The Daily Bloon

Mmm….Blockbuster.

Title: Psychonauts
Genre (Video Game): Action/Platformer
Systems: Xbox, PC, PS2
Description: A wonderful melting pot of all your favorite games with a lot of humor to top it off.
Quickrating: 8/10

Let’s start off this review with the best thing about this game: the humor. You know how I was congratulating The Bard’s Tale several months back on its wonderful sense of humor? Well, now comes Psychonauts, a game after TBT’s own heart. Psychonauts is easily the funniest game since TBT, and maybe even funnier than that. It has wildly varying humor, from using a piece of bacon as a calling device to funny little pokes at society. It’s humor that everyone can get, as opposed to the humor rooted in American culture, which can get a tad bit tedious.

In Psychonauts, you are an aspiring young psychic Razputin who runs away from the circus to go to a summer psychic camp. While there, you get pulled into a devious plan and must use your powers to save the world. This is done by using psycho-portals to insert yourself in someone’s mind, fighting off their fears, childhood problems, and obsessions in strange landscapes that reflect the balance of that person’s psyche. Great stuff to be able to enter a paranoid, conspiracy-obsessed security guard’s mind to find yourself in a twisted suburbia with spies in trenchcoats, sweet little girl scouts, and cameras popping out of trashcans, lawn ornaments, and all other objects around you.

The gameplay is strangely reminiscent of Zelda games, Ratchet and Clank games, and Prince of Persia games. The combat is definitely from Zelda, but the jumping segments share from R&C and PoP. So, while the layout is very original, the gameplay really isn’t. Not to say that the gameplay’s bad, just that it’s not new or novel in many ways. Still a blast to play, though, even if you’re just scavenging around for money.

You have all the psychic powers you can think of, but telekinesis, which should be the most powerful, is a joke, and you will only use it when you absolutely have to. The only one you will really use in most combat situations is Targeting, which shoots beams from your brain. Pyrokinesis takes too long, and Confusion is too much of a hassle.

All of the levels are varied, meaning no one’s brain can be played like someone else’s, which is wonderfully true to the game’s meaning. You’ll play a level with only jumping parts, as well as a shooting gallery level and even a level where you are Godzilla-sized in a city of Lungfish. My favorite levels were the last few, because these departed from the Zelda-rule that adhered to the beginning of the game: levels are completed using only newfound skills. However, after you got almost all of the skills, the levels became brilliant mixtures of different techniques; utilizing your whole mind to figure out how to progress. However, as great as the game’s puzzles are, if you’re stumped, there’s always someone ready to give advice so that you’re not constantly dashing back and forth from gamefaqs.com or some other guide. The game is also very forgiving in others ways, as you can’t really get a Game Over, you’ll merely get booted out of someone’s mind and have to go back through it. But nice little teleporters will warp you through levels once you reach them, so backtracking isn’t an issue either. Also, you’ll have to really put forth an effort in order to die, especially near the end when you have so much health.

Alas, how ironic that the things that hold this extroadinarily unique game back are the most common flaws out there! The camera is really quite bad, especially in the closed-in areas you find in the latter half of the game. The load times for the PS2 version, at least, are horrendous. Many-a-time have I switched to a TV channel during the load times in order to keep awake. And, although I did play this game very hard and very often, I did manage to beat it in one rental period. Therefore, while I would definitely suggest playing this game, I don’t think you really have to buy it, because the replayability isn’t very high, either. I mean, really, once you get past the story, a lot of what you would go back to do is collect things in people’s minds, which would get old really fast.

If you need a break from the norm, I suggest Psychonauts. Its characters will stick in your mind, its jokes will tickle you silly, and its good ol’ fun level will keep you smiling until you return it to your local Blockbuster.

“And, finally, I would like to say that I am very, very sorry for stealing all of your brains and trying to take over the world.”–Psychonauts