Review: Dragon Ball Z – Ultimate Tenkaichi (PS3)

What is it?

Insecticide is the first game from developer Crackpot, published by Gamecock. Crackpot is made up of veterans of the PC adventure game genre, in my mind most notably from the fantastic Lucasarts title, Grim Fandango. In fact, Insecticide is coming to the PC in an episodic form, but more on that later, because this review is for the Nintendo DS version.

What isolates Insecticide from other adventure games is the action-shooter-platform portions of the game, which generally have you rushing through areas and fighting enemies, in a format very similar to Ratchet and Clank games. These sections of the game stand in contrast to the adventure portions, which follow a more standard format: wander through a small area collecting items and figuring out how to use those on each other and your environment to pass that area.

How does it play?

The control system for the adventure portion is successful. A touch screen is practically a mouse for games like this, with no pointer and no need for one. You walk around reasonably detailed environments using the D-pad, looking for talk-bubbles and magnifying glasses to appear. Interacting with these gives you a detailed still where you can collect a coffee pot, a teacup, a handful of charcoal or whatever else you might need by simply tapping them. Look at them in detail by tapping them in your inventory slot, drag them on top of each other to combine them. It’s executed flawlessly.

The controls for the shooter portions are very awkward and, after a time, it becomes clear they are unfinished. Repeated delays of this game were presumably due to production delays (as Nintendo has to manufacture the game cards for every publisher on their system, which is a major bottleneck in busy release seasons) but I find myself wondering how much time was really put into the controls for this part of the game. Fortunately, there are two ways to play it: stylus mode or button mode. Don’t use the stylus, because it doesn’t work. Use the button mode, and use A to lock onto enemies.

The challenge level is excellent in the adventure portions, and the same goes for the action mode with an important caveat. Tips are offered almost constantly from your partner in the game, whether you want them or not. It’s very easy to die, but you are given infinite lives and usually respawn in almost the same location where you died. Often when you respawn, all the enemies in the immediate area are gone. Very few of the enemies in the game actually need to be fought at all because pickups are strewn everywhere, and it’s usually much more dangerous to stand and fight than to simply jump over the monsters and run for the exit. By the end of the game I was simply barreling through each action area at top speed, continuously jumping and rushing to the boss battle. With no real penalty for death, there’s no point in standing your ground.

The boss battles are where all the important action takes place, but they are pretty unbalanced. Bosses generally need to be outsmarted instead of outgunned, but there are notable issues. There is a boss near the end of the game that seems impossible to fight in stylus mode, because without a lock-on the game doesn’t seem to register weapon collisions with its vulnerable points. There is no feedback that you’ve connected an attack when you do, as the enemy doesn’t react and it’s only when you’ve destroyed that weak point that it’s apparent something has changed.

How does it look and sound?

The graphical style is brilliant. The character models feel very familiar to those of us who’ve played Grim Fandango and its cousins like Psychonauts, and the entire game is awash with personality. The dialog is sharp and well-delivered, and the comedy is very strong as well. Be prepared for bug puns. The high point of the game is its cutscenes, which are often detailed, high-resolution full motion video. These are probably the same cutscenes from the game’s PC big brother, because the production values on them is excellent. I suspect that the sheer amount of space these cutscenes occupy on the game card is a key reason for the game’s shortcomings.

Further complicating the action mode is the extremely rough presentation. There’s a lot of action and the environments are large. As a result the detail, particularly on the enemies, is distressingly low. This is a shame because the visual style throughout the game shines with the brilliance we’ve seen in the work these veterans have produced in the past. The darkness of the visuals is also a problem: this is the first game I’ve ever played on the DS Lite where I had trouble seeing what was going on. The DS Lite’s backlight is very bright, with a broad viewable angle, but the slightest angle casts everything on-screen in this game immediately into darkness, so things like holes in the ground vanish, making finding your footing perilous at best.

The music in this game is excellent. The tenor sax piece in particular goes a very long way to creating that old time “crime drama” feel. All the music in the game is great, though there isn’t a lot of it, so you’ll hear the same handful of quality songs again and again. There’s a strange issue with the music where it periodically fades out and back in over the span of a couple of seconds, as if someone accidentally slid the volume down and back up again. It’s not clear what this is about, but I’m guessing the music is a digital track and would not loop seamlessly, so they faded it at both ends to make it less jarring.

The sound effects are adequate, but many don’t seem suited to the event. There’s a machine gun effect that’s very good and will make you jump when you hear it, but for every good sound effect like this there’s the one that the robot enemies make when you shoot them, which doesn’t really sound like anything you would expect.

How is the replay value?

There is none. The FMV cutscenes unlock in the main menu as you play them, in case you want to watch them again. You can do a stage select thing and replay any level you like. There is no difficulty adjustment or anything. Once this game’s done, you’ll likely just flip it for half what you paid, and completion will likely not take you much more than five hours to reach.

Is it worth it?

I really enjoyed playing through this game and I can’t actually say it’s bad. Rather, I will recommend you pick up the PC version when that becomes available. It’s clear the developer had some big ideas for this title and either the platform’s limitations proved too tight for their vision, or the time constraints did. The characters and world presented in Insecticide are brilliant, and I look forward to interacting with them again in a context that could better represent the creators’ vision. If the game will scale to my dated PC, I’ll be all over it.

That said, the DS game needs to be rated on its own merits, not in the context of its potential. As a result, despite the excellent writing and its very enjoyable adventure sequences, I rate the game a three out of five.