Psychonauts Review

(reviewed using a Pentium 4m, with 1GB of RAM 600MHz, 256MB ATI Radeon Mobility 9600, 2-Channel sound).

The gaming market is crammed with clones and carbon copies. It is very refreshing when either a new idea or an incredible new spin on a genre appears in the market. Psychonauts is one of those new spins. A great storyline, however, is tempered by hindered gameplay and interesting graphics are tempered by an overall muddiness; a lack of exploratory levels; and an overall console feel.

You play as Raz, a Psychonaut cadet. A Psychonaut is a being with the ability to enter others' brains and root out problems and fight battles. You fight battles either with your fists or a series of special powers called Psis. Also, during your travels, you collect brightly colored imagination figments. Once you collect a sufficient number of figments, you increase your rank. Sufficient increases in rank allow you to learn additional Psi powers.

Raz starts out at a summer camp that trains cadet Psychonauts. The camp is equal parts “Rugrats” and “the Nightmare Before Christmas.” Most of the cadets seem to be of grade school age (although since they are humanoid rather than truly human, this could be arguable) and they speak as though they are very young. Every stereotypical character is present, from the camp bully to the socially-awkward doofus.

Psychonauts is essentially a puzzle game with combat tacked on. The puzzles are never very challenging, but some can be unfairly frustrating. They often do not require a creative or clever solution, but require finding some hidden out or timing some jump correctly. It is simply a psychedelic, three-dimensional Mario Brothers.

As a selling-point, Psychonauts makes a big deal about its ratings in the console media. The box proudly proclaims “9.5 out of 10.” If Psychonauts represents the state-of-the-art in console gameplay, it will be a long time before the console can challenge the PC vis-à-vis depth of gameplay--regardless of how the hardware compares or what John Dvorak's opinion is.

GAMEPLAY: 7
Psychonauts is a plain vanilla walk-around-and-find-stuff game. You need to find tags to unlock “emotional baggage” and open locked-away memories. This is essentially the same as color-coded keys and locks from the Doom and Duke Nukem series. You have basic movement controls, and you automatically climb, shimmy, or swing from anything available to climb on, shimmy across, or swing from. The movement controls aren't as sensitive as they should be and you frequently run in a cardinal direction rather than along some radial in between. This is especially evident in combat as you tend to run back-and-forth and to-and-fro rather than circle-strafing or anything else that resembles shooter tactics.

The reason for this rather average gameplay boils down to the obnoxious camera. The camera is sluggish. Being essentially a third-person shooter, a sluggish camera sometimes causes you to fall off a platform because the camera doesn't turn as fast as the character does. Also, challenges that require you to face multiple enemies or targets are easier to handle by running in specific directions keeping the camera static, rather than to keep the camera moving with large, sweeping, time-consuming mouse movements. The camera frequently gets stuck behind solid objects obscuring you from your character's view. Further, the camera sometimes switches to a frontal-mode without warning, rendering the mouse completely useless.

The gameplay otherwise is simple. If you've seen any of the Sega “Sonic” games, you'll be familiar with the gameplay. Basically, you run around on rails in a three-dimensional environment, trying to find where the next jump, climb, or fight is.

All this being said, these facts make Psychonauts perfect for young gamers who haven't seen this sort of thing before and will find the game's lack of sensitivity perfect for still-developing reflexes. Kids will probably find the characters amusing and the gameplay well-balanced. The combat isn't too over the top or harsh for most children. The storyline, setting, and gameplay will probably not appeal to teen players regardless of the ESRB rating.

GRAPHICS: 8
Call it a seven for quality, nine for creativity. The levels are very nicely conceived with each individual's brain being reflective of their personality in creative ways. There are great details and touches to each level that make the game really stand out. Further, each level is colorful and psychedelic and has a greatly playful quality to it.

The character models are adequate but nothing special. They get the job done, but look conspicuously computer-generated. The lack of varied animation and the overall simplicity of the models make it very difficult for this game to feel like anything but a simple game. An excellent counter-example is Evil Genius. Evil Genius has simple character models, hyper-colored graphics, and a cartoon atmosphere--but has enough personality, charm, and distinction to the graphics to feel more like an overall experience than simply just a game. The game environments--while sometimes vast--are not well rendered. They look blocky and dated.

More than this, the textures are poor. For as colorful as the environments are, they still appear a bit unsaturated. The textures also have a grave lack of detail both in the environments and on the characters. If even a fraction of the environmental detail present in recent hit games was present in Psychonauts, this game's graphics would have become instantly classic. They're creative and interesting enough to hold the player's attention, but executed poorly enough to knock them down to an average rating. For a game with such high hardware requirements, this is inexcusable.

SOUND: 9
One of the best parts of Psychonauts is the sound. Each character has his, or her, own voice and is convincingly acted--even if at times annoying. The sound effects are very well done and the music is nice, complimentary, and shifts depending on what is happening in the game.

REPLAY: 5
There isn't much reason to go through Psychonauts again once you have played through it. There are possibly additional cards and Psi-Cores--Psychonaut's version of power-ups--to find. Although this may be marginally attractive, having once solved all the puzzles, there is really no other motivation to play through again.

MULTIPLAYER: N/A

BOTTOM LINE: 7.2
Psychonauts may be an excellent concept and creatively realized, but it is translated into an average game. Young gamers may find it fun and funny--parents shouldn't be turned away by the T tag. For fans of PC gaming, this sort of thing has been done better elsewhere.