the whole visitor."

The cute style is complemented by gruesome carnage.

You take on the role of characters Marco and Maria Mendoza, Don Eduardo's weapon-proficient grandchildren, and bring the fight back to the animals -- the zombified ones, anyway. While the two will use a variety of powerful guns and items to mutilate the walking dead, they will also carry with them nets in order to capture and save the animals still unaffected by the outbreak.

nimales de la Muerte plays similarly to classic fixed position shooting games like Smash TV and, more recently, Alien Syndrome for Wii (the latter of which failed to live up to its potential, sadly). Since the title has been developed specifically with Wii in mind, High Voltage has naturally been able to make much better use of the Wii remote than SEGA did. To play, you move your character around the screen with the nunchuk's analog stick and aim with Nintendo's pointer. You aren't merely limited to shooting in various directions -- you can also very quickly and accurately target enemies with pinpoint precision (using an on-screen reticule) and blast them to bloody pieces. This control method nurtures the characters' abilities to run in one direction and simultaneously shoot into another. In addition, a speedy flick of the nunchuk will toss grenades at whatever spot you've got your reticule aimed. You can go it alone or with up to three friends in a four-player single-screen cooperative mode, which becomes chaotic.

Weapons

As you progress through the levels, doorways and gateways will become opened after you've disposed of a preset number of animal zombies and accomplished some secondary objectives. Along the way, you'll be able to earn pesos, which fall from the obliterated dead, from destructible objects and from boss characters, to buy upgrades -- both temporary boosts and full-blown weapons. If you like collectibles, you're in luck. The Valle De La Sol Public Zoo is home to a series of mold-o-matic machines which allow you to buy waxy replicas of your favorite animals. More importantly, though, the exhibit houses many handy gun-o-rama machines, too -- "... just in case," according to High Voltage -- and these store invaluable guns and items.

There's the uzi, a default weapon which enables rapid fire and features infinite ammo. The bullwhip is a secondary weapon, causes radius damage and pushes zombies back. The flamethrower is a medium range gun and it damages enemies over time. There's the rocket launcher, a long range projectile that causes a big explosion which will disintegrate several foes at once. And, of course, the chainsaw -- a melee-style weapon that inflicts ridiculous amounts of blood-splattering, limb-severing anarchy upon those animals unlucky enough to rub up against it.

On top of everything else, Marco and Maria are able to learn and master several "legendary attack moves handed down through their family tree." To execute these "Attacks Estupendo" you will need to fill their power meters first. There's the luchadore, which executes a high-flying wrestling kick. In some character art High Voltage showed us, Marco unleashes a luchadore that sends the character kicking directly through an elephant in a gruesomely awesome display of skill. There's the el mariachi, which triggers temporary invisibility and twin machine gun guitar cases for the characters. And the padre or sister, which effectively calls upon a higher power to eliminate any undead in the immediate area.

The siblings will need every move and weapon at their disposal to mutilate and eliminate the hordes of enemies attacking them at any given moment, each foe armed with unique abilities of its own. The monkey is cute in life, but the animal is a true pest in zombie form, throwing its own bones at Marco and Maria if they come too close. The warthog will try to impale the kids on its razor sharp tasks. The speedy penguin will slide on its belly and pounce, slamming its beak into opponents. And the walrus will hurl its grotesque slime into their direction if the children come too close. Don't even get us started on the elephants.

Attacks Estupendo

The title's premise is enhanced by real-time cut-scenes which use the game engine to advance the storyline and High Voltage is aiming to pepper the experience with lots of blood, guts and comedy, obviously. Check out some of our screenshots and videos to see the carnage on display. High Voltage's Eric Nofsinger compares the level of violence in the game to the cult movie Dead Alive, famous for its exaggerated gore. "Animales de la Muerte all started from a simple little drawing of a cute little rabbit with a flamethrower. Somewhere along the way it morphed into a zombie apocalypse in a Mexican Zoo. And then the idea just kind of took on a life of its own," says Nofsinger. "Between GenCon, Wizards World, Siggraph, and GDC we gave out 30,000 bookmark sized board games, 2,000 1" buttons, and 200 T-shirts. Quite a lot of people really seem to like seeing cute cuddly animals all zombified and dismembered. I know I do.

This elephant is going down. Hard.

The title uses the company's Wii-exclusive technology for a graphical style that is both cute and charming and offensively over-the-top brutal at the same time -- always a winning combination, as some titles like Conker's Bad Fur Day have shown.

The developer has not yet set a price point for Animales de la Muerte -- it's still plugging away on the title and will no doubt look at other WiiWare values in the coming months – but currently the studio is gunning for a September launch date). As just as soon as it becomes available, we'll bring the information to you. While you wait, definitely check out all the media we posted for this refreshingly different WiiWare game that oozes style and is sure to make you smile.

If you want to purchase Wiiware or Virtual Console games for FREE then just check out my post about Free Wii Points.