Psychonauts finds, in the twisted human mind, the perfect flourishing grounds for the wackiness of the platforming genre
Being fully aware of that, the talented folks at Double Fine Productions decided to set their game in, what is perhaps, the place that is the furthest away from reality: our very minds. At its best, it is a neatly organized place where all our thoughts and ideas are methodically placed so that we can gain easy access to them in times of dire need; however, at its worst, our subconscious is a messed up realm where our memories, fears, traumas, hobbies and passions all come together to shape up the big mental mess that constitutes our complex personalities, and fortunately, for us, most of the characters inhabiting Psychonauts world are closer to being deranged maniacs than boring individuals with peace of mind. By exploring the inner workings of our psyche, Psychonauts becomes free to be as crazy as a game can be, ridding itself of any level design laws or patterns, and – in turn - taking advantage of the core characteristics that make platformers such fantastic games: their natural inclination towards being devoid of realism, and the organic way in which they are able not to take themselves too seriously. If games were solely judged by how fitting their concepts are, Psychonauts would be easily above all other games ever released, because it found the perfect place to plant platforming seeds and let them flourish into glorious full-blown madness.
Psychonauts are secret agents who work for the American government to stop any surging evil plans that involve taking over the world. They do not carry guns, wear fancy outfits or make use of amazing gadgets, as their sole power to stop possible menaces is the ability to use psychic powers to physically harm villains or enter their minds to solve inner conflicts that may be the cause of their devilish nature. Before being accepted as agents, though, as teenagers, humans that have gifted minds must practice in an exclusive training ground cleverly disguised as a summer camp for children, while being assisted by some of the agency's most talented people. Our hero, Razputin, lives in a wandering circus alongside his also psychic father. However, upon not being allowed to join the camp by his dad, Razputin decides to run away from home and sneak into the place, something he easily achieves by climbing in a nearby tree and watching them camp's opening presentation. That is it, until one of the instructors feels his presence and brings him down from his hiding spot. Despite the fact that the normal procedure is expelling people who try to sneak in, the instructors detect that Razputin is very gifted, hence, they let him stay for a little while until his father comes to pick him up. However, that short while is more than enough for someone to start stealing the brains of his camp friends, and with his instructors out in an important mission, it is up to Razputin to stop the brain thefts.
Psychonauts is set up pretty much like all platformers out there. The game consists of one large overworld with plenty of places to explore, which in this case happens to be the area where the camp is set up, called Whispering Rock; and, scattered around this overworld, lie a bunch of stages that demand a certain degree of explorations, investigation and puzzle solving to be found. What makes those stages unique, though, is that they are set inside people's minds. First, players must go through a series of tutorials that will teach them more about Razputin's basic techniques, those tutorials will take place in the minds of the kids' instructors and, although their settings are quite interesting – one of the instructors, for example, has a mental bloody war going on inside his head – the fact that they are merely introductory lessons makes the game drag quite a bit in its early stages. In fact, it becomes rather aggravating once you consider that out of the nine minds Razputin will enter during his adventure, three of them are just training levels that do not let players loose and, as a consequence, stop the game from reaching its full potential.
However, after those initial stages Psychonauts gains life, and it becomes one of the most surprising gaming experiences players have ever had. The game simply never ceases to amaze in the way its stages are presented. Each mind that is visited belongs to a character that is somehow important to figuring out what is happening behind all the kids' brains being kidnapped, and inside them Razputin will come across storylines that are independent from the game's core plot, but that must be sorted out in order for him to proceed his adventure in the real world. Those little stories are extremely engaging and very well-written, as you would expect from a Tim Schafer game; but the most amazing thing about them is how the writers were able to give a reasonable representation of something as abstract as a human mind through the telling of a tale that involves lots of aspects that form our psyche: traumas, happy moments, memories and etc. It is not something that can be firmly explained through words, but once you start diving in someone's brain, it is almost possible to grasp their inner selves by the things you see, feel, hear and face. Below all the randomness and wackiness, there is a very coherent story of a complex human being, it is just a matter of paying attention to the things Psychonauts throws at you.
In addition, those storylines pave the way for some absolutely hilarious scenarios. In an early stage, for example, Razputin will go into the mind of a disturbed lungfish. In an exaggerated display of how much the lungfish fears the big human, inside the fish's head, Razputin will be seen as a massive giant that is destroying Lungfish City while lungfish civilians desperately call for help while trying not to be crushed by the boy's enormous feet, and the local lungfish network does an absolutely tragic, yet hilarious, coverage of how the local army is trying to stop the giant's advances. On another occasion, Razputin will jump into the head of a janitor who, in disappointment on his cowardliness even though he happens to be descendant of Napoleon Bonaparte, plays a mental board game of war against the French dictator, which will send Razputin inside the board itself in order to try to win the war for the poor insane man, via talking to soldiers and carpenters while also devising strategies to move the pieces around the board, in an awesome mixture of platforming, exploration and strategy. Those moments, among others, show how brilliant of a game Psychonauts has been allowed to be due to its core premise, and by the time players wrap up the twelve-hour adventure, it is impossible not to wish for more, because this is clearly an idea that opens up an overwhelming amount of possibilities.
As it is to be expected, the gifted boy has all regular abilities of a hero in this kid of game he jumps, climbs ropes, runs and punches; but, being a game about mental powers, Psychonauts obviously features a very nice group of psychic abilities such as invisibility, confusion, clairvoyance (seeing a situation through another character's eyes), polytechnic, levitation, shield, telekinesis (moving an object with the mind's power), among others. Those powers do become useful in a number of situations, especially combats, but there are only a few puzzles during the game that force players to use them, which ends up being a major waste of potential, because the couple of instances where abilities like telekinesis and clairvoyance must be used happen to be quite clever puzzles, and it is a major disappointment that the game decided to focus on platforming – although it is really varied – and left a huge chunk of puzzle possibilities to be explored. It is also worth noting, that, as far as gameplay goes, Psychonauts does feature a few occasions where the camera does not provide players the best angle to deal with a certain situation, which can become slightly infuriating.
Like most platformers, there is no lack of things to collect at Psychonauts. All stages have a certain number of mental luggages that can be picked up by Razputin, by finding the appropriate tag and then locating the right luggage; a few vaults containing memories of importance from the character whose mind is being visited at the moment, which gives players a little extra backstory on them; and figments, which are quite abundant and easy to spot, but hard to be completely collected given the fact that there are so many. In the overworld, Razputin will find PSI cards, which when joined with a PSI core – purchased at the camp's store – will form a PSI Marker, causing Razputin to earn one rank. Ranks are of importance because as Razputin earns new ranks, new psychic abilities are unlocked, and some of which are mandatory to finish the game. Psychonauts is, then, a game that can either be played as a straightforward platformer, or be slowly appreciated as gamers explore its stages' many locations; however, it forces players to do a certain – not too extreme – degree of exploration, even if they do not want to, because figments, luggages and other items must be collected to help Razputin gain a new rank.
Psychonauts is not satisfied with excelling in its gameplay, though. In its extravagance, it is a game that looks a whole lot like a Saturday morning cartoon. Artists have clearly taken many liberties when drawing how the game's world and characters would look like, because everything is extremely exaggerated and cartoonish: the scenarios are outlandish, characters have differently shaped heads, and etc. The game's cartoon-like features go beyond its visual, though, also reaching its happy and upbeat soundtrack, with a few darker tense moments, and its stellar dialogues that will most certainly make gamers laugh out loud. The game successfully alternates between many kinds of humor, going from exaggerated to lightly sarcastic in a few seconds, but always coming off as extremely natural due to how well-constructed the game's characters are and how the lines are properly delivered. It may be an obvious statement to make about a Double Fine Productions game, but Psychonauts is a big lecture on proper videogame humor.
In the end, Psychonauts does stumble in a couple of core areas, but its achievements easily outweigh its flaws. Platformers will forever benefit from settings that give the creative minds behind the project the chance to create, and no platformer has ever done that as seamlessly as Psychonauts has. It is one of those rare cases where it is hard to tell if gameplay was built after a story premise, or if the premise was simply put together to support the gameplay, because the two of them are so great together and have such a positive exchange between each other that Psychonauts simply seems to have been born just like this. It is the product of brilliant minds who were able to portray, with a precision that cannot even be found in psychology books, how the inside of a messed up mind looks like.