This is your brain on drugs…

Since Jeff has yet to get his pre-ordered copy of Psychonauts (the PC release was pushed back a week) I’ll try not to spoil anything for him, but this game is too cool not to post about. It’s so cool my wife Jess has even been playing it!

You play Razputin a psychically gifted boy who has snuck into Whispering Rock Summer Camp to become a Psychonaut. You learn such psychic powers such as telekinesis, pyrokinesis, levitation and more. As the plot develops, you find yourself having to enter the minds of insane people and to help them solve their problems from the inside. Each level is unique in theme and design depending on the mental problems of the host. In addition to defeating their personal demons you also collect figments of imagination, sort emotional baggage, suck up mental cobwebs, and open mental vaults. As you level up you gain additional powers and power upgrades.

Fans of Tim Schafer will not be disappointed in this game. It’s as much a classic adventure game in the vein of Grim Fandango and Full Throttle as it is a platformer. You have an inventory, you solve problems and puzzles, but instead of thread after thread of conversation, you get to jump around and shoot things. The enemies are specific to each environment and the game boasts some pretty great boss battles. Beating each one requires problem solving as much as “duck and shoot” platforming.

Technically the graphics and sound are amazing. I was a bit disappointed at first because the Xbox version looks nowhere near as great as the PC demo did, but it’s the best looking Xbox game I’ve played. My advice if you have the hardware and an analog controller for your PC is to get the PC version which is also $20 cheaper. The other reason for this is that my Xbox copy is a bit buggy and has crashed several times whereas you can get patches for the PC copy.

The best part of the game however is it’s sense of humor. The dialog and cutscenes are absolutely hilarious. Rarely does a game make me laugh outloud, but this one cracks me up over and over again. I dare say it’s the funniest Tim Schafer game yet and that’s saying a lot.

I believe everyone here has either a PC, Xbox, or PS2 so there’s no excuse for any of you to not go out and buy this game right now (pre-order for PS2). Jess has already logged over 10 hours on it so that means it must be a ton o’ fun!

More later…