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Tim Schafer has a beautifully mind!
That statement is more than likely to draw a few blanks looks from the current gaming generation, so perhaps I should elaborate further for those of you who have no idea what I am talking about. Tim Schafer, the computer game designer who was originally attached to LucasArts, brought us games like the critically acclaimed Grim Fandango, the first two Monkey Island games and the cult classic; Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle. Titles such as these are nothing to sneer at for they are but a few of the games that set the standard for the adventure game genre and re-defined the way we perceived the art of gaming, and, chances are that even if you have never played any of these games you would have heard of them and chances are, that what you have heard are very good things.
There is a very simple reason for this and that is the vivid imagination and exceptional humor that was designed and written for these games. It literally transported you into another world, a quirky, fun filled and unrestricted world that introduced you to new environments, stunning cultures, unforgettable characters and once-in-a-lifetime encounters. This is something that is becoming a rarity in modern games as publishers, motivated more by money than ideas; continue to milk different varieties of the same plot in the form of sequels and movie spin-offs. As a result we tend to see less and less games with the depth or the engaging storyline as those of the aforementioned titles and as instant gratification games slowly overshadow the 'cerebral' type games we slowly see why some gamers consider people like Tim Schafer as possessing a beautiful mind.
I know, I know!. Some of you may be wondering why this introduction is longer than any in my previous reviews and why it seems more of a rant than an actual review. Well, that's because it is partly a rant. It is a rant about how some games, despite what they offer to the gaming community, despite what they represent, despite the effort that has been put into it, are for the most part ignored by other developers and players alike for some obscure reason. One such example, is Psychonauts, a game that many of you would have heard but few have played, so to find out what makes this game tick the reviewing shall begin and the ranting shall end.
Also as a side note, this review deviates slightly from the normal format where I divide the "gameplay" section into 2 segments. 'Elements' and 'Controls'.
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Psychonauts, was designed and developed by Tim Schafer and his developing company, Double Fine Productions, in 2005. It was originally distributed over a variety of consoles and systems, such as the Xbox, Playstation 2 and Microsoft Windows but now it is also made available on Steam via the Xbox Live Marketplace and is a free to play game title on the GameTap basic subscription service. As an addition to this on December 2006, after a successful e-mail campaign by fans, Psychonauts was added to the Xbox 360 backwards compatible list and is now available for direct download on the Xbox 360 through Microsoft's Xbox Originals program.
It took more than four years and two publishers for the game to become available to us and this is it's story:
[HEADING=2]The Story:[/HEADING]
http://i716.photobucket.com/albums/ww161/Skarin_2009/psychonauts-raz-moon-forest-2.jpgThe game has you playing the role of a young psychic lad called Razputin "Raz" Aquato, who has run away from his circus performing family and snuck into a summer camp for psychic children. The Whispering Rocks Psychic Summer Camp as it turns out, also happens to be a training ground for budding Psychonauts, a form of psychic warrior/secret agents, who have the ability to enter the minds of others and to source out inner demons and to fight battles. It soon becomes Raz's dream to master the advanced training and to become a Psychonaut himself.
The catch is that as a runaway Raz only has one day to learn as much as he can before his father comes to collect him and to complicate matters further; some unusual activity begins to occur within the camp. Amidst the shared nightmares and the general psychic chaos that begins to take root in the camp it becomes apparent that someone is abducting the cadets and relieving them of their brains, turning them into TV obsessed and hackeysack loving zombies. As the protagonist, it soon becomes your dutiful job to investigate the matter and to resolve the mystery at Whispering Rocks Psychic Summer Camp.
[HEADING=2]The Gameplay: [/HEADING]
I. Elements
Psychonauts, is an action adventure game which combines puzzle gaming with combat. Despite the classification as a platformer however, the game has a lot more going for it besides the obligatory platform-jumping and swinging associated with the genre. In order to solve the many puzzles in the game and to prevail in combat against amusing foes, players have the ability to utilize Raz's bristling series of crazy psychic powers. Initially of course you have your regular fighting skills at your disposal but as you progress along in the game you will come across items that you can use to upgrade Raz's ranks and master new powers.http://i716.photobucket.com/albums/ww161/Skarin_2009/psychonauts-02.jpg Using powers, such as; clairvoyance, telekinesis, and levitation on foes and the environment is but one of the greatest joys in the game. Things only get better when you stumble across situations where you have to experiment with different powers and you will find that much of your time will be spent wondering if pushing an enemy off a ledge with telekinesis is just as amusing as setting him on fire with your mind using pyrokinesis.
Just when you thought that the coolest part of Psychonauts is the ability to wield psychic powers, you are made aware of the fact that an entire new playing field is at your disposal. The very core of the game is about Raz and his psychic powers and how he can gateway into people's heads and have a rummage.
There are no mixing words here, Raz is a psychic and he has the ability to jump into other people's minds and run about inside their brains. Each mind serves as one of the games main levels and each level is completely unique, i.e, each mind is a physical manifestation of the owner's personality, full of their own unique emotional problems, nightmares and subconscious desires. Raz's job, as a Psychonaut-in-training and given the situation at camp, is to enter the minds of various characters and rid them of their personal demons while battling little men in business suits, called 'Censors', who stamp out thoughts that do not belong. Aside from this he also can open memory vaults; which contain stories from the person's past, sort out "emotional baggage" by finding their proper luggage tags, collect 'figments' to advance his level and earn new psychic powers and dust mental cobwebs for PSI cards, which also raises his level. Of course finding and resolving all these isn't a must but for those players who enjoy a good character driven game, this is an additional plus.
A good example to demonstrate the humor, ingenuity and the scale in which Psychonauts operates is the very first tutorial mission in which you have to complete a "basic training" course inside the drill sergeant's head. Being a military man, the drill sergeant's mind is a war-torn battle ground, full of explosions, barbed wire, plants made out of ammunition, rope scaling, flag waving and trenches. The whole level is richly detailed and filled with hilarious internal monologue that you cannot help but get attached with the characters involved and at the end of the day you cannot wait to see what exploring the minds of the other two dozen or so characters will reveal. More importantly though is the scope of the concept design in the game, this cannot be put into perspective by words alone; Psychonauts has more imagination in a single level than most other games put together and it surprises me to no end that the journey you have inside a characters minds tells you just as much about their personality and their back-story as having an actual conversation with said person.
http://i716.photobucket.com/albums/ww161/Skarin_2009/psychonauts1-3.jpg
Remarkably, the drill sergeant's mind is one of the more mundane of the levels you will encounter. Each mind is unique, offering a different design aesthetic and often introducing entirely new gameplay concepts; one involves racing around a twisting snowboard-style course on a rolling ball of psychic energy, while another finds you directing pieces around a game board using telekinesis. To say more would be to give away some of the game's most glorious moments, which are best discovered fresh and unspoiled. However, it is safe to say that everything in a given character's mind is totally weird but also hysterically funny when you consider their personality on the outside. Indeed, it is this theater of the mind in which the game takes place that adds a new dimension to its storytelling, it is these stories told in memories, the weirdness, the fun, the drama, the sheer absurdity and the downright laugh-out-loud moments, that makes this a real boon for Psychonauts and is by far an utterly unique experience.
The minds of your fellow campers are but just one environment that Raz can explore. As you would expect you can also explore the camp, which in itself will have you laughing out loud. The camp primarily acts as a 'filler' between the game stages but it also serves to tie in bits of the storyline together with its own highly detailed events and stories. This camp is filled with the most bizarre cast of characters that you will ever meet and entirely befitting to this large group of people is the soap opera like events that play out, complete with rumors, crazy messages and gushing hormones. One only needs to check the various bulletin boards spread around the camp to find out what the latest and undoubtedly hilarious gossip news was. Much of the other camp activities will include exploring, scavenger hunting and of course, interacting with characters.
Character interactions by far is what brings out the trademark Tim Schafer game in Psychonauts. Regardless if you have engaged yourself in a conversation or if you are just listening in on one, you will undoubtedly get a deeper understanding of the characters personalities but, what is also guaranteed is that you will also be highly amused by the contents of the conversation and astounded by the sheer amounts of it. Depending on what stage you are in the game, the conversation varies to quite an extent and therefore you can be guaranteed that dialogs with your quirky colleagues will be less repetitive and more entertaining and this helps significantly in pulling the storyline forward.
Double Fine has done a great job at keeping the gameplay diverse, and it's equally impressive how they've given each location a very distinctive look. As far as visual styling goes, Psychonauts is reminiscent of the movie The Nightmare Before Christmas, just without the gothic elements. Each level brings something new to the palette, frequently changing the entire appearance of the game and playing with lighting and scale to gobsmacking and often hilarious effect. The background modeling in Psychonauts varies from black velvet laced Spanish cities to pastel colored 1950s suburbia which is quite the eye candy in itself but couple that with faultless voice acting and a theme befitting soundtrack and you end up experiencing an amazing masterpiece.
http://i716.photobucket.com/albums/ww161/Skarin_2009/psychonauts3.jpg
II. Controls
The movement controls for the game are pretty basic and you automatically climb, shimmy, or swing from anything available to climb on, shimmy across, or swing from. However, your experience with the controls depends on which form of the game you are playing. You must remember that Psychonauts is a platformer, and in a game where you have to perform tight moves and precise maneuvering to hit the right jumps and to dodge and fight during boss battles you need a very intuitive controller. Unfortunately for the game, this only comes about in the form of the console controls. As such, the Xbox version (which I have tested) was very effective in getting my commands across but some digging about revealed that all is not so cheery in the PC game version. It has been reported that the keyboard and mouse setup does not translate very well for this style of gaming. While the game does default to a keyboard-mouse setup it isn't as tight or as elegant as one would like it to be when it comes to maneuvering Raz about in the full-on platform mode and so, the recommendation is (assuming you are having difficulties) to switch to a USB console-style gamepad if you're having a go at this game on the computer.
The camera control is another flaw that can be found in the game, and is the leading cause for much of my in game frustration. I often found the camera tends to get stuck behind useless scenery like trees or buildings when I am moving about casually and when I am swinging about on the platform stages the camera decides to focus on some random bit of artwork miles away. Yes, there is a manual camera control feature (right analog stick) but somehow configuring the camera to the proper view gets tiresome after you do it for the twenty seventh time.
The platform controls for the game are quite easy to pick up and quite fun to pull off once you mount the small learning curve and the platform mechanics are solidly designed so you won't find yourself getting stuck on invisible polygons. Pretty soon you will be pulling off acrobatic moves much like that of Prince of Persia but in a more happy-go-lucky manner. That said though, despite the incredible level designs and mechanics involved one cannot help but notice that the game, for no apparent reason, extends your learning curve for certain platform levels. For example, while the majority of the time you can perform normal jumps, you will find yourself blindsided into an occasion where you have to perform pixel-perfect jumps to proceed on with the level. That can get annoying really fast.
[HEADING=2]The Big Picture:[/HEADING]
http://i716.photobucket.com/albums/ww161/Skarin_2009/psychonauts1-2.jpg
There wasn't a moment in the game where I wasn't staring at the screen with my mouth open in awe at what I had just witnessed, heard or done. The game constantly makes you feel like a little kid exploring a candy factory for the first time; it bedazzles you with its lovable hero and engaging storyline and treats you to an overdose of possibilities with your psychic powers at play. More importantly, it is a game that makes you want to see it through to the very end. Only too often do I find a game that fails to capture my interest to the end but not so with Psychonauts. The pacing feels right, the narrative holds together, and the ending is satisfying. The writing, even for incidental characters, is a riot and makes you want to interact repeatedly with every character to make sure you've heard every possible response.
One of Psychonauts strongest selling points is it's humor. Yes, this game is genuinely funny. Not cheap student humor either, or the carefully cynical satire of GTA. Psychonauts delivers proper gut-wrenching laughter, regularly and through the natural interaction of characters or cunning level design. Gameplay rarely gets repetitive and strives to keep you on your toes. There is an inherent ability for the game to switch from fun adventure to insightful drama as in the case with the memory vaults that you open while exploring minds; this can reveal anything from tragic and deeply moving stories to laugh-out-loud hilarious facts about the character in question. All in all, Psychonauts reminds us that the human mind is a bizarre place to venture into and that as in life, people make their own monsters.
http://i716.photobucket.com/albums/ww161/Skarin_2009/psychonauts5.jpg
My only criticism of the game (apart from the aforementioned technical issues) is that the gameplay is pretty short. The main storyline will only take players about 10-15 hours to complete assuming that you don't have a completionist streak in you. However, if you are the kind that needs to unlock everything, then the scavenger hunts and the hidden items and all the optional side events will keep you going for much longer.
Yes, this game has its flaws but like all great entertainment experiences, the few complaints soon fade into insignificance when compared to the otherwise mighty achievement of the game that took more than four years to develop. Psychonauts offers players so much and on so many levels that none of the game's control issues are serious enough to substantially interfere with you enjoying the trip.
Without a doubt, Psychonauts is close to perfection as perfection can get and it is by far the most fun game that I have played in years.
Final Verdict: A quirky and wonderfully strange platformer!. Regardless if your a fan of the genre or not and even if you have never played a platform game before, you will still appreciate what this game has to offer. Psychonauts is easily and without a doubt a buy!!!.
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Psychonauts!. The one game that goes mental!
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