The engine sort of couldn\'t do the game justice. The team had to switch to a different protagonist because the original one had a night cap that just couldn\'t be animated properly. The graphics themselves aren\'t really lackluster. I mean, it\'s the first game from the team (Double Fine), a mostly inexperienced one at that, and it\'s not like they could get Unreal. Cut it some slack. Funny, I do not remember having any issues at all on my laptop. It could be that something went wrong when you downloaded the game. That can happen. Also, you\'re not factoring in just how well each other the asylum dwellers conditions are personified through their levels. The 3D platforming isn\'t mediocre either. It\'s just standard at worst. One of the reasons it is so beloved is because of how truly original it is. Plus, despite having an art style you would expect from a cartoon show aimed at kids, it\'s actual target audience is older.
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Just...OK
I went into this game with fairly high expectations. Pretty much every review I’ve read paints it as one of gaming’s most undeserved flops; a hidden gem loved by all who happen to stumble over it. Another factor in my interest in Psychonauts was my love of 3D platformers, a genre that is unfortunately woefully underpopulated, especially in recent years. What I got left me underwhelmed.
The game starts off great. Despite some technical qualms (which I’ll get into later) I found myself really getting into it. The voice acting's great, there’s plenty of Funny Moments, and the characters that were introduced early-on were really interesting. I particularly liked how Sasha and Milla’s backstories actually explored some of the implications that growing up with psychic powers would have. You get several power-ups in this part, most of which make the game more fun and remain useful throughout the rest of the game. Unfortunately, the game takes a massive dive in quality after its midpoint. The levels become much less fun, and the characters become a lot more cliched and uninteresting. The power-ups also become a lot more situational and gimmicky, and lack utility outside of a few contrived situations. All of this culminates in a final level that’s frustrating for all the wrong reasons, and a final boss that fails to provide any kind of challenge whatsoever.
I also found some severe technical shortcomings in the game. I didn’t really have an issue with the art direction; however, I felt like this game’s engine really couldn’t do it justice, despite other games from around the same time looking much better. Despite these lackluster graphics, I also couldn’t get a decent framerate out of this game, and some friends with higher end systems have confirmed that these problems persist even for them. Sometimes, after playing for a while, the game would also lag even more than usual, forcing me to restart the game to make it playable again. Poor optimization and a memory leak are probably to blame.
The combination of a promising first half, a tedious second half, and poor optimization average out to a game that I find to be So Okay, It's Average. Psychonauts has taught me that, sometimes, there’s a reason certain works become Cult Classics rather than, you know, plain old classics. Psychonauts may appeal to some that can stay hooked into its story all the way through, and don’t mind the rather mediocre 3D platforming, but I simply didn’t find the story and characters interesting to the end and felt that the gameplay simply didn’t measure up to some of the greats of 3D platforming, such as Mario Galaxy and Banjo-Kazooie. Perhaps I’m being too hard on the gameplay, and unfairly to comparing to games way out of its league, but solid gameplay, as well a low Story-to-Gameplay Ratio, is just something I expect more from platformers than I do other genres, such as RPGs and Adventure Games.