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MAJESCO Psychonauts ( Windows ) Review
User Submitted MAJESCO Psychonauts ( Windows ) Reviews
Date: 2008-11-16
Psychonauts, Heck Yes!
Fun, clever, endearing. I tend to prefer role-playing or first-person shooter styles of gaming. Psychonauts, an action-arcade adventure, was recommended to me as a classic worth trying even if it fell outside my personal gaming realm. After playing the game myself, I agree. Psychonauts was a pleasant diversion and a delightfully imaginative good time. And for $[...], it wasn't too expensive a gamble. =)
Date: 2008-08-12
Preeettttty Colorsssss...
I enjoyed my time spent with this visually innovative title, but honestly most of the fun was had as a spectator of environment and character interactions. That's both a compliment to the creative brilliance of Psychonauts's art style, and a jab at its most basic platforming mechanics and story path.
The good and the bad of Psychonauts's quirky genius are presented immediately. The stylized Psychonaut campground is brilliantly colored with an almost 3-D appearance to every surface. For a game designed on last generation consoles, it's stunning visually. (Widescreen HD is one reason for the PC version's superiority). Character design is equally arresting, although the exaggerated Burton-esque shapes make everyone seem more like potatoes than people. Initially, the controls are breezy fun with simple, responsive jump, attack, and interact maneuvers. And the game set up my Logitech gamepad with perfect calibration and button mapping right off the bat. Voicework is first rate, and the Double Fine crew wrote tight, geniunely witty dialogue for the characters. That's a rarity in games, as perfect timing is tough to achieve in interactive entertainment. In short, the game is a blast to goof around with.
Environmental design is creative and whimsical...sometimes to a fault. It's a joy to experience a fresh twist on all the old platforming conventions. And yet, when trying to break away from standards, sometimes we're reminded why things are the way they are. By taking all the straight lines and making them curved, incongrous, and sometimes just spatially incorrect, the developers made many basic functions of the game more difficult than necessary. Jumps are needlessly tough to navigate at times, as are the jumbled up inventory menus. The monetary exchange and item collecting is so convoluted that I needed constant reminders how it all worked. More conventional design, in many areas, would have benefitted the basic gameplay.
And yet when you witness the breathtaking artistry of certain levels, like the neon backlit Velvet World, or fight entertaining bosses like The Critic, it's hard to argue with Double Fine's choices. Psychonauts keeps you on your toes, unable to predict the next story episode. The game is certainly never boring, nor is it always comprehensible. The jumbled mixture of various motifs and themes within each stage ensures that the gameplay will never lose your attention, even if it occasionally feels directionless and nonsensical. The game's hero, Raz, interacts with this world both through physical and telekinetic means, with abilities added slowly with the player's progression. Most of these powers are genuinely fun and useful, although sometimes imprecise and clumsy, and make exploration of secret areas and scaling of hard-to-reach heights a lot of fun.
In summation, Psychonauts is a really amazing experience that turns the platforming game upside down. Very often it does this literally, and not always to its benefit. Whimsy isn't necessarily the best foundation for a game, but it sure makes for a pretty picture.
Date: 2008-07-04
Dissapointed.
It was either PC Gamer, PC World, or PC Games that said "This is the best game you never played" around 2006 or so. I decided to try it out on Game Tap to see if it was worth buying.
The good: You can interact with your environment about as much as you could in Serious Sam & the areas you can explore are much bigger than in Fable: the Lost Chapters. You get to hear the voice of Invzder Zim's voice actor & the voice acting all-around is good. The character designs have that Tim Burton grotesqueness, which is refreshing since only American McGee ever seems to encorporate it.
The mediocre: I'm pretty sure this is a consol port; I've seen worse controls, like the ones in Harry Potter 4. The music is neither annoying nor memorable.
The bad: It's not nearly as ammusing as others were telling me. The game causes cramps in the left hand & the same annoying chest tightness you get when jogging. The actual combat levels are harder than they need to be, solely because of the camera angles; the camera does not want to turn when you really need it to & doesn't look straight, so you will get pummeled from behind & jump to your death a lot. Extra annoyance comes from when you think you've finally passed the level only to find out that you've only done a small fraction of it; like Sasha's mind cube. The Save feature isn't so good either because you won't restart exactly where you saved. You might get heavily annoyed at your innability to reach the target & wish the game had a god-mode just so you could get through the damned level, but there isn't one. The map is pretty bad & the whole menu isn't very self-explanitory.
Date: 2008-06-27
My favorite game of all time
This game has everything--great humor and dialogue, fun action sequences, a good storyline with unpredictable (relatively)twists. It was fun for the family and we still quote the game today. We've owned it for 3 years and played it through many times. I wish there would be a follow on, because the characters were great.
Date: 2008-04-18
Played it all the way through, which I rarely do
It's a fun game with a wonderfully wacky sense of humor. Gameplay is challenging and varies throughout the game so that you never get bored. I get bored easily, and the fact that I played all the way through to the end really says a lot. If you want an enjoyable game that has been (sadly) rather overlooked - check this one out today.
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