MAJESCO Psychonauts ( Windows )

List Price: $19.99 Discount Price: $4.35

Features:

• Enter people's minds and use your powers of levitation and Psi-Blasts to face people's worst fears
• Rise up in rank as you collect figments of other people's imaginations, sort their emotional baggage, clear out their mental cobwebs, and crack open their Memory vaults
• Complete special training missions to earn new powers like telekinesis, pyrokinesis and more
• Fully interactive environments - use tightropes, trapezes, ladders, poles, ledges, trampolines, climbing walls and rail slides to your advantage
• Multiple paths and sub-challenges - the nonlinear gameplay offers greater depth and better gameplay

Customer Reviews:

Fantastic Fun [Posted on 2008-02-12]
I know there are Xbox and PS2 versions of the game, but I think that the performance issues people had were due to that older hardware. Psychonauts playing on a fairly modern rig at max details ran smoothly and sounded and looked great.

I deliberately did not buy it when it first came out because I wasn't sure if I would like it based solely on the artwork of the game. In a sense, I was afraid it was too 'kiddy' for my tastes. Once you get past some of the character models and the opening of the game, you are rewarded with a fun 3D platformer with a fun and frequently dark storyline. As a Psychonaut cadet, your job is to enter the minds of the game's characters and some of them, including several confined to a mental institute, can be frightening and overwhelming places.

After completing the game I can say that the art direction is fantastic and is completely suitable for the kind of game that it is. The audio is great: dialog and soundtrack are perfectly suited to the characters and the settings you visit, and on my first time through I reached level 96/100. It is worth the pittance you'll pay for it now, and I still feel guilty for finding it for only $8. There are plenty of games that leave you feeling ripped off, muttering things like, "I paid $XX for that?" In this case, you'll be richly rewarded if you're looking for a fun game that requires a little creative thinking and a keen eye for all the game's hidden objects. Having played it a mere 3 months ago, I would consider it the best game of the year, beating out all the new games that were released all year.

quirky and awesome [Posted on 2008-02-17]
Although the gameplay wasn't anything amazing in itself, the quirky style, story, and humor were enough to make me love this game.

Played it all the way through, which I rarely do [Posted on 2008-04-18]
It's a fun game with a wonderfully wacky sense of humor. Gameplay is challenging and varies throughout the game so that you never get bored. I get bored easily, and the fact that I played all the way through to the end really says a lot. If you want an enjoyable game that has been (sadly) rather overlooked - check this one out today.

My favorite game of all time [Posted on 2008-06-27]
This game has everything--great humor and dialogue, fun action sequences, a good storyline with unpredictable (relatively)twists. It was fun for the family and we still quote the game today. We've owned it for 3 years and played it through many times. I wish there would be a follow on, because the characters were great.

Dissapointed. [Posted on 2008-07-04]
It was either PC Gamer, PC World, or PC Games that said "This is the best game you never played" around 2006 or so. I decided to try it out on Game Tap to see if it was worth buying.

The good: You can interact with your environment about as much as you could in Serious Sam & the areas you can explore are much bigger than in Fable: the Lost Chapters. You get to hear the voice of Invzder Zim's voice actor & the voice acting all-around is good. The character designs have that Tim Burton grotesqueness, which is refreshing since only American McGee ever seems to encorporate it.

The mediocre: I'm pretty sure this is a consol port; I've seen worse controls, like the ones in Harry Potter 4. The music is neither annoying nor memorable.

The bad: It's not nearly as ammusing as others were telling me. The game causes cramps in the left hand & the same annoying chest tightness you get when jogging. The actual combat levels are harder than they need to be, solely because of the camera angles; the camera does not want to turn when you really need it to & doesn't look straight, so you will get pummeled from behind & jump to your death a lot. Extra annoyance comes from when you think you've finally passed the level only to find out that you've only done a small fraction of it; like Sasha's mind cube. The Save feature isn't so good either because you won't restart exactly where you saved. You might get heavily annoyed at your innability to reach the target & wish the game had a god-mode just so you could get through the damned level, but there isn't one. The map is pretty bad & the whole menu isn't very self-explanitory.

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