Let’s Talk About Psychonauts

Well, it’s a new year and that means new changes. In my case, one of the big changes I made as a gamer was switching from PlayStation over to Xbox. The reason why is something I’ll probably go over at a later date, but as of right now I’m happy with the choice I made and am enjoying my Series S quite a bit.

One of the benefits of this change is that I can now play games I’ve always had my eye on but never got the chance to play. And one of the first games I got for my Series S, with the help of Game Pass, was a platformer that I’ve been meaning to play for years but never got around to, Psychonauts.

Psychonauts was a 3D platformer released in 2005 for both PlayStation 2 and original Xbox that was developed by Double Fine and published by Majesco. The game was the brainchild of game developer Tim Schaeffer who was a previous Lucas Arts employee and had worked on games like Grim Fandango and Full Throttle.

Say what you want about Schaeffer the man can make a great videogame, and Psychonauts was no exception. The game was critically praised when it first came out with many praising its arts style, writing and gameplay. Sadly, this did not equate to sales.

Psychonauts was a disappointment commercially. There are a few reasons for this, but I think chief among them was simply a lack of marketing and advertisement. I can attest to this. I knew of Psychonauts thanks to an Xbox demo disk my cousin had which featured a trailer for the game, nd being a big 3D platformer fan I was eager to check it out.

Problem was, when it released, I had no idea it was out. I didn’t see any advertisements for it anywhere and by the time I had heard of it due to word of mouth, the game was impossible to find in stores. It was also released in a busy year for videogames. Resident Evil 4 released that year, the third Splinter Cell came out the same month, Kingdom Hearts 2, hell even the 360 released that year. Psychonauts just ended up getting lost in the shuffle.

I also think it being a 3D platformer didn’t help. By the mid 2000’s classic 3D platformers weren’t that popular outside of long running franchises. The most successful 3D platformers of that era were ones that mixed in other genres. Like how Ratchet and Clank had a larger emphasis on gunplay, or Sly Cooper integrating stealth mechanics for example.

By the end of the sixth console generation, 3D platformers were largely a dying. It was until relatively recently that the genre has made something of a comeback, and that’s largely thanks to the indie scene. A classic styled 3D platformer like Psychonauts wasn’t going to cut it in 2005.

Look, whatever reason it bombed, it bombed. But like with most of Tim Schaeffer’s other games, Psychonauts became a cult classic with many gamers considering it a hidden gem. It became so renowned that Schaeffer was able to successfully Kickstart a sequel, which released in 2021.

I had been meaning to check Psychonauts 2 out when it came out, but didn’t feel comfortable playing it before the first game. Unfortunately, the PlayStation 4 version of Psychonauts, which is an emulation of the PlayStation 2 original, was not very good. I couldn’t play it for very long because of how choppy it ran and so I never got around to finishing it.

Thankfully the Xbox Series S version does run well, and I was finally able to play the game through to completion. So did it live up to the hype. Absolutely. Psychonauts is one of the best platformers from the sixth generation that I’ve and is well worth of it’s cult classic status. But I should stop prattling on and explain why.

Psychonauts follows Razputin, or Raz for short, a young boy with psychic powers who joins a summer camp for psychic children. Raz comes from a family of acrobats but his dream to become a Psychonaut, a type of secret agent that protects the world from psychic threats. The camp is, in actuality, a training ground to teach these kids how to properly use their powers to become a Psychonaut, hence why Raz is there.

Unfortunately, his family has a bad history with psychics and wouldn’t let him go. He actually ran away from home in order to be there, and since the camp can’t have him there without parents’ permission, they have to call Raz’s parents to come pick him up.

But they still let him take part for the few days he’s there, and Raz is determined to become a Psychonaut in that short amount of time. But things become complicated when students begin losing their brains in mysterious circumstances. So, now it’s up to Raz to uncover what’s going on, rescue the other kids brains, and become a Psychonaut along the way.

Psychonauts has a much bigger focus on it’s narrative than most other 3D platformers. Even one’s released at the time which were putting a lot of emphasis on their writing and stories. There’s a lot of cutscenes in this game, perhaps too many.

The cutscenes can get intrusive. The ones that happen in the middle of the level really mess with the flow, you’ll just bet getting into it and the, BAM, you’re in another cutscene. Thankfully, they are skippable. So if you hate getting interrupted, just tap the B button and your straight into the action.

I would still recommend you watch them at least once though since the writing is very good. The world building, character work and plot are all very well constructed, in some ways it reminds me of a point and click adventure game, which is unsurprising given what Schaeffer worked on previously.

If there’s one thing Psychonauts has, it’s personality. The world and characters are so quirky and weird it’s hard not to like them. And when I say weird, I mean WEIRD. Every level in Psychonauts takes place in someone’s mind, trekking through their innermost psyches and deepest darkest thoughts.

Take the first level for instance, it takes place in one of the camp councillors who acts like a military general, so the level is based on war. Another takes place in the mind of a man who is very organised, so the whole level is one giant cube.

Not only does this allow for great environmental variety, but it also leads to some great visual storytelling. There’s a lot of clever hints and subtle details that really show you what each of the characters is going through. If you’re the kind of player who loves combing levels for the smallest of details to get everything out of the story, you are going to have a field day with this game.

One of the key themes of Psychonauts is mental health and how bottling up and not confronting our pasts can lead to ramifications later in our lives. The game uses the mental projections to show us the mental states of the characters.

That’s surprisingly dark for a platformer. It’s more like something out of Silent Hill and I kind of love it for that. It’s nice to see a 3D platformer deal with darker themes like this without devolving into edge lord nonsense. I was taken aback by how dark it got at points, especially near the end.

It never gets too dark mind you. Like a lot of Tim Schaeffer’s games, Psychonauts has a great sense of humour. There’re some great visual gags and clever one liners here. it has the same kind of sardonic sense of humour a lot of the old Lucas Arts point and clicks had. If you liked the comedy in those, you’ll probably like it here too.

The characters are all great too. They would have to be given that a lot of the game involves exploring a person’s mental state. Each character has their own distinct personality, even the kids at the camp, who don’t have much of a focus, have their own unique traits that make them stand out.

I liked pretty much all the characters, mainly because of how odd they all are. Everyone is incredibly quirky in this game, you’ve got a camper who thinks they’re an alien, you’ve got a janitor with a split personality, you’ve got an artist with anger problem, there’s a dude who thinks he’s napoleon, it’s an eccentric cast to say the least.

Raz himself is a very likable protagonist. He has the typical optimism you expect from a platformer protagonist, with a little bit of a sarcastic wit to him. it’s like they took some of the best traits of other platforming characters while also adding their own twists to things.

A lot of why I like Raz is due to his voice actor, Richard Stephen Horvitz. I was already a fan of his work, and he brings his A game here. Me manages to sell a lot of the weirdness very well and brings a likable energy to the character. While he doesn’t get to go full manic like with some of us other roles, he has shown he can voice more laid-back characters and his performance here is a good example of that.

The entire voice cast does a good job here. These characters are supposed to be naturally odd, and the voice actor’s delivery manages to make every line of dialogue sound very natural no matter how weird it gets. It helps make everything feel more believable and that’s not easy to do with characters this surreal.

Speaking of surreal, let’s talk about the art direction. If I had to describe the art style in this game, I’d say it was a mixture of a Tim Burton stop motion movie and Klasky Csupo. The characters have very odd, extremely exaggerated designs that some will likely find off putting, while others will absolutely love. I am in the latter category.

While the character designs do look bizarre and at times very ugly, it kind of works for this game. I mean the world of Psychonauts is supposed to be very strange and kind of odd, so the character designs fit with the kind of world the game creates.

And the designs do a good job of reflecting each of the characters personalities. You can tell what a character is like just by looking at them, even the campers who act as the basic bitch NPCs in the game. The character designs may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I don’t think anyone would call them bad.

What we all we can all agree on is the environments in this game are awesome. At least the main levels are. The hub world takes place in the summer camp, and it looks, fine. It’s not the most creative hub area from a visual perspective, but it does have its own unique charm.

It does feel like a summer camp will all the iconography you would expect from such a location. Plus, there is a change to the hub world in the second half of the game that does shake things up considerably. But I don’t want to spoil the surprise for those that haven’t played it. All I’ll say is that I found it a lot more interesting visually.

But once you enter a level, that’s when things pick up. Because the levels take place within the mind of the various characters, the designers got really creative with the level themes. One is themed after a 60’s roller disco, one is themed on war board games, there’s a level based on Kaiju movies, there’s a level that takes place on a stage with a Phantom of the Opera parody. The levels are like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get.

And some of these levels can be pretty fucking out there man. One of the more memorable levels is The Milkman Conspiracy, which takes place in the mind of a deluded security guard obsessed with conspiracy theories about the Milkman, and it’s about as weird as it sounds.

The whole thing takes place in a neighbourhood that twists around itself, with robots and hidden camera’s everywhere watching your every move. Not only is this one of the more memorable levels in the game, but it’s also one of the most interesting and unique levels I’ve ever played in a platform.

Gameplay is Psychonauts is very straight forward. It doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel when it comes to the 3D platformer, it’s very much what you would expect. You’ll be doing a lot of platforming challenges, exploring for collectables, occasionally fighting some enemies. It’s nothing you haven’t seen before, but what’s here is done very well and it does add its own unique flavour to the mix.

Raz controls very well. While his move set isn’t as vast or as open to play around with as other 3D platformer protagonists, it’s still a fairly decent set that gets the job done.

Being a former circus acrobat, Raz is naturally very acrobatic. He can cling to ledges, walk on tight ropes, climb poles, grind on rails, because it wouldn’t be a 3D platformer from the 2000’s if you couldn’t grind on rails, swing on handlebars, all that fun stuff. His jumping feels nice with the right amount of weight and momentum and made exploring the levels a fun time, for the most part.

I did notice some jank in the platforming. Sometimes I wouldn’t grab onto things properly or the physics would bug out which would cause me to miss a jump. It wasn’t too common, and I don’t know if that’s a game problem or an issue with emulation on the Series S. The platforming in general isn’t too difficult. It can certainly offer a fun challenge, but it’s never too punishing. There aren’t many bottomless pits so missing a jump only meant I lost a little progress. It’s annoying, but not frustrating.

Where Raz’s move set gets interesting is in his array of psychic powers. Raz will unlock a bunch of new powers as the game progresses. He can equip 3 of them at any given time and activate them with the shoulder buttons. It is a little annoying needing to swap powers around, something you’ll need to do a lot, but the quick select you can bring up made this more of a mild irritation.

The one power you’ll use the most is the levitate ability. With it, Raz will balance on a psychic energy ball that lets him jump higher and float slowly down in the air. And you’ll use it the most because it is absolutely broken.

I’m not kidding. Levitate is so busted you can easily break certain platforming challenges, and that’s not a complaint. The levitate ability is just fun, it’s enjoyable seeing how you can break the game in half. That’s part of the fun in 3D platformers and I’m glad Psychonauts keeps that spirit alive.

Some of my other favourite powers were invisibility which is self-explanatory, and clairvoyance which lets you see through other people’s eyes. I recommend trying clairvoyance it on as many characters as you can, there’s some fun visual gags in seeing how other characters see Raz.

The psychic powers are fun, but there’s not a lot of room for experimenting. Most of them are used for a specific purpose and not much else. You can’t really use them much to help with platforming so a lot of them feel very situational. Some of them do have an additional use in combat, but there’s almost no reason to use them.

Combat is the weakest part of the game. There’s barely any enemy variety and most encounters can be beaten with your standard 123 punch combo or psychic shot. There are some enemies that require a specific power to beat them, but these are so rare they don’t help matters much.

Combat is just too easy in this game. Even the bosses don’t pose much of a threat, once you figure out how to hurt them, they pose no challenge at all. I do like the design for most of these bosses, but the lack of challenge makes most of them kind of boring.

The combat sucks, but on the bright side it isn’t a big focus. The bulk of the game is spent platforming which is where the game is at its best. The game knows where its strengths lie. The combat is just there to add some variety and is pretty harmless.

Psychonauts is a fairly linear game. The goal of each level is simply to make it to the end. While levels are open enough to let you explore and find collectibles, most of this is optional. You simply need to finish each levels missions in order to progress.

You’ll be doing a lot of linear platforming challenges, but also a lot of puzzle solving. This is where a lot of Schaeffer’s experiences with point and clicks comes into play. A lot of the puzzles will involve finding items or using your powers to solve them.

None of them are too tricky to figure out, but a few did take me a little bit to figure out. It was nice to have a platformer that got me to think. Most platformers have puzzles, but most are little more than pushing block puzzles that don’t take much brain power to solve.

Though to be honest, some of the puzzles were only ever difficult because they required use of a power that I barely ever used. This might just be me and my crappy memory, but powers like telekinesis were used so little I actually forgot about them. I like that the powers each have a use, but some felt a little neglected.

But if the goal of every level is simply to get to the end while the collectables are optional, what do they actually do? After all, in most platformers they’re used to progress and unlock new levels, but here that isn’t the case. What’s the point of the collectables then? Well, that’s where your Psy-Rank comes in.

Every collectable you pick will add a little bit to your Psy-Rank, and when you reach certain thresholds, you’ll unlock a new power or an upgrade for powers and health. The upgrades aren’t needed to finish the game, but they can be very helpful. Some of the end game upgrades are absolutely busted, once you get the upgrade to your basic shot that hits multiple enemies at once, it makes the combat even more trivial.

I think that’s a better incentive for most players to go after the collectables. Let’s be honest, not everyone likes collecting everything in a platformer. Sure, there might be a reward for it like a better ending or something, but some players simply do not enjoy the process of getting it. Trust me I know the feeling; I love going for 100% in platformers and it can be aggravating in certain games.

Here if you just want to playthrough the story, you can do that without worrying about the collectables, but doing so gives you upgrades that make the game easier to play. It’s still worth going for them, but it isn’t required. Well aside from the powers you get early on, but those aren’t too difficult to get.

As for what you’ll be collecting, well it depends on where you are. Both the hub world and the levels have different collectables, but they all contribute to the same thing, which is a good way to keep things focused. The collectibles themselves are, actually kind of creative, at least in the main levels. you’ll find figments of peoples imagination which are themed on whatever level your in, vaults which contain snippets of the characters backstory, and emotional baggage, which are actual bags that are emotional. I have to admit, that last one made me laugh.

The only collectable I find annoying to get are the cobwebs, not because they’re hard to find but for how you collect them. The cobwebs are the only collectable that requires an item, the Cobweb Duster, and the only way to get that is by buying it at the camp store with arrowheads you can find buried around.

The problem is that it is very expensive and will require you to grind out arrowheads in order to buy it. You can buy a dowsing rod to make things go by faster, but you still need to stop what you’re doing in order to farm for resources. And you need to do this. One of the cobwebs blocks progression through one of the levels, so if you don’t have the duster yet you need to go out and get it.

This is one of the games few blackspots. Honestly, I wish it didn’t have a store in the first place. Most of the stuff in it could have just been made a standard collectable or just been something gained through story progression. The store feels unnecessary.

Aside from that one part, and a couple of minor niggling issues, the gameplay in Psychonauts is great. The core loop of platforming, puzzle solving and exploring for collectables is extremely solid, and even the weakest part, the combat, isn’t that bad all things considered.

Of course, none of this would matter if it didn’t have good level design. I’ve already praised the levels for their strong visual presentation, but are the levels themselves any good? Yes, a resounding yes.

Psychonauts levels are incredibly well designed with each new level introducing new concepts and ideas. One level takes place entirely on a stage where you need to run a play in the right way in order to progress, another takes place entirely on a board game where you switch sizes to recruit game pieces, another has a massive downhill race using the levitation power.

Every level feeling like its own experience. It reminded me a lot of the early Paper Mario game with how every chapter kept changing things up. The variety is strong here without having to rely on alternate gameplay styles and vehicles like so many of its contemporaries often did.

That being said, because of how varied each level is, not all of them work. I like the concept of the kaiju level, because come on you get to play a giant monster movie and that’s awesome, but it also makes Raz a lot heavier which makes him not as much fun to control.

Also wasn’t a fan of the Waterloo level. It was a little to open for its own good and the board game element felt underwhelming. It also has way more jank, I had more missed jumps and weird bug outs here than in any other level.

My least favourite level though is Black Velvetopia. While it’s one of the coolest looking levels in the game, it looks like the Oogie Boogie scene in Nightmare Before Christmas, it just not that much fun to play.

The whole level is one long linear street where you need to avoid a bull charging towards you. The level is too claustrophobic, it’s somehow confusing to navigate despite being the most straightforward level design wise, the bull is a constant annoyance and there are enemies that constantly respawn. Did not like this one very much.

Those were the levels that bothered me, but the thing with levels this varied is that the quality is going to vary from person to person. You may enjoy these levels and find ones I like to be not that great. That’s just the nature of having each level variety like this. And I wouldn’t call any of the levels bad. Even the levels I don’t like that much have fun moments, so while I may not have liked them that much, I also wouldn’t say I hated any of them either.

At least every level is memorable. There isn’t one I found bland or boring. I love games like Mario Galaxy or Crash Bandicoot 2, but even those games have levels I don’t remember that much. Every time I go back to them, I always reach that one level where I go, “oh yeah, this level”. I don’t think that’s going to happen with Psychonauts. Every level is so imaginative it’s going to be hard to forget any of them.

As for the hub world, it’s a very good one. There’s a lot of secrets to uncover, some platforming challenges and collectables to find, it’s a solid hub. It’s broken off into a variety of sections, so it’s not one big hub world like Princess Peach’s castle, but it works fine for what it is. At least by breaking it up like this it lets the areas be a little more detailed.

I should mention that there’s technically 2 hub worlds. There’s a second location you visit in the second part of the game, but I won’t say what it is in case you haven’t played it yet. It isn’t as good, but it does have a nice creepy atmosphere.

In terms of length, Psychonauts should take about 10-12 hours to finish, longer if you go for 100%, which is just the right length. I wouldn’t say 100% is worth it since all you get is an extra cutscene that doesn’t tie into anything, it’s just a brief extra scene and you can just look that up online. I’d say just play it normally while getting what collectables you can, you’ll still have a fun time.

The only thing I haven’t covered yet is the music and honestly, I don’t have much to say on it. It’s good music, it fits the levels well enough and is well orchestrated, it’s just not particularly memorable. It goes more for atmosphere and does so very well, I just like my platformers soundtracks to be catchier.

Psychonauts is one of the best hidden gems of the sixth generation of consoles. it’s one of those games that was perhaps always destined to be a cult classic. It’s bizarre art direction alone would have given it some attention, but it’s well written story, great humour and fun gameplay adds substance to match the style.

It isn’t perfect, no game ever is, but what it gets right it really gets right. It’s a shame it never got the attention it deserved back in the day because there’s a lot about the world that could have been expanded on with a sequel. We have one now, but it took years for that to happen. This could have been a big franchise and it sadly never got that chance.

I’m glad I finally got to play Psychonauts. I would put it right up there with Ratchet and Clank 2, Super Mario Sunshine and Sly 2 as among the best platformers of its generation, certainly one of the most underrated. If you’re a 3D platformer fan it’s well worth checking out.

Well I can finally scratch this one off the back catalogue. And now I can play the sequel, but not right away. There’s a lot of other Xbox games I want to try out still. I will get to the sequel eventually, but there’s a whole new world of gaming for me to explore. And if they’re half as good as this game, it should be a fun ride.