Hey, uh...remember my GOTY blog from several months ago? The one that ended with Claude destroying your conceptions of existence? Remember how I said I'd be writing about how dumb Psychonauts is while posting in the blog itself? Two things wrong with that: first, I wrote this out almost two weeks before that blog. Second: Psychonauts is amazing. Like, really amazing. I'd go so far as to say that it proves platformers still have a place in modern gaming, but honestly, this is more like a death knell for platformers. How many developers can put the level of thought that's in Psychonauts in this game? (It doesn't help that this came out in 2005.)
Part of the reason why I'm gushing so much over this game is because of how much it resembles a cartoon from the 1990s. As we all know, the 1990s produced some amazing cartoons, and Psychonauts is here to remind us how. The first step is "make sure your protagonist is voiced by a Power Ranger", and all the other steps are focused on the art. I don't even know how to put it. Everything's just twisted and exaggerated to...well, cartoonish proportions. It's almost scary, at times, which I guess is the point. (I'd say it's to give each character a distinct feel, but let's be honest: who the hell remembers any of the non-plot-related campers outside of Patrick Klepek?) After all, you're at a camp for psychics that's essentially sitting on an alien nuclear stockpile or something. Did you expect things to be sunny and cheery? It also helps that the game has a pleasantly mean sense of humor lifted st-
Oh, wait, I've just realized something: I forgot to explain the premise. Well, let me rectify that immediately. There's a camp for psychics somewhere (I'm guessing the Doug universe, given all the lumpy heads and inhuman skin tones), and an oddly calm Richard Horvitz manages to sneak in as the player character over the course of a seven minute cutscene. Somehow, this leads to one of the supervisors wanting to take over the world. What? What do you mean that sounds abrupt and superfluous? Well, unfortunately, it is. It kinda comes out of nowhere in the middle of Raz's almost sad story about training to be a psychonaut. What makes this truly unfortuante is how the game thinks almost everything else through. I'd use the title screen as an example, but given how @Pepsiman already did that (and did it much better than I ever will), I'll instead list every other example under the pretentious sun.
For instance, this is a platformer. Have I mentioned that? Say, how does a regular camper know how to jump about the wilderness like crazy? He's from a family of acrobats, of course! A family of acrobats that were cursed by gypsies or some shit to die in water, which explains why you can't swim AND why he ran away to this camp in the first place. I know this sounds like a cop-out, but remember: there's an alien nuclear stockpile underneath this camp. Of course some crazy shit's gonna go down. It also kinda explains why everybody you encounter is out of their mind, allowing you to rummage around in it and sort out their emotional problems. It also also explains why none of the characters actually take any role in solving their own damn problems over the course of the game. With the exception of maybe one guy, they all just mope about and let Raz sort things out. What kind of lesson is that to take away from the game? "Just wait for a jaundiced Michael Jackson impersonator to jump inside your mind if you want your emotional problems sorted out"? Let that go down as the only significant problem I have with the game's scenarios.
And let this go down as the only complaint I have against the level design: levitation. It destroys a lot of good level design. I used it to skip a pretty cool grinding section in the final level simply because I'm a massively lazy bastard. That out of the way? Good. How about I gush all over the level design, then? Because the level design is all kinds of amazing. As I'm certain I've said before, you jump into people's minds and whack their problems away, and that's where half the fun comes from: figuring out just what their problems are. Every level has a unique feel specific to one character, and dear god, does it show. Sasha's a control freak with a Pandora box level; the Lungfish's mind is a reverse Godzilla where everybody's an assole; and then there's the Milkman. Clearly, he has no problems. You know, like the levels in general. It's surprising how well the level design reinforces people's character. Who was behind this, again? Shit. Things got pretty awkward fast.
How about we move away from the story? I mean, it's pretty easy to do so, since actually playing through the levels is just as fun as....whatever the hell I was doing in the last paragraph. It's hard to place why, though, given how many different ideas it employs. I know what you're thinking, and no: this is nothing like Alone in the Dark. The difference here is that all these different gameplay concepts are actually worked in well. I can say that I had just as much fun running around the Milkman's level as I did puzzling my way through the Napoleon stuff. (I can, but I won't, because I don't want to be set ablaze by fortified milk.) Also amazing is just how long a given level can carry its idea without running it into the ground. Some levels last longer than the entire game and somehow do a good job of masking that insane fact. (Odd, then, that the story only lasts a day and the game itself less than half that.) The only exception to this rule would probably be the artist level, where you have to navigate tight hallways and not get run over by a bull every five seconds. It's just as fun as it sounds, which is to say that it's not.
This is where I talk about collectibles, but not in the way you'd expect. Here's the thing: I actually like them. Yea, there are a trillion to keep track of, and their purposes overlap a lot. In fact, outside a couple story-related pick-ups, almost all of them are for increasing your rank. But that's where the strength lies: purpose. As in "they actually have one". This isn't collecting for collecting's sake, or to make some number counter go up for a secret ending (sort of). It's all there to unlock better powers over the course of the game and expand your psychic power. Isn't that enough reason to jump around levels time and time again, searching out that last figment? So you can light things on fire with your mind? In fact, that's all I really needed to say to sell you on the game: "light things on fire with your mind". Who cares about things like character design or visuals or level design or humor or anything like that? Light things on fire with your mind. That is all.
Review Synopsis
- This game is simply a reminder as to why the 90s were awesome.
- Everything about the Milkman, from his illogically muddled mind to exploring said muddled mind, is also awesome.
- Oh, and you should probably play this with a controller, since using a mouse and keyboard set-up is a sluggish nightmare.
You know what else is Psycho? The game immediately following this completely unrelated video:
I can't even tie it into the 90s thing from before. DuckTales came out in 1987. (It was originally going to be this, but then I realized how well the current video would fit into the last blog.)
Actually: scratch that. This game isn't terribly psycho. Yea, the beginning and the end are all kinds of psycho, but not much else about the game is very psycho. In retrospect, that video above is more psycho than Psycho Fox. I mean, it's a large-chinned duck (or an Irish pelican named McQuack) at a rave and still wearing his clothes. Psycho Fox, on the other hand, is more or less a very average platformer.
The only thing I can think of that separates it from everything else, for better or for worse, are the controls. First, because punching your enemies simply involves lazily stretching your fist forward like some type of horrifying lollipop monster. Second, everything's incredibly momentum based. It takes a while to build up speed, and you're not getting anywhere without speed. Not in the Sonic the Hedgehog "blast all over the level" sense (since that wouldn't be made for about two more years), although that's certainly present It's more in the Ice Climber "your jump is fucking pitiful" sense that you need momentum. Now, this can pay off in a few areas, like swinging off a giant pole and....no, wait, that's pretty much the only thing I remember liking about it. The rest of the time, the controls were just mildly annoying, especially when you plow straight into an enemy because you didn't allow yourself the 200 feet necessary to come to a complete stop.
Of course, you can change characters at any time to alleviate this a little, but I really fail to see the point. What? You thought the Fox was the only playable character in the game? Of course not! You also get a crap hippo for busting down the occasional wall, a nerdy monkey who can jump really high, and a tiger I completely ignored. As you can probably tell, I spent most of my time playing as the monkey. There are a lot more situations where you need to jump high than there are where you don't need to jump high, so the monkey gets all the love. And while I'm on the subject of things you can do in the pause screen (because how else did you think you change characters?), I might as well mention the items. Again, only one of them is really any good. There's a character switching item (useless), a doll that I think eliminates all enemies on screen (again, I think; I was never clear on what exactly it was doing besides slightly startling me), and an invincibility potion. Can you guess which one I actually used over the course of the game?
You know, by now, I probably should have elaborated on how incredibly average this average platformer is. I want to, but how can I do it without listing off common features in platformers? There's a power-up that lets you kill things better (the bird from the earlier video). You jump around levels that weren't so much designed as they were chaotically slapped together. You fight the same three bosses over the course of the game (excluding that part at the end where you don't). Now don't misunderstand these as criticisms against the game or anything. Psycho Fox is still good for quick bursts of fun, but that's about it. You get some dumb characters, an insane scenario you didn't know existed in the first place, and gameplay mechanics that are nothing more than competent. It goes without saying that none of this is particularly psycho.
Review Synopsis
- Imagine if Sonic's fat gut was a gameplay mechanic. That's what Psycho Fox is like.
- Pause screens should just be pause screens. I don't need a billion items and characters on it, especially if I don't need any of them.
- Other than that, it is a platformer.
Well, did you guess the theme behind this blog? The answer is below.
It's drugs. The theme is always drugs.
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