Psychonauts
Released: April 19, 2005
Game Length: 15 Hours
Grade: A
Development
A Lost Game: A long time ago when the Playstation 2 was cool, there was a guy by the name of Tim Schafer who was helping LucasArts in developing quite a bit of adventure games - The Secret of Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, and Grim Fandango. He split off and founded his own company by the name of Double Fine to begin making certain kinds of games with a broader appeal. Among the giant wave of platforming games we all saw that decade, Tim wanted to work on an old abandoned concept he had a few years ago called Psychonauts. But as we all know from the console wars, development wasn't easy. The original backing of the game came from a man named Ed Fries that worked with Microsoft. When he left in 2004, so did the publishing for the game. The internal conflict between their artists and programmers didn't help matters. Instead, the company Majesco Entertainment picked up the slack. Unfortunately, there is a good reason why you may have never heard of them before. Only 400,000 retail units were sold from all the work generated by 42 members and a budget of $11.5 million, causing the publishing company to leave the video game industry for good.
Introduction: For a lot of people, this title was barely on the radar. Double Fine kept pushing the game, working and releasing it every time a new console came out. But the moment that really cemented its position was when it came to Humble Bundle in 2012. Paying above the average, which was $7 at the time, allowed you to obtain Bastion on top of the other good games contained in this bundle. They made more money in those two years than ever before after receiving publishing rights to the game.
Gameplay
The mechanics: The main story wasn't anywhere near what I thought it was going to be. You are a kid who shows up at camp where there are a bunch of kids hanging out with psychic abilities. At first, I thought they were going to make you enter each of their minds and learn their associated ability. These kids can read minds, talk to animals, catch things on fire, and turn invisible. You do eventually learn some of these abilities yourself, but only through gradually exploring other people's minds. A big hindrance to the gameplay is how you can only tie 3 of these abilities to your gamepad. The left trigger is exclusively mapped to resetting your camera. While two of the abilities are situational, the other six abilities will need to be constantly juggled around depending on which world you are in.
The locations: I wasn't expecting much content going in after seeing how many hours it was taking people to beat the game, but there is relatively a good chunk of places to visit. The open portion of the world where you do your scavenger hunt at camp is great to wander around in, but it is the gameplay loop inside the minds that really excel. The first three worlds are generated from your teachers to let you become accustomed to the mechanics. You explore a war-torn mind filled with obstacles that test your acrobatics, a clean mind that tests your combat, and a funky mind that tests your platforming skills. I had thought the rest of the game would be based on the rest of the kids at camp, but their personalities were not part of the course. Instead there are five worlds that are composed from those who are clinically insane. Very much like the early segments of the game, these places are ludicrously interesting to explore. The way each one is uniquely presented and builds on the mechanics you learn in the other three minds are great. However, I must point out that there is one final world which combines two minds into one. This one was so excruciatingly difficult that I rage quit. The developers even mused on how difficult it was when they named the Steam achievement "I Thought That Was Unbeatable!" Although they were nice enough to ease the lost of health instead of lives if you fell to the pit below, the camera angles and lack of "snap" in the environment made one portion of the map too much for me to handle.
Extra
Progression: Because the game is relatively short, they included a ton of things to collect. Some of these things will require some careful coordination. This can be difficult when they are constantly moving around the environment. It will take a few tries and some precise jumping to get up to 100% completion. Although they give you the option to play the game using a keyboard and mouse, I felt the gamepad was more suited to this undertaking. Despite the night transition halfway through the game, it is still possible and encouraged to revisit old worlds for more items. However, traversing the camp becomes a pain with the addition of the psychic night wolves hanging around. I was pretty sad when all those psy-kids were no longer around to talk to either. Unfortunately, I still got stuck on a couple of later levels because the exact order in which I could continue wasn't made quite clear to me.
Attention to Detail: Although the story and gameplay were quite enjoyable in their own right, what I liked the most is how much of the game wasn't necessary to finish the game. For example, there is a bulletin board that you can click on about a dozen times. Each time will bring up another notation of what a camp member would write in that sort of setting. They added a help feature through their own wacky set-up of using a strip of bacon to call forth your mentor to advise you of how to pass certain obstacles or defeat specific encounters. You can converse with several members multiple times at various intervals of the game. The game automatically pauses if you lose focus and collects all of the data in a nice journal. There are lots of ways to quickly travel around the various hubs and a list of options to choose from in dialogue (even if denying the choice only gets you a slap in the face).
Summary
Review: Although Psychonauts is a relatively old game, much of the content holds up pretty well to modern standards. There are plenty of things to collect, great platforming puzzles, intriguing story, extra content the developers didn't need to include, and surprisingly interesting worlds to explore. However, I also must urge with a side of caution. As fanatical and weird the worlds can get, there are also some things that can bend a little too far beyond one's comfort zone. If one is preparing to play Psychonauts 2, I highly recommend playing the first one and at the very least watch a playthrough of the virtual reality game Psychoanuts: In the Rhombus of Ruin. The series is definitely not like anything I've ever seen before.
3-18-2022