Developer: Double Fine Productions
Publisher: Double Fine Productions
Rrp: £6.99
Released: 19th April 2005
Available on Steam, Gog, own website
You take on the role of Raz (or Razputin if you want his actual name). He has snuck into a summer camp dedicated to training psychic warriors. Unfortunately for him he’s promptly caught and is going to be sent home, luckily though it turns out he has a way with words and charms his way into staying… At least for a few days. So in that short space of time Raz aims to train and become a Psychonaut.
Psychonauts is what I would define as a puzzle platformer, although the emphisis is definitely in the platformer side of things. What few puzzles they do have though can be quite mind bending, especially in later levels. Of course there is a hint system if you need it, and that manifests itself in a very unusual and an extremely funny way.
The humour is slightly warped in both the designs and scripting, and the characters have a vaguely Tim Burton-esk look to them. This same warped humour and design is included in the designs of the world particularly in the mental levels.
Speaking of the levels one of the things I love this game for is how varied the levels are aesthetically. In one level you’ll be in a 1960’s style disco party and in another you’re in a war zone. Some of these levels require a completely different style of thinking and play to beat, so the game keeps you on your toes.
Exploration is rewarded in this game, and as you play sections of the world previously inaccessible will become available.
All the collectibles in game serve to aid you by boosting your psychic rank, thereby granting more powers to use or to use as money which allows you to buy items to help you progress. In the main hub area there are several types of collectible. There are arrowheads which are the in game money. Psi cards, which when nine of those combined with a psi core (purchased in the store) create a Psi challenge marker which boosts your rank by one. There are also a few whole psi challenge markers scattered that will level you up. Lastly there are the scavenger hunt items, these items in themselves hold no value, but when eight are found you progress four ranks. When you’re in a psyche there are figments you can collect… I’ll be honest I can’t remember exactly how many of those you need to collect to rank up. There are others but you need certain equipment or powers to collect them.
There is a power and inventory system and as you progress through the game and go up in ranks you’ll be granted more items and powers to play with. You can only have three powers ready to be used at any one time but you can switch them out easily enough should you need to.
Some technical flaws exist within the game and graphically it certainly is showing its age, though this is somewhat mitigated by the stylised designs. I suspect most of the technical flaws are due to the way technology has changed since it came out. For example, originally the game was made to be played with a mouse and keyboard so all the on screen commands are written as such even if a controller is plugged in. Unfortunately this also means that if you want to change something in the options menu you have to use the mouse as the controller simply doesn’t work there
On the Steam version the game will crash to desktop seemingly at random, thankfully there is a fairly simple is a manual fix for this. You have to find the application and change its settings to run in compatibility mode for windows 95. I can’t say if other version does the same sadly but if it does then this fix should work for those too.
If you’re being a completionist then the game should take somewhere in the region of twenty hours to finish, if you’re not and assuming you have a moderate level of skill it might take fourteen hours. In my book that means the consumer gets a lot of entertainment for their money. So… Yes, I recommend this to anyone who likes a bit of off the wall humour in their games.
