Psychonauts gets its first review

[OftenK]

Funny. I thought the internet had more asses of the dumb variety.

[nsps]

That would explain the misuse of the apostrophe.

[lailoken]

okok, that's enough kids break it up...

[Dingo Chavez]

1up.com has posted a new Psychonauts preview, with a bunch of Tim Schafer quotes and a new trailer (with Grim Fandangoesque music). It's a great read.

[Moosferatu]

And here would be the link.

[lailoken]

I guess it looks just as good as everybody hoped it would...the amount of work that must have gone into all the different stuff you can do... nice!

[netmonkey]

Has anyone talked about how the Psychonauts theme is super-heavily based on the Beetlejuice movie main title theme? Has anyone noticed that little detail?

Then again, Psychonauts has a very Tim Burton claymation sort of feeling. Or at least it did before, when I first saw that video in 2002ish.

[Chris]

Yeah, Peter McConnel's score has some rather...striking similarities to some various Danny Elfman scores.

[Jake]

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").

[pj-]

Psychonauts got an 8,9,8 in egm..

Shawn - 8: "If i respect Psychonauts more than I was riveted by it, that's because for every two bits of out-of-the-box thinking, I found one piece of boilerplate platforming. Emotional baggage, repressed memories, figments of imagination--all wonderful ideas for a game that treats pathological minds as physical places--aren't more than things to hoard by the tens and hundreds, same as the coins and stars in any ordinary collec-a-thon. At times, too much irrelevant rigmarole--doubling back on previously treated clinical cases (read: levels) to fetch more doodads; second, third and even fourth iterations of the same brain-teasing puzzle--keeps hero Raz, a psychic tot at summer camp, on the clock like some opportunistic shrink. In a game where you can clairvoyantly control yourself through the cat's eyes of an enemy in order to wallop 'im in the dark, any been there, done that seconds tend to stand out.

But criticism's the stuff of short-term memory where the cult status is concerned. Psychonauts' artistic oomph--the black lit velvet painting landscapes, the topsy turvy worlds where walls are floors and floors are roofs--is lightning in a bottle. It's one-of-a-kind wit (from the conspiratorially minded mailman whose route is a twilight zone of peeping toms and probing g-men, to the nut with a napoleonic complex whose mind is a hex-based board game) makes it an instant classic.

Robert - 9: You've jumped over bottomless pits and punched out bad guys before, but Psychonauts presses these conventions into the service of its story and characters. IT injects meaning and purpose into what has traditionally been adventure for adventure's sake. As you explore the surreal, mazelike minds of charactesr, you'll aslo interact with them, literally wrestling inner demons and sorting out childhood memories. IN short, the story doesn't stop when the game starts.

And there is a game here--one that shoots for the mario and zelda but falls a bit short. The last hour or so features some regrettable platforming bits that really outstrip character control. But shawn is wrong about the backtracking; except for one early level, you only go back if you want to.

Josh - 8: Anyone who doesn't fall for the unique characters, hilarious dialogue, and brilliantly conceived environments of psychonauts has no soul. The james brown of games, Psychonauts' personality overcomes its flaws. Most of the puzzles are clever ( af ew obvious ones get tedious), but the platforming fails to capture that elusive "feel" you get with a mario or ratchet game. The art and gameplay styles change dramatically depending on the level, so some are mind-blowing, but others don't quite measure up (the boring conspiracy level and needlessly difficult final stage were particularly disappointing). Nitpicks aside, Psychonauts is a refreshing alternative for those of us not preoccupied with eating McDonald's and watching reality TV.

[MrHoatzin]

Psychonauts got an 8,9,8 in egm..

These people should be shot!!

:ponycrap: :deadman: :\

[Bc9b]

Yea, I expected that out of EGM.

You have to realise, these people have probably spent more hours playing platformers than everyone at Double Fine combined. They can tell the difference from a platformer by Rare and one by Nintendo. It was only docked down because of their high standards. Keep in mind that their grading scale tries to be wider than the 7.5 to 10 ones, so this is a pritty good review.

Also, they are fucking idiots.

"Instant classic" and you don't give it a 10? Or at least a 9? Goddamn, mathematical rating sucks.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

I actually wasn't even giving those number scores any relevance. The actual writing was far more informative and offered me a bit of insight into the nuances of the gameplay and general experience.

[Udvarnoky]

It was always expected that the platforming aspect of Psychonauts was to be somewhat generic in that it doesn't really offer anything new in terms of jumping, climbing, swinging, etc. - that's simply not where the game's originality lies. All I'm really concerned about in that area is that it's solid and responsive, and by accounts that seems to be the case.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

It was always expected that the platforming aspect of Psychonauts was to be somewhat generic in that it doesn't really offer anything new in terms of jumping, climbing, swinging, etc. - that's simply not where the game's originality lies.

Then where does it lie?

I'm not necessarily arguing, I just want to know what the designer's intent is and if that intent was successfully manifested.

[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).

[Udvarnoky]

Then where does it lie?

Uh, just about everywhere else? I was simply trying to say that I doubt the actual mechanics of maneuvering Raz were ever intended to be revolutionary. The game has always seemed highly original in the areas of design, story, characters, art direction, etc.

I'm not pretending to fully know a designer's intentions, if that's what you're getting at. And I can't really tell if it's been successfully manifested until I play the game. I'm just building on what I think Bc9b was getting at about what I found to be an unsurprising reactions from EGM.

[Udvarnoky]

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.

[Chris]

These people should be shot!!

:ponycrap: :deadman: :\

Coming soon, folks, an unbiased Idle Thumbs review of Psychonauts by our very own The Kingzjester! (or not!)

[SiN]

so who's gonna get the review anyway?

the great thing about being a pc gamer is that i havent played a platformer in years ... the last one i played was mario64 about 3 years ago. so to me, im guessing psychonauts will be great in terms of gameplay, because i dont know any better. ahh, blissful ignorance

but as its been stated before, we're not buying this game for the platforming aspects, we're buying it for the humour, story, dialogue, art-style, etc. i'm positive it'll deliver on all of the above, and even though gameplay is important, as long as its pretty solid and the controls are responsive i'll be happy.

SiN

[Thrik]

I think anybody who's been expecting Psychonauts to completely revolutionize or even significantly impact the platforming side of platform games has been sitting on the wall to be honest. Whilst there's no doubts that it'll have a stable platforming element, and this has been confirmed by a number of people who have played it, it's not exactly going to be the next Mario 64 in that it'll completely change how things play from now on.

What it may do, however, is encourage both developers and publishers to invest more time in the character, universe and storyline development in platform games, and possibly other genres. Whilst it is done to an extent, not many truly focus on it and integrate into the experience as strongly as they could do. I really hope that Psychonauts succeeds on that front, and it's not just Double Fine who make these types of games in the future.

[MrHoatzin]

Coming soon, folks, an unbiased Idle Thumbs review of Psychonauts by our very own The Kingzjester! (or not!)

Or yes!

[pj-]

What it may do, however, is encourage both developers and publishers to invest more time in the character, universe and storyline development in platform games, and possibly other genres. Whilst it is done to an extent, not many truly focus on it and integrate into the experience as strongly as they could do. I really hope that Psychonauts succeeds on that front, and it's not just Double Fine who make these types of games in the future.

It won't encourage anything if it sells like crap

[Thrik]

That's a given, really.

[Tanukitsune]

A Spanish magazine called PC Life had a very short article on this game...

Nothing new, I don't think they even new the game is coming out any moment, and guess what they calld the hero REZ!

Oddly enough they also talk about Gish and Samorost in a mini article about indie games...