Forgotten Game Greats: "Psychonauts" (2005)

- by Ninja Ross, 30 November 2012

Have you played "Psychonauts"? Because I have recently found out that it’s a cult game with sales so bad it nearly screwed up its publisher, Majesco. One of the best games of the PS2 era- a game that still holds up today- was a commercial failure. Sit down, readers, let me tell you why this is the stupidest thing ever.

Psychonauts is a game about young psychics in a psychic summer camp, learning to control their abilities. Raz, our hero, shows up in the middle of the night, interrupting a lecture at a camp fire, and reveals that he ran away from home to join the camp and learn from the Psychonauts, a team of secret agent psychics who run this summer camp. The reason he ran away, of course, is because his family hates psychics, because a gypsy psychic cursed them to drown. Raz’s father doesn’t hate him, but he spends his every waking moment trying to make him love the circus more than he loves Psychonauts. Yeah, he was raised in a circus.

But the game has a silly cartoon style with comedy and stuff! So that makes the silly back stories acceptable. Can you imagine if Nathan Drake was a psychic circus guy? That game would make no sense...

So, on the surface, we have a fun all ages cartoon influenced game with loveable characters, witty dialogue and an insane plot about camp member’s brains disappearing.

Raz learns psychic skills like levitation, psi-blasts and invisibility by entering the minds of his teachers with other students, taking part in silly themed obstacle courses.

You can rush through the game and get nothing more than a fun ride with comedy and a little drama. But! BUT! Every good gamer knows that you shouldn’t do that. You need to explore everything.

It is here that the game’s hidden depths are revealed. Dark depths that add extra layers to characters and make everything more stylish and interesting.

Maybe that’s why the sales weren’t good. You have to work for this stuff!

You find out more about the characters when you enter their minds and search for cartoon vaults that run around. You slap these suckers with your big orange psychic hand and then you get one of those little clicky viewer things (that’s the technical term, by the way) with pictures. These reveal hidden back story for the character you’re mind reading. They’re repressed memories!

Raz

Ok, let me give you an example here. While learning levitation, you need to make your way through the mind of Milla, one of the Psychonaut agents. Her mind is a great big party from the 1960s with dancers, funky music and bright colours. You’re rolling around on a big levitation ball, exploring. What do you find? One of those little vaults! Slap it open and what do you find? A viewer thingy. What’s the repressed memory? The agent used to run an orphanage until it burnt down, killing the orphans.

EXIT! EXIT!!!

Wow, right? She’s using this hippie party stuff to distract herself from that memory! And being a Psychonaut also helped her forget.

But wait... Right next to the vault... A box with a red light coming out of it. And you hear the agent’s nervous voice telling you the party isn’t down there. Screw it, jump down anyway!

In this box is actually a whole mess of what look like little monsters. Almost childlike. What’s worse is, they’re screaming with high pitched voices, asking why they were left alone and that it’s too hot in there. Yup. You just got smacked in the face with dark drama, character development and slightly disturbing visuals.

Outside of heads is the camp. In this camp is people. In these people are tongues. Behind these tongues are thoughts. All of this gets mixed into... Words! Interesting words!

I’ve talked enough about the characters but I will say this: If you do buy this game, you need to talk to everybody. They all have their own little stories. Love triangles, broken friendships and bullying. A whole lot of my time spent on this game was spent talking to camp members about their problems.
And setting birds on fire.

But the style, witty dialogue and great characters aren’t the only reason to play this! No, it’s also a solid platformer with some real fun psychic powers! You can set things on FIRE! Fire, dun dun duuuuun dun! I’ll teach you to burn! As I said, I like setting
birds on fire! FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRE!!!

If you try to set other camp goers and teachers on fire, though, they get pissed. But hey, that’s fun, too!

Every mind gives you fun challenges based around your powers. For example, to avoid a charging bull in an alley (yeah, a charging bull in an alley) you’ll need to use invisibility to sneak into someone’s house as it passes. To defeat a giant brain tank, you’ll need to shoot its belly with Psi-Blasts!

Brain Tank!

Also, FIRE!!! Burn things!!!

Between all that stuff I already mentioned, you’ll be fighting Censors, picking up figments of a person’s imagination (used to level up and ear new powers) and putting tags on people’s emotional baggage.

So, what did you miss out on? A fun, dark, twisted game with great gameplay and fantastic characters. You messed up, people. Unless you played it, of course. If so, I like you. Give me a big hug.

This game is now available on PSN, Steam, XBLA and GOG.com so you have no reason not to get it. Unless you have no cash... That’s a valid reason. Also, you get to be Goggalor. Don’t ask, just go play it and be amazed.

Tagged: video games, Forgotten Game Greats.

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