Psychonauts

Psychonauts
Majestico (PC, XBOX, PS2)

Wouldn’t it be nice to have the ability to enter into someone’s psychological space and ferret out any problems they might be having by battling their mental demons? If someone is violently trying to live up to their macho instincts, for example, then all it would take is the defeat of a certain “mental bull” to restore them to sanity. Oh the domestic bliss that would ensue...

Psychonauts was designed by Tim Schafer, the genius behind PC classics like Maniac Mansion, Full Throttle, and Grim Fandango (which is perhaps the closest a game has come to being a complete artistic expression along "cinematic" narrative lines). Shafer’s usual off-kilter humour, wacky characters, and brilliant art design are in full effect this time out. Like always, a Tim Shafer script needs to be played, not read. And so you play Raz, a young psychic who breaks into a summer camp training socially-deviant kids with psychic powers to be super soldiers (think X-Men without the self-confidence). One of the evil minds behind the camp is surreptitiously stealing the brains of these kids to power battle tanks. After discovering this secret plot, it’s up to Raz to enter a bunch of people’s heads to fight their mental demons and stop the madman before his plan destroys the entire world. And that’s where things take a decided twist for the wacky.

Psychonauts is a 3D platformer, and the vast majority of levels are constructed in the mental space of the other people at the summer camp. These conceptual triumphs of level design include Waterloo World, where you help someone defeat their Napoleon complex; a disco-party level where you uncover the disturbing secrets of the mind in question behind all the happy fun-fun times; a theatre level where kids enact a series of surreal tableaux, leading up to a boss fight with an art critic who attacks with ink droplet words like “Trite!”; a level that looks like one of those sofa-sized paintings sold for $29.95 by, er, 'starving artists'; and a level performed in the mind of a bully fish who is so scared of Raz that the latter is realized as a Godzilla-sized figure trashing the gigantic Lungfishopolis, heart of all that is sacred.

Gameplay consists of the usual platforming conventions, including powerup collection, combat, and jumping/swinging/climbing etc. You beat levels by collecting or manipulating certain objects, clearing mental cobwebs and emotional baggage, defeating enemies, and solving some fairly devious puzzles. This nets you the reward of watching a Viewmaster presentation of their memories and emotional needs; Baudrillard's trip to Vegas was never so surreal. As you progress through the game, you gain psychic powers that you can use at your leisure, such as telekinesis, levitation, and (my fave) pyrokinesis.

While the gameplay is solid, it’s the script, art direction, and sound design that will truly captivate. The game is both creepy and laugh-out-loud funny -- usually simultaneously so. While certainly not the replay value on adventure games remains circumscribed by nostalgia, Psychonauts is long enough to will keep a typical gamer occupied for several hours. Tim Shafer will one day be inscribed as a major figure who elevated games from mere electronic interactions to full-blown aesthetic experiences. Psychonauts has been released for all major platforms, and is equally good wherever you play it. If you have a decent gaming PC (with a gamepad, son) however, then skip the consoles and aim for the graphical splendour made possible by a more high-power system.