Insecticide from Crackpot Entertainment is a mash up of action along with old-style adventure gameplay. Members of both Crackpot and publisher Gamecock were important in the making of many highly regarded LucasArts adventure games of old like Full Throttle, Day of the Tentacle and Grim Fandango. That’s all well and good but the fact is Insecticide can’t hold a candle to those game, making the resume a moot point.

The story is quirky enough: in the future humans did a bunch of experiments on insects and the insects eventually grew bigger and smarter and took over the world. The humans are now termed by the insects as hominids and there seems to be very few of them left. You play the role of Detective Chrys Liszt, one of the newer police officers that staff Insecticide Precinct #47. The job of a police officer has gone downhill lately with crime running rampant and not enough staff to effectively stop them. The Chief of the precinct, Chigger, has been recently thinking about retiring, but a case comes across his desk – a murder at the Nectarola Soft Drink Company, a powerful conglomerate whose reach goes far beyond just the business world. He calls upon his last old-timer, Detective Roachy Caruthers, along with some novices, to crack the case.

The overall story is told through cutscenes via voiceovers as well as through text. The game itself starts off from the action perspective as Liszt, a novice detective, tries to take down a perp. Right off the bat you get a sense that the action part of this game just isn’t going to pass muster. Jumping via the B button (double B is a double jump) is very loose and you can easily fall to your death via the foggy chasm below. The nice thing is that you usually spawn very close to where you died, but be prepared to die plenty while doing jumps and trying to run across the tops of thin walls without falling off. The shooting is pretty easy as you are able to lock onto targets with the A button and fire at them with the R trigger. You are also able to sidestep enemies shooting at you by hitting the L trigger and moving the d-pad left or right as well as scroll through available weapons with the Y button.

The adventure sections are enjoyable and will remind you a bit of the old LucasArts games. The only thing missing, and something that might show up in the PC version, is an indicator on the touch screen of what can actually be used on the screen. In adventure games on PC you usually have the mouse arrow that will change into a different icon when you roll over something of use. Here you don’t have that luxury, instead you will find yourself touching many parts of the screen with the stylus and either getting the same text reaction repeatedly or actually landing on something of use. As in the adventure games of old you are trying to gather items, maybe merge them together, use items or present them to someone else for information. The information screens are set up much like other adventure games where you are given a number of choices of what to ask the person of interest. The only problem in the adventure section outside of the absence of indicators is moving around with the D-pad in the 3D environment to get to an area of use that is shown via the appearance of a magnifying glass. It is tough to move around and you will often find yourself hitting the wall as you are trying to move or go forward.

Also of note is that this game is quite dark and in the action sections you often can’t see where you have to jump. The whole experience is dark whether you play on an original DS or one of the new Lite DS systems. Even cranking up the brightness on the Lite didn’t help matters much. You almost have to tilt the DS away from you to see the game adequately while in the action element.

Insecticide is a schizophrenic game. The adventure parts of the game are decent enough, but the action could easily have been left behind or at least refined. Maybe the PC version will be the system of choice for the game? Hopefully so because the DS version is a bit too spotty to recommend.