An underappreciated but not unremebered tresure.
For anyone who appreciates artistic style and carefully crafted games you will love Psychonauts as much as I do. Witty dialogue, charming characters, and enjoyable gameplay are the brain, heart, and legs of Psychonauts. Not very often does a game come that makes you say "Oh, that’s why I like games".
You play Razputin better known as Raz, a young psychic that ran away from the circus to go to Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp. Whispering Rock is filled with other psychic camp goers and counselors that populate the camp. Instead of bracelet making in this camp you go into others minds. This is where Psychonauts shines. Every mind you enter is completely original visually and has different gameplay functions and ideas. You travel though the mind of a giant blow fish as a Godzilla like monster. In a mind of a paranoid conspiracy theorist and play chess against someone whose altar ego is Napoleon.
The story progresses very well and there is rarely a calm moment. There are things around the environment to collect though you just wanna see the next cutscene. All of the cutscenes are directed very well and are very funny this is one of the funniest games I’ve ever played. The voice acting is top notch and has great music to match. All of things along with the brilliant art style are what makes this game so great. Every character, environment, and brain is colored with charm.
You gain the abilities of telekinesis, levitation, burning things, invisibility, clairvoyance, and other things. You get better at these by finding psy cards and psy chores which aren’t to hard to find. In these minds are censors, theses are the enemies you fight the most. You will also find emotional baggage that you need to find the tags to and vaults with pictures that show the origin of the person whose mind you are exploring. The game is a traditional platformer but it is the imaginative use of these functions that make it really fun. Most of the minds are a puzzle that is not too hard or too easy.
The game will take about 8 to 9 hours to complete and has a good amount of replay value. There is a hint at a sequel though because of its less than bad sales there will not be any other psychonauts which is a huge bummer. It is no longer even manufactured for Xbox but can be bought over Xbox Marketplace. I am simplifying this to say the least I could write pages on Psychonauts. This is a true treasure that you need to find and play it. This game really is special.
