When checking out the previews and trailers for Insecticide, it looked to be a promising game. The platforming looked fine and the puzzle portions didn’t seem all that intriguing. Strangely, the opposite is true when it came down to actually playing it. That seems to be the way of darker tones however, opposite of expectations.
Beginning the game, you start as Chrys Liszt, a detective in the Insecticide Division. To solve the murder at the Nectarola plant in the city of Troi, you and your partner, Roachy Caruthers must use bronze and brain to find a suspect. The game is broken into two aspects of gameplay, puzzle detective work and platforming.
The best aspect by far is the puzzle portions of the game. You’ll look around a crime scene or a room for clues to keep the story moving. Talking with witnesses and persons of interest are also key to keeping the flow and gathering information. It’s easy to investigate everything with the stylus by simply tapping on items of interest and the game is vaguely helpful if you become stuck. Once you’ve solved each area, you’re thrown into the action where you’ll need to use weapons and terrain to save your carapace.
With the investigation portion of Insecticide decently handled, I wonder what went wrong on the action platforming end. You are presented eventually with many different weapons, but I found the whole entire affair feeling as if it was stapled onto an otherwise excellent game. There wasn’t much variety in the enemies Chrys encountered, nor were they a real challenge, save a few enemies here and there, when you figured out their patterns. Enemies that were a challenge seemed to be cheap with their attacks and fired through whatever you were using as cover. It was disappointing to encounter these issues to say the least.
During my time with the game, I found I was forcing myself to get through the action scenes simply so I could enjoy more investigations. This is completely opposite of my expectations when looking at the game previous. It is a decent game though and in spite of the action portions, you’ll want to push through for the diamond in the rough puzzle bits.
