What's your game?

Psychonauts

The last outstanding platformer I played was probably Super Mario 64. There are a lot of half-assed platformers, that have serious flaws, ranging from insanely difficult to just plain not fun. There are a couple of decent platformers, Voodoo Vince and Jax and Dexter fall squarely in that category.

Psychonauts is the first platformer that I’ve played since Mario 64 that balances easy accessibility and the ability for newbs to advance with complex and innovative puzzles.

Psychnauts puts you in summer camp for psychically gifted kids. In the course of your stay, you’ll not only explore a typical psychic kid’s camp, you’ll also journey into the mind of nearly everyone at the camp, from the counselors to lungfish. Inside each mind, you’ll have several goals—defeat an enemy, destroy an object, collect something—which advance the main story.

In addition to the basic “complete the mission and collect the reward” type missions, there are tons of objects to collect in each mission, and at the camp. You’ll find many of the objects as you explore, more than enough to complete the game. However, if you want to 100% the game, you’ll need to do lots of hunting.

Each mind you explore is different. Some minds are extremely organized, some are cluttered, some are insane, and some are very primitive. They’re all unique, and they’re all goood, old-fashioned, wacky fun.

Anyway, Psychonauts is really good, and definitely worth playing.