There are collision problems throughout. You can try to sneakily shoot around a corner, but your shots bounce off some invisible space right in front of you. As you walk along precarious edges, swinging cranes can knock you off even though they clearly did not hit you. Instant deaths are numerous and cheap – you’ll die if you fall literally 20 feet. Combine these factors with some poorly placed checkpoints and you’ll be repeating tedium a number of times.
The detective part of the game isn’t just irritating, it’s infuriating. You are restricted to a small area, with only a few different objects to examine and people to talk to, and yet it’s possible to run back and forth for an hour trying to figure out what the heck to do. The solutions are almost universally exasperating. Never once did we feel clever when we discovered the solution, instead exclaiming “What the f---? That was the answer?” We ran around on just the third level, checking every object and going through every dialogue tree over and over for two hours, until we stumbled upon the solution by mere accident. We double-tapped an item in our inventory. In other levels, you can’t combine an item with another one until you have another item, even though it doesn’t make any sense why, just that the game doesn’t want you to.
The majority of our time in the detective scenes was spent running back to the same places repeatedly and dragging items over other items and hearing Chrys say “I can’t do that right now.” However, it must be noted that these types of illogical puzzles are often a staple for adventure games. If you don’t mind pixel hunting and randomly dragging items over other items, then these sections might float your boat. Still, it is mediocre adventuring at best.
When the dialogue isn’t peppered with insect-puns, it can be pretty clever. Whether you’ll find it funny is a matter of taste. We found only a handful of lines amusing. As with the gameplay, adventure games tend to have a “quirky” sense of humor that appeals to certain people. Adventure games are also rare these days, so those seeking the goofy humor and weird puzzles you wax nostalgic about, Insecticide could possibly scratch your adventuring itch. Just be prepared to split that 50/50 with ho-hum action sequences. For anyone with little patience for tapping every inch of the touchscreen to find that one tiny item: approach with caution.
Mar 12, 2008
