Psychonauts

I spent a long time wavering between 4 and 5 for this game, but after cooling down a bit from the frustration I felt at the final level (never a good thing!), I've decided that it's still a 5. There is so much to love about this game that a few frustrations can be forgiven, even though I usually reserve 5/5 for games that, while possibly flawed, never truly aggravate me. A tremendously original concept, bolstered by fun game mechanics, great storytelling, fantastic voice acting, spot-on and varied visuals, plus a hearty dose of overall enjoyability, Psychonauts is worth buying for almost anyone. It lacks polish here and there, but even if you're not a big platformer fan, you should check it out; you'll find a lot to love. VISUALS: While it lacks the beauty of, say, Prince of Persia, Psychonauts is a visually near-perfect game. The graphics are cartoony and fit the light-hearted feel of the game, reminiscent of class LucasArts adventure games. Each person's mind has a distinct visual style and level design, which really adds to the atmosphere and prevents the game from ever feeling stale, even if you spend the extra time to complete the many collection bonus tasks. It doesn't take a very powerful machine to get it looking nice, although on my newest computer running Win7 64-bit I experienced intermittent, mysterious slowdowns even with fairly low settings. The camera is generally very cooperative, and while it can take some searching to figure out where to go or how to get there, I don't recall ever having to take a blind leap. The variation in environments does sometimes combine with camera restrictions to make it unclear why a particular jump is failing, but this is quite rare. The few occasions in which enemies are hard to see are mostly due to probably-intentional environment features, and movement and view work surprisingly well in warped environments that should be far more disorienting. Clearly much attention was paid to this critical aspect of platformer design! STORY/ACTING: The core concept of psychonauts (exploring and tinkering with people's minds) is both clever and perfectly tied to the wonderfully varied gameplay. It is enhanced by truly excellent voice acting and great characterization for a broad cast of fellow students and instructors, with plenty of fun interactions to be had if you explore a bit and chat with everyone. One of the main rewards for exploration sub-tasks throughout the game is unlocking slide reels with character backstory . . . and I really looked forward to them! It is rare for a a game to be so well written and acted that it is worth spending extra time and effort just to experience a bit more of the world, whether it be through collecting memory reels or simply trying to talk to everyone everywhere. Psychonauts not only pulls this off, but makes it feel perfectly natural. All your tasks, rewards, and even the fun and helpful game mechanics are tied in and fit perfectly with the story, which rarely even feels linear despite having a pretty straight progression. You level up over the course of the game, and some time is spent just working towards getting critical abilities, but there really isn't any feel of grinding, since you gain rank by completing mission tasks and collecting "figments" as you play through levels. If you make a half-decent effort at collecting the most obvious figments littered along your path, you'll have plenty to complete the game, and a bit of extra effort in whatever area most appeals to you will net you some helpful extra skills. The key is that it never feels "tacked-on", integrating well with the story being told. CONTROLS: This is one of the areas where the game shows some lack of polish. Everything has a somewhat floaty feel, which is generally appropriate and probably intentional (especially when you are actually floating!), but makes it hard to be really precise; even as I repeated levels I liked to complete collections, I really got good *at those levels* more than I improved my overall control skills. However, this is in part due to the strong stylistic variation in the levels, which is generally a good thing and keeps the game from getting stale. The game also frequently lacks the smooth flow that characterizes well-done parkour-style platformers like Prince of Persia. This isn't always a bad thing: it allows the set up of some challenging sections that take a bit of planning and sharp execution . . . but it sometimes takes you out of the experience a bit. Climbing and swinging sections in particular tend to involve elements such as tightropes, on which you move slowly, and which can take a couple tries to jump between when they cross at an angle; while realistic, this does disturb flow somewhat. All that said, the controls *are* responsive and the camera very rarely causes any pain; you might make the wrong jump, but Raz does consistently jump the way you told him to! The great variety of ways to get about can add to the challenge but the controls are well-designed so that you always do the action you intended, and while they may take more time to master, having extra options makes gameplay more interesting. It is always nice to come up with a clever way around a more obvious path that involves a skill you don't like. DIFFICULTY: This game is challenging in all the right places. Too many platformers are hard only because of a few unforgiving sections with sparse checkpoints that kill you for any small mistake, or because you are placed in situations where camera and controls fail you. Psychonauts has some hard-to-collect items (mostly optional), and some skill challenges that take a good chunk of time and effort to beat (but are generally safe to try until you beat them, but rarely punishes you too harshly for minor errors. You will have to learn new skills fairly frequently, both as you acquire new abilities and as they get used in novel level designs, but the game accounts for this with low-risk or no-risk areas that both train and challenge you. The bubble-floating chamber and the race in Milla Vodello's mind are two excellent examples that also have some of the best flow in the game. Despite the complex environments, it is usually clear where to go, and if you have trouble with anything, including the many and varied enemies populating different minds (including bosses), you acquire a method to ask for help early in the game. Like everything else, it fits the story perfectly. Furthermore, you will quickly acquire tools that allow you to exit a mind at any time, or just return to the camp to cash in collectibles and level up, grab some healing items from the store, or otherwise restock and regroup. Even if you lose all your lives, you're just booted out of the head, and when you return you can warp to any major area you've already visited, so even in the worst case, backtracking is limited. This is also very helpful if you choose to return to collect items you missed on the first pass. Thanks to all this, it is alright to have a few segments that take a lot of tries to complete; as I said, the game does in fact have some challenging bits - it's just that it neatly dodges frustration almost all of the time. LEVELS, STRATEGY, and OTHER ELEMENTS: It bears repeating that every level is unique and wonderful. The concept I liked best was one where you helped a possessed descendant of Napoleon defeat his ancestor in a board game by shrinking to manipulate the board and then further to talk to the pieces in order to convince them to serve their leader. That level ultimately wasn't very hard, although it had a couple challenging jumps when I saw a shortcut. Milla Vodello's mind probably has the best flow - in it, you learn various uses of your levitation ball, including floating (by climbing a brightly colored tower in columns of bubbles) and rolling (by racing against your fellow classmates until you win) - both of these involve continuous movement, and the latter has a wonderfully natural way of guiding you - in early runs or when you are behind, the various accelerators will be demonstrated to you by the others ahead of or passing you, and most fast routes are not hard to see, just a bit challenging to reach. I replayed this level many times in order to collect everything (there are figments on every path!), and it really stayed fun. My favorite boss was probably the bullfight, in part because it requires you to do some fairly complex power use at high speed, but that turns out to be entirely manageable [which speaks well of the control design and makes you feel awesome]. You have a fun arsenal of offensive psychic powers, and while certain powers are better than others against some enemies, you really do have a variety of options in every case. There is a "lock-on" ability that helps with big guys, and a strong degree of auto-targeting if you're facing the right way keeps combat smooth and enjoyable. You get a crowd-clearing (and quite fun) jump-slam ability early on, and the camera generally provides a wide field of view around you, so getting surrounded is uncommon and not a death sentence. Most enemies can climb and jump though, so you won't find many places to camp and snipe . . . which keeps things interesting, and you shouldn't need such exploits anyway. Bosses do often have puzzle-type solutions, but these are varied, often fun, and if you can't figure them out, heavily hinted if you ask your little in-ear assistant. Furthermore, most "repeat N times" anti-boss attacks are limited to at most three times, so it doesn't get tedious. The only level I have a major complaint about is unfortunately the final level. There is an escort section, and it has all the unfortunate features common to escort sections. You are protecting a little kid chasing his pet bunny, and have to grab the bunny for him while fending off an endless stream of enemies. This is fine and doable; the kid isn't too fragile, and you can handle the bad guys with little difficulty. The fact that the kid has bad path-finding (he got stuck behind me repeatedly) doesn't actually make things any harder, since you're pretty set once you reach the kid, but it does make you hate him a bit more. The real problem is that he travels to four successively more difficult-to-reach areas, and starts taking damage while you struggle to reach him. If you fail, the game forgivingly does not take a life away . . . but it does set you back to the beginning. Nothing is more irritating than repeatedly getting through three hard segments only to see all of that go to waste when you are almost in reach of the last stage. This is enhanced by the introduction of a new enemy whose attacks must be exploited to reach the next area - a fine mechanic in general, but a dangerously irritating one under a time limit. Furthermore, those segments have unusually bad camera angles, AND a fun extra feature you're likely to discover on the last segment: even though things stick in them, those wheels aren't as solid as they look! Specifically, if you jump against one in order to better grasp a passing pole, you're gonna go right through and enjoy starting the segment over. After so much good game design, this one was jarringly unpleasant. Also, in the following bit, there's a difficult (in a fine and challenging way) netting climb - at the top, be aware that the little platform the local enemy is standing on is NOT where to jump, and is in fact not solid. You need to be on the other side, as clever as getting inside may have seemed at the time. A couple other levels have their own irritations, but have such overall appeal that they don't stand out as bad. The second one I'd caution on is the Milkman Conspiracy . . . it's a very clever level with wonderful warped geometry (which the controls and camera handle wonderfully), but it is fairly large and easy to repeatedly miss something for which you are looking as you traipse back and forth completing sub-missions within. That is probably the only level where tedium intruded, but the concept there is so whimsical that it gets a pass. THE VERDICT: OK, the final level and a few other spots had definite issues, but taken as a whole, the game is a thing of beauty. A fantastic story, well-told and well-acted, genuinely varied abilities and a control scheme that lets you use them well, a cooperative camera, absolutely inspired level design that makes every area a genuinely new experience, and overall just a lot of fun - this game does so much so right while simultaneously staking out new territory that it really can't be given anything other than a 5. There's something here for almost everyone.

I guess the best way to advocate this game is by anecdote. I usually play games for at most 2 hours in a day, and that only on weekends. I installed this game on a Friday evening and within 36 hours I'd sunk 22 hours into Psychonauts to beat the game in two lengthy sittings broken only by a few hours of sleep. The addictive platforming, original characters, vividly beautiful world, and well-balanced difficulty curve make this a fascinating game that everybody should play.

I loved this game, mostly. The levels were generally designed very well, the humour was consistently laugh-out-loud worthy, and there were lots of wonderful touches and great ideas added throughout the game, but I felt it fell down at the end. The final platforming level was a huge spike in the difficulty curve, and marred the experience. Frustration led me to power though the last platforming level, to come to deal with an insanely easy endboss, with a reasonable cutscene to close things up. Other than that, though, the game was a joy, and I'm glad to see Schafer is still at it, making games with lots of laughs.

Psychonauts has a very original story, aided by interesting atomsphere and often hilarious dialogue. The gameplay is classic adventure type with a very light RPG element, making the whole game entertaining and worth its money. The only downside is there is very little to do in terms of replay value, other than reliving the adventure again (which is not a bad incentive, just not so soon) Tip: for those playing with mouse and keyboard (which is perfectly viable) turn off smart camera in the settings, because it will drive you mad.

Going to have to hold up my flame shield for this one. Psychonauts gets so many things right. Its premise and story, its art style, its humour - all fantastic, and people have talked about these things a million times, so it seems pointless for me to do so. The problem is, I just don't find it very fun. I wanted to like it so much, and over the years I've started the game so many times, but never got further than a few hours in. I bought this game on Steam back in 2006! I then bought the GOG version later to further support the developers, telling myself "I'm definitely going to finish this one day and I'm definitely going to love it." I always told myself I was getting distracted by other games and by life, and that one day I'd finish it. Today, I've finally pushed through the game, further than I've ever got before, and I've come to accept how I really feel, which is that I don't really like it. It's hampered by bad level design (in a gameplay sense), stiff controls (yes I'm using a gamepad), a clumsy targeting system, and awkwardly-designed boss fights. Parts of it have just aged poorly, other parts were never very good, and yet some moments are pure genius which just makes the rest of the game all the more disappointing. I would love this game, if it wasn't for the whole "game" part of the game. When people praise Psychonauts, they talk about the characters, the world, the story; most people aren't praising the gameplay, and that's something you should keep in mind if you're new to it. The gameplay itself is, at best, average for a platformer from 2005, and subpar when played today. Personally, there are other platformers from the same era that I can still enjoy much more than Psychonauts.