In a near-ZOMG moment, GameCock, the game-cocky indie publisher, has announced the new adventure game Insecticide for the PC and DS, which is being developed by the same people that brought you Grim Fandango, Curse of Monkey Island, Full Throttle, Day of the Tentacle, and Sam and Max Hit the Road. If that pedigree doesn’t get your panties all in a bunch, I don’t know what will.
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Set in a future where insects have become the dominant race, “Insecticide’s gameplay puts players in the shoes of bug detectives charged with the task of investigating a mystery of epic proportions.” Color me ultra-tickled pink on that one.
I really am proud to see the once legendary gaming genre come back with such vigor these days. And I’m gonna have to say it’s all because of the DS. It’s ripe for that kind of gameplay, and when the original Phoenix Wright sold out, you can see that there are enough people out there that want that kind of experience. Even though the PC is an even better platform, we haven’t seen an adventure game like Day of the Tentacle since the late 90’s.
And now we get a game that was made by the same people who brought us the near-pristine Grim Fandango?! There are no words, my friends. Insecticide is set to spray all over the place this holiday season.
[Via Joystiq]
i am enjoying the resurgence of the adventure genre as well, but i’m not exactly sure what to make of this news. i like to give a lot of credit for most of the games you mention to tim schafer, and he won’t be working on this new one. to say insecticide is by the same people as grim fandango when its not from schafer is a bit misleading.
well this came out. it has a metacritic score of 55. does anyone around here know anything about it?
I’m also curious. I’ve seen it on the shelf for a while now, but every time I pick it up my eye gets caught by a title I’m actually informed about enough to purchase:) What reviews I’ve read don’t seem kind, but most appear to give the adventure parts of the game (or setting and characters anyway) a thumbs up. I’m kind of worried about the number of games that come out on DS that don’t have a large enough review base on major review sites to allow consumers to make informed purchases. DS releases have become so numerous (or perhaps so glossed over) that it’s not uncommon to wait at least a few weeks before a reliable set of critiques become available, if they materialize at all. I’m not advocating a review for every Bratz game out there, but when a title as (potentially) interesting and worthwhile as Insecticide can still be waiting on a review from Gamespot nearly 2 months after its release, something is out of whack.
On a tangentially related note, another possibly good but likely flawed adventure game for DS comes out this week- Jake Hunter: Detective Chronicles. I know even less about it than Insecticide, but who knows, it might be worth checking out.
What I take from that is that “traditional” game media (wow, online gaming sites are now traditional media) can’t even hope to keep up with the growth of the industry, in both content and consumers. They can grab at what looks big (or whatever publishers have told them to push), but they have no chance of serving the ever growing niche markets. Services like that will, at least for the time being, fall to smaller sites that are more able to focus their energies on a subset of the industry’s considerable amount of product.
Also, I wouldn’t look to GameSpot anymore, as it seems the review staff seriously limited, with only one or two people actually reviewing the massive stack of games that need reviews now. Kyle Van Ord seems to be the only guy doing it these days, and one man can do so much. I’m sure this is what happens when all your big journos leave the company in such a short span of time. I like Van Ord’s style (expect for his Lost Winds Review, the harlot), but it takes for ever to see a review from them nowadays.
Bruce and TT, part of the problem is the smaller sites (hey, this is a smaller site!) often spend their own money and work day jobs. This means that we can only buy so many games and play a few hours a day and so we rely, possibly to a fault, on bigger sites to give us an idea of what’s worth playing.
A cycle is thus created where many smaller sites are unwilling to give up proportionately more of their time and budget for smaller unknown games, which are unknown in the first place because big sites won’t touch them, and so we keep buying better known titles and failing to serve as that critical source of info for smaller games. This also explains why the majority of reviews on this site are positive – we read reviews before buying games because we don’t have the time and money not to.
That’s a good point about the importance of sites with a specialization in the world where big game sites aren’t enough any more, Bruce. I remember back when I was still actually reading game magazines for most of my information (Next Generation forever!) and the potential of big online sites seemed limitless. They could have a hundred guys, covering every game from every angle and never worry about running out of time or money (both of those are unlimited on the internets, right?). Matt’s evaluation of Gamespot and its recent implosion is an excellent example of how iffy the “big site that gives you all the info you need” model can be from a consumer point of view.
I hadn’t considered the secondary consequence that trusting on megasites to show the way leaves smaller sites struggling to find material that is compelling while still covering unique subject matter, Jay. Hopefully as the game market broadens specific niches will continue to grow more viable for prospective sites willing to specialize. Until then, fight the good fight and keep putting out articles about things like Shiren the Wanderer when you’re done reviewing the latest GTA. That way you can be ahead of the curve when everybody on the internet is enlightened and first person parkour games are as big a genre as Tetris clones:)
this game is in the mail on its way to my office. i’ll try to get you guys some impressions of it soon