Psychonauts Reviews

An extremely charming game with great music, art, and creative level design. Its not perfect, but i thoroughly enjoyed my time with every level (except meat circus). To this day, despite how aged this game is, i haven't seen level design like this EVER. On top of this, some of the best representation for mental conditions I've seen. It has room for humor and personality without punching down on anyone and truly showcases the troubles associated with them and how to overcome them. I'm gonna play psychonauts 2 right now and try to get all collectibles (i will die)

You can see the effort and love this game was made, funny, hard to believe this game is from the ps2 era and it just 5 gb, the cinematics looks low quality but the game itself looks very good, one of the best games ever. Hard time playing it on the steam deck because of lack of controls but it was worth it downloading some controls

gameplay has aged a bit, specially with how it controls but that artstyle is so good I dont even mind. Outside of that it held up very well and each level has so much going for it with quirky characters and fun gimmicks that you dont expect to see in a game that's this old. Outside of a few flaws, its a very fun game and you should absolutely get it.

One of my favorite games. Super creative in it's game features and levels. Definitely check this game out it was one of the best games to come out of it's generation.

Psychonauts was more entertaining than I thought it would be. I got it on sale and played through the whole thing on my Steam Deck. If you want to play it on Steam Deck, you're going to want to force Proton Experimental compatibility. If you don't force proton compatibility, it tries to use a Linux build and the camera gets stuck rotating for some reason... Also, when you start the game, you'll have to use the touch pad to go into the game controls > key bindings, and set the Default key bindings every time you load the game. I don't know if this is an issue for everyone or just me. After figuring this out, the game played great! The controls, on screen, didn't match what I pressed on the deck, but once I figured out what button did what action, I was good to go. If you like playing old-school Xbox genera games, give Psychonauts a shot.

What incredible charm, it's both nostalgic and mindblowingly advanced. To think that this game came out in 2006 is absolute insanity. The detail is incredible if you look in the right places 10/10 Please for the love of god do not try to 100% it like I did, do not suffer as I have suffered.

Psychonauts is a terribly flawed game that also happens to be in some ways brilliant and one of the best platforming games I've ever played. The main issues with the game are issues that plague a lot of games from this era- camera controls sending you off a cliff, wonky platforming sections, etc. But the core concept is so smart and well executed that it doesn't even matter. This game was in many ways way ahead of its time because it takes place in a retrofuturistic 80s setting and has a strong emphasis on narrative among the different characters. Back when this came out NPCs were a lot more robotic. It's cool that in this game they move around and what they say changes as the game progresses. The story is also pretty fantastic because there are more developments as it progresses. Normally in a game like this the setup is everything, for example, Mario needs to save the princess. However, psychonauts story is more akin to one you would find in a point and click game as there are consistent developments that change the characters. The game goes pretty deep into Jungian psychology. All the character levels are stored in a main hub called the "collective unconscious" and each character has some unresolved issue in their psyche that makes up the bulk of the level. For example, one character is completely focused on being mentally neat and orderly but goes nuts when that order is upset by the protagonist Rasputin. The humor in this game is actually pretty well done, I laughed a few times at the overall silliness of the story, and if you pay attention there are a lot of visual gags that are just brilliantly done. For example, the senior agent is hiding around the camp in different disguises. When you confront him in the underground area, he claims he cannot go above ground and is trapped because the psychic crystals underground are keeping him sane. During the end sequence, there is no explanation as to how he's above ground, but you see a crystal strapped to his back as though he found a rudimentary way to solve the problem, but occasionally just says insane things. It can be inferred that he is actually crazy and goes up and takes on other roles at the camp without realizing it. There are tons of things like this in the story and it's really a ton of fun to play a game that rewards you for paying attention. Likewise, the platforming and combat aspect is just great in concept, and only somewhat flawed in execution. Attacking can be a little unresponsive, but this game is more platforming than combat. As you progress you get tons of powerups like the ability to levitate on a bouncing ball and pick up and throw objects with your mind. Beyond this just moving around in this game is more fun than it ought to be, as Razputin can swing, slide down rails, double jump, climb, hang from ledges, etc. It's probably the most impressive number of individual acrobatic maneuvers I've ever seen in a 3D platformer. Further, as you progress you get more upgrades and become more powerful. The game gives a rank from 1-101 which is like a level that bestows new rewards as you progress. It's really well done and makes collecting everything in the game a lot more fun. This game has thousands of collectibles and for some reason collecting things never gets old in this game. I like the idea of collecting "figments", which are basically little two dimensional drawings on the 3D plane that represent ideas. Because each figment is unique it makes the collectathon aspect a lot more fun. I used the guide on Steam and found all the collectibles with few issues, but it was very time consuming. This game also has some great boss fights, and I like that there are sequence breaks to certain problems, ala, Mario 64. Once you get the levitation ball you can skip a lot of the platforming requirements you'd normally have by jumping and floating over them. For some reason this is more fun to me because you can come up with your own ways to solve the problem. And while the overall structure of the game and its upgrades feels ridiculously confusing at first, after a few hours I found it highly intuitive and cleared the game 100% without any issues. It's clear that this game has a cult following both for its fantastic game design and characters. There is enough content in here for five platformers and each "brain" you go into almost feels like its own little game. I would put it up there with games like Banjo Kazooie and the original Spyro trilogy as a AAA platformer that's just a bit rough around the edges because it's extraordinarily overly ambitious, I can, however, forgive most of this because the game was just incredibly engrossing and compelled me to keep playing it. With all of that said, aside from the bad camera issues and minor delay in the combat I wish the music was a tad more memorable. The tunes are good but they aren't catchy, even though the voice acting is excellent and it's incredibly impressive that such primitive graphics managed to pull off highly accurate lip synching. If the concept interests you, there's no question that you should play it.

An absolutely amazing game, I seriously wish I played this sooner. Up there as one of the best 3D-platformers even though the platforming is kinda crap and not what you're actually there for. The game is absolutely oozing with humor and life, the kind of game only a visionary leading a team of creatives who love their craft can manifest.

Psychonauts is a great game that has some of the best writing in the Video Game history BUT time also hasn't been very kind to this game in terms of control and combat. Firstly, the games story, writing, voice acting, etc is all top notch and it has some of the best environmental storytelling out there (with exception to the sequel). Raz (the main protagonist) is a fantastic character and the voice job by Horvits is top notch. Graphically this game doesn't hold up too well and it's not for the art style. While the Art Style can definitely be divisive personally I think it's fine. It's later polished up and I think looks way better in the sequel but here it's fine if not a bit ugly at times. However the art style mixed with original xbox graphics and low resolution cut-scenes can make parts of the game just look bad and dated. The real part that makes this game not be a masterpiece is the combat and to a lesser extent the movement. The combat is clunky and tough to get the hang of (another thing fixed in the sequel). The movement is fine but the Levitation ability is completely overpowered which while fun completely negates a lot of the platforming challenge. The games world and main hub (whispering rock psychic summer camp) is charming and fun to explore but the first levels or minds can feel very tutorialized making the start of the game one of the weakest if you're not fully exploring the hub. The game really picks up halfway when the story pivots to its main objective (not to spoil anything) and takes you away from the camp to really go into the best minds in the game. Sadly the final level is a mess. It's not this super insane challenging level it got over time but it's way tougher than the rest of the game and the bad and clunky combat makes it a frustrating chore. Overall you play the original Psychonauts for the incredible story, fun word, and cleaver writing and not the combat/platforming. If you do pick this up (which I recommend if you're interested) be prepare to endure some dated gameplay to get to the parts that made this game a cult classic. 8/10 - Infinite

Funny, quirky adventure. Although the later stages might be annoying, the level designs are really fascinating. This game has been on my backlog for almost 8 years; finally, I played it from beginning to end.