Psychonauts

aka: The Most Excellent Game Psychonauts
Moby ID: 17451
Windows Specs
Note: We may earn an affiliate commission on purchases made via eBay or Amazon links (prices updated 3/27 1:25 PM )

Description official descriptions

At a summer camp for up-and-coming psychics, a young boy with an unusually high level of psychic ability inexplicably shows up. The boy, named Raz, is allowed to stay at the camp until his father comes to pick him up, but his arrival coincides with very strange circumstances. Soon, evidence that someone is psychically tampering with the campers' minds reveals itself, and Raz is the only one who can stop it. Raz must project himself into the psyches of several different people in order to figure out what is going on and who is behind the recent occurrences.

Psychonauts is a 3D platform game with a rather unorthodox style. The characters' inner worlds are the game's levels. Each world reflects the personality of the person whose psyche it represents, often resulting in unique, surreal creations, and influencing the gameplay style. For example, the psyche of a giant lungfish is presented as a large city populated by fish people, in which Raz himself becomes a giant monster who can destroy entire buildings; the psyche of a mental patient is a huge board game, where Raz has to command armies in order to defeat Napoleon, etc.

There are also many gameplay elements and tasks which are common for all the levels. These include Raz fighting the (not very numerous) regular enemies, defeating level bosses, collecting currency, "figments of imagination" needed to upgrade his powers, and bonus items such as complete sets of the character's memories and others. Many of the game's puzzles require the usage of psychic powers, which Raz obtains in a more or less strict order. These powers range from combat abilities such as Psy Shield to Telekinesis (moving objects without touching them) and Clairvoyance (reading other people's minds).

The camp itself serves as the game's "hub", in which the player can explore, interact with characters, search for secret areas and items, and so on.

Spellings

  • ζ„θ―†δΈ–η•Œ - Simplified Chinese spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Videos

See any errors or missing info for this game?

You can submit a correction, contribute trivia, add to a game group, add a related site or alternate title.

Credits (Windows version)

257 People (150 developers, 107 thanks) · View all

Creative Director
Lead Programmer
Art Director
Lead Designer
Animation Supervisors
Lead Gameplay Programmer
Executive Producer
Lead PC Programmer
Senior Graphics Architect
Programming
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 86% (based on 55 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.8 out of 5 (based on 237 ratings with 8 reviews)

A not-so great port of a great game. Still enjoyable and worth buying, though.

The Good
Tim Schafer. One of my gaming industry heroes, and the famous creator/co-creator of games like Day of The Tentacle, Full Throttle, and Grim Fandango. When Psychonauts was released, discerning gamers everywhere proclaimed it a masterpiece.

Well, it is. This is a wildly imaginative, hugely varied, very entertaining romp disguised as a platformer. You play Raz, a boy with psychic powers who sneaks into a "psychic summer camp". You get merit badges throughout the game which give you special psychic powers like Telekinesis, Levitation, etc. I won't give away anymore, but the areas in the game are essentially the minds of very quirky individuals, and the developers play this concept to the hilt. I think that this is the only game I've played where every area requires a different type of gameplay. Unlike most games that introduce some core gameplay principles at the beginning and then just crank up the difficulty as you go along, Psychonaut's levels are all very unique, and very well done, despite the variety. You might be playing a wargame by recruiting and moving pieces on a giant board, or you might be rolling and floating Sonic-style inside a disco inferno. It has to be played to be believed.

There's also tons of stuff to do if you like collect-a-thons, and believe me, if you want to collect everything, you'd better have some skills and patience.

The Bad
Well, most all of the bad aspects come from the way this game was ported to the PS2. For one, framerate issues. Some people might find it less obnoxious than I do, but the framerate in the PS2 version tends to fluctuate wildly. The game is still highly playable, but really there's no excuse for this kind of thing in a professional product.

Loading times in the PS2 version are also sub-par. This is not unusual for these kinds of ports, but it's still annoying.

Also, the way the game handles save files is not PS2 optimized. You have to create a 1500KB profile save file that contains 5 save slots. The problem is, you can only use these save slots for the game you're in. If you start a new game, you have to create another massive 5-slot profile. The problem with this is that you never need more than 1 slot, as the game is mostly linear, and does autosaves anyway. Which means that if you live in a three-gamer household like me, there will have to be three massive save files on your memory card, and all each person will ever use will be 1/5 of their save slots. Given that games like Ratchet and Clank can support up to six totally separate game files in a 350KB file, this limitation is a bit silly, and feels like the the porters just used the PC-style save system with no modification.

To be fair to the original developers, an external porting house did the conversion, but this is still the least desirable version of this great game.

The Bottom Line
Psychonauts is truly a great game, and every serious gamer should definitely play it. But unfortunately, for the best experience, you should certainly go with the XBOX or PC versions.

PlayStation 2 · by phanboy_iv (84) · 2008

Very creative. Very well made. Very good.

The Good
I would like to take this opportunity to rather untactfully point out that I'd already considered Tim Schafer to be Lucasarts' brightest talent before he made 'Grim Fandango'. 'Full Throttle' was one of the best adventures the company produced, so why everybody forgot it and heaped their praise instead on a game about a dog and rabbit solving mysteries is a mystery to me. 'Psychonauts' is perhaps his most creative offering yet, and everybody has forgotten it already. Haven't you? Yes, I'm talking to you!

You wouldn't have forgotten it if you've played it, but apparently nobody has. I even had to get the game on import because it hasn't been released in Britain. Madness. Sorry if I sound bitter, because normally I wouldn't buy a hyper-colour PC platformer with a child protagonist either. But 'Psychonauts' is so cool, you just have to own it.

Firstly, and primarily, it's perhaps the most imaginative thing ever (with the possible exception of "Katamari Damacy"). Schafer's games always suggested that his head was so swimming with ideas that it needed to express them in order to stop it exploding in the night and covering his bedroom walls with bits of crazy characters, strange plot-lines, and whacked-out situations. Fortunately (for his health), he decided to make a game where you go inside people's minds, which gives him a lot of room to be creative. Every mind is a separate world. Different characters, different places, different times, different everything. The ideas are rampant. You get hit with something new and interesting almost every 10 minutes. It's like nothing you've played before and, with the exception of one moment which I will come to later, you won't ever get bored. Wonderful.

One of the potential pitfalls in creating a game so diverse is that it will require immense effort to make each world rise above the average and actually feel distinct and fun by itself, regardless of how different it is from the other worlds. Double Fine have leaped over this problem. The work gone into each level is stunning. They don't just look and sound different but they "feel" different. This attention to detail shines through everywhere. About half-way through the game, you gain an ability which allows you to see yourself through the eyes of another person. Use this power on Gloria, a once-famous actress, and she sees you as a walking autograph-book and pen. Use it on the girl who fancies you, and you see yourself as a Romeo figure holding a rose and smiling. Once you get it, you can go back to any level you've played and use it on any character you find just to see how they see you. It's an ability that barely has to be used in the game if you don't want to. If you take the effort to explore, you'll see just how much work they've put in. This is just an example. The love that has been poured into 'Psychonauts' is unbelievable. Normally I admire dedication to your art, but in this case, I think Double Fine probably ought to spend a little more time with their families. The divorce rate is high enough.

The characters are fantastic. Bobby Zilch is one of the best characters in the history of gaming. Know how much screen time he has in the whole of 'Psychonauts'? About 3 minutes.

The voice acting is as good as it gets.

The score is by Peter McConnell.

It's not really a platformer.

It's occasionally ball-achingly funny. When's the last time you laughed out loud playing a game? The characters you see in the 15th screenshot were responsible for tears of laughter hitting my keyboard.

It's occasionally very dark. There are a couple of secret rooms in some of the levels that shed a lot of light on certain characters. Some of them are so unfunny and unexpected that they'll make your jaw drop to the floor. You never know what to expect in "Psychonauts", not for a minute. They're constantly throwing curve-balls at you.

The animation is top-drawer. When was the last time in a game that a character's physical movements intentionally caused you to laugh?

In fact, everything that I don't mention in the next section has been done well. It was pointless of me to try and isolate separate parts (the graphics, the music, the script, the acting...). It's all first rate. Schafer clearly doesn't mess around...

The Bad
...except with the controls and the level of difficulty.

Some reviews of this game have stated that it's "unplayable" without a joypad. This is ludicrous, natch, but the game is slighted with camera difficulties simply because it's in 3 sodding dimensions. Since the dawn of 3D gaming, getting and keeping the right viewpoint on the action has been a consistent pain and maybe always will be. Still, "Psychonauts" is no worse than any other third-person game except with the boss fights.

The problem is that the bosses are huge and as such, require you to run away from them most of the time. So, given that, where should the camera go? It's a difficult question. Put it behind the hero and you can't see the enemy. Put it in front of the hero and you can see him and the enemy, but you're running into the camera. The developers chose the latter option, which is the wiser choice, but it still doesn't play well. It's far too awkward.

The only other mild snag is that the game is almost never a proper challenge. Nothing special there I suppose, since gaming is now mainstream and all games are dead easy. They may come with harder difficulty settings but that doesn't usually work because the games aren't really designed to be played on "Impossible". Psychonauts won't ever tax you. Sure, you'll lose some lives occasionally and have to replay sections a few times, but you won't shout expletives. (Until you come to the very last level, which is actually a bit tricky. Consequently, you'll hate it, because you'll be fumbling over the keyboard like a drunk, looking skyward, and shaking your fist as you remember the golden days when games were fair and only made in two dimensions.)

Finally, as I mentioned much earlier, there is only point in the game that will bore you. You have to collect shards out of the ground with a divining rod. You do this by running around and tapping "F" a lot. It's horrible and will make your blood pressure rise. Thank God you don't have to do it for very long.

The Bottom Line
Just because one of the world's greatest game designers can't overcome the Everest-sized hurdle of making a non-first-person game set in a 3D environment accessible and enjoyably difficult, doesn't mean "Psychonauts" isn't a game that everyone should own. It's one of the best of the year and perhaps the best ever of it's type for PC.

Windows · by Shazbut (163) · 2005

A unique and funny adventure

The Good
The core gameplay (platforming, puzzling, and...uh...adventuring) is very good. Most of the gameplay challenges in the game are fun and satisfying. The puzzles aren't so hard that I got stuck but, at the same time gave me enough of a hard time that solving was satisfying. The gameplay is woven very well into the level design, one level may be more about platforming, while another might be more about puzzle solving, etc., but each one has enough balance and flair that it still feels like a coherent experience.

The story is not bad. There is a particular plot point towards the beginning that's introduced a little clumsily, and the ending is a little predictable, but, other than that, the story is good and the dialogue is quite funny if you dig odd quirky humor. Unlike a lot of other comedic games, Psychonauts knows how to pull off the serious moments well. The characters come across as well-rounded and real despite the game being anything but real.

The level design is outstanding. Without giving anything away, you'll truly be surprised level to level, the brilliant art direction and architecture the folks at Double Fine have come up with. Saying the levels have some variety would be selling them too short.

The Bad
The controls can be a little slippy sometimes. Sometimes you might try to make a jump and maybe miss a little, and it's not entirely human error, but it's not a huge problem and it's kind of a sticky area because it really depends on what you individually think of the controls.

The load times between each area can get bad. We're talking time-to-take-a-nap bad. This really only happens in the overworld, not the actual levels themselves, so it's more of a small problem then a major one.

The voice acting is spotty. Some characters like Raz the protagonist are really well done. Some characters, though...the actors sound like they just drank a gallon of cold medicine and decided to stand on their heads. In other words, they're in it for an easy paycheck.

The Bottom Line
Psychonauts is a great adventure game with a funny and endearing story and characters, and level design that may challenge you to rethink your opinion of games. A couple of technical issues keep it back from being perfect in my eyes, but to all others, I say jump right in.

PlayStation 2 · by kent c. koopa (19) · 2010

[ View all 8 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Aaaaaaaaaaaaargh!!! Parf (7873) May 31, 2012
Just Finished it (sort of) Joe Price Apr 29, 2009
Windows or XBox? Matt Neuteboom (976) Mar 4, 2009
I hope the guy who made the final level gets fired Unicorn Lynx (181780) Aug 7, 2008
Does the last level drag the game down a little? Atomic Punch! (186) Nov 5, 2007

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Psychonauts appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Bobby Zilch

The annoying bully-type character in the game, Bobby Zilch, is based on the camp bully from Schafer's real life experiences, who was also named Bobby.

Boyd

The dialogue of the paranoid security guard Boyd is partially based on a mentally ill person which used to swipe Double Fine's doorstep once a week and talk with Tim Schafer about his conspiracy theories.

Names

Several characters' last names mean "no", "none" or "nothing", including Bobby Zilch and Sasha Nein.

Ostrich

One idea Tim Schafer had for the game's protagonist was a mentally unbalanced (with multiple personalities) ostrich. However, this idea was dropped as Schafer is a strong believer in games being a form of wish-fulfillment, and he came to the conclusion that not many gamers would dream of being insane ostriches. One wonders if there would have been a personality-changing game mechanic consisting of the ostrich sticking its head in the ground and pulling it out again with a different persona.

Raz

Not only is Raz played by Invader Zim voice acting talent Richard Steven Horvitz (who was born in 1966); if you work hard, you may be able to unlock a Primal Memories journal entry with concept art showing Raz to be simply a non-green Zim with goggles!

The original main character was going to be named D'Artagan, but was cut. He is referenced twice though; in the beginning cutscene, when Coach Oleander is trying to guess Raz's name, he says, "Starts with a D!" Also, the original D'Artagan model can be seen poking out of the outhouse in the ending cutscene.

The name comes from Razmig Mavlian, an animator at LucasArts who later joined the Psychonauts team. It could also be a reference to Grigori Rasputin (died in 1916), the famous Russian "court mystic", who was considered by many a religious charlatan. Raz's special psychic powers is a reference to Rasputin's alleged mystic healing powers.

References

  • In the campfire area there is a tree with a crashed van and three tombstones under it. Some say this is a Day of the Tentacle reference, as the truck looks similar to the one used by three characters in the game. It is also a double entendre stating Schafer's opinion of LucasArts' commitment to adventure games - dead.

  • After getting the canoe from Cruller, you can ask him "Admiral Cruller? That canoe...are you...in love with it?" This is a reference to Sal in Grim Fandango asking if Manny was in love with Meche.

  • When you need a Marksmanship learner's permit and don't have it yet, you can tell Sasha "I left it in my other pants." Guybrush says something similar in Monkey Island 2.

  • The obligatory Star Wars reference: When Clem and Crystal are standing on the roof of the lodge, you can overhear their conversation which includes, "We're going to be so powerful, aren't we?" and a reply of "More powerful than you can possibly imagine."

  • The Russian immigrant Mikhail Bulgakov is named after the Soviet/Russian writer, author of the popular novel The Master and Margarita

  • The character of Edgar Teglee is based on the real artist Edgar Leeteg who popularised the Black Velvet style of painting of that level's art style. Leeteg initially worked as a billboard painter and sign writer in California before losing his job due to the depression. Later he went on to achieve infamy for his cheesy art style.

  • The four painting dogs in the same level are the dogs from the famous Dog's Playing Poker painting, actually called "A Bold Bluff" by Cassius Marcellus Coolidge.

Release delay

The PC version was inexplicably delayed to April 27th, even after the announcement that both the Xbox and PC were shipping on their original release date. This is likely due to manufacturing complications.

Xbox exclusivity

The game was originally supposed to be an Xbox-exclusive title. Microsoft dropped the publishing contract in 2004, at which point it was picked up by Majesco, who requested PC and PS2 ports.

Awards

  • 4Players
    • 2006 – Best Xbox Game of the Year
  • BAFTA Video Game Awards
    • October 10th 2006 - Best Screenplay
  • Computer Games
    • March 2006 - #10 Game of the Year 2005
  • GameSpy
    • 2005 – #7 Xbox Game of the Year
    • 2005 – Xbox Platformer of the Year
    • 2005 – Special Achievement in Art Direction (PC)
  • GameStar (Germany)
    • Issue 22/2008 - names as having one of the "10 Coolest Levels" for the Milkman Conspiracy. (It manages to connect parody with playing elements and the three-dimensionally twisted environment unifies theme and style.)
  • PC Powerplay (Germany)
    • Issue 02/2006 - #3 Action Game in 2005

Information also contributed by Depeche Mike, Kabushi, Mark Ennis, PCGamer77, Pixelspeech, Rupert Breheny, Tomer Gabel and Pentatonic Duck

Analytics

MobyPro Early Access

Upgrade to MobyPro to view research rankings!

Related Games

Pingu: Sekai de 1 Ban Genkina Penguin
Released 1993 on Game Boy
Castle Wolfenstein
Released 1981 on Apple II, 1983 on Commodore 64, 1984 on DOS
Need for Speed: Most Wanted
Released 2012 on Windows, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3
Old World
Released 2020 on Windows, Linux, 2022 on Macintosh
Banana Gun
Released 2019 on Windows
3,2,1...SuperCrash!
Released 2010 on PSP, PlayStation 3, 2012 on PS Vita
Akui
Released 2020 on Windows
Endless World: Idle RPG
Released 2019 on Windows, 2020 on Macintosh, Android
Secret Ponchos
Released 2014 on Windows, PlayStation 4

Related Sites +

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 17451
  • [ Please login / register to view all identifiers ]

Contribute

Are you familiar with this game? Help document and preserve this entry in video game history! If your contribution is approved, you will earn points and be credited as a contributor.

Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Zack Green.

Linux added by Hamish Wilson. Xbox One added by Plok. Xbox Cloud Gaming, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3 added by Sciere. PlayStation 2, Macintosh added by Kabushi. Xbox 360 added by Parf. Windows Apps added by Koterminus.

Additional contributors: Unicorn Lynx, Apogee IV, Sciere, LeChimp, St. Martyne, Patrick Bregger, FatherJack, glik.

Game added April 21, 2005. Last modified March 16, 2024.