Preview: Insecticide
Insecticide for the Nintendo DS is an interesting hybrid that's part 3D shooter, part platforming experience, has plenty of puzzles to solve, contains a detective story and is so unique that it's almost bold.
Any gritty, hard-hitting detective story has certain elements to it. There's usually a mysterious murder, a pair of contrasting detective partners, their screaming, hot-headed boss, and......insects?!!
And this detective story, involving insects, is unlike any that you've ever seen. It takes place in a strange future where humans have devolved into primates from pesticide overexposure and insects have not only become bigger, but also intelligent enough to have formed their own society. This adventure takes a young, six-legged detective named Chryst Lizst and her streetwise, veteran partner Roachy Caruthers through the seedy sections of the city Troi to solve a murder that happened at the Nectarola soft drink company. Their journey takes them to other characters met throughout the game too including the constantly angry Chief Chigger, but Chryst is the most important to remember since she's the controllable player.
While the game is Action-Adventure at heart, there's plenty of shooting the keep you on your toes.
While controlling Chryst, the game play styles will differ greatly which offers quite a variety. While Insecticide is classified as action-adventure, it has so many other different components that broaden this category. There's the speedy, 3D shooting and platform areas of the game, the investigative puzzle levels, hostage negotiations, interrogations, and stakeouts. Most of the 3D shooting play is pretty fast paced and involves jumping from platform to platform and even taking cover to avoid shots from hostile insects. The other dominant style of game play, the puzzling, pretty much follows the same point-and-click format seen in many other puzzle games such as Monkey Island and Full Throttle. You'll use the D pad to move to your objective and the stylus to look around and find these objectives.
Crackpot Games also added some variety in the weapons selection too. While the focus of Insecticide is not really on making a giant arsenal of really cool, high-powered guns, developing studio Crackpot Games did do its best to make sure that people wouldn't be running through the game with a peashooter the whole time. Yes, the first gun is pretty weak and fires slow but as one progresses, upgrades become available. Weapons available in the game include the Pollinator, Amberizer, Nector Cannon, and the Nector Blaster.
The quirky weapon design is a fresh addition to the already fresh art style.
Another good thing about Insecticide involves its graphics. Players should enjoy the graphics as they are pretty well done for the DS. The brightly animated style has a Pixar-type feel to it that fits the game perfectly. The graphics may even remind people of an older console and computer game called Psychonauts. Psychonauts was very well received in large part because of its style and graphics. Insecticide shouldn't be far off and could be even better received due to its varying game play styles.
One thing is clear early on though; this game is at least good enough to avoid being squashed like a bug.
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