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Sorry to flake out on you for a few days, folks, and it may happen again soon. Deadline season's getting thick. For now, though, I am back with a long-overdue and frankly heartbreaking look at Gamecock's Insecticide, a DS game that appeared to be one of the most exciting prospects going at last year's E3. As with a lot of games that look great on the show floor, though, something didn't quite come together with this one.

With a metacritic average sitting at 55%, the reviews suggest that quite a lot didn't quite come together. Most reviews cite the camera, but you'll see all kinds of complaints before we're through. Really, it's a shame, because Insecticide had a dynamite premise and a creative pedigree that didn't leave any reason to think the final product would've been anything but fun to play. Anyway, if you want to see the anatomy of how not to polish up a game for release, then jump under the cut.

The high score was a spate of scores identical to IGN's 7 out of 10. These merciful takes on the game, much like Daemon Hatfield's, seemed to think the praiseworthy adventure game segments canceled out of the action game segments, which were lacking at best.

The player controls Detective Chrys Liszt as she investigates a possible homicide at a powerful corporation. To catch the bad guys, she alternates investigating crime scenes and chasing suspects. The crime scenes feature tried-and-true point-and-click gameplay and it's done very well. These portions of the game are fun, funny, and will provide a decent challenge to adventure gamers -- in fact, the game was created by LucasArts veterans who clearly know the genre.

When the action kicks in, though, the fun checks out. Chrys can only fire one shot every few seconds, so forget about intense shootouts. And while she has a decent inventory of weapons, there's no way to switch them quickly. Either the Y button can cycle through them one at a time, or you can remove your hand from the fire button and select the gun you want with the stylus. She also turns at snail speed, so trying to dodge enemy fire is fruitless.

GamePro's stance was a little less enthusiastic, awarding Insecticide a mediocre 3 out of 5. While reviewer Adam Sensoy's complaints about the action sequences are similar to IGN's, he doesn't seem to feel that the adventure game aspects are especially well-handled, either, thanks to low resolution graphics.

While the puzzles themselves are well conceived and laid out, it's often difficult to make out specific objects on the screen, which makes detective work more of a chore than it should be. Worse, there is no way to know what item on screen might actually be useful, or heaven forbid, pertinent to advancing the plot and moving on to the next puzzle. You're constantly forced to click on each object just to determine whether or not it might be of any use. This makes it difficult to actually solve puzzles the right way and far too often forces you to rely on trial and error.

GamesRadar wasn't impressed with either half of the gameplay, awarding a 5 out of 10 score that denotes mediocrity at best and failure at worst. Reviewer Matthew Keast is especially hard on the failures of the "detective" scenes that most reviewers considered one of Insecticide's strengths.

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 cant do that right now. However, it must be noted that these types of illogical puzzles are often a staple for adventure games. If you dont mind pixel hunting and randomly dragging items over other items, then these sections might float your boat. Still, it is mediocre adventuring at best.

The low score game courtesy of Edge magazine, who awarded Insecticide a 3 out of 10. The harshness of the text is typical for take-no-prisoners European outlets, and Edge is quick to call the very premise of Insecticide out as something not fully realized.

The strength of such an endeavor depends largely on the writes ability to find humorous parallels between the bugs' world and ours. But outside of a few silly pokes at worker drone mentality - the bee workers spout fizzy-drink-endorsing PR patter - much of the world seems forced. The hierarchy of a hive is ripe for nefarious power plays, so why does the tale focus on cloning and arms deals?

I was never particularly hot for Insecticide, but hearing it turned out so poorly is a sadness. What's interesting is that there is a PC version of the game that I believe is still in development, and I have to wonder how different - and better - it's going to end up being than the DS's Insecticide.

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