Induction Assingment: Psychonauts

Induction Assignment: Games Review

(Psychonauts)

Psychonauts it’s a platformer developed by Double Fine Productions, Originally released on the Xbox in 2005 and later on for Windows and PlayStation 2. The game stars voice actor Richard Horvitz who is the voice of Raz the main character and protagonist in the game. Richard is also the voice for Orthopox in the Destroy All Humans! Series. Psychonauts has won many awards including EuroGamer: Overall Game of the Year 2005, and E3 Game Critics’ Awards: Best Original Game.

The characters are thoughtful and have interesting histories which intertwine in the games story. The array of crazy and fun characters makes this game much more enjoyable and adds more originality to the game. Characters include: Raz is a psychically powered child who runs away from the family circus to train to be a Psychonaut (A psychic agent). In the time he is at Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp he is faced with many various tasks due to some suspicious behaviour going on which leads to his many adventures. Other characters includes four of the Psychonauts that run the camp: the cold and calculating scientist Sasha Nein, the fun-loving party diva Milla Vodello, the regimental Agent/Coach Morceau Oleander, and the old Psychonauts leader: Ford Cruller. Many of the significant mind puzzles are set inside the Psychonauts minds. The rest of the characters are other psycadets and the insane asylum patients.

Whilst Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp is free to walk around in, the games puzzle and platforming sections are hosted in the minds of the insane you meet along the way. Some of these mind settings include Meat circus, waterloo world, the asylum, Black velvetopia, and lungfishopolis. These strange world settings makes it easier for strange objects and crazy colours to be used, which are a whole lot better than your average gun metal grey and dusty brown colours used in most games. Psychonauts effectively uses graphics technology at the time to create a cartoony aesthetic.

Due to the game being a platformer, you may ask “How do you get around?” There are many ways introduced to getting around, the greatest being the gravity ball! A ball of psychic energy keeping you afloat. Use it to get hold of updraft and float around. It is great fun.

However being great fun, the game can be very unclear and can sometimes be very time consuming and frustrating. Throughout the game the puzzle solving never ends, and if you miss the smallest thing, this mistake can cost you hours of searching and wandering. However the most frustrating thing is you obtain items with special capabilities such as the mind door and the game fails to mention the significance of this item leaving me stuck on puzzles until hours later I figured how to use it by myself. The most time consuming area was inside the mind of the insane post man!

As well as puzzle progression, you have to buy different items from the camp shop such as the Cobweb duster to remove ‘mental cobwebs’ which are used for turning into psi cards which when gathered in a group of ten and a psi core can make Raz more powerful. However to buy the cobweb duster you have to spend hours of time searching the campground for ‘psy-tanium arrowheads’ which include a lot of button mashing. The time spent on finding arrow heads is unnecessary and the cobweb duster should have been made available otherwise as it is such an important item for game progression and shouldn’t require such mundane and grinding activities to obtain. Along with a repetitive soundtrack can cause frustration easily!

In conclusion, Psychonauts is an exceptional platformer with a large variety of play styles and world settings, along with a rich story and character development, which makes this game rise above the others platformer games of its era, such as Shadow The Hedgehog and sly 3: Honour Among Thieves. However it could be improved with less grinding activities such as hunting for arrowheads. I would recommend this game to any gamer who likes platform games or who likes interesting and original story and dialogue, however the crazy characters which inhabit this unhinged game make it all a lot better.