Psychonauts

The Good
Definitely the best thing about Psychonauts is that it looks at psychology and the many aspects that belong to it, then imagines a way to visualize it with a sense of humor, how to give it context within the story, how it could be used as a gameplay mechanics and then also add a reward system for it. Because of this all the little side-objectives you can do in the game, as well as the way many of the mental disorders are portrayed, work very well and are genuinely entertaining to interact with.

The game is also very good at immersing you in it's own little world because everything you see and do fits the theme perfectly. As I played through the game I could clearly feel that Tim Schäfer was calling the shots because only he can manage to pull off immersion this well.

The characters are simply amazing, not a single one of them is generic or "just an NPC". Every character has a name, a personality, a background and something that makes them utterly and completely unique. Even the characters that get less lines than protagonist of the first Saint's Row game have secrets to discover. I also liked it how you don't just run into a profile of a character like in Alpha Protocol, but had to befriend them and hear them out to slowly figure out who they were (or even eavesdrop on them). There are some real surprises too!

The overall humor of the game is rather lighthearted, but just like with the immersion of the world it has that specific style that you can only trace back to good old Tim. Honestly, I owe the world an apology for claiming he is overrated in my Brütal Legend review because he is just a good game designer (that game was just a misstep). The humor is timeless and clever, if you're the kind of person who likes pop-culture references and memes that only exist for like a month before disappearing than Psychonauts might shock you and put a proper sense of humor in your skull.

The way the levels works is pretty original and can only be compared with the paintings from Super Mario 64. The idea is that all the levels are based on the minds of the people around you and you have to enter them in order to fix whatever is wrong and obtain the items or services the characters have, but refuse to give. My favorite level is definitely the Battle for Waterloo, where a descendant of Napoleon has to win a board game from his ancestor for reasons I won't spoil.

Because you see so many different worlds Psychonauts is naturally rich with variety and that is a good way to keep one interested enough to keep playing it. Another good thing about the levels is that you get some very interesting colors thrown at you. From a rather standard level that switched between overly cheerful and very dark and grim, I went to a very beautiful level based on a certain genre of paintings which focused a lot on purple and dark blue. That level, despite been the most boring from a gameplay perspective was probably the most beautiful level I have ever seen in a game.

Just like in Ocarina of Time you are able to contact help to provide information on enemies and how to kill them. I really liked this because uninspired wailing can only be fun for so long while constantly having to adapt to different enemies with different weak-spots is much more enjoyable and challenging. The combat is not fantastic and it's hardly the most challenging game out there, but this at least made smaller fights interesting enough to bother with (whereas I would skip over all the fights in Brütal Legend).

The controls are overall very nice and tidy. Platforming with Raz is made functional enough to be entertaining rather than frustrating, there are several ways to get from A to B faster than walking and switching between different psychic powers and items is made easy enough to prevent been annoying.

The Bad
The biggest problem is that the Steam version of this game never seems to bloody work. The first time I played the game it was fine, but the second time (when I wrote my original review) the game would constantly crash for no apparent reason. Now that I have tried it a third time I got through the entire game, but the sound was downright horrible. The music was okay, but when characters talk it would often skip or repeat a word or just glitch out entirely. It was so annoying that I just read the subtitles before the characters could even start and then hit a button to skip through the dialogue.

There is one part in the game where you will suddenly need the Cobweb cleaner which up to that point was a mandatory item. I didn't buy any other items, but still I was short 400 arrowheads (currency) for the damn thing, so I had to go out of my way to grind myself silly for three hours. I really think this item could have been better implemented if they were going to make it mandatory for the later stages anyway.

The last level of the game is downright horrendous and totally unnecessary from a story, gameplay and graphical viewpoint. Without trying to spoil anything: You pretty much have to sit through one more level after a pretty climactic boss-fight, but this stage is so poorly designed and makes such a lot of use of fixed camera angles that I just call it void and stop. The villain is beaten, everything is back the way it should be and we have seen everything the game had to offer, so don't put out just another level for the sake of having it. I also hate how we already visited this place, so the design is not special anymore and how it doesn't use any tricks or challenges we haven't done before.

The entire story happens over the span of a single day, which doesn't make much sense to me. The second you start playing Raz has just arrived in the camp, yet he knows pretty much everything there is to know regarding basic information of the people around him (names, activities and so forth). Raz also goes from a complete newcomer to the greatest hero that has ever lived in just this one day and overall it just leaves me with the impression that even the developers noticed this was rather tight for the adventure they had intended. Which leaves the question: Why didn't you change this completely trivial matter? I also like how the teachers clearly state that Raz may not attend to camp activities, yet is order specifically to come to basic training at the beginning of the adventure.

The design of the characters doesn't really rub me up the right way and I doubt it will for anybody. When I first played the game's demo it took several weeks and a sale to finally get me to buy it just because of this fact. The characters don't really look very Human nor stylized enough to be cute and forgiven for this fact. Some characters have huge eyes, some faces are completely malformed and some characters look like they came from that old show: "Doug Funny" or whatever it was called.

The Bottom Line
Psychonauts is definitely one of the better platforming games that came out after the Nintendo 64 era. The humor is clever, the gameplay is entertaining, the story is interesting and the design of the levels is simply beautiful. Get this game on any system other than PC and you can already scratch away my biggest complaint, but even then it doesn't matter that much because the game is overall very good.

I will say that Psychonauts is not as good as the old Nintendo 64 games, but it's still quite a nice game. If you are one of those people who believe games are art (like me), you are obligated to play this at least once. Younger people and people in their 30's will probably have fun with this as well, but the average shooter fan will probably get annoyed by the heavy-story and difficulty curve.

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.

The Good
Psychonauts is the craziest, most deranged and one of the funniest games I have ever played. You take control of Raz (short for Razputin), a kid who’s run away from his circus family to sneak into Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp for psychic kids to become a member of the famed Psychonauts. The cast of characters be they your fellow camp psychics, the teachers, or the many people running round inside people’s minds that you'll bump into - all are fantastical or horrendously stereotypical and most are hilarious. There’s Bobby Zilch, the camp bully or Dogan, an extremely short chap who wears a foil hat because he blew someone’s head up “well, once kinda,” you don’t want to see what happens when he gets cornered by squirrels. Much of the story or happenings are bordering on insanity.

Your first task is a basic training level, Coach Oleander sucks you into his mind and barks orders and 'encouragement' as you leap crevices, get blown up and run for cover from machine gun fire, all to the sound of a WWII bombing campaign, vintage style projections of falling bombs light up the walls as you clamber up camo-netting, you’ll catch up with plenty of your fellow students as you go. Each level, or mind, that you enter is heavily themed. One of the most surreal is a twisting mess of suburban roads, hedges and identikit houses (gravity changes to which ever way happens to be down for each section), cartoon 'spies’, shifty chaps with high coat collars, red eyes and fedoras are busy going about their undercover business. At one section, they claim to be the road crew "We are the road crew", “We work on the roads", “My back is killing me”. You’ll need an item to get through each section to prove you’re one of them. Another involves matching a theatre play with the right set and mood (good or bad) - sounds kind of run of the mill, but like much in this game its unexpected and bonkers. Not to mention Lungfishopolis.

Between the story, which is mainly told through humorous cut scenes (I laughed out load many times, there’s always something hilarious, even if it's just the perfectly executed reaction on a characters face), the action is of a uniformly platforming style but with vastly different tasks to perform, huge boss battles are common and are, traditionally, at the end of each level.

Raz acquires psi powers such as levitation - a ball of energy you can bounce on and turn into a balloon type thing to float down slowly and ride up drafts, invisibility and telekinesis, to name but a few, as he gains ranks, the powers also increase as you go. There's plenty to collect, each mind is populated with figments - 2D sketches of stuff, usually crazy looking stuff, that are either just lying about the place or floating through the air, collecting 'em helps you gain those ranks, there's also mental cobwebs that can be cleared with the mental cobweb duster (available at the camp store) these can be redeemed for psi-cards (which you’ll see bobbing about from time to time) combine enough psi-cards with a psi-core (also available at the camp store) and you gain an entire rank. Smashing stuff can yield positive mental health, aggressive psychic energy (used for psi-blasts) and arrowheads, the camp currency is arrowheads as Whispering Rock was founded on an ancient Indian burial ground. There’s also emotional baggage, wailing suitcases and purses and the like which you’ll need to find the corresponding tag to clear, clear them all and you can access primal memories from Raz’s journal, which appear to be concept art for the game, and hopping vaults, punch these and you get a memory reel (comic strip style story board). Memory reels and cut scenes can also both be accessed from Raz’s journal for each level.

The camp consists of several different areas that you can travel freely between in-between missions, if you decide to take some time out to collect arrowheads, visit the camp store or just explore.

The music and voice acting are superb, spot on voice acting for the characters and very very funny, I particularly liked the adventurous secret agent style Psychonauts theme that plays in Ford Cruller’s underground HQ.

The Bad
The platforming can be awkward at times, as per usual.

The Bottom Line
Brilliant, the furthest out game I've played, so to speak. While it’s a completely different game in many ways than Grim Fandango, Creative Director Tim Shafer's previous game, it’s got a similar quality of style to it. I don't suppose there’s much chance of the sequel, but I'll be looking out for Double Fine’s second game sequel or no.

One third genius, one third insanity and one third hilarity!