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Our giddy love of Psychonauts probably says as much about the dreadfully po-faced nature of most videogames as it does about the relative merits of Double Fine's cult classic. It's hard to think of too many other games that have ever inspired such heart-warming bursts of pure fun merely from the quality of the writing alone. It's as if critics the world over exploded in a righteous froth at the undiluted joy of being released from the harrowing shackles of reviewing intolerably beardy World War II/Sci-fi/stealth/D&D epics and actually allowed to play something that made them laugh. When you spend most of the year with a knitted brow saving the world from insane megalomaniacs, the chance to, um, save the world from an insanely funny megalomaniac has a disproportionate allure. Especially once you realise that 'Sir' Tim Schafer's one of the men behind it.But then you tell people it's a platform game, await the inevitable emission of a hundred thousand audible 'harrumphs' and prepare to string together your most convincing argument ever. You'll insist (without hesitation) that it's damn near the funniest game ever, that it's got more invention on a single level than most games have in their entirety, and with justification compare it to the best animation movies you've seen. Eventually, you'll even begin to reel off obscure anecdotes about those infinitely hilarious bits that you'll probably miss the first time around, exchange utterly hilarious quotes and wallow in the stand out genius of The Milkman Conspiracy.
The warm afterglow of Psychonauts completion is best enjoyed accompanied by a fat cigar, silk sheets and attentive, impossibly attractive slaves. And other people who've played the game. In the quotability stakes, it's the videogaming equivalent of Spinal Tap, or Withnail and I.
Fathers for justice Psychonauts in Hex-based wargaming shock.And then people like us demand fist-shaking justice. We throw logic out of the window and go and vote it our Game of the entire bloody Year. We wave our gaudy home-made Psychonauts placards at you outside our local Game, damn you and demand you go and sodding well buy it. 'Seriously', we wail, 'you'd be mad not to buy it.' 'But I'm not a fan of platform games,' comes the inevitable reply.' But you'll like this one. Really'.A game chock full of such obvious quality that's been so widely acclaimed shouldn't be a hard sell, yet somehow all the brilliance is ignored the second people realise you can double-jump.
Psychonauts are special psychic operatives with powers they use in service to the world's governments. When students begin disappearing from Psychonaut.
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Ah well, anyway.Rock Psychic Summer Camp provides the backdrop for this delightfully unhinged adventure, and you take control of the precocious wannabe psychic soldier Razputin, or Raz as he prefers to be known. In the game itself you flit between the 'real world' hub of the camp and the 'mental world' of other people's minds, with the general goal of defeating their personal demons in order to make progress. After some basic Psi Cadet tuition (amusingly in the war-torn mind of military obsessive Coach Oleander) you begin to win all manner of Merit Badges, which grant Raz with useful new abilities.
Beginning with Marksmanship, completing numerous tasks earns Raz the ability to perform Telekinesis, Pyrokinesis, Levitation, Invisibility, Clairvoyance, Shield and eventually Confusion - abilities that all come in exceptionally useful at one time or other.As seems to be the Law of Platform Gaming, Psychonauts comes fully stocked with an utterly ludicrous number of predictably superfluous collectibles to ferret out during your adventures. Initially the most useful are the numerous arrowheads which litter the landscape and provide the game's currency. In conjunction with the various Psi Cards that are hidden away in generally hard-to-reach places, you can increase your Psi Rank, unlock ability upgrades and later exchange your winnings for objects (like the Dowsing Rod, Cobweb Duster and Mental Magnet) which enable you to gather even more collectables. Give it to me Are you following me?In case you're already rolling your eyes to the heavens at the prospect, such obsessive-compulsive kleptomania never feels that much of a chore, though. This is largely thanks to some generally excellent level design allied to the sort of progression structure where being through always seems to reward the player with something genuinely worth having, be it a new ability or a hidden memory. Hard to believe, but even Psychonauts' concept art is worth having. It's all in the presentation.Better still, this quest for endless tat is by no means compulsory.
Despite it being possible to upgrade to level 100, there's absolutely no need to get anywhere near that level to be strong enough to polish off the game's storyline.
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