We're big fans of Insecticide, and not just because it gives us an opportunity to wheel out our lamest insect puns (happily, it's no longer alone in that respect). Okay, that's a part of it, but from what we've seen and played of Crackpot's game, Insecticide looks like another top-drawer addition to a genre that's already overflowing with goodness: DS adventure games.
This latest trailer of the title might be light on gameplay footage (read: there's none whatsoever), but it still does a fantastic job of communicating the game's noirish feel. There's the gravelly-voiced narrator, rookie upstart cops, cigar-smoking veteran detectives, and lashings of moody silhouetting. In short: DO WANT.
Gamecock sent over a near-final preview copy of Insecticide, and I've been playing through it for the last few days. I haven't encountered any bugs yet -- except the ones that are supposed to be there, amirite? I previously played the game during the Penny Arcade Expo, but this time I had the benefit of playing a more complete copy, for more than ten minutes, while sitting down in a room with fewer than ten thousand people in it. I don't want to evaluate too much in a preview, but in the small portion of the game I've played, it's clear to me that this is exactly what people hope it is: the return of the funny 3D adventure game.
While the adventure genre (by which I mean the third-person, 3D-movement, point-and-click adventure game, as opposed to graphical text adventures like Phoenix Wright) hasn't quite died, it has been populated in recent years by games like Indigo Prophecy and Syberia: dour, dark, gritty, Serious Business. Insecticide is not that. It evokes something like a Grim Fandango or a Space Quest: interesting characters who have a lot of funny things to say, in a game that requires you to adapt to a unique world's somewhat joke-based logic.
Posted Feb 1st 2008 10:30AM by JC Fletcher
Filed under: News
Bad news for bug-detective adventure-platform action game fans: Insecticide isn't ready to emerge from its cocoon just yet. Amazon sent a notice out to an Insecticide preorderer that the game would ship out on March 11, instead of the previous February 12 date. The product listing has also been changed accordingly, and GameStop has updated their listing as well.
Our Gamecock contact confirmed the delay, which is the second so far. He wasn't sure of the exact issue, but suggested it had to do with needing more time to manufacture a sufficient number of copies. So we don't get our own copies as soon, but there's a higher possibility that we will all be able to find one at all.
Posted Dec 21st 2007 10:30AM by JC Fletcher
Filed under: News
We may be making an assumption that Insecticide is going to be good, but that's the gamble of all pre-released games. What isn't in dispute (among the totally partial DS Fanboy staff) is that preordering Insecticide demonstrates good taste in game styles. Insecticideappears to be a humorous adventure game in the style of the very best LucasArts adventures (but with action too).
If that's not sufficient enticement to preorder, how about free junk? If you preorder the game at GameStop, you'll get a swanky-looking hardcover art book. Then you can visit the Insecticide website and enter a code found in the book to redeem a free "Bug Blaster." It is a gun that shoots a foam ball! Yay! No, really, we love those.
Like the splattered, twitching remains of an errant fly on a speeding windshield, Insecticide's January 2008 release date is no more. Earlier today, a new release date for the bug-based detective game landed in our inbox, and we trapped it beneath an upturned beaker before it could buzz away again.
Which is a very long way of saying: Insecticide now hits stores on February 12th. Booo. A shame for sure, but then a month is pretty bearable, and the last thing we'd want to see is Crackpot being forced to rush this potentialgem of an adventure game.
You've just gotta respect a police/detective game that cracks jokes about donuts, and doubly so when the detectives in question are insects. We hear they like crumbs.
Gamecock's Insecticide is one of those games we can't help but get excited over. It looks like the total package -- a little adventure, a little action, and a couple of cleverly-named and designed protagonists. Sure, as with so many DS games, it looks better in motion than in stills, but we're used to that. In fact, we find the look of it in motion so irresistible, we're shining our weekly video spotlight squarely on this new trailer. Go on, discover it for yourself ... and check out the updated screens in our gallery below.
Yesterday, we remarked on the relative lack of coverage of the investigative aspect of Insecticide. We see a lot of screens and video of action, but relatively few of the adventure-game portions. And so we decided to hit the streets and put our detective skills to the test, hunting for new screens of this portion of the game.
Then before we started, we got six new screens in our e-mail. We're such awesome investigators that all we have to do is want to investigate. Look! The game has a story! And, yes, conversation trees! There is truly an adventure game hidden in the platformer. That is wonderful. Not only that, but the game's personality is evident from even the tiny snippets of dialogue found in these screens.
As the January 8th release date approaches, the Insecticide updates seem to be increasing in number. Hopefully the trickle of screens and video will become more of a downpour, helping to keep the game fresh in people's memories. We forget about it ourselves occasionally when discussing anticipated upcoming games, and we are actively interested in it. We need more.
The latest screens show more of the platforming aspect of the game -- the bizarre cityscapes that serve as the levels, full of rooftop-jumping and precarious ledges. We admit that we'd like to see a bit more of the investigating. It's the adventure game devotees who will have the most interest in this game, and they aren't as interested in jump puzzles as they are inventory menus and dialogue trees.
Insecticide appears to be shaping up nicely. The action gameplay seen in this latest trailer shows both sharper graphics than we've seen previously, and more responsive-looking movement. We don't think we could have pulled off the kind of acrobatics on display here during our playtest back in August. We fell in love with the quirky insect-noir adventure back then, so seeing marked improvement is wonderfully heartening for us.
Speaking of marked improvement: thankfully, publisher Gamecock and developer Crackpot Games have learned to hold the DS on which the game footage plays still. Could our constant complaining about the swirling madness of previous trailers have paid off? We'll have to complain about other stuff now!
The folks at Gamespot were recently in the enviable position of having the chance to get their hands on Insecticide, a game we can't help but love, if only for the art style and intriguing concept. One of the best things about Insecticide is that it's almost two games in one; half action platformer, half adventure-style puzzle and investigation sequences. It's the best of both worlds, and Justin Calvert got to try both. Our own JC Fletcher had the same chance at PAX with an earlier version of the title, so we can't help but wonder if some of the rough edges have been smoothed.
And it seems there's some good news: Calvert reported only issues with the uneven look of the game, and no platforming problems at all. If that's the case, then it looks like Insecticide only needs a polish to help it realize its potential, and from everything we've seen, that could truly be something great. We're keeping our fingers crossed, in hopes that we'll be getting buggy (and loving it) early next year.
We'd love to say it's because the game looks great (it does!) Unfortunately, the cause for our dizziness is the continued use of the "flying DS" style of trailer, in which all efforts to look at the action on the screen are rebuffed by the constant movement of the DS.
The effect is only mildly annoying, and it can't prevent all viewing of new Insecticide footage. The trailer focuses on one of the game's action stages, with Chrys Liszt chasing after a suspect through a circuitous level full of precision jumps and rail-thin platforms.
Insecticide is due out January 8th, and we're giving it some serious thought.
Posted Aug 28th 2007 3:40PM by JC Fletcher
Filed under: News
I didn't get as much time with Crackpot's Insecticide as I liked, but I got to mess around in both an action stage and the detective mode, at least superficially enough to know how they worked. I can tell you right away that all three Psychonauts owners, as well as LucasArts adventure fans, are going to want this.
The action mode looks and feels just like Psychonauts, with the exception of touch-screen integration, of course, and your character's use of a projectile weapon rather than melee. It's pretty much a standard 3D platformer. The graphics have taken a significant hit compared to the concept art, obviously, but the style of the game (like its neighbor at the Gamecock booth, Dementium) helps cover. The touch-screen control scheme was a little hard to manage, seeming to involve more limbs than a non-arthropod like myself had available. However, I quickly found that I could lock-on to targets with a button, and could therefore avoid the stylus altogether. I fell through platforms a couple of times, but that was actually a pretty common problem for some of the really early versions of games I played at PAX.
After the game was announced, we were excited to see what Insecticide was bringing to the DS table. We imagined a feast chock full of delicious foods, allowing us to gorge ourselves until our heart's content. Well, until that time when the game releases, we'll just have to settle for some screenshots from the game's website. Check them out in the gallery below.
Insecticide combines a noir theme with visual elements of Psychonauts and personality-filled characters reminiscent of an adventure game. This is our first chance to see any of the actual DS version of the game, however, and something tells us the publisher doesn't want us to see it. The PC trailer certainly didn't get the shaky-cam treatment.
Check after the break for a textbook example of how not to make a video game trailer. Seriously, this goes beyond poor editing or bad screen quality and into intentional obfuscation. But it's worth it to check it out, because Crackpot's game looks fantastic.
Posted May 24th 2007 3:15PM by JC Fletcher
Filed under: News
Gamecock Media, the new publisher formed by former Gathering of Developers executives, have announced a new DS game from Crackpot Entertainment: a "third-person shooter/detective game" called Insecticide.
The game, also coming out for PC, stars Detectives Chrys Liszt and Roachy Caruthers as they attempt to solve a murder at the Nectarola soft drink company. In addition to shooting bad guys, players will have to investigate environments and clues using the stylus. We are loving the concept art. It's got a great detective-thriller atmosphere combined with Psychonauts styling, which is very appropriate for what looks and sounds a whole lot like an adventure game. Obviously this art is a little too hi-res for DS, but we hope they can pull off a similar look.
Bad news for bug-detective adventure-platform action game fans: Insecticide isn't ready to emerge from its cocoon just yet. Amazon sent a notice out to an 
We may be making an assumption that Insecticide is going to be good, but that's the gamble of all pre-released games. What isn't in dispute (among the totally partial DS Fanboy staff) is that preordering 
Like the splattered, twitching remains of an errant fly on a speeding windshield, 
Yesterday, we 
As the January 8th release date approaches, the 
The folks at Gamespot were recently in the enviable position of having the chance to get their hands on Insecticide, a game we can't help but love, if only for the 
Insecticide combines a noir theme with visual elements of Psychonauts and personality-filled characters reminiscent of an adventure game. This is our first chance to see any of the actual DS version of the game, however, and something tells us the publisher doesn't want us to see it. The 
_thumbnail.jpg "Spiderwick Chronicles DS")
