Let's go back to a golden time when Double Fine were untainted by the mediocrity of Brütal Legend, the disappointment of Broken Age, the sloppiness of Grim Fandango: Remastered, and whatever Costume Quest is. Let's also go back to a time when fully-blown comedy games were still allowed to be made by a major company and released on consoles.
Quick question: name as many comedy games as you can without consulting Wikipedia. Here's my attempt: the Portal franchise, the Monkey Island franchise, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Typing of the Dead, the No-One Lives Forever franchise, Team Fortress 2...um...I could've sworn I had more.
Second question: name any comedy games made within the past three years. Far Cry: Blood Dragon, Saints Row 4, Deadpool...um....does Team Fortress 2 still count?
It's odd because games are inherently funny. The reason why YouTube has so many people recording themselves playing games is because whilst games themselves are often completely straight-faced, actually they are your playground. Half Life 2 only has a few smatterings of humour, but I'll always remember saving the world by grabbing toilets and throwing them at Combine forces. You'd think that developers would go all out and just make a proper comedy game instead of playing it all so deadly serious like in Call Of Duty or Metal Gear.
So along comes Psychonauts. You play as Raz, who I'm told is a human boy but for some reason everyone in this game looks like an insect. You've broken into a summer camp for other psychic children, with the aim to become the greatest psi agent in the world so your parents don't come to pick you up. Raz himself is a surprisingly complex character as it soon becomes apparent that he ran away from the circus, he has a crippling fear of water, and there are many other mental issues he has to grapple with whilst trying to solve other peoples.
The crux of the gameplay centers on psionic powers, which is hilarious because most of them have the same names as the psionic powers from System Shock 2 - a game which is the precise opposite of this one. Annoyingly, you can only equip three powers at a time, so you'll be constantly swapping them around because as the challege ramps up the game will demand a wide pallette of abilities. Sometimes I think the game deliberately forces you to use a power you don't have equipped just to vex you.
I have no idea what Double Fine were on when they made this, but I want it. Such setpieces include a town made of minature fish-people, a neighbourhood populated by secret agents disgusing themselves as construction workers by loudly saying how they love being a construction worker, and the greatest PSI agent in the world being an elderly texan with his personality split all over the campsite. Every few moments a new burst of originality comes forth to make you gaffaw so loudly it annoys the neighbours.
The art style is nothing short of inspired. Every level is a masterpiece of aesthetic design, and whilst jagged edges and polygonal models are frequent here - it's otherwise aged well for a game ten years old. The cartoonish asset complete with bright colours adds to the trippy nature of the game, and my screenshots won't ever be able to do this game justice.
I'm not sure why Double Fine decided to double-back and make point and click adventure games again instead of ones that intergrate story and gameplay into one, because letting us actually walk about this world adds so much fun to the experience without sacrificing the plot or comedy. You simply wouldn't be able to smash up the fish-peoples town on the SCUMM engine. The ultimate joy here is being part of the madcap setpieces rather than simply clicking our way around it. More than Grim Fandango, Psychonauts makes it clear why point-and-click adventures died so hard.
Which is odd, because gameplay-wise it's a standard platformer. The levitaion power adds some much needed fluidity but aside from that there's nothing spectacular. The combat is repetitive, with the 'lock-on' system only working when it feels like it, but it's not horrible. One part I really dislike is how there are several points where the game clearly wants you to backtrack. Certain areas are unreachable unless you collect a 'cobweb duster,' meaning if you want 100% completion then you're going to have to re-do levels again - but this time without all the hilarious commentary so really what's the point?
Also, the final level is ridiculously hard. The game itself doesn't really have much of a difficulty curve - it just suddenly starts throwing in the levels with bottomless pits. Considering this is for the most part a family game, it's odd that I've been gaming all my life and even I wanted to snap my controller with rage. Oh, and any game with a lives system made in the age of checkpoints and quicksaves is a sinner that must be punished.
It's really the humour that holds Psychonauts together, and whilst the gameplay itself is flawed - this is one of those games so unique that you have no choice but to at least check out the first two hours. It's on Steam so you have no excuse not to play it.
