Review: Psychonauts

What is it: Psychonauts was released in 2005, and is a platforming game, with some fighting, puzzles and lots of collecting to do.  You get to play the game from the perspective of a kid named Rasputin, more commonly called Raz.  While I'm not a huge fan of platforming games, what I did play of this was very interesting.  I do have to say that I did not finish the game, but according to the Steam counter, I have put 57 hours into the game. 

Pros:  The character/NPCs - they're pretty cool, and entertaining to listen to.  There seems to be something interesting to everyone that you run across, and most seem to have very distinct personalities.  If you're good at exploring, you can also find picture-books of sorts with parts of their past as well.  Heck, even the tram system has its own voice, something that made me smile.

Graphics - I really like the style of this game, it meshes very well with the storyline and style of narration.  The motions of the character and npcs seem smooth from what I noticed.  It almost reminds me of Reboot in a way.

Music - It fits very nicely into the background, and it's overwhelming or jarring in tone for whichever setting that you find yourself within.

Cons: The controls - Perhaps it's because I played this on a PC, and not with the originally intended controller, but I found some areas of the game difficult to get through using mouse and keyboard.  I also found myself looking up the controls constantly, and the inventory is a bit annoying to move through.  I had a rather difficult time selecting exactly the thing I wanted at times.

Collecting - There is a lot to collect in this game, and sometimes it feels a bit tedious.  Arrowheads, cobwebs, luggage tags, and psy cards.  You have to collect arrowheads in order to use the store, and there are a lot of things to buy there.

Overall Opinion:  I would say to give this a try.  I was very amused by the characters and the quirky sense of humor throughout every area and encounter, and curious about the storyline, but the awkward gameplay using mouse and keyboard had me very frustrated at times.  I may go back later, and try to finish this game.  If I do, there will be another review on the rest of it!