Psychonauts Review by Palfrei
By palfrei 4 Comments
Graphics: 8.5
Music: 9
Story: 8.5
Control: 7
Gameplay: 9
Level design: 10
TOTAL: 9 (rounded)
Psychonauts really amazed me. It is a really crazy and cool game to play. I'm not going to spoil much of the story but we have to control a kid that goes to a summer camp for psychics and discovers a plot to take control of people's brains... the funny part is that it will not happen by brainwashing, no, no, no.
The gameplay involves the usual 3D platforming and we can resort to several psychic powers to ease our journey through the minds of several unstable people; unstable people with hilarious personalities and dialogues [yes, personalities for one person, I'm talking about crazy people here]. Besides jumping, moving and shooting there's the usual item and money fetching and we can level up our character by using psycards and mental cowebbs in weird machines.
What makes this game shine above others, besides the sense of humour, is its level design. Each level is a crazy world on its own and they range from a Godzilla-sentai level to a meat-filled circus and, my favourite, a Waterloo-battle game board. In this level, we go from the traditional board perspective requiring to move pieces [with our psychic powers] to actually being inside the board world as if it were a regular a level and we keep going between these two "dimensions" of gameplay.
There are some issues with the default controls, especially if you are using the keyboard-and-mouse combination but, fortunately, we can customize almost everything and even the camera pitch, which is extremely important to me since I prefer the inverted vertical control.
Graphically, the game looks vibrant and the engine handles things well. It is a pleasure to look at the characters and levels because they have been cleverly designed with a lot of "personality".
Psychonauts is a platformer like many others but its heart does not lie in its platforming roots but in its "psychoticness".
Give it a try
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