Ok, fine! Theres a little more on the website but apparently links are a faux pas.
I finally got around to purchasing Psychonauts from the Steam store. When I originally watched a trailer for the game it immediately struck me as a children's game, and therefore simple, easy, and generally unworthy of my time. As I began to read in other gaming reviews it was being trumpeted as one of the best examples of innovative game design. Better late than never, I decided it was time to see what this title was all about.
Psychonauts is an adventure/platformer that takes place in a secret psychic summer camp for children. You are trained to harness your psychic powers to engage in mental warfare with your opponents. Your character, Rasputin, does this by entering the mental subconscious of his opponents and combating their inner demons from the inside. Every person in the game has a completely unique mental landscape that is affected by those characters past experiences, desires and fears. It allowed the game designers to let their imagination run wild with the design of each level and they succeeded in making every level a memorable experience.
The game attempts to balance that fine line between ?children's game? and ?adult game with childlike nostalgia?. I would put it in the same category as Ratchet and Clank; both are enjoyable platformers that are fun for any age, but the presentation and dialog sometimes seems directed at the young teen demographic. They attempt what all Pixar or DreamWorks animated films seem to achieve; an attempt to create an ageless entertainment experience. Do you remember how surprisingly funny the first Shrek movie was? It was great! It combined adult humor, a role reversal of the classic Disney characters, but did it seemlessly in a child-like fantasy world. Children loved it, adults loved it, and it was a unique movie that had universal appeal. It is obvious that this is what Psychonauts was aiming for, which for the most part it succeeded.
The comedy in Psychonauts is genuinely funny and sometimes outright goofy. There is one level where you enter the mind of a gargantuan mutant fish, but in his mind, the roles are reversed and you are a giant monster destroying a peaceful fish-opolis that reflects how much he fears you in the real world, despite himself being a menacing threat. Of course, this is the obvious role reversal of Japanese monster movies, which is likely lost on many children, but fully enjoyable by both children and adults. This is why I brought up Shrek earlier; it is a movie that is based on turning the traditional roles of fairy tale stories on its head, overlooked by children but fully enjoyable by adults. Then again, sometimes the jokes are one-liners that even as a kid I would have thought they were quote, ?dumb?. So there is the obvious intention on the game developers? part to entertain children, but if the dialog is generated with a younger audience in mind that doesn't explain the gameplay.
Hypothetically, the game is easy. Even the final levels are relatively simple with only one or two tricks that need to be grasped in order to beat a boss or complete a level. Having said that, the controls are so messy and your interaction with the environment is so specific and often finicky that the game nears unbeatable at some points. It becomes a lesson in patience as you try for the twentieth time just to jump from one platform to the next, thwarted only by the unforgiving controls the game provides. Rasputin seems almost suicidal as he almost always prefers to jump out into the empty sky rather than grab onto that trapeze, or he decides to fall face first into a lake of fire rather than walk outacross a tight rope. Maybe it was done intentionally to teach children the futility of life in today's backwards, throw-away society, which often rewards the spectacular failure of the rich far greater than the hard work and good intentions of the poor. Then again, it could just be that the controls are shit. It takes what would otherwise be any easy game for adults and a slightly challenging game for children and turns it into a frustrating game for adults and a neigh impossible game for children. Think about playing through your favorite Prince of Persia game and then just have him miss every third ledge you jump to, or refuse to run across walls because he didn't like how hard you pressed the X button. That is what Psychonauts feels like.
Besides the platforming, a fair amount of the players? time will be spent collecting items. There are roughly 4 different types of items you collect and they all do the exact same thing. They all increase your level in order to access new powers and they all bore you to death. Listen, I understood when Pacman came out that games would always have an element of collecting random objects if for no other purpose than the enjoyment of hoarding things. For instance, do you remember your favorite part from any of the Super Mario games? Did you say collecting the 10,000th gold coin? Of course you did, because that is clearly the part of the game that was so endearing about that series. In Psychonauts, it is an unnecessary inclusion that exists only for the sake of existing and it is the only way to level up, so the player must engage in the Pacman mini-game whether they would like to or not. It's not fun. It is not even gameplay as there is no detriment to dying a billion times in order to collect all the items. At least in Mario you had to weigh the cost of grabbing extra coins in order to gain extra lives with the cost of possibly losing a life while collecting those coins. It was a gameplay tradeoff that made sense and in some small way, it added a layer to the gameplay that rounded out the platforming. The only tradeoff in collecting all the items in psychonauts is between leveling up and losing your sanity. Seriously, if I have to watch one more video of Rasputin sorting out mental baggage I will jump into the polar bear exhibit at the zoo. I hear that has works out well for the mentally unstable.
If it seems like I am being overly harsh in this review it is only because everything outside of the basic gameplay is so darn good, which makes it frustrating from the perspective of someone who enjoys sharing good video games with other people. I highly recommend it at the same time that I think the reader should keep their distance. It is like Schrodinger's video game, existing in both a state of awesome and suck at the same time. The game is a great experience, each level feels completely new and different, the art and presentation is phenomenal, the dialog is funny and the characters are memorable. As for the gameplay aspects, it really suffers and becomes almost unplayable at certain parts near the end. The controls make the game very hard to recommend to any demographic, but if you are willing to tough through some minor frustration; there exists a really deep and interesting experience to be had.
You might have noticed that I used the word experience several times during this review and mostly that is because I couldn't think of a better word to describe this game. It is like describing a movie that pulled you into the screen and washing away all knowledge that you are surrounded by mouth-breathers, crying children, and an unknown sticky substance covering your seat. Or, describing a book that scares you so deeply you hide it in the freezer between readings in order to keep its unspeakable evil trapped away until the next time you are ready for its nightmare-inducing fantasy. It would be almost impossible to convey to a third party what it was about the book that made you so afraid. It was more than just the characters, the settings, and the imagery that was used. In other words, Psychonauts is a game that is greater than just the sum of its parts. For instance, the gameplay is mostly sloppy platforming and gratuitous object collection, and yet, even when you subtract the subpar gameplay, Psychonauts is still a fun game. The game is, plainly and simply, an experience that is anything but plain and simple.
Rating: 75% (90% if you remove the control issues)
