Psychonauts

If you've been reading my column -- and judging by the traffic you haven't -- then you'll know that I'm a big fan of Psychonauts and what it represents for gaming. This platform game is an incredibly creative, wonderfully humorous, and refreshingly original title with the enormous potential to rise above the glut of sequels and "me-too" titles that comprise the majority of the market. When Psychonauts was unceremoniously dropped by Microsoft, it became the martyr of creative game design in my heart. But like Obi-Wan Kenobi, I knew it would become much more powerful than Microsoft could possibly imagine. Recently, I stopped by Double Fine to check out Psychonauts and I was tickled chartreuse to see that its considerable potential is being actualized.

At first, Psychonauts might seem like the generic story of a telepathic, telekinetic, and pyrokinetic young boy that runs away from home with dreams of becoming a psychic soldier -- a tale all of us have heard time and time again. The game sure seems like it's going in that direction when Raz goes to psychic camp to unlock his latent abilities. As he's training and learning the ways of the mentally gifted, he discovers a sinister plot that threatens his fellow campers and his esteemed instructors.


Raz is much more than a little boy blessed with psychic aptitude. He was raised in the circus and possesses impressive acrobatic skills that complement his potentially powerful cerebellum. So you see, Raz is "not just of the body, but of the mind," effectively making him a non-amphibian version of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. (I've been waiting three years to make a Partnerz in Kryme joke.) More importantly, this gives the developers a convenient excuse to place Raz in the traditional platforming situation of running, jumping, climbing trees (Eddie Izzard).

Combining Raz' unique psychic powers with traditional platform elements gives the game a solid foundation. My initial fear was the Psychonauts was going to be a radically cool-looking game with an awesome story and middling gameplay, but the few levels of the game I saw looked pretty tight. The running, jumping, and climbing looked like a lot of fun in that classic Mario-esque way. The various psychic abilities were cool to use and added original twists. Most importantly, the puzzles that require the use of both were very, very clever. If the portions of the game I saw are indicative of the whole, then the gameplay will be very solid.


With all the great platform games on the market, solid gameplay is not enough. Thankfully, Psychonauts has so much more going for it. The game's levels are some of the most imaginative I've ever seen. The art direction is diverse and cool, which caused me to mouth, "Wow," several times during the demo. The artisans at Fine were given a lot of freedom with their creations since the bulk of the game takes place in the minds of various characters. Raz has to jump into 10 different minds, which are drastically different from each other. This nifty gimmick allows the art direction to go all over the place, and the artists definitely throw some wacky and offbeat styles at you. Just check out the movies and screens to see how stylish and varied the environments in this game are. It's much easier to understand and more entertaining if you see for yourself.