I wanted to go straight to Psychonauts 2 since it recaps the story anyway but I figured experiencing the original Psychonauts and comparing the 2 games could be very interesting so I went ahead and played it anyway.
The end result is…meh. Like, it’s fine? I think this game is 110% hard carried by the extremely creative ideas it has. The story, characters, writing are all very well done here, the themes of the levels you venture into are nothing short of genius and very occasionally hilarious.
Now while I’m usually the kind of person that values gameplay over story (and it still applies here no matter what), I’m more lenient on games like these for a couple of reasons. For one, the ideas the game has as I said before go above and beyond what I initially expected, and this is a very old game too. Even when I was bored with the game to a degree, I still managed to be entertained by everything else. Second, the game itself isn’t awful at all. The control is solid enough, you have a couple of movement options to mess around with, but overall it’s just nothing special. It’s very plain and basic, especially in conjunction with the very bland platforming challenges the game presents you. Raz has a couple of neat psychic abilities to use but having to frequently swap them out every so often to deal with what a level has to offer feels clunky in the heat of the moment. There’s a crapton of collectables to find but honestly you get overwhelmed with how many there are so easily that often I just don’t bother most of the time. Overall it’s a very average game that manages to bump itself up a few pegs with the charm and imagination it showcases on full display
The end result is…meh. Like, it’s fine? I think this game is 110% hard carried by the extremely creative ideas it has. The story, characters, writing are all very well done here, the themes of the levels you venture into are nothing short of genius and very occasionally hilarious.
Now while I’m usually the kind of person that values gameplay over story (and it still applies here no matter what), I’m more lenient on games like these for a couple of reasons. For one, the ideas the game has as I said before go above and beyond what I initially expected, and this is a very old game too. Even when I was bored with the game to a degree, I still managed to be entertained by everything else. Second, the game itself isn’t awful at all. The control is solid enough, you have a couple of movement options to mess around with, but overall it’s just nothing special. It’s very plain and basic, especially in conjunction with the very bland platforming challenges the game presents you. Raz has a couple of neat psychic abilities to use but having to frequently swap them out every so often to deal with what a level has to offer feels clunky in the heat of the moment. There’s a crapton of collectables to find but honestly you get overwhelmed with how many there are so easily that often I just don’t bother most of the time. Overall it’s a very average game that manages to bump itself up a few pegs with the charm and imagination it showcases on full display