Escape from Bug Island is to survival horror what Evil Dead is to horror movies. Aware of its campy absurdity, it seems actually able to pull off cheesy plotlines, unimpressive graphics and silly monsters with a certain flair.

   Ray, the protagonist, is pretty much me - cynical and girly, with a huge distaste for insects - except somehow he's even worse at dating than I am. Despite Ray's hatred of all things crawly, he travels to a remote, insect infested island with his long-time crush (and entomology enthusiast - what a great match!) Michelle and his best friend Mike, a shotgun-toting Davy Crockett type. Before Ray can fumble out an "I really like you," Mike has confessed his own love to Michelle, causing her to demand a solitary walk so she can think things over. Mike runs off after her, but Ray, respecting her request to be left alone, waits until it's likely that she's been eaten by something before going off in search of her. That, in a bugshell, is the plot of Bug Island.

Lost in translation... and bad weather

   I have no idea where Bug Island is, but I assume that it must be somewhere near Silent Hill, as it seems to suffer from a similar amount of fog. However, unlike Silent Hill, there's nothing terribly horrifying in this game unless you have an intense fear of insects, fog, or cheesy dialogue. Fighting enormous insects is done by either throwing ranged weapons by locking on to a target and waggling the Wii remote around like a crazy person, or using melee weapons by waggling the Wii remote around like a crazy person. With melee weapons, the waving needs to be especially frantic because the combat system is supremely unresponsive. Although the tutorial tells you that there are different kinds of attacks you can make with different movements of the remote, it's nearly impossible to accurately perform a specific attack consistently, so the best approach is just to pretend you're conducting the Philharmonic Orchestra and wave your remote about with wild gusto until everything is dead or begging for mercy.

   There's no shortage of recovery items on Bug Island, as Ray will eat anything from mushrooms to breadfruit and ancient cans of spinach (presumably left behind by a primordial Popeye) to restore health. This makes the game considerably easier and pretty much rules out there ever being any kind of tension at all. Perhaps a future game could have a one in five chance of getting botulism from eating an old can of spinach, or hallucinations if more than one mushroom is consumed in quick succession.

Digging through the dunghill

Gosh, is it 2007 already?!

   Visually, this game is something you'd expect to find as an early PS2 title. The backgrounds are very dated, the water effects are awful, and the characters are far from lifelike. Although as a campy survival horror it didn't seem to need stunning graphics, it certainly would have made for a more immersive experience if I wasn't always wondering why everyone's shoulders looked like elbows.

   The music follows the graphics - it's sufficient, but nothing to write home about. In fact, it hardly even warrants a quick text message. Basically, there's the non-fight scene music and the fight scene music. The fight scene music is a loop which eventually becomes so tedious that you find yourself rushing to defeat the monsters just so you don't have to hear the music anymore. Having said that, the insect noises were great - they sounded exactly like you'd expect man-eating insects to sound. I'm concerned that there really is some sort of Jurassic Park of enormous bugs that the developers traveled to for their audio files. After evicting a spider who was big enough to eat kittens from my bathtub yesterday, an island full of mammoth insects doesn't seem all that difficult to believe.

Thinking small

   This game is really all about the little things. Even though it has flaws (giant, man-eating flaws by some standards) I must admit that I rather enjoyed swinging my arms around like some deranged monkey in combat, and if you are generally a fan of these kinds of games, there are plenty of reasons to keep playing. Where else are you going to see colonies of Lizard women? Is there another game that lets you throw exploding ants at your foes? I think not! It's also one of the few games I've played wherein the protagonist seems level-headed and aware of just how ridiculous his situation is. Armed with a smart-aleck response to any problem, Ray is refreshingly different from the typical woe-is-me survival horror protagonist. Don't get me wrong, I understand that sometimes there are situations (when your dead wife starts writing you letters, for instance) that weigh on your mind, and it's hard to find time to be snarky with the constant threat of impending death and insanity, and I may sound like a callous jerk, but jeez, it would be nice if more survival horror protagonists could lighten up sometimes.

   Bug Island got a lot of room for improvement, but the groundwork is actually more or less solid. Despite the clunkiness of combat, the interactivity of the Wii controls was a definite bonus to the game. An entirely new form of survival horror - fans of the genre looking for something different than what the Resident Evil or Silent Hill franchises have to offer will enjoy this, as it's destined to be a hit in some (admittedly rather small) cult.

       ... Lyndsey