The GHZ Forum

Psychnauts kicks ass. It's a little known gem that want to endorse here for a moment. I mean, really. It's like if you mixed the best parts of Tim Burton, Matt Groening, Jhonen Vasquez blended into gooey wonderfulness. The voice cast is great. The setting and characters are what really make the game. It starts out seeming like a typical happy Mario game for the first few levels, and I think thats what turned a lot of the intended audience off of it, unfortuantely. Every part of it is a visual surprise. From being inside the mind of a paranoid psychotic to collecting individually drawn "figments" that actually decorate the background instead of generic coins. A lot of the game really does come from surprise, so I don't want to spoil too much.

However, it does have a couple of flaws. It's very noticably the bastard love child of a PC point and click adventure game and a 3-D platformer. As such, you'll often feel like the gameplay is a halfassed version of one or the other that was never completed. The developers said they made the platform elements first and then added the talk to/collect item/use item to get past guard that by all rights your character should be able to immoliate with your mind if not for plot-induced stupidity elements, but to me it generally felt the opposite way around. The platforming elements are all pretty boring, even if they take place in interesting stages.

Another dissapointment are your powers. They all sound very interesting and exciting when you get them. The problem is that they suck. You get Pyrokinesis, and you can't shoot fire. You only get a thermometer that you can cause to appear over the sky of select objects that you can heat up. How about telekinesis? That sounds fun. Erm, it's a giant hand that you use to hold most things in place, and ocasionally move puzzle pieces around with a mouse. Nothing really oriented towards action/platform play except a standard "gun" weapon.

So, if you like funny adventure games in the vein of Monkey Island, or Sam & Max, I'd get it at all costs. If you're looking for a platform game, but hate game stories or sort of absurd/black humor, than you'll problably be dissapointed. I was able to beat it with a rental of four days, though I played nearly non-stop.

I also got ahold of and finished Psychonauts. I loved it. I was intially turned off by it's art style, but the well-received opinions of this game swayed me towards the purchase of it.

I've also played the game. Just rented it, and loved it for the first, say, 5ish hours. Enough to get up to the last levels, anyway. And, it was the last few levels that ticked me off so bad that I just ejected the disk and returned it to the store. Piss poor level design at the end, especially when compared to the begining of the game. But, the story is awesome on a level that we may never again see as mortals. That, and Raz is a badass.

I don't remember any end game level design being terrible, the one that was a playset was pretty annoying though. I would also have to agree that some of the psycho powers were lame, but others like levitation kicked ass. I never would have thought levitation would be a ball that you can run on, bounce on, and float with. I would have to disagree with Zeta about the platforming parts though, I thought all aspects of the gameplay were combined pretty much flawlessly.

I originally thought it looked interesting, then after I read Gibbons post I decided it was worth it since it could easily be found for 30 bucks by then.

The only things I could find to complain about in Psychonauts was a frustratingly placed rail at the ending's grinding section, and the loss of Raz's goggles when he becomes a Psychonaut at the end. Raz without goggles just seems... wrong. Other than that though, I found it a totally satisfying experience.


Not totally sure that neededspoiler tags, buuuuuttt....

Actually what I thought was weird about the ending was the way Raz's dad turns out to be a good guy after we hear nothing but evil things about him for the whole game, and the way Raz never resolves his watery curse.

the only thing I really hate about that game is that if you want to replay a level you pretty much got to start a whole new file. Then you got to do all that saving up for a cobweb duster bullcrap. They should have made a trial mode like in sonic adventure. Also I would have also liked to play as Lily.

Psychonauts is hands down my favorite Xbox game (yes, that's including Halo and KotOR). Not only is it an amazingly well designed platformer (quite rare these days), it's also geniunely funny... It's one of the few games since the old Lucasarts point-and-click adventure games to literally make me LOL.

I agree though that the game gets a little sloppy near the end-- I almost gave up on the game due to the Meat Circus. The worlds before that, however, were some of the most creative levels I've seen since games went 3D; the painter's (forget his name) mind remains one of the most visually memorable stages in history, and Bonaparte's level (the faux-hex based strategy game) is great just because it plays out so differently from the usual platformer level.

It's a shame the game sold worse than sandpaper condoms. Does anybody know what Tim Schafer or Double Fine is working on next?

Yeah, they are working on not filing for bankruptcy. I wouldn't say the Meat Circus was sloppy, but it was definately unnecessarly difficult. I'd say my favorite levels were the conpiracy theory guys head (even though after an hour or so of running through it I had a terrible headache), the Godzilla level, and I don't know if the painters level was terribly fun to play, but I really liked looking at it and listening to it.

Of course meat circus was difficult, I mean, it is the last level. Irronically though the last boss in meat circus was tottally pathetic. And the painter level was the best.

Yeah, Milk Man Conspiricy was awesome. And, I also felt the game was briliant on a level with Mario 64 platform-wise (barring Meat Circus). More than good enough to make me keep my eyes out for anything else these guys work on.

Actually, I played the PS2 verson of the game. I thought the graphics were really impressive. Makes me wish my XBox hadn't died.

What's so bad about meat circus? I beat that course without even dying.

Also I've heard you get a special video if you successfully collect everything in the game and become rank 100. But I don't really want to try this because the source was not very reliable (I heard it on G4). so does anyone know if this is true.

Yeah, you do, someone here got them all and said it wasn't worth it or something. It involves Raz and his girlfriend whose name I can no longer recall.

That was me. I was pretty giddy, it had been years since I was motivated to do anything like that. It's extremely relieving to know that I am still capable.

It's just a short gag clip, has nothing to do with any of the main characters. The prestige is the greater reward.

It involves Raz and his girlfriend whose name I can no longer recall.

No it doesn't. It's Mr. Pokelope the talking turtle and Linda the Mutant Lungfish in lurve.