Psychonauts ~ A Dragonatrix Review

Psychonauts is often regarded as a game that is one of the best ever made by reviewers (professional or otherwise) and players alike. Whilst it's remarkably difficult to find people who have even heard of the game - let alone played it - should you happen to know someone who has, chances are they'll tell you the same thing I'm about to (unless they're a first person shooter fanboy, then that's just weird): screw Halo 3. This IS the best game ever made.

(One of the main reasons why the game didn't sell as well as it should have, may be that it was never actually advertised properly. I certainly had never even heard of it until sometime two years ago when I chanced upon it in a backdated copy of my then favorite PS2 game review magazine; I have yet to even find a TV advertisement for it, or even some snippit from a magazine that wasn't said review.)

Since you've likely never heard of the game, I might as well give a minor explanation as to how the game came into creation; Double Fine Productions is a company created by Tim Schafer (the guy who helped create Grim Fandago and the first two Monkey Island games; you just know this game is gonna be good with that knowledge alone) in 2000 shortly after he left LucasArts. It's personel is made up of the Grim Fandago development team and several other people. If you've never heard of Double Fine either, I'm not surprised, as at the time of writing, Psychonauts is the only game they've ever made; 5 years after the company was formed and 4 years before the predicted release of their second game.

Well, I'm four paragraphs in and I haven't even started discussing the game yet so I might as well start now, otherwise this'll have been a giant waste of time. Psychonauts is about a child named Razputin Aquato (Raz for short) who runs away from the circus to go to Whispering Rock Psyching Summer Camp where psychics are trained to become the elite agents known as Psychonauts. He manages to get in with minimal worry, but quickly gets caught and is technically not allowed to participate in any camp activites as he doesn't have parental permission to be there and thus one of the camp councellors - Mia Vodella - calls his father (who caused Raz to run away in the first place, because he hates psychics) to come and collect Raz. This leads to Raz attempting to complete the entire camp course within one day to prove his worth, yet he manages to get involved in something much bigger...

Psychonauts gameplay is one of the places where the game really excels, due to the nature of every powerup being a plot-related unlockable (even the seemingly optional ones are needed at some point) that can be upgraded eventually. Each powerup takes the guise of a new psychic power, and they are fairly predictable for the most part; Psi-Blast is the main offensive powerup but it isn't actually the first (the easiest way to describe what it does is by simply calling them "mind bullets"), that works as a gun in an action game; it actually has ammo that CAN and frequently does run out. Pyrokinesis is the standard psychic ability of burninating (yes, I said burninating) with the mind. Telekinesis is another standard ability for anything to do with psychics (telekinesis is the ability to move things with the mind for those that don't know). Invisibilty is one of those things that do exactly what you think it does. Levitation is a rather interesting one; it can be used to make Raz float but it's also used a method of moving faster than normal (at the slight cost of ease of control) via a colour-customisable sphere that appears like a balloon. Shield is nothing worth using overly much, aside from in a few specific areas where it's needed, it prevents all ranged damage done to Raz for about 3 seconds. Finally, the power of Clairvoyance. This is normally a power associated with the ability to see into the future but in this case it does something a bit different. By holding an item, when you activate Clairvoyance you can see exactly what this item will show you; more often than not, it's what the other characters see Raz as, but some items show things like a bonus scene, and one is used to solve a puzzle via this very method. [Don't worry, none of these powers are surprises or anything; they're all in the manual.]

These abilities allow for some interesting gameplay choices that you can make, but I invariably end up using Psi-Blast, Levitate, and Pyrokinesis. Everything else isn't really all that useful or is merely designed for puzzle solving.

The really interesting gimmick that Psychonauts has, however, is the ability to enter specific characters minds. Some of these are pretty much exactly what you'd expect, some have hidden secrets that the character doesn't want you to find out about, and some are just plain weird. The minds, as well as being fun little romps inside a characters psyche, are technically the levels of the game. There aren't really many minds to enter [13 in total; not everyone's can be entered] but some of them are pretty lengthy, and/or really difficult to compensate. Each mind has a pretty interesting mini-plot that goes with it (for the most part anyway), but there is one mind in particular that no one can ever forget because it's just so awesome (and random). I would explain it, but since it comes pretty late in the game it's a spoiler. Of awesomeness.

Another really good quality of Psychonauts, is that there's never a moment where nothing is really happening, unless you intentionally just stand in an awkward spot. In almost every screen, there are a couple of bonus scenes that tell you more about the other campers, or are just little short scenes. A lot of them are really easy to miss as well; I've played through this game many times and I don't think I've seen them all yet!

I might as well give my opinion of the unimportant details now, like the graphics. The graphics are pretty good for a 2005 release game, and still manage to hold up well today. I don't find myself looking at the graphics of the game that often though, because I'm normally having fun doing, well, anything. The music is also very good, but some tracks are pretty boring and dull (these are only found at the end of the game though). Another little quirk with the game, is that even though it could be considered a childs game with regard to the difficult of a good 98% of the game, some of it is actually pretty scary all things considered. I dread the end-game optional backtracking, due to some of the stuff that can be encountered then. And if you don't get this one specific item, you have to do it. That's pretty much my only qualm with the game; you need seemingly optional items that you aren't even told you need until the very moment you need them.

In conclusion, I highly highly reccomend giving this game a try. Don't worry if you have neither a Playstation 2 or an original Xbox (any more), as it can be bought through Steam for the Xbox 360 or PC. I'm not entirely sure of the price, but I highly doubt it'll be too expensive; even if it is, you can also try someone elses copy. This game is worth playing at least once just for the experience of doing so. And there's a lot to be experienced in a world as detailed as this one is.