At the heart of Tim’s latest game is Razputin – or Raz – an intrigued young kid who wants to become the world’s best psychonaut, a group of secret agents who use their brains rather than brawn to save the world from havoc. The game begins with Raz sneaking into a training camp for young up-and-coming psychonauts, in an attempt to hone his skills in becoming the best of the best and fulfilling his prophecy of becoming a young psychic prodigy. As it seems though, Raz has run away from his home at the circus to become a psychonaut but, stunned by his incredible brain power, the camp’s drill sergeant and counsellors allow Raz to stay a few days – until his father returns to pick him up. Not too long after, during Raz’s training, he stumbles across a disastrous scheme to suck the brains out of all the residents of the camp, leaving them as TV-obsessed zombies (much like our readers). Having no better opportunity to cement his place as a psychonaut, unlikely hero Raz steps up to the plate to solve the mysteries behind the conspiracy of the brain-taking maniac.
The story isn’t anything exciting, but the humour and characters within the game bring alive what could’ve been a very boring little adventure. The humour is off the scale and incredibly funny – what else would you expect from Tim Schafer? – and is projected constantly throughout the game. Hilarious one-liners, fascinating personalities and some unexpected moments of comedy blitz. Psychonauts, though, is a very basic platform game. Not a lot is different from what has been experienced and is in fact quite derivative to other games in the genre. Regardless though, Psychonauts is still an incredibly solid title. The game is very open-ended, with the camping grounds acting as a hub for gamers to establish their route to the next level, shops and places to upgrade abilities. The great thing about this camp ground hub is that your fellow camp members move around at the camp’s lake, or even spying on the girl’s changing rooms, and you can interact with these somewhat creepy, yet insanely funny, camp members. The dialogue is one of the best assets of the game, and running around to talk to the many different characters is always a refreshing experience.
Each level is broken down by Raz entering the minds of more than a dozen different characters in the game, where he must untangle the mysteries of not only the people’s mind he is jumping into, but also to unravel the mystery behind who’s stealing all the camp member’s brains and making them dumb-founded TV-hungry zombies. These are great access points to a lot of fascinating levels though. You’ll enter the mind of a huge fish-like creature, where you’ll play as a Godzilla-like Raz where he must crush buildings to save the members of a special freedom fighting force, while in another mind you’ll enter the paranoid mind of a security guard named Boyd Cooper, who has a bizarre conspiracy of someone called ‘The Milkman’. The variation between each of the level’s design is fantastic, and the style and uniqueness of each level offers a few laugh of their own.
"The milkman has the key. I am not the milkman, I am the security guard".
At its core, Psychonauts is a fairly typical platformer title. There’s a ton to collect, various areas to explore, abilities to unlock and platforms to jump. One of the most obvious downsides to the game’s gameplay, however, is that the way the collection of items is progressed. Early on in the game, you’re required to collect 800 arrowheads so you can actually buy an item to progress through a level - without the item, you’re deadlocked into running aimlessly for hours just to locate enough arrowheads to purchase a device so you can progress further. If there was one major problem with Psychonauts this would be it. The collection of items can get frustrating and confusing. There are certain items such as mind-figments, locked-up emotions, and even items that help you improve your psychic abilities. Sure, it can be entertaining, but it’s short-lived and clearly a little overdone.
Speaking of abilities, Raz can learn a number of various psychic powers throughout the course of the game to help him progress further. Each power must be earned, much like earning a badge at camp, and you must prove yourself worthy of using such power before being able to openly use it. These powers include invincibility, levitation, telekinesis and even clairvoyance. You’ll be able to use your typical hand-to-hand attack, plus map out three abilities to your controller. The uses of these powers are quite varied. Once acquiring them you’ll participate in a number of puzzles that require assistance from these powers, however, later in the game you’ll find that you’ll never touch them again.
There are a few problems with Psychonauts’ platforming aspects also, which transforms a usually fun formula into something frustrating. The number of different items is enough, but another common problem similar games fall victim to is the smart zone of your character, or in other words, how close they must be to grab ledges. In the last few levels this is a bit of a problem, since in one stage you’ll need to continuously climb up poles and platforms before the water raises and you drown. This isn’t much of a problem at all in the early stages in the game - mistakes here can be forgiven much more easily - but for the last three or more levels, you’ll need almost impossibly precise movement and jumps. It’s these little things that hurt what is otherwise one of the best platforming titles for several years.
Jumping to great heights.
The presentation of the title is clearly one of its strong points, but not so much when compared to the Xbox and PC versions. While the PS2 isn’t a power-horse like the aforementioned platforms, it is decent enough to show off the remarkably polished style of the game. The choppiness is pretty evident throughout the game, the textures can be a little flat at times, and the game does come across a few hiccups here and there. But none of these hinder the experience whatsoever, and unless you’re someone who pays close attention to these details, you probably won’t even notice the difference. When first seeing Raz for the first time the first thing that crossed my mind was the kids movie Antz and that Raz reminded me so much of Z (who was played by Woody Allen). Every time Raz opened his mouth, I expected Woody Allen to speak. But thankfully, that isn’t the case. The game also has a bit of a Tim Burton feel to it, with its spooky and twisted animation and modeling style. The levels are just so well organised and well presented, full of colour and life.
The audio is by far one of the finest areas of Psychonauts though. The voice acting is done exceptionally well, and is backed by a lot of talented cast members. Raz is voiced by Richard Horvitz (Invader Zim), with cameo roles by Star Trek famed Armin Shimerman (who has also worked on games such as Jade Empire and Ratchet: Gladiator), and even the excellent, and incredibly funny, voice work from Tara Strong (known mostly for her work as Bubbles of Powerpuff fame). There’s also an incredible amount of depth of character voices and dialogue that fit the context of the game amazingly well. The sound effects and game tunes are excellent also. There are a number of fantastic tunes that you’ll want to hear over and over again, while the sound effects suit the goofy style of the platformer to a tee.
Thankfully, the minor problems that exist in Psychonauts aren’t enough to not warrant a purchase. Is it a good game? Yes. Is it the best game? No. I’m a massive fan of most of Tim Schafer’s work, but Psychonauts hits a few common platformer problems along the way. It can feel awkward at times, does occasionally drift from being fun to frustrating as the jokes later on become less frequent, and the platforming problems such as the structure of the collection of items are disappointing areas of the game. However, the humour mends a lot of the games problems and offers one of the best platformers on the PS2, or any other console for a couple of years.
Loading...
