A unique and fun experience, Psychonauts should not be missed.
The Bad: Seems padded near the end to increase length artificially; short game overall, clocking in at twelve to fifteen hours; little replayability.
Taking place at a summer camp for psychically gifted youngsters, Psychonauts places you in the role of the protagonist, Raz (short for Rasputin), voiced by Richard Steven Horvitz, who also provided the voice for Invader ZIM in the eponymous cartoon. The voice work throughout, in fact, is top-notch: each character has been well cast, and with help from excellent writing, Psychonauts also has above-average amount of character development.
The level design is the real star of Psychonauts. Each level presents a unique visual style while maintaining platforming gameplay mechanics throughout. Since each level takes place inside someone’s psyche - and the entire cast is quite a distance from normal - this leads to some intriguing and truly unique experiences. All of the psychic powers Raz earns throughout the game are put to good use in the levels, and as many enemies and situations can be handled by different methods, this opens the gameplay up a bit. The game has several interesting puzzles, some of which are witty head-scratchers, while others are frustratingly repetitive, obvious, or just annoying. In fact, the only drawback of the gameplay is that some of the platforming mechanics become too repetitive: swinging on poles, double-jumping, shimmying along ledges… nothing out of the ordinary here, though the levels themselves and overall design of the game are anything but ordinary.
As you might expect, the humor characteristically found in Tim Schafer’s games is here in abundance, from witty one-liners to offbeat humor. This game will make you laugh out loud more than once, which really says something considering it’s a ten to fifteen hour adventure with little replayability. Tim Schafer and his development company, Doublefine, definitely still know how to make good games. Overall, Psychonauts is brief, but with a fair amount of challenge, and a gameplay experience that should not be missed.