Insecticide
March 24,2008 - There are plenty of games that have lots of detective work. There are also plenty of games that have nonstop shooting action. Have you ever wanted to play a game that included both? Following in the footsteps of those CBS action dramas, Crackpot Entertainment has decided to boldly take that step to give us Insecticide. Much like many CBS action dramas some parts are way better than others.

The game takes place in a semi-futuristic setting where the insects have taken back what’s theirs and become the dominant race. Humans are now just as much as an annoyance as … bugs. You play as Chrys Liszt, a detective with a confident attitude unexpected from a rookie on the elite police force (called the Insecticide).

You begin the game hunting down some criminal as he attempts to make a getaway in the slums of town. Right off the bat, it’s your job to chase him down while following orders from one of your colleagues, and this actually turns out to be a pretty well-done tutorial. Though the tutorial is fine, the actual gameplay is too clunky in certain areas, and it makes the action sequences in this first-person adventure unenjoyable and frustrating. Chrys is equipped with a gun that has unlimited ammo, but it fires one shot about every three seconds, ruining any chance of having a true action-packed shootout.

While there definitely is a lot to be desired with the action in the game, the investigation sequences in the game are where the value comes from. Think of Insecticide as a PC detective game (even though the game is downloadable on the PC via Gamecock’s servers) or more of a next-generation Ace Attorney. Following a point-and-click style with your stylus, various analyses erupt from Chrys and all the other characters in the game when you point at significant objects. The first investigation part of the game had Chrys at the station and the objective was to update the police report on a homicide at a dominating soda company. In order to actually finish the level, you had to gather up expired coffee and steal paper from people to find the right stuff to put on the police bulletin board. It left for some unique comic relief while also having a reason to enjoy playing the game.

At some parts, especially the cutscenes, the game looks great—offering a slight resemblance to Psychonauts, a sleeper hit from years past. The art style and direction is nothing short of fantastic, but during the action scenes the visuals leave much to be desired. Despite the fact that nearly all the combat takes place at night, the lighting is downright terrible and a lot of platforming areas you explore look exactly the same. On top of that, due to the lack of any exact specifications in exterior building architecture, you’ll find yourself dying a lot trying to jump from one building to the next.

The sound is almost as much as a mixed bag as the game’s visuals. The music is fine and the voice acting is great, but for some reason or another the tracks lag when they loop, leading to some noticeable slowdown when you’re within a given area for a long period of time. It’s hard to tell whether the developers at Crackpot intended it to have a jukebox feel, but it just doesn’t work.

Insecticide had a lot of great things going for it (former developers from LucasArts, intriguing investigation sequences, a terrific art-style, and hilarious story), but ultimately the game comes down as a dire disappointment. There is hope if the game becomes a series though, because all the developers have to do is make the first-person action controls more responsive by making the shooting faster, take a page out of Renegade Kid’s book and have the option to tap at a new weapon instead of pressing the Y button millions of times. But for now, at only five levels and only a few worth playing, Insecticide is an okay rental at best.

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