Capsule Review: Insecticide
A comedic noir platformer/shooter/adventure game set in a world populated by anthropomorphic insects - you play as an “Insecticide” detective, equivalent to a “Homicide” detective in the real world. The noir setting is presented in a light-heartedly satirical way with a near-constant stream of insect jokes and puns, the cumulative effect of which can be enjoyable despite most of them individually not being particularly funny. The gameplay alternates between investigation levels that play as a 3D point-and-click adventure game and action levels that play as a third-person platformer/shooter - and neither mode is that great. The investigation levels are bogged down by moon logic (it’s not quite disguise puzzle from Gabriel Knight III crazy, but it’s not sane) and sluggish dialog that you can’t really speed up. On the PC, where I played the game, the action levels are basically competent but lack polish - guns don’t feel good to use and you can’t really tell when enemies are taking damage. On the DS version (which I have not played), the hardware limitations apparently cause these sections to fare much worse, with most reviews complaining of their slowness, poor visiblity, and bad controls.
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