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xyzzysqrlSo lately I have been KIND OF ON A ROLL when it comes to finishing games, over here!
GAMES I HAVE FINISHED RECENTLY:
Tomb Raider Legend
Tomb Raider Anniversary
Tomb Raider Underworld
Dead Space
Max Payne
Max Payne 2
Sonic the Hedgehog 2006
Transformers: War for Cybertron
Alan Wake
Driver: San Francisco
...And our newest complete: Psychonauts.
Psychonauts has a reptuation for being a Work of Staggering Genius cruelly ignored by the same gaming community that keeps calling it an Ignored Work of Staggering Genius. Which it isn't. What it IS is a really decent platformer grafted to a highly amusing storyline. It's not a game without problems, though. Uhm... For those of you unfamiliar with it, you play as Raz, who is voiced by Invader Zim. Raz runs away from the circus to go to summer camp. Psychic summer camp! Where, before his dad shows up to take him home, Raz must train to be a mind-exploring secret agent!
I enjoyed the heck out of finally completing Psychonauts. I've started this game about five times over the years, gotten to a particular stage (Lungfishopolis) and then quit. As it happens I picked the right place to stop each time, because after that particular level ALL THE PLOT GOES AWAY. ... Okay, that's a lie. But the interesting summer camp storyline gets shelved in favor of "Here is a room full of crazy people, solve their problems to progress". I liked some of those world designs! Waterloo World is probably my favorite level, design-wise, in the game! But it doesn't really further anything. It's a classic adventure game "There's a block in front of this door, go figure out how to move the block" puzzle design. You finish that world and then you move that block out of the way and woo you're good.
Then there was the Meat Circus level. The infamous end level. This level is why I have a screenshot on my Steam profile now captioned "The moment all joy died forever." Escort mission! Timed "climb quick as the water rises" mission! Rail-grinding with tricky quick jumps! Good lord. That one level was actually MORE PAINFUL than any given level of Sonic 2006. I know. I've played both.
That's not to say that I didn't love Psychonauts. I did. In particular I want to single out the Steam achievements for this game, which aside from one or two duds do exactly what Achievements are meant to do: They point you at INTERESTING STUFF. Psychonauts is a game packed with easter eggs, stuff you have to go looking for, little tidbits of plot and characterization hidden away. The Steam achievements point this stuff out. You still need to grab a guide and go exploring to actually find them, and it's very easy to push the plot ahead a little too much and miss a hidden funny scene.
That said, Vernon's inanely ridiculous Civil War story may be my favorite painfully extended gag of the entire game.
So I liked this game! And you know what? I like FINISHING games. I look around at all the stuff I have that's unfinished and I go "Hrmf." and "Man, what am I doing?" ... but I have attention span problems. I keep wanting to figure out some way to MOTIVATE myself to keep doing these things...
More on that next time. I Have A Plan.
GAMES I HAVE FINISHED RECENTLY:
Tomb Raider Legend
Tomb Raider Anniversary
Tomb Raider Underworld
Dead Space
Max Payne
Max Payne 2
Sonic the Hedgehog 2006
Transformers: War for Cybertron
Alan Wake
Driver: San Francisco
...And our newest complete: Psychonauts.
Psychonauts has a reptuation for being a Work of Staggering Genius cruelly ignored by the same gaming community that keeps calling it an Ignored Work of Staggering Genius. Which it isn't. What it IS is a really decent platformer grafted to a highly amusing storyline. It's not a game without problems, though. Uhm... For those of you unfamiliar with it, you play as Raz, who is voiced by Invader Zim. Raz runs away from the circus to go to summer camp. Psychic summer camp! Where, before his dad shows up to take him home, Raz must train to be a mind-exploring secret agent!
I enjoyed the heck out of finally completing Psychonauts. I've started this game about five times over the years, gotten to a particular stage (Lungfishopolis) and then quit. As it happens I picked the right place to stop each time, because after that particular level ALL THE PLOT GOES AWAY. ... Okay, that's a lie. But the interesting summer camp storyline gets shelved in favor of "Here is a room full of crazy people, solve their problems to progress". I liked some of those world designs! Waterloo World is probably my favorite level, design-wise, in the game! But it doesn't really further anything. It's a classic adventure game "There's a block in front of this door, go figure out how to move the block" puzzle design. You finish that world and then you move that block out of the way and woo you're good.
Then there was the Meat Circus level. The infamous end level. This level is why I have a screenshot on my Steam profile now captioned "The moment all joy died forever." Escort mission! Timed "climb quick as the water rises" mission! Rail-grinding with tricky quick jumps! Good lord. That one level was actually MORE PAINFUL than any given level of Sonic 2006. I know. I've played both.
That's not to say that I didn't love Psychonauts. I did. In particular I want to single out the Steam achievements for this game, which aside from one or two duds do exactly what Achievements are meant to do: They point you at INTERESTING STUFF. Psychonauts is a game packed with easter eggs, stuff you have to go looking for, little tidbits of plot and characterization hidden away. The Steam achievements point this stuff out. You still need to grab a guide and go exploring to actually find them, and it's very easy to push the plot ahead a little too much and miss a hidden funny scene.
That said, Vernon's inanely ridiculous Civil War story may be my favorite painfully extended gag of the entire game.
So I liked this game! And you know what? I like FINISHING games. I look around at all the stuff I have that's unfinished and I go "Hrmf." and "Man, what am I doing?" ... but I have attention span problems. I keep wanting to figure out some way to MOTIVATE myself to keep doing these things...
More on that next time. I Have A Plan.
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no subject
Date: 2012-07-25 02:15 am (UTC)I know what you mean about the sudden switch though. The best part of the game is exploring the summer camp to see what's changed and what everybody else is doing at each stage of the game. Every minor event causes everyone to be somewhere else, doing something else, in a dozen little mini-stories of character development to make you care when their brains get stolen.
I remember the Meat Circus being hard but I never hated it the way most people seem to. I think I did the ladder-water part a dozen times, but that's not so bad compared to some games. I actually liked the rail jumping part, too.
If there's one thing I really want to be able to take out of the game, it'd be the security guard's randomly generated paranoia. That was wonderful. I could just sit next to him and listen to him rattle off randomly generated insanity for minutess. ^.^
I'm curious, did you collect all the figments and get the true final ending? I was never able to find the last one I missed in Waterloo, even when I tried using FAQs. It was the only one I didn't get, I was really frustrated. Also, thanks a lot, since I played that on your old GameTap account back in the day. ^.^
Also, are we Steam Friends? I was gonna look at your achievements but I didn't see you on my friends list. I'm this guy. http://steamcommunity.com/id/releesquirrel
no subject
Date: 2012-07-25 03:18 pm (UTC)I did in fact collect everything. The only achievement I don't have is for buying something on Christmas Day, which is KIND OF A WEIRD THING to have an achievement for.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-25 05:57 pm (UTC)So if that's the version you played, make it about 12% more annoying to get the annoyance factor of the original release! @.@
dang bunni