Spend all of your free time in the Psychonaut camp... just don't forget your brain there when you leave!

User Rating: 9.7 | Psychonauts XBOX
By edubuccaneer | Review Date:
Psychonauts is the brain-child of Tim Schafer, creator of classic adventure games like Day of the Tentacle and Grim Fandango. It took four long years to develop, but the game was worth the wait. It isn't very much like the past games control and gameplay-wise, but the wild character design is back, and this time as strong as ever.

The game is a third person action adventure game that tells the story of Raz, a kid that ran away from home in the hopes of joining a special camp for kids with psychic powers. As he is welcomed to the group, mysterious attacks begin to happen, and fellow campers loose their brains, becoming drooling zombies. To try and save his friends, Raz, with the aid of some odd-ball instructors from the camp, begins going through the minds of the victims in an attempt to save them. And there is where the game gets crazy; as each character visited has his/her/its own fantastic and maniacal minds, complete with childhood traumas, for an example, locked away and hidden while the rest of the mind is a 24/7 party or another mind of a crazy guy who is paranoid about government conspiracies, in it, you are surrounded by cameras and spy things.

Each mind is as different as water to wine. A level, for ex, happens in a world dominated by a rampaging bull and black-velvet paintings, all acompanied by spanish music and dames. Your psychic powers evolve as you progress through the game.

You'll need to collect a whole lot of items along the way, like mental cogwebs and figments. With these, you'll use a machine that generates challenge cards that you need to gain levels. With each new level, something is gained, and sometimes you get new powers. Another way to get new powers is earning merit badges after you beat instructor challenges that are given to you as you progress.

The controls for the game resemble the ones found in Zelda: Ocarina of Time, because you can configure a certain number of powers to specific buttons, so if you use the pyroknesis a lot, you can configure it to the white button in the Xbox, or the S button in the PC.

Psychonauts is recommended to people who enjoy platformers but are looking for new and fresh ideas. Also, if you liked Shafer's previous works, you are sure to enjoy this game. Its style is just crazy and really original.

Just watch out not to fall into a catatonic state by accident!

Thanks for reading!

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