Jake

I don't think Schafer really wanted to revolutionlize either platformers or traditional adventure games, but wanted to see what happened when they got really properly mashed up. That's what Psychonauts is really - is it a twisted up adventure game (albeit with simpler puzzles and a lot of jumping, dodging, floating, and punching) or is it a twisted up 3D platformer (albeit with a lot of inventory, dialogue, and with characters and a story that matter)? It's really both of those sort of at once. I think his other goal was to make a game more visually insane than anything else out there. I think he succeeded on both counts. Psychonauts isn't revolutionary, but it is very fun to play, and its visual design is more or less unprescedented in gaming (at least in 3D gaming).

lailoken> ban jizmonkey? The user "jizmonkey" is now banned. > Location: Trep's Twisted Imagination | Score: 200 billion | Moves: 14

I believe it's called "sneaking," a tactic applied by large corporations and patchy hobos alike.

Whoa it's Duncan's birthday!

Especially that main theme song. Fortunately it only appears in the main titles. Most of the other music sounds like its own thing (or, at least sound like "Peter McConnell music").

# I think that happened back when I tried to quit it about 5 posts ago.

I read the review and it didn't really contain any super strong negatives, or anything super spoilerific. I'll look through it again just in case.

> q

Yeah I'm sure Play is a little biased, given that elsewhere in the issue the Editor in Chief lists Psychonauts at the top of his most wanted upcoming games list But on the other hand, whatever, all media is biased (if not out of hype then out of political or other motivation). Also after playing the hell out of the Psychonauts press demo, I agree with the guy who reviewed it for Play. The game is incredibly fun both because the gameplay is good but also because its got the crazy Schafer world that you can completely lose yourself within while playing. It's a quality title. Of course it has a couple funky quirks, flaws, bugs, etc, but... it's a good game. Not a shit one. It's not even an "awkward" game - which was one of my early and persistant fears. It flows well, doesn't piss you off because your character always walks off cliffs instead of turn around or decides to jump 2 seconds after you press the jump button or something... It, I think, succeeds at feeling like 1 part Zelda 64 + 1 part Mario 64 + 1 part Day of the Tentacle, churned through the meat grinder that is Tim's head. That's what the Play guy says, it's what Tim's been saying since the start, and I think it's a pretty spot on assessment That said (and as we probably all suspect) Psychonauts is, in my opinion, probably not going to sell too well (probably better than Grim Fandango, but apparently that's not saying much). The thing Psychonauts has going for it -- the "Schafer effect" -- is that anybody who gets their hands on it, whether they thought they'd like it or not, instantly becomes hooked on the game and the world, and won't, in fact, give you the controller back, ever. I think on the whole, game reviewers are going to like Psychonauts. I semi randomly predict that it's score on average will be bouncing between 7/10 and 10/10, but mostly in the high 8's-mid 9's. Whether that means it will sell well is anybody's guess.

http://gillen.blogspot.com/2005_03_01_gillen_archive.html#111158640502988507 Kieron Gillen, the man responsible for the New Games Journalism "Manifesto" (or was it), has put up a bit of a "one year later" retrospective on the whole NGJ thing... (there's of course more where that came from here)I'm glad he's jokingly sorry for the mania and idiocy (well only half-jokingly half-sorry really) but isn't sorry for proposing the ideas and stirring the pot in the first place. While I think people have got the concept all wrong, the ideas Kieron was mulling about a year ago are still very valid issues. The fact that people decided to take up a banner and turn it into a crusade and then compounded the problem by crusading about the wrong thing is a bit retarded, but that's not Kieron's fault! Also if you're still not bored of hearing about NGJ, just the other day I spouted off about it over here in the woefully undernourished "International Game Journalists Association" website. New Games Journalism New Games Journalism New Games Journalism

Good to see they've got the modern film "white rim of light around the back of everything" look goin on. Super hip!

I don't know what led you to think that a sort of small, not to mention general and unfocused gaming forum community would have meshes and textures to Kaileena from POP but... were you honestly expecting someone to just randomly post that as an attachment? It's a pretty obscure request.

#ah it is a new page thing. the bot gets confused around the start of new pages apparently and starts eating itself temoporarily

look

jump down

# i think eventually it will have some sort of autosave management??

climb down

Look metallus tried to delete his post but I undeleted it... looks like Simpleton momentarily ate himself.

Inventory

go east

# fuck.

examine troll

# You're annoying this simpleton as well. ... wandering mind sorry

# Hey 8, if you're only going to comment in a non-game way as your pOST, that's when you're supposed to do the # thing.