Psychonauts

"The Good Crazy"

Psychonauts is really one of the few games I've actually beaten through to the end, and even so it was only recently. It's crazy, but in a good way.

Story:
The game starts out pretty quietly. Your character, Razputin, aka Raz, runs away from home, in contrast to the norm, to escape the circus (he's a child acrobat, I should probably mention) and goes to Camp Whispering Rock, a summer camp for cadets to an elite corps of extrasensory soldiers, Psychonauts. At first our young hero is just there to learn, but then finds himself embroiled in a sinister plot at which some evil dude is trying to take over the world using the brains of the other kids and since he's the only one whose brain is in his head, literally, it's up to him to find the brains and save the camp while trying to bust the bad guy by journeying into the subconscious minds of those around him, including (but not limited to) a square secret agent, another secret agent to whom life's a non-stop party, a mutant, a security guard, a stage performer, an insane asylum orderly and an artist.

Story Score: 9/10
The levels are all very well made and perfectly replicate the personalities of the characters whom they are based off of. The one level I have a problem with is Boyd Cooper's mind, due to the whole orientation changing and "fall off the level into the endless abyss" thing. All the characters you come across have their own personality quirks, ranging from an insane asylum orderly who went insane and is channeling Napoleon Bonaparte to an actress who is emotionally stressed out over her mother's suicide right down to the emotionally-fragile camp bully.

Gameplay:
Gameplay-wise there's not much to tell. Your job is to run, jump, punch and use your telekinetic abilities to fight your way through the various levels and challenges you come across. Though on the X-Box, using the black and white buttons to do telekinetic ability whatever is a little monotonous, the X-Box 360 makes good use of it with the right and left bumpers. The side quests include a camp-wide scavenger hunt, finding the other campers' brains, obtaining Psi Challenge Markers and Psi Cards, hunting down figments of peoples' imaginations, finding safes containing their memories, searching for mental cobwebs and sorting emotional baggage.

Gameplay Score: 10/10
I don't know what it is, but something about having the ability to set everything from squirrels to girl scouts on fire is awesome. You can't insult that. It's against the law or something. However, the various side-quests you have to do, such as chasing down figments, mental cobwebs, emotional baggage and safes containing the characters' memories can be a little tedious and the levels of unfairness tend to vary. Especially since you can't go back into Coach Oleander's mind and get his mental cobwebs and mental baggage that you missed.

Visuals:
The game is visually pretty darn good. When there's direct lighting on what you're looking at, that is. When the game changes from day to night, it becomes a real chore trying to track down the scavenger hunt items, Psi Cards and Challenge Markers, finding the other kids' brains is a bit of an annoyance when you can't see your hand in front of your face and the few lamps there are show off very little light.

Visuals Score: 8/10
I really can't harp on the dark aspects of the game too much because your Levitation Ball provides some light, and all the levels and areas are incredibly well-detailed.

Sound:
Every squeak, squawk, boink, bonk, splat, crack, whap and sproing is well-represented and well-defined, every character's voice seems to mimic their personality well (save one who is more of a split personality) and the game generally sounds like a big Bugs Bunny cartoon, something I wish I could see/hear more of.

Sound Score: 10/10
The music and sounds fit well with the levels, especially in Black Velvetopia.

Final Thoughts:
Psychonauts is a fun game. I won't try to hide or sugarcoat that. I'm going to list out of context a few things that occur within Psychonauts: a level where you become a giant Godzilla-esque monster and terrorize a society of fish, an insane asylum orderly channeling the spirit of his great-great-great grandfather Napoleon Bonaparte, a dentist that harvests brains, a telekinetic ability that lets you set squirrels on fire (come on, everyone wants to set squirrels on fire!), a milkman who delivers molotov cocktails, and a wrestler-turn-artist who can't stop thinking about bullfights. A game with all these things simply cannot be judged harshly. It's illegal.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 06/20/08

Game Release: Psychonauts (US, 04/19/05)