GregHowley.com

It's been a while since I reviewed a game I've played, but since I've gotten my new computer, I've played more games than normal.

Psychonauts is a game I'd heard a lot about, and now that I've played it I've got a lot to say about it, both good and bad.

In Psychonauts, you play a boy named Rasputin, who has snuck into a summer camp for psychics, since his parents hate psychics and wouldn't let him come. They're coming to pick him up, so he only has a couple days to earn all his psychic merit badges.

Let's hit the good stuff first. Psychonauts has excellent graphics, and will make very good use of a high-end system, which is part of the reason I got it. But the single best thing about Psychonauts is the humor. It's the only game that's made me laugh out loud on numerous occasions.

This starts in "basic braining", where you learn the basics of running, jumping, climbing, swinging, walking tightropes, and "grinding" - which is sliding along a rail in a distinctly skateboard-like way. Along the way, you are heckled by the drill-instructor-like teacher, who comes out with some great remarks... "You move like molasses going uphill in January! ...with crutches!!"

But this leads me to the aspects of the game I didn't like. Firstly, I've never had to consult an online walkthrough nearly as much as I did with Psychonauts. There are just so many spots in the game in which the next step is non-intuitive that I had no other choice. If I'd have been playing this type of game back in 1987 when I was on my Commodore 64 and had no internet to consult for answers, I'd likely have had to stop playing the game. The first time this happened was in Basic Braining, when at the top of a wall I'd climbed I found myself at a dead end. The only thing in sight was an irregularly-surfaced platform to which I assumed I had to jump. After failing the series of jumps and dying twenty or thirty times, I got fed up and shut the game down. Eventually, when I couldn't do it, I looked up a walkthrough. It turns out that I was not supposed to jump at all - I'd never have made it. I was supposed to punch a wall with a crack in it, which then opened up into another route. Completely non-intuitive.

The other thing about the game that drove me nuts was the number of situations in which you'd climb, jump, and swing yourself upwards and then fall down and have to do it all over. Doing this two or three times is no big deal, but when you're on your thirtieth try and pulling your hair out, and you land on a platform and accidentally slide off due to a deceptive perspective, it becomes maddeningly frustrating. Personally, I call this the Zorro factor, owing to an old Commodore 64 game of that name in which this happened often. This reached its worst in a section of the game's finale called "Big Top", in which you have to jump laterally between hovering nets which you're climbing. Oh, and the nets are on fire. And the room is filling up with water.

The Zorro factor gets worse anytime you're using the "levitation" power, which isn't levitation so much as it is rolling around on top of a giant psychic beach ball. As you might imagine, your footing is a bit shaky while balancing on the ball, and turns and stops are tough to manage. The levitation lesson, which takes place at a giant dance party inside one of your instructors' minds, is probably my least favorite part of the game.

But now that I've finished my complaining, let me go back to the positives. If the game had been nothing but frustration, I'd never have continued playing long enough to reach the end. One of my favorite portions of the game begins when you enter an old insane asylum and have to enter the minds of a number of inmates in turn. The first is a crazy conspiracy theorist, and his mind is rendered as a crazy neighborhood with twisty upside-down streets floating in the air. There are many groups of trenchcoat-wearing spies, each "disguised" as different types: Road Crew, Phone Workers, Gardeners, Sewer workers, et cetera. The only visible difference between any of these people is their "disguise", which for example is a stop sign for the road crew workers. "I am on the road crew. This is my stop sign" Quite bizarre, but pretty funny. The worker/spies spout sayings which they imagine would make them fit in, "Look at that woman. She has large breasts.", "Although I smell like feces, I deserve your respect, for sewer work is important to society."

The minds of other asylum inmates are rendered as the neon streets of a mexican village, the set of a bizarre theater, and a very nicely done game board where you have to move the giant pieces using your telekinesis.

But my absolute favorite segment comes when you enter the mind of a "giant hulking lungfish". The mind of the fish is rendered as a large city, complete with skyscrapers and streets busy with lungfish-people. In the fish's tiny mind, Rasputin appears as a behemoth, and stomps around the city godzilla style. The inhabitants quickly dub the goggle-wearing youth "Goggalor", and gameplay is interrupted by newscasts detailing Goggalor's destruction of the city. You can climb buildings, pick up and throw tanks, and swat at planes. There's a great movie of that sequence at IGN.

If you're into collecting treasure and finding every last tidbit a game has to hide, you'll find that Psychonauts is heavy on that. Personally, I'm glad that this aspect is optional. For those to whom it appeals however, you can collect psi cards, which are hidden throughout the campsite. Find enough and your rank will increase. (Rank = experience level) There's also a scavenger hunt, which I personally ignored entirely. Items in the hunt appear in your status screen so you can track what you have and what you need. And if this isn't enough, each of the mental realms you visit will have a number of "figments" to collect, which increase your rank when you find enough, and "mental cobwebs" you can clear out once you have enough money to buy a cobweb duster. These can be turned into cards for another rank boost. As if we needed more to collect, each mental realm will also have mental baggage that you can deal with by finding each baggage item's associated key. And later in the game, you can rescue (collect) your fellow campers' brains for a mental health (hit point) boost.

So I'd say Psychonauts is a mixed bag of beans. There's a lot of enjoyable - and funny - stuff in there if you can stomach the mind-numbingly tedious Zorro factor.