Insecticide Hands-On

Earlier this week, during a meeting with Gamecock Media Group, we had an opportunity to get our hands on a two-level demo of Insecticide for the Nintendo DS. Currently in development at virtual studio Crackpot Entertainment, Insecticide is a detective game that will offer two distinct gameplay styles: fast-paced third-person platforming and shooting, and more sedate, puzzle-oriented investigative sequences. The split between the two gameplay styles will purportedly be 50/50 as you progress through the game, so it's fitting that we got to play through a level of each.

Insecticide is set on Earth, but it's a very different world than the one that we know. The overuse of pesticides has caused humanity to devolve into a race of primitive primates known as hominids, who must wear special suits to survive. Meanwhile, insects have developed a natural immunity to the radioactive chemicals that now fill the air, and somewhere along the line they've also evolved to become just as large and as intelligent as humans used to be. You'll assume the role of a young, six-limbed detective named Chrys Liszt who, along with her partner Roachy Caruthers, has been tasked with solving a murder at the Nectarola soft-drink company.

The game's first level, titled Great Expectations, is action-oriented and tasks you with pursuing a suspect through some particularly dangerous areas of the City of Troi, in which Insecticide takes place. Presumably because it has been designed with the needs of insects in mind, the city looks quite different than anything that humans would've built. Consequently, jumping between platforms is accepted as a conventional way of getting around. You'll spend a good deal of your time in action sequences that help you figure out how to navigate the city's unusual architecture to get to where you need to be. When you're not doing that, it'll be because you've either arrived or encountered some bugs intent on closing your investigation prematurely.

In the finished game, you'll gain access to an arsenal of four upgradeable, organic weapons as you progress through the story. We had access to only one at the start of the game, though: an underpowered pistol with a slow firing rate. Locking the targeting reticle on to enemies is a necessity because it's really the only way to target them accurately, and it's only when locked on that you can perform sidesteps to evade the enemies' own projectile attacks. If you can get close enough to an opponent, melee combat is also an option, and it'll kick in automatically when you press the button normally reserved for firing weapons. Your health can be replenished at any time by collecting cans of Nectarola, and you'll also find pick-ups that can be used to power up special moves and to upgrade your weapons.

The second level, titled A String of Bombings, takes place entirely within the confines of the police station. Your mission is to locate five pieces of evidence that have gone missing from the case board after being borrowed by your colleagues on the force. The detective sequences in Insecticide are puzzle-based in the same manner as many of the best point-and-click adventures. Think Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, and Full Throttle, and--provided that you're familiar with those games--you won't be far off. You use the stylus to look around and the D pad to move, and you'll notice that characters and objects that you can interact with are highlighted. We're not going to tell you how we located and managed to get our hands on the aforementioned pieces of evidence, but to give you some idea of the game's tone, we'll tell you that the puzzles involved coffee, stale donuts, a voice recorder, and plenty of improvised poetry.

Insecticide's visuals, at least in the unfinished version of the game that we were playing, are a little inconsistent. Detailed 3D environments clearly aren't the easiest thing to do on the DS, and the Troi cityscape is perhaps a little too ambitious for its own good. The police-station interior, though also 3D, was a lot easier on the eyes and showed off an art style that was difficult to pick up on in the action level. That's unlikely to be as much of a problem in the PC version of Insecticide, which, along with the DS version, is scheduled for release early next year. We'll bring you more information as soon as we get it.