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Hasn’t anyone learned to never put “part 1 of” anything on their game? I mean, seriously, if you aren’t Star Wars, how many times has that actually helped you make a sequel?
(Part 1 of 2 is up there in that pic. It’s just hard to see.)
So what is this first-half of Insecticide? Well, it’s a point-and-click adventure combined with platforming action adventure. Yeah. YEAH. How do those two even begin to mix? You play as Chrys, a rookie detective. She’s spunky, cool and driven to solve the case because she’s the only one who can. It’s not a new story, but then again it’s told in a new way–entirely with bugs. It feels a lot like a Double Fine game like Grimm Fandango or Psychonauts.
Now, admittedly, I hate point and click adventures. Like, loathe them. However, from my somewhat limited exposure to them, the point and click parts seemed at least functional if not decent. The animations on the office workers were fun enough and you had to do all the normal things involved with a point-and-click, like… click on everything desperately until something happens that forwards the plot (tell me again why we keep making this genre?).
The action-adventure bits were substandard though. “Point and click” might actually be used to describe them as well. Aside from falling off a ledge from a bad jump, it’s nearly impossible to die as soda cans (health packs) are piled up at every turn. Then there’s combat–enemies stand still and let you shoot them and with infinite bullets there’s no real challenge. What’s odd is that there are max-health boosts hidden about the levels but I have no idea why A. You would need them. B. You would be motivated by the gameplay to actually find them and C. Why they thought that a game so short (according to “How Long to Beat” it’s 3 and a half hours long) needed powerups of any kind. 3 hours is barely enough time for the player to familiarize themselves in your game mechanics let alone have the need for permanent stat boosters.
All this said, I hate the game but it needs to go in Tier 2. Those who like the animations, characters and point-and-click style of games will probably find something to enjoy here and even I have to admit the character models intrigued me. The platforming sections could have just been left out in my opinion. It’s just so odd that they would try to mix them in the first place… Oh well. Live and learn when it comes time to make the sequel. Oh wait…
