The First Review

Alright, I'll admit to not beating that many games for someone who is a hardcore gamer. I've played a great deal, but getting to the end of most games isn't that imperative to me. I could be said to be the antithesis of a completionist, but if I get in the right mood I can do what I did to TES4: Oblivion. (I have beaten every single quest like in the game, not counting the miscelaneous quests of which I'm missing maybe fifteen or so.) Still, I have played plenty of games and beaten at least the main quest of several so I'm going to take this chance to review them in no specific order. Some of them are going to be pretty old games, but think of those as a chance to enjoy a few of my old favorites as a pick them apart into tiny pieces of beaten muck.

Without further b/s...
Psychonauts

Psychonauts is the first game released by developer Double Fine and would most likely be considered an action-adventure game, but genres and whatnot don’t make a game so let’s get down to the facts. First off, Psychonauts is an incredibly imaginative game. You play Raz, a kid who has run away from his family circus to become a psychonaut, basically a psychic secret agent, and the game opens with him insinuating himself in the Whispering Rock Summer Camp for psychics. He has only two days to earn every merit badge, gain all his psychic training, and become a psychonaut. Along the way he runs into a few interesting situations which make him the game’s hero. I’m not going to the give out any of the kinds of spoilers that get popcorn thrown at me at movie theaters, but let’s just say that the game goes in some odd directions.
One of the first things you’ll notice is that psychonauts handles like sticking your controller and hands into a goldfish bowl full of piranhas. The camera can at times be the most difficult opponent in the game, but once you get it under control and learn the quirks you can pull off pretty much any trick the game can think up, which is good because towards the end of the game you’re going to need them.
Ah, yes, the difficulty curve. Psychonauts consists of two halves. The first is a series of little more than training missions where there is nearly no penalty for failure except to try again. Any player with a working limb should be able to take these levels without any problem. Then about half way through the game the difficulty jumps, acceptably. Really the middle levels are not terribly difficult and they are quite imaginative. It is only towards the very end of the game that all the little quirks you’ve had to pick up on slowly over the majority of the game become murderous obstacles. What was once simple can become truly frustrating and I’ll admit I had to put the game down and walk away a few times so that I didn’t start grinding my teeth. Still, if you’ve spent the game mastering the finicky little controls to an impressive point the final levels present an enjoyable challenge.
Yes, I would liken Psychonauts to the old Mega Man games on the NES. There are points where you want to scream at the game and tell it that you hate it and never want to be friends again, but you still come back for another beating when you’ve had a little time to think of that one other way you might try to take the next obstacle.
So really there’s little to say about Psychonauts. It’s a clever and fun game that has more than its share of gameplay issues, but is forgiven of all problems by the fact that you can make seagulls explode with your mind.

Visual: 3/5
Gameplay: 3/5
Story: 5/5
Overall: 4/5