5/5 ★ – LadaFanboy's review of Psychonauts.

I play lots of platform games, most of them are memorable through it’s gameplay,graphics and soundtrack. Psychonauts does none of those things incredibly well, if he were just those things it would have been completely forgotten already. Psychonauts even without great gameplay or technical aspects he managed to become one of the best, weirdest, most surreal and fun experiences I ever had with a game. I am going to review Psychonauts, separating him in two sections: story, gameplay and completion/replayability. In those sections I’ll review almost every aspect of the game in those respective departments, also spoilers for the game, with that said and done, let’s do this: Story: Narrative The narrative follows Razputin (Raz for short), a psychic kid who runs away from the circus (literally) to go into a camp that trains kids to become psychonaut, essentially a psychic superhero/spy. After he is found out at the camp, the teachers at the camp call his parents since he has gone to the camp without his parents authorization. Now with less than 3 days to become a psychonaut, Raz must work hard to try and convince the camp teachers to train him to become a psychonaut, luckily he has lots of talent and potential, but barely he knows that behind the scenes someone is stealing the kids brains and he is the only one who can stop this evil threat. The narrative concept is very creative, utilizing the typical “summer camp gone wrong” trope to create an incredibly surreal and bizarre experience. The narrative goes from light hearted and funny to extremely dark and insane, the narrative greatest achievement is how well it balanced its humor with the dark themes of mental health and trauma, together with its consistent good characters and atmosphere, making for one of the best narratives I have ever seen in a game. Characters The characters from Psychonauts are extremely unique, from both a design and personality standpoint. One of this game many achievements is the fact it makes every character funny I it’s own way, from the stoic Sasha to the insane Boyd, almost everyone has made me laugh on more than one occasion, the jokes involving each one are incredibly well written. The best part is that they aren’t just funny, most of them has a lot more going on than it appears, the major characters all have detailed backgrounds, all of them are great, but this game biggest achievement with its characters are the minor ones. The minor characters are amazing here, I remember all of them, and that is very hard for me normally. During this game first half, we can hear and interact with various kids throughout the camp, we can see many storylines happening and see them in more depth than when they first appear, and is awesome to see the developers put so much care into these background characters, creating many parallel storylines for each one of them, I recommend every time you progress through the story you stop and try to interact with as many characters as possible. In the second half we don’t have as many side characters, but most of them compensate that by having the levels passing through their minds, I am going to talk more about them in the level design section, but to put it simply they are amazing. In summary, the characters are memorable, every one is well written and consistent, the highlights for me are Raz, Sasha and Boyd do to how unique they are and the roles they play at the game. Atmosphere This game atmosphere is weird to put it lightly, in the real world everything looks normal, but you can already tell the bizarre nature of the game through its visual presentation and character design. Everything looks like it comes directly from a Tim Burton movie, from the characters through the art style and off the wall weird vibes this game gives you at the beginning. The atmosphere reaches its pinnacle in the mind levels, each one has their own atmosphere, it can go to upbeat and colorful, to unsettling and disturbing, they perfectly represent the games tone. The game atmosphere is memorable and it perfectly fits with the game story and characters, now that the story section is done let’s go to the gameplay aspects. Gameplay: Character controls, moves and abilities Raz controls well and moving as him fells very acrobatic, his moves makes you truly believe he came from a family of circus acrobats, controlling him isn’t as satisfying as Mario, but it does the job well, the problems start to come up with the psychic abilities. Raz can do simple attacks which are okay, he can also use psychic abilities, they are....okay I guess, they are mostly very clunky to use and most of them you are going to forget for large chunks of the game and the others just aren’t very useful. The only abilities the player will always use is the psy blast and levitation, but there are entire levels dedicated to these power ups, and the only other level that does that and is arguably the best of them, doesn’t really matter since the power it introduces is useless everywhere else. So in terms of controls and abilities it is okay, nothing amazing and mostly forgettable or very clunky, this game doesn’t play incredibly well and there are much better games in these aspects. Technical/Sound design The graphics haven’t aged well with some very ugly textures and the fps drops a lot of times, not to the point of ruining the gameplay, but are visually annoying and sometimes can ruin this game presentation, the sound design is also nothing amazing, doing things on this game doesn’t feel or sound very satisfying, the soundtrack is good, but nothing to write home about. Overall this aspect is pretty bad, I know it’s a 6th gen game, but many others on that time were better and still aged well in these aspects, is very difficult to see if this part will be bad until the end. Level design Yeah never mind, this game level design is top notch, but it is for different reasons than the normal, these levels are incredible for their aesthetic, mechanics and connection to the character’s stories. The levels are separated into two types, the first are the real world levels, there are only two levels of this type on the game, they are the biggest levels on the game, to the point that each one has various areas separating each. Both levels are fun to explore and play around, this is where most of the story takes place and where we’ll interact with most characters, they also serve as hub worlds to the other type of levels on this game. Those levels are know as the mind levels, you probably heard of me talking about them before, in these levels Raz enter people’s minds to clear some objective, because of this the levels can be as creative and imaginative as they want. They also serve as ways to show each character backstory and how they perceive the world, Sasha’s mind is a monochromatic and organized cube that don’t let any emotions escape, Milla’ mind is a constant disco party that also serves as a distraction from her traumatic past. These levels represent the games themes of how you deal with trauma and your personal demons very well, there is two levels I would like to highlight, the Milkman Conspiracy and the Meat Circus. The Milkman Conspiracy is the most unsettling and bizarre level in the game. In the level you go through Boyd Cooper’s mind, a paranoid night guard who is obsessed with a conspiracy of his own involving a man know as the milkman. The level setting is extremely creative, Boyd’s mind is represented as nice neighborhood that became completely twisted, with warped streets and the neighbors are constantly trying to spy on one another. It’s a bizarre, funny and dark concept that perfectly represents Boyd constant state of paranoia, and also represents everything I love from this game. The other level is the worst and final level of the game, the infamous Meat Circus, this level is the weakest level on the game from both a aesthetic and gameplay perspective. First, visually this level is boring compared to the others, the meat aesthetic combined with the circus is cool at first, but it gradually becomes more boring and uninteresting to look at with the time, because other than that there is not much more going for with this level presentation. Second is the gameplay aspect, this level first part is a boring escort mission, the second part is rail who goes to long and is boring too. The worst part is the final boss fight that goes from stupidly easy to hard as hell, the difficulty of this boss isn’t consistent with the game or itself, which annoys me as hell. The story concept of the level is good and is executed relatively well, but it doesn’t excuse the rest of this mess, I don’t hate the level, but I agree is the worst part of the game. Completion/Replayability: One of this game main objectives is to up your ranks as a psy cadet, for this you must collect psi cards that are found mostly on the real world levels and when combined with a psi core that can be bought on the camp shop, we also have the figments of imagination that are scattered throughout the mind levels. Collecting figments here and there is not a problem, collecting all of them is another story, they come in large scale and are easy to blend in the background, it’s almost impossible to collect all without looking up in a guide. The psi cards comes in two formats, on the real world where they are found normally and in the mind levels in the form of cobwebs, which brings to another problem. To collect cobwebs you need the most expensive item in the game’s shop, you buy items in this game by collecting arrow heads that serve as the currency in the game. You can occasionally get arrow heads by exploring the world levels and beating enemies or breakable objects in the mind level. Main problem being you need more than 800 of these suckers to buy that specific item, and considering is already necessary on the fifth mind level you’re going to have a lot of problem collecting these (seriously just see a guide to find good farming points and where you can get a bunch of these). The other collectibles are way better, we have the scavenger hunt items on the real world levels that can be traded for a bunch of ranks, the emotional bags that does the same but on the mind levels and when all of them are collected gives you artwork for the game characters and levels. The best collectibles are the memory vaults on the mind levels, collecting them give you access to each character past, some are funny as hell, while others are incredibly tragic. Overall I recommend collecting most of the ranks since most of your psychic abilities come from this thing and also the memory vaults, other than that it isn’t very necessary, do it only if you are a completionist. Final thoughts Psychonauts is everything I want of a story, being funny, dark and unique. The sense of humor on this game can go from childish to dark very quickly, Raz is an endearing protagonist for me and the same can be said for almost all characters, everything about this game story is so memorable and unique, it makes me so happy and emotional even for how good this story is written. The first half is heavy on story with lots of cutscenes and the build up for this game second half, the highlight of this part are the camp kids, their storylines are funny and somewhat relatable, like the bully falling for the weird nerd girl, or two cheer leaders planning to poison the camp lake. The second half is heavy on gameplay with the highlight being the asylum mind levels, they are very creative and fun, each one exploring different mental conditions. The final level is disappointing and bad, but the ending itself is very good. Everything is so well designed and written, the themes resonate with me a lot and overall is like this game was made for me. It’s one of those games that combines story and gameplay in a wonderful way, also Zim dubs Raz which is enough motive to give this game five stars. 5/5