Noir feel action/adventure with plenty of humour that never overstay its usefulness.

User Rating: 7 | Insecticide DS
Gameplay: 7
Graphics: 7
Sounds: 9
Value: 5
Tilt: 8

Gamecock Media (the chaps who published Insecticide) had a bit of a turbulent history for publishing computer games. They have a tendency to grab titles for which on the surface sounds totally fascinating yet somehow fails in the most dramatic way. Some examples are Fury (died in ten months), Legendry (PC Metacritic score of 50%) and their most recent Velvet Assassin (PC Metacritic score of 66%) makes one to believe that why should I bother with their games. Well, keeping an open mind and a total lover of all things Noir, I couldn’t resist grabbing Insecticide as it promises a blend of action and adventure.

Insecticide is based in the future where insects rule the planet and Hominids (humans) are a dying breed because of their past, developed pest resistant crops that didn’t turned out the way the humans thought it should. Nevertheless, the insects build resistance to these crops and for the humans consuming these crops, formed severe lethal allergies killing of the population and the rest in hiding due to the outbreak of the deadly pollen. ‘Present’ day, the Hominids due to the toxic pollen permeating the city, must wear hazmat (hazardous material) suits to survive otherwise they’ll swell up like a balloon before ‘popping’.

As for the thriving insects and considering their longing taste for anything sweet, can’t get enough of ‘Nectarola’, the soft drink made of pollen and nectar produced by the drones of Madame Haezzle Quinbee, the queen bee and CEO of Nectarola Co. Yet just before the introduction of their new flavour Manchurian Cherry, there’s been reported cases of explosions around the city of Troi yet no fatal causalities so the press tagged this as the ‘soda bomber’ and this is where you Chrys Liszt (yep – it’s a pun for chrysalis) and your boss, detective Roachy Caruthers of the Precinct 47's Insecticide division (pun for homicide) are currently investigating.

True to their word, the game play is a mixture of adventure and 3rd person shooter as there will be scenes that requires platform style jumping whilst shooting critters and then sleuth your way in gathering clues and solve puzzles. All of these controls are via the stylus and associated buttons on the DS as the bottom screen serves your ‘actions’ and the top the visuals. The controls are easy enough to master (e.g. left button for firing, ‘a’ for aim, ‘x’ for viewing etc) however considering the DS’ small size the jumping/firing/strafing can hurt your fingers over time and unfortunately there are no options to customise these controls other than inverse look and adjust for left/right handed people.

In the battlefield there seems to be a lack of assistance as considering there are scarabs to collect (permanent health increase) and small cut-scenes of where to go next, it’s kinda hard to get your bearings straight as the 3rd person camera angle have a tendency to collide especially near walls; hence the ‘button x’ visual option is very limited when you really need it (as apposed to using the visuals in the open space – but that’s almost pointless as you can see everything). There’s also no death penalty other than restarting at the last checkpoint however checkpoints are saved quite often. And considering there’s only one save file and one level of difficulty, replay value virtually is non-existent. But, the firing aspects are pretty easy yet concentrated enough to maintain enthusiasm.

The adventure element is pretty much stock standard, similar in the veins of Myst where it’s a matter of ‘point-and-click’ at a desire object or collecting, matching items to uncover certain secrets etc. Conversation wise it’s a matter of selecting the appropriate dialogue and if you need to hand/collect an item it’s a matter of dragging and dropping or simply click to pick it up. Of course being an adventure game, some items/actions require ‘pre-requisites’ before regarding it complete however the adventure facet are very easy but entertaining enough as the conversations are well composed.

Typical sights and sounds of anything Noir are eternal darkness, smog, self narration…basically the darker side of humanity and Insecticide actually done a reasonable job capturing this bleak feeling whilst maintaining that humorous experience. So you’ll witness dark clouds hovering above the smoke (pollen) infested city with neon signs posted throughout and archetypes wearing the obvious baddie clothing all displayed in dreary yet colourful mode. The characters themselves are quite detailed and even facial expressions are convincing enough with eyes darting when they are thinking to the occasional eyebrow raise when being quizzical.

Likewise are the sounds as you can hear the pit-pat of footsteps and the chatter (with added puns to boot) of all the characters you’ll meet. Kudos to all the voice acting as it’s professionally arranged and well timed in every given situation and never seems over-the-top cheesy like; sadly though the lip-sync is way off and not sure why however there was a great quote from Chrys when talking to a buzzbee stating ‘…lack of programming’ so I leave it to that. Kudos also goes to the musical scores; extremely well composed and actually bends well to meet that ‘Noir’/ tongue in cheek feel and like the voice acting, never too tacky…ok maybe just a little but subtle enough.

Insecticide achieved exactly what I have expected when playing this game; Noir feel action/adventure with plenty of humour that never overstay its usefulness. Infused with the blend of action/adventure with a cool story to boot reminds me of viewing a good Sunday morning cartoon. However there are times that the game could use a little spit-and-polish as I’m not sure that whether the timing or budget ran out and that’s a shame though as detailed are the characters and history, Crackpot could of easily made a sequel (or sequels) similar to Strong Bad or Sam and Max.

One can only hope…