Psychonauts (2005)

Play Psychonauts; if there's one thing I want you to take away from this review is to go and play this game. You don't have to finish it you just need to play it. Psychonauts is one of those games that feels like they trapped lighting in a bottle, it'll most likely never happen again but damn was it good when they did. The premise is that you play a ten year old boy named razputin who ran away from home to go to whispering rocks psychic summer camp to become a psychonaut. Unfortunately the teachers called Raz's dad and so he only has a few days to learn all that he can, but when his friends start having their brains stolen he's the only one who can save them.

Psychonauts is a little weird, and by a little I mean a lot. Each level is actually the mind of someone else, from your teachers for classes to someone who has a split personality and thinks they're napoleon. You'll gradually go through the levels, increase your psychic rank, and unlock new psychic abilities like burning stuff. The gameplay itself isn't anything too special for a 3d platformer but it's solid enough to be fun.

You don't really play psychonauts for the gameplay though, the best part of the game is just exploring around the camp talking to people and learning about them. The dialogue is top notch; every conversation is entertaining and I never once got tired of talking to people. The voice acting is also very good, there wasn't a single voice that sounded wrong to me, or got irritating to hear.

I don't really have many complaints about Psychonauts. The controls are good, I personally never encountered any glitches, the difficulty was never too much (no, not even the meat circus), and the music was also very nice. The only thing that I have a complaint about is getting all the collectibles. Getting everything in the camp was fine and very fun to do, getting the emotional baggage, safes, and mental cobwebs was no trouble either, but the figmants were a pain. The problem with them is that there are so many of them, when you get down to the last few it can be a real headache to find them. The main level where this is the worst is obviously Waterloo. Here's some help from me so you don't lose your hair: when you are as small as you can be go to the carpenter's house from there go right to the tunnel and go behind it, look around the trees back there and you'll find a figment.

But other than that the game is great, go play it. There aren't many games I feel everyone should try but Psychonauts is definitely one of them. It's only 10$ normally and even less when it's on sale like the Christmas sale coming soon. So do yourself, or someone else, a favor and play Psychonauts you won't regret it.

Notes: I have 100% this game and reached rank 101