Best Of

So, not to cop out too bad, but Psychonauts is a game that's a bit hard to explain. I'll give it a shot, but... damn. *Even the screenshots are less descriptive than I remembered.*
The trouble with explaining Psychonauts is that it's like explaining the first time you got laid, or your first kiss, or something. It was incredible when it was happening to you, but somehow the phrase 'and then we were all like WHOAAAAAAH' just doesn't have the same effect when you're telling it to a group of your ~~cats~~ friends during a ~~trip to the vet~~ sweet party. You can't do the experience justice using words. Psychonauts is humorous. Best of all, it's humorous in that way that a really solid Pixar movie is humorous - most of the jokes fly over the heads of younger audiences, which makes you feel like you're part of an inside joke at all times. In a world where most of our humor is either satire (Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert) or direct and shocking (Archer), Psychonauts's brand of humor is super refreshing (the way, you know, a Pixar movie is refreshing). Not that satire or shock humor isn't a blast... just that sometimes something different can really brighten your day. I found myself laughing out loud more than once. Psychonauts is absurd. It doesn't even TRY to approach reality. The art style is nothing short of affected (which is a trend I LOVE in video games). The premise involves being a kid of unspecified age at a summer camp for psychics (think telekinesis, telepathy, pyrokinesis... not hokey-ass Reiki bullshit). The animals around the camp are also psychic, and prefer to use their psychic powers over their claws. Most of the game involves diving into the brains of NPCs of varying states of sanity. *This is a dog in a flat, high-contrast imagination painting shit. He is one of four, who all talk about playing poker.*
Psychonauts is creative. I promise that you have absolutely never heard of any story anything like this. The main character is teased by a bully... "I heard you were born in a circus!" and you shrug it off... then later, you're talking to one of the counselors, and you find out that the main character was _actually born in a circus_. Every character has their own backstory, if you want to find it. Oooh, that brings me to a REALLY cool mechanic. Psychonauts rewards your exploration with **story**! Each character - down to the most minor little snot at camp - has their own backstory that is told by finding them, talking with them, tickling them with feathers, casting clairvoyance on them, reading posted camp notes, or what have you. Take, for instance, two EXTREMELY friendly children who are constantly cheering for the main character - turns out they're also suicidal as shit, drinking poison and jumping off cliffs. Or consider the girl who is in a hurry to grow up, and so gets an easygoing southern kid to agree to 'date' her, changes his name for him and goes out of her way to let everyone know that he is HERS, and not to DANCE with him, or TALK to him... all while he continues throughout the game to not give a shit. *He drinks poison at one point. Totally doesn't die.*
Honestly, the storytelling is nothing short of brilliant. Diving into some of the minds (levels), you are treated to a pretty solid depiction of varying states of sanity. Sure, the obvious stuff is there - the calm, organized German has his entire mind packed inside a fifty-foot cube, the guy with split-personality disorder is literally playing his ancestor in a game of Waterloo - but it's the less obvious stuff that really hits you. A (spanish?) painter, heartbroken from losing his world-class flamenco dancer love to a toreador, can only paint pictures of bulls. In his mind - clean, bright, flat brushstrokes and flourishes against a jarringly black background - he is building a gigantic card castle but is terrorized by a massive bull. Except... as you progress through the level and talk to the dogs in his mind (literal statement), you find that perhaps the game has lied to you completely. I'll spare you spoilers (because it's REALLY good), but you actually DISCOVER repressed memories, and the depression within that turns him into a monster. The characters are well developed, too. Every motive is perfectly in place, every quirk of every profession is on display (the actress's mind is a perfect example). Furthermore, the voice acting... my god, it's superb. It's just fucking SUPERB. You know you've found good voice actors when you read the wikiquote page and _it's less funny in your head than it was in game._ That's the good. And yeah, the good is REAL good. This is a game that is full of depth, but doesn't try to cram it down your throat. You legitimately feel like you're sleuthing the information out. You go wherever your interest takes you. The ideas are fresh and new. The art is a joy (if dated). The humor is spot-the-fuck-on. There's some bad, though. It's not enough to ruin the game, but if one looks, one can definitely spot some unpolished bits. First off, this is a 3D platformer in a game where gravity does whatever the fuck it wants. When the mind you're exploring is a twisted, curvy mess, you're never sure which direction 'down' is... which makes platforming very frustrating. Furthermore, your shadow is missing - that wonderful, overlooked companion that tells you WHERE YOU WILL LAND. In a game where the story is so good you want it written in a book, getting stuck on a jump because you were forty feet off to the side can really impede the dialogue. *There are full on 180 degree curves in this game. This is but a fraction of the problem.*
Second off, this was ported from a console, and the game grew up in the time where it was totally okay to skimp on porting to PC. "Nobody uses computers to play games," they said. "Just remap the controls and it'll be fine." Since my mouse is NOT a thumbstick, I had a very hard time _looking the fuck around._ I've since gotten over using WASD instead of a thumbstick (look, diagonal movement is not that hard), but I can see how anyone else would have the problem. Worst of all are the bugs. At one (horrifying) point, loading my save file crashed the game. I have no idea what eventually fixed it, but on the fourth try, all was well. Depending on the time of day, some 3D models may straight up disappear. At one point in the milkman level (one of the BEST levels... seriously, go watch a 'let's play'), the post office bugged out and I was forced to load an earlier save. *Two examples of bugs: first, there should be a mesh around this psychic dead zone holding up all those signs...*
*...and second, the signs were blinking in and out of existence the whole time anyway.*
Third, there IS an irritating 'collection' mechanic going on. Yes, it's cool that 'figments of the imagination' are 2D stick figure drawings of random shit - that's very clever - but don't make me collect 2D shit that twists and moves in a 3D game. Trying to figure out where it is is just a headache, and I want to pay more attention to the clever level you've designed. Also, yes, sorting 'emotional baggage' by finding bag tags and returning them to their owners is a very funny play on words, but I never could get into that Banjo-Kazooie 'gotta find all the extras' shit. *Although the transition from sad emotional baggage to happy emotional baggage is nothing short of adorable.*
Worst of all is the hunt for arrowheads. The currency of the game seems very extraneous - you can buy 'dream fluff' (the equivalent of health potions), change the color of your psychic powers (vanity), magnets to make collecting arrowheads easier (cute), and I'm totally okay with that... it's more fun for people who like to collect currency. Trouble is, there's a part of the game where you MUST buy an item to continue (a la the shovel in The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening). At that point, I had 20 arrowheads. I needed 900. And no, there are no quest rewards, or big arrowheads falling out of bosses. You have to dig them up the old fashioned way. This was a HUGE thorn in my side - I went straight to the internet to find the fastest way to farm currency. Forced collecting is not my idea of a good time, and I wasn't about to spend three hours grinding numbers without content - I'll go play WoW for that, thank you.

The thing is, though (and you may have noticed)... I really have to dig for complaints. Honestly, I feel bad airing the complaints, because the good about this game makes up for the VERY minor bad a thousand times over. This is a masterpiece of a game. I will absolutely trade a little frustating grinding or collection fever or bugs for the wealth of story and depth of character that I found in Psychonauts.
**They don't make games like this anymore.** Go purchase and play this game right now... or if you're too lazy, go watch a Let's Play during lunch. It is 100% worth it.