Psychonauts
Posted May 31, 2005
It’s a damn shame when great games don’t get the attention that they deserve, this happened with Ubi Soft and their fantastic game Beyond Good & Evil, and it seems to be happening again with the Majesco published, and Tim Schafer creation Psychonauts.
Schafer is responsible for some of the great adventure games of the past, like Day of the Tentacle and the fantastic Grim Fandango. His quirky sense of humor and wild imagination are highly prevalent here in Psychonauts, and each very unique level that you play during this roughly 8-10 hour adventure through the minds of others display the genius that Schafer brought to the game.
Psychonauts is at its heart a simple 3D platforming title, and because of that chances are that a lot of people are going to miss out on the game. There are a few things that set this game well above and apart from other simple platformers that have come out in recent times, one being the amazing art design. No two levels look or feel alike when you work your way through the game. The second huge difference is the level of humor in this game, even walking around the real world area of the game, in this case a summer camp for psychic children, is a riot. At points in the game you’ll come across a couple kids standing around chatting, and believe me you’ll want to stop and take a moment to listen to what they say more often then not.
Your name in the game is Razputin, or just Raz for short. Initially the game opens with the camp counselor giving a speech to the children who’ll be attending camp that year, and Raz is noticeably absent, but crashes the party a little later. Soon after resisting the psychic powers of a couple of the adults at camp, they realize that this kid might have something and he should be allowed to attend the camp, only until his parents pick him up however. Similar to other games, you gain powers as the game progresses, but the way it’s handled here is with merit badges, which you have to earn by proving that you’re capable of handing the powers such as clairvoyance, telekinesis and levitation. After each merit badge is earned, it’s sewn to your backpack and you can use it whenever you feel the need. The first level you play is dubbed “Basic Braining”, which has you enter the mind of the camp leader, Coach Oleander, and run through the obstacle course in his mind. He’s an old army man, so his thoughts are filled with battle related things, such as blown out buildings and the flash and bang of bombs going off.
As mentioned, each level takes place inside the mind of another character in the game, some can be very well organized, such as another Psychonauts mind that you enter, it’s a very minimalist mind with everything very well organized and the level plays itself out as a training ground for when you learn to fire psychic energy at the censors and other enemies in the game.
Censors you might ask? Well, imagine if you will a piece of bacteria entering your body, as soon as it’s noticed, other cells in your body will attack it…the censors act in a similar way. Because you are essentially an invader in your hosts mind, his or her body will try to remove you from memory, blocking it out. However you can defeat the censors quite easily, and then move on to help sort the emotional baggage (represented by actual baggage), and defeat personal demons of your host sometimes helping set their lives straight.
Gameplay:
Being a platform game, the controls must be spot on, or the developers take the risk of someone playing the game for a short while and becoming too frustrated to continue playing. Thankfully, the controls here are actually quite intuitive; even though they utilize every single button one the Xbox controller.
The camera is always a sticky subject when it comes to games, but whenever I found myself in a situation where the camera was stuck in a nasty location, I was very easily able to manipulate it to my liking, removing all frustrations very easily.
The game does play out in a very linear way, and within each level, the actions that one needs to take are all set out for you. Sure the game ends up being somewhat of a fetch-fest on some levels (The Milkman Conspiracies, for one) but the entertainment factor in the levels helps remove the feeling that you’re always backtracking to find the next required item.
Because this is a platformer, there are always things to collect to help further the game experience, but instead of bananas or coins Psychonauts has other items that you must collect in order to gain experience and higher powered attacked such as Figments of Imagination or clean out the mental cobwebs in your host brain. The items are scattered throughout the levels and blend into the art of the game so well, you won’t even realize that you’re collecting them obsessively. Now that’s good game design.
Graphics:
Graphically, Psychonauts won’t wow you with realism, but it will astound you with the surreal feeling that each unique level throws your way. Characters are all super deformed in one way or another, but all are animated very fluidly and fit the wacky theme of the game.
I have no bad words to say about the graphics, or the level design, as even the most minimalist of the levels inspired awe. But when you get to some later levels the level of genius comes flying at you, especially one the amazingly fun (and hilarious) Lungfishopolis, the contorted Milkman Conspiracy, and my personal favorite when it came to looks, Black Velvetopia.
Audio:
A level is only as good as it’s audio, and with each of these levels that are played out the audio portion is perfectly matched to enhance the experience that much more. For example on the black light lit Velvetopia, a light Spanish vibe plays throughout the level, matching it perfectly, and in Waterloo be prepared for some great classical battle tunes.
The voice acting throughout the game is also extremely well done, and each character is seems really alive and each have their own personality which shines through in the brilliant dialog that they have to work with.
Conclusion:
As mentioned earlier, the humor in the game really makes this stand out as a top title in my books, if anyone out there can make it through the opening cinema of Lungfishopolis, then you need to get checked out as that had be giggling and laughing, which continued throughout most of the level, thanks to the news flashes that came on screen periodically. I know this has been a glowing review with no negatives shown, but to be honest with you even with the short length of the game I can’t complain too much about it as every moment that I played it I was enjoying myself, and that’s saying something in the days of games that become a chore to complete.
On one hand, I am a little sad that Microsoft decided to let this game go cross-platform, because I feel that they let something this good out of their exclusive grubby mitts. Conversely, I am extremely happy that more people will get to enjoy this game because of MS giving it up, and more people buying this game can only send a message to the developers that we want them to hear. Keep making great games, we don’t care about length, we don’t care about ultra-realistic graphics, we don’t care about having three full cities to drive to and terrorize…we want games that are fun, and most of all entertain us each and every time we pick it up. Psychonauts gets our highest rating, Videogame Talk Collector Series.
Schafer is responsible for some of the great adventure games of the past, like Day of the Tentacle and the fantastic Grim Fandango. His quirky sense of humor and wild imagination are highly prevalent here in Psychonauts, and each very unique level that you play during this roughly 8-10 hour adventure through the minds of others display the genius that Schafer brought to the game.
Psychonauts is at its heart a simple 3D platforming title, and because of that chances are that a lot of people are going to miss out on the game. There are a few things that set this game well above and apart from other simple platformers that have come out in recent times, one being the amazing art design. No two levels look or feel alike when you work your way through the game. The second huge difference is the level of humor in this game, even walking around the real world area of the game, in this case a summer camp for psychic children, is a riot. At points in the game you’ll come across a couple kids standing around chatting, and believe me you’ll want to stop and take a moment to listen to what they say more often then not.
Your name in the game is Razputin, or just Raz for short. Initially the game opens with the camp counselor giving a speech to the children who’ll be attending camp that year, and Raz is noticeably absent, but crashes the party a little later. Soon after resisting the psychic powers of a couple of the adults at camp, they realize that this kid might have something and he should be allowed to attend the camp, only until his parents pick him up however. Similar to other games, you gain powers as the game progresses, but the way it’s handled here is with merit badges, which you have to earn by proving that you’re capable of handing the powers such as clairvoyance, telekinesis and levitation. After each merit badge is earned, it’s sewn to your backpack and you can use it whenever you feel the need. The first level you play is dubbed “Basic Braining”, which has you enter the mind of the camp leader, Coach Oleander, and run through the obstacle course in his mind. He’s an old army man, so his thoughts are filled with battle related things, such as blown out buildings and the flash and bang of bombs going off.
As mentioned, each level takes place inside the mind of another character in the game, some can be very well organized, such as another Psychonauts mind that you enter, it’s a very minimalist mind with everything very well organized and the level plays itself out as a training ground for when you learn to fire psychic energy at the censors and other enemies in the game.
Censors you might ask? Well, imagine if you will a piece of bacteria entering your body, as soon as it’s noticed, other cells in your body will attack it…the censors act in a similar way. Because you are essentially an invader in your hosts mind, his or her body will try to remove you from memory, blocking it out. However you can defeat the censors quite easily, and then move on to help sort the emotional baggage (represented by actual baggage), and defeat personal demons of your host sometimes helping set their lives straight.
Gameplay:
Being a platform game, the controls must be spot on, or the developers take the risk of someone playing the game for a short while and becoming too frustrated to continue playing. Thankfully, the controls here are actually quite intuitive; even though they utilize every single button one the Xbox controller.
The camera is always a sticky subject when it comes to games, but whenever I found myself in a situation where the camera was stuck in a nasty location, I was very easily able to manipulate it to my liking, removing all frustrations very easily.
The game does play out in a very linear way, and within each level, the actions that one needs to take are all set out for you. Sure the game ends up being somewhat of a fetch-fest on some levels (The Milkman Conspiracies, for one) but the entertainment factor in the levels helps remove the feeling that you’re always backtracking to find the next required item.
Because this is a platformer, there are always things to collect to help further the game experience, but instead of bananas or coins Psychonauts has other items that you must collect in order to gain experience and higher powered attacked such as Figments of Imagination or clean out the mental cobwebs in your host brain. The items are scattered throughout the levels and blend into the art of the game so well, you won’t even realize that you’re collecting them obsessively. Now that’s good game design.
Graphics:
Graphically, Psychonauts won’t wow you with realism, but it will astound you with the surreal feeling that each unique level throws your way. Characters are all super deformed in one way or another, but all are animated very fluidly and fit the wacky theme of the game.
I have no bad words to say about the graphics, or the level design, as even the most minimalist of the levels inspired awe. But when you get to some later levels the level of genius comes flying at you, especially one the amazingly fun (and hilarious) Lungfishopolis, the contorted Milkman Conspiracy, and my personal favorite when it came to looks, Black Velvetopia.
Audio:
A level is only as good as it’s audio, and with each of these levels that are played out the audio portion is perfectly matched to enhance the experience that much more. For example on the black light lit Velvetopia, a light Spanish vibe plays throughout the level, matching it perfectly, and in Waterloo be prepared for some great classical battle tunes.
The voice acting throughout the game is also extremely well done, and each character is seems really alive and each have their own personality which shines through in the brilliant dialog that they have to work with.
Conclusion:
As mentioned earlier, the humor in the game really makes this stand out as a top title in my books, if anyone out there can make it through the opening cinema of Lungfishopolis, then you need to get checked out as that had be giggling and laughing, which continued throughout most of the level, thanks to the news flashes that came on screen periodically. I know this has been a glowing review with no negatives shown, but to be honest with you even with the short length of the game I can’t complain too much about it as every moment that I played it I was enjoying myself, and that’s saying something in the days of games that become a chore to complete.
On one hand, I am a little sad that Microsoft decided to let this game go cross-platform, because I feel that they let something this good out of their exclusive grubby mitts. Conversely, I am extremely happy that more people will get to enjoy this game because of MS giving it up, and more people buying this game can only send a message to the developers that we want them to hear. Keep making great games, we don’t care about length, we don’t care about ultra-realistic graphics, we don’t care about having three full cities to drive to and terrorize…we want games that are fun, and most of all entertain us each and every time we pick it up. Psychonauts gets our highest rating, Videogame Talk Collector Series.