Domo Arigato Doctor Loboto

Jess and I both fed the bomb to Psychonauts this weekend. She beat me by a day, but I collected everything!

What a great game. I’ve read some reviews that claim that Psychonauts does not reinvent the platformer. Well I’m here to tell you that it does. I’ve never played a platforming game with this much character development, emotional depth, and adventure gaming goodness. Sure, it has it’s share of frustrating, seat-of-your-pants platforming, but the majority of the game is spent solving puzzles and interacting with its large cast of colorful characters.

What really sticks with you in this game are the dark and serious emotional elements you uncover in the mental environments when you open each persons memory vaults. Their memories are displayed like a ViewMaster with each click revealing another piece of the host’s pride, love, sadness, loss, etc. Some of these include scenes of suicide, the death of a parent, lost love, and childhood trauma. The most affecting for me was a memory found in Milla’s Dance Party. The level is one giant disco party with dancing spectators, colored lights, and bubble machines, but tucked away in a small hidden room is the memory of a horrible tragedy in her life (I won’t spoil it here).

My one complaint is that there comes a point in the game where you can no longer go back to the campground. This means any cards, challenge markers, or scavenger hunt items you haven’t found yet are gone forever. This can really infuriate someone trying to reach the level 100 goal. It can also be extremely frustrating to find all the mental figments that are floating around. Each level has around 150 - 200 of them and though they help you level up, it isn’t necessary to find all of them in order to beat the game. I think Jess was around level 60 when she beat it. I ended up collecting all of them, but it really dulled the gaming experience in my mind after meticulously combing each level in search of those last few figments. My advice is to collect the ones you come across and not worry about the hidden ones. It takes away some of the magic of these fantastic levels to scour them over and over again. I would recommend finding all the scavenger hunt items as you advance 8 levels after you collect all 16 of them. Some of the higher level power upgrades are pretty sweet too like the ability to use your levitation ball as a weapon, health regeneration, infinite ammo, and a shield upgrade that causes damage when melee attacked. All you get for reaching level 100 is a mediocre bonus video and since there is a rank 100 cheat code, you won’t be missing anything.

With every Tim Schafer game I’ve played no matter how long it takes you’re always left wanting more; and Psychonauts is no exception. It takes around 20 - 25 hours to complete, but I’m already praying for a sequel. Now that Schafer has his own company Double Fine I hope he can pump a title out at least every two years. He is one of the most innovative and creative forces in video games and is a beacon of hope in the these dark days of adventure gaming.