Psychonauts

psychonautsLike SBCGFAP Episode 3, this game took me forever. I’m not sure exactly when I started it, but I guess it must’ve been sometime in August or September last year. And like a lot of other things, I stopped playing this game until some weeks ago.

I’ll admit it, for about the last third of the game, I used a walkthrough. The game is not really that hard (although the difficulty curve is in fact not straightforward, as Yahtzee mentioned), but I wanted to get it done finally. However, I still enjoyed it very much. I think I remember reading that people were unsure if Tim Schafer would also be good at developing an action-adventure, and in the beginning of the game, I felt there was too much going on. But once you get into the game and find the objectives and the types of items you are collecting, and when you find more and more abilities, it all becomes much clearer.

And of course there is the humor. I often feel unsure whether I will like a game that’s intended to be funny, and I often prefer “serious” games to “funny” ones. However, as in most cases, this turns out the be a misconception. This game is funny without end. The amount of ideas that went into this game is amazing. Just to name a few of the absurd scenes:

  • In the mind of a crazy retired actress, you’re directing a stageplay in which she faces her childhood memories. To succeed, you have to order the scenes in the right order so certain events in the story happen and you can use the stage props to advance further in the level.
  • While in the conspiracy fantasy of another character, you have to disguise yourself as a member of several groups to a number of “secret agents” who all wear the same conspicuous outfit and who all use just one item as a laughable disguise.
  • In the mind of a fish, you wander around in a “Godzilla”-like size, terrorizing a society of talking fishes.

What more could I say?