Overview: Play as Razputin, a boy at a summer camp where children with psychic powers train to be Psychonauts. However, something awful is happening and Raz must use his psychic powers to save the camp.
20120731:
The first 5 to 7 minutes of the game starts out with the introduction. After which you can create a profile and in your dreams there's a short tutorial. More tutorial tidbits come as you continue through the game.
A great reason to play the game is for it's dialogue. For example, as I was exploring, I passed by a pair of characters and they started discussing their band name with each other. I found their discussion interesting and stayed around to listen. It went on for about 1 to 2 minutes! Afterwards I talked to one of them and my character gave his input and asked about a button he was given. Afterwards, I'm free to move on, but they continue to banter. On a related note, I'm happy with the voice acting.
The game mechanics and story are well motivated. You are a kid with psychic capabilities who has entered a secret psychic training camp for kids. You ran away from your parents, because they, like most people in the world think of psychics as weirdos. You start the game with standard platformer movement: double-jumping, climbing ladders, swinging, and sliding down inclines. As for attacking, you start off with a psychic punch.
I played the first 45 minutes of the game with a 800x600 pixel resolution. I knew it must have defaulted low when I started the game, but with fear of interrupting the introduction cut scene I didn't want to change it then. After the intro, I still didn't change it, because I got caught up with exploration. When I did change it, I changed it to 1280x1024.
Overall, I was drawn in by the story and presentation of the game. The variety of platforming elements such as walking across rope and swinging also keeps for a fun game.
Tip: To change direction when hanging, press the action key (on my gamepad, that's the same key I use to talk to people). In the picture below, I recall only being able to switch when I was near an upright, feet to the sky position, but I could be mistaken.
The game seems to have potential replay value, as finding various objects eventually leads to having more power. Thus, even after completing the level, one can revisit a level.
Checkpoint Grand Total: 113 minutes.
Playing more into the game, I unlocked two psychic abilities. One is from the main story, a psychic blast which runs on limited ammo, and the other is from collecting enough of something in high quantities.
From more collecting, I unlocked the telekinesis ability. I find looking for objects is just as fun as the main story. I suppose this stems from a history of desiring 100% completion rates, a desire I manifested when I first got my Game Boy Advance in middle school and lost completely when I got my Nintendo Wii.
Eventually I came to unlock the invisibility ability and defeat Dogen's brain. The brain's second form is much harder to defeat than the first form. This is partially due to the amount of confusion missiles it spits out and I eventually gave up and just tried to attack it with brute force: hovering in with levitation and then proceeding to punch it to death. It's also easiest to walk straight towards it, as confusion switches left and right, but not to and fro.
Grand Total: 6.5 hours.
20120801:
So I forgot to mention that this game is full of humor. It may not be laughing-out-loud funny, but it is funny. Also, it became apparent to me that the cutscenes, being pre-rendered, are at a lower resolution and thus appear blurrier than the in-game graphics. This is unfortunate, but at least I get the good looking in-game graphics.
Grand Total: 10.7 hours.
20221118:
I was getting close to potentially recovering my lost Hades game saves. As part of the debugging process, I had launched Psychonauts. Technically, it didn't really contribute to the debugging, but inadvertently I changed the resolution to 4K and it looked amazing! I had no idea the character models could have so much detail. Oddly, while the in-game textures are capable of looking better, the sharpness of UI elements remain low-res and the stark difference between the two is an unpleasant sight.
Steam Game Time: 10.9 hours (cumulative game time) / 0.2 hours (session game time)
Psychonauts (PC) (2005)
Relevant Links:
Psychonauts Website
Psychonauts (Wikipedia.org)
Psychonauts (Steam Store Page)
Psychonauts (PC) (MetaCritic.com)
 |
| Razputin |
20120731:
The first 5 to 7 minutes of the game starts out with the introduction. After which you can create a profile and in your dreams there's a short tutorial. More tutorial tidbits come as you continue through the game.
A great reason to play the game is for it's dialogue. For example, as I was exploring, I passed by a pair of characters and they started discussing their band name with each other. I found their discussion interesting and stayed around to listen. It went on for about 1 to 2 minutes! Afterwards I talked to one of them and my character gave his input and asked about a button he was given. Afterwards, I'm free to move on, but they continue to banter. On a related note, I'm happy with the voice acting.
 |
| Lili |
The game mechanics and story are well motivated. You are a kid with psychic capabilities who has entered a secret psychic training camp for kids. You ran away from your parents, because they, like most people in the world think of psychics as weirdos. You start the game with standard platformer movement: double-jumping, climbing ladders, swinging, and sliding down inclines. As for attacking, you start off with a psychic punch.
I played the first 45 minutes of the game with a 800x600 pixel resolution. I knew it must have defaulted low when I started the game, but with fear of interrupting the introduction cut scene I didn't want to change it then. After the intro, I still didn't change it, because I got caught up with exploration. When I did change it, I changed it to 1280x1024.
Overall, I was drawn in by the story and presentation of the game. The variety of platforming elements such as walking across rope and swinging also keeps for a fun game.
Tip: To change direction when hanging, press the action key (on my gamepad, that's the same key I use to talk to people). In the picture below, I recall only being able to switch when I was near an upright, feet to the sky position, but I could be mistaken.
The game seems to have potential replay value, as finding various objects eventually leads to having more power. Thus, even after completing the level, one can revisit a level.
 |
| Yikes! How scary! Crazy antagonist gearing up to extract Dogen's brain. |
Checkpoint Grand Total: 113 minutes.
Playing more into the game, I unlocked two psychic abilities. One is from the main story, a psychic blast which runs on limited ammo, and the other is from collecting enough of something in high quantities.
From more collecting, I unlocked the telekinesis ability. I find looking for objects is just as fun as the main story. I suppose this stems from a history of desiring 100% completion rates, a desire I manifested when I first got my Game Boy Advance in middle school and lost completely when I got my Nintendo Wii.
 |
| Raz (front), Agent Sasha Nein (back, left), Agent/Coach Morceau Oleander (back, center), and Agent Milla Vodello (back, right) |
Eventually I came to unlock the invisibility ability and defeat Dogen's brain. The brain's second form is much harder to defeat than the first form. This is partially due to the amount of confusion missiles it spits out and I eventually gave up and just tried to attack it with brute force: hovering in with levitation and then proceeding to punch it to death. It's also easiest to walk straight towards it, as confusion switches left and right, but not to and fro.
Grand Total: 6.5 hours.
20120801:
So I forgot to mention that this game is full of humor. It may not be laughing-out-loud funny, but it is funny. Also, it became apparent to me that the cutscenes, being pre-rendered, are at a lower resolution and thus appear blurrier than the in-game graphics. This is unfortunate, but at least I get the good looking in-game graphics.
 |
| Aww... how cute. |
Grand Total: 10.7 hours.
20221118:
I was getting close to potentially recovering my lost Hades game saves. As part of the debugging process, I had launched Psychonauts. Technically, it didn't really contribute to the debugging, but inadvertently I changed the resolution to 4K and it looked amazing! I had no idea the character models could have so much detail. Oddly, while the in-game textures are capable of looking better, the sharpness of UI elements remain low-res and the stark difference between the two is an unpleasant sight.
Steam Game Time: 10.9 hours (cumulative game time) / 0.2 hours (session game time)
Psychonauts (PC) (2005)
Relevant Links:
Psychonauts Website
Psychonauts (Wikipedia.org)
Psychonauts (Steam Store Page)
Psychonauts (PC) (MetaCritic.com)
Date/Time
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
@
07:00
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