Psychonauts (2005)

The game is somehow simultaneously the most 2002 thing of all time, and also very modern in its sensibilities. I had heard great things about this game (and its modern sequel) for yeras and I'm very glad I finally got around to trying it. The gameplay felt tight, the theming that everyone reveres was excellent.

I'm glad I wasn't spoiled much on this game even though I'd heard about it so many times. The milkman conspiracy was truly a delight that I think would have been much lesser if I had been spoiled. Unfortunately, on the other side of that coin, I wish I had been told how.. brutal the final level would be. The meat circus was so difficult I got to the final boss with 1 life and very low health remaining. I resorted to using a save state so I wouldn't have to replay the entire level if I died. This level of stress seemed unintentional, and imbalanced from the difficulty of the rest of the game.

The characters and dialogue were fun, and lively at every turn. What a strange and wonderful game.

An action adventure platformer that is rarely utilized today. The Mario franchise still churns them out. Zelda I would classify as something different, though there is overlap in game play. The big difference is replacing platforming with puzzles. It's a shame because this is a fun genre. I plan to dive into Jak and Daxter (never played before) after Psychonauts 2. It seems devs are more concerned with making Action RPGS or battle royal shooters these days...

Fuck it. 5 stars. There are plenty of flaws, but what this game does right is a blast. Tim Schafer is the Tim Burton auteur of video games. His art style is part Dali and Picasso creating deeply disturbing imagery without being horrific or grotesque. While you can argue that this game is not sensitive or conscious of mental health issues, I would tell you to shut up. You're missing the point. Schafer wasn't trying to marginalize or criticize mental health issues. He just wanted an excuse for a psychedelic ride on a magic school bus to the subconscious. The result is a tongue-in-cheek, wildly imaginative and fun ride.

I wish the writers for Disney were as clever as Schafer. The stakes are as high as in any Marvel movie. A deranged fascist is kidnapping children, stealing their brains and creating psychic tanks to take over the world. Yet, there is never a moment of tonal whiplash. It manages to maintain its humor, and be legitimately funny, at all moments. Hell, there's a dentist that is stealing the brains and an undercover agent holding a bread roller spouting disjointed dialogue about making pies to convince people he is a house wife. Need I say more?

The plot is inane and insane in such charming and self aware ways. My favorite detail is with the Milkman. At the start of the level, you can stay and listen to him rave like a lunatic. There's a pattern in how he talks. There's 5-6 meters of dialogue and within a meter there are 5-6 options that are randomly chosen. This results in utterly nonsensical dialogue as he endlessly cycles through these randomly strung together meters. It's honestly pretty clever.

The levels are all unique and utterly bonkers. Each one introduces a new mechanic to keep the game play feeling fresh. One level you are grabbing props to go undercover, the next you are on a giant game board playing a weird version of Risk and trying to beat Napoleon Bonaparte. The art direction goes a long way to make the game hold up visually, despite originally coming out in 2005.

What are the flaws? Sadly all of the game play. It's clunky and the platforming is janky to keep it succinct. While you have a large arsenal of psychic abilities, they are rarely useful adding more flavor than substance.The difficulty curve is erratic, with an extremely frustrating final level that causes the game play to fall apart at the seams. It's a shame, because the art direction in this final level is a great... sadly they include a terrible sequence where you have to protect Oley and his bunny... it's some of the worst game play I have subjected myself to... it's followed up by a long and equally poorly designed and painful platforming sequence. Honestly I have not been this frustrated while playing a game in a long time. It doesn't feel fair, it's just ineptly difficult.

Despite how terrible the last level was, I had a ton of fun with this game. A rare thing in a sea of remakes and trend chasing. I'm excited to jump in to Psychonauts 2 this week.

The gameplay is quite varied with platforming, fighting, solving puzzles, and looking for secrets and collectibles. The platforming by itself is nothing special, but once you unlock a telekinesis ability (which feels incredibly satisfying to use), you have the movement options to quickly bypass a lot of it. As many people have said but also exaggerated, the camera is a bit clunky sometimes. What's actually worse is a clunky menu that you have to navigate a lot.

The story is about a psychic who runs away from home to a psychic summer camp in the hope of becoming a psychic secret agent, or a Psychonaut. It's a kids' game and follows a very cartoonish logic while also managing to be surprisingly captivating, funny, and even somewhat mature at times. The first third of the games actually turns out to be a glorified tutorial for the last two, as the main character is suddenly forced to go into the minds of a monster and insane asylum patients.

Most of the games' levels are based around going into peoples' heads and, in the second two thirds, fixing their problems. Each of the minds has its own unique art design, quirks, and story to tell that reflects the person's psyche. The game never feels dull, and its interesting aspects expertly disguise what is actually some pretty mediocre gameplay. It's a bit difficult to talk about the game without seeing it in parts.

The first third of the game is fairly linear and mostly involves platforming and simple combat, as well as unlocking most of your psychic abilities. This leads to what I found to be the game's main problem. Once you reach a level known as The Milkman Conspiracy, you're unexpectedly forced into puzzles without knowing about it and into a progression wall. There is an ability you need to unlock by finding collectibles, as well as an expensive item that the game doesn't tell you that you'll need to progress.

Once you start to understand how the game works after this point and overcome this wall, it becomes dramatically more fun and easy to figure out what to do and use your psychic powers in interesting contexts, such as using telekinesis to move pieces on a board game or using clairvoyance to see yourself through a character that can see in the dark. Even around the end, the game is not very difficult, but it's at least not brainlessly easy. The game lasts 13-14 hours, it's easily worth playing.

PROS

• Unique setting and tone make for a fun hub world to explore
• Conceptually creative levels are distinct and filled with surprises
• Script is loaded with small comical touches that made me chuckle
• Incorporation of light adventure game elements works well
• Tying collect-a-thon tropes into a centralized character progression system is a cool idea that incentivizes you to hunt down hidden items

CONS

• A general aura of sloppiness that gets worse as the game goes on permeates every aspect of the game's design
• Imprecise controls make for some frustrating platforming challenges
• Butt-ugly art style
• Character designs range from bad to depressing
• Too many ill-conceived mechanics that are either boring to use or forgotten immediately after being introduced
• Simple plot is rendered a disjointed mess from poor storytelling
• Voice acting, though of fairly high quality, is frequently irritating (as is much of the sound design)
• Off-putting romance subplot between 10-year olds feels out of place

A very funny adventure platformer. The concept, and story are executed so well. It's such a neat idea to be able to delve into characters' minds in order to get insight on how he or she sees the world around them, and what experiences have shaped that view. These dynamic worlds provide for non-stop exploration; never dwelling for too long on one level. The art and designs are very Tim Burton-esque. The voice acting is excellent in this game; perfectly cartoony.

This port has a few technical problems which detract from the presentation, unfortunately. There are quite a few sound glitches (or poor sound mixing), and moments of unresponsive controls throughout the game; the latter being the most frustrating. Too often a double-jump won't trigger, Raz will fall through a tight-rope, or won't grab on to a ledge. Locking on to enemy targets during combat can be equally hit-or-miss on whether it will work as intended or just recenter the camera 180 degrees in the opposite direction. This is my first time playing through the game, so I don't know if all of these issues are unique to the PC port.

07/10

Gameplay: 4/5 Story: 4/5 Presentation: 3.5/5 Difficulty: 1/ 5

Basis:

Story= plot progression, intrigue, characters, world

Gameplay= Mechanics, gameplay options (freedom), repetition, goals, difficulty

Presentation= graphics, animation, environment/character design, Art direction, Script, music

What a great concept for a game with a very Saturday morning cartoons art style. This kind of game goes to show that great games are timeless. Even with the character modeling and texturing being so outdated the gameplay was still so great. I liked how they were able to put some somewhat mature themes in this seemingly childish games. It was cool to see that each character had a rich backstory though not fully told and so minimally told with picture books and context clues. Tag on a fun story with a hilarious script and it was a great time. Highly recommend a play of this for all gamers, but especially people who love early 2000s platformers such as Jak and Daxter and Ratchet and Clank

Like a lot of its fans, I "discovered" Psychonauts by accident... I swear it magically appeared in my Steam Library (as described in this retrospective video by programmer Brad Muir). I was quickly ensnared by its charm, its unique design and structure, and the world that just exudes positive vibes without shying away from darker themes. For folks like me that love 3-D collectathon platformers, inventive character design and humorous storytelling, it's easy to forgive the game's quirks (camera, difficulty spike toward the end, etc.). When you love the whole experience this much, nitpicking that stuff feels a little like complaining that The Beatles put Piggies on The White Album.

My most recent playthrough (my second 100% run) was of the PS2 on PS4 re-release. Unlike the Steam version, this remaster is based on the PlayStation 2 port, which made a few graphical concessions (given that the game was original developed for the Xbox). In general, these are minor... Lake Oblongata lacks its usual reflective surface, for example. It also runs at the same 30fps as the original, which might bug some people. I did encounter the occasional audio bug... in total, three or four lines of dialog failed to play when they should have.

If you dig old-school 3D platformers or Tim Schafer's adventure games, you should definitely give this a shot. If you're torn between PC or PS4, the PC version definitely has the edge, but you'll be getting a great game either way.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go re-watch the intro video for Psychonauts 2's lead designer...

Pros:
-- Fun idea jumping into people's minds and clever extrapolation of that idea
-- Still looks great, years later, when you upscale the settings to HD
-- Lots of collectibles and replay going back to explore and find more (*see below)

Cons:
-- Characters can be a tad annoying, when not charming
-- Ability management can be frustrating, along with little point in using many of the abilities
-- *The Point of No Return ruins all replay/collectables, if you aren't expecting to avoid it

Check out my full review at TheKlotzNet