Introduction:

Welcome to Couch Adventures! My focus is on gaming and bringing my thoughts to the masses. I have been gaming since I was a little kid on my grandma’s Colecovision and Atari as well as an original GameBoy. Since then, playing video games has been my main hobby to distract myself from real life, while enjoying the many worlds and their stories. Couch Adventures is an attempt to write down my thoughts and share them with you in bite-sized pieces.

The format of the reviews may change over time, but the overall aesthetic will be consistent. I want to talk about my history with the game/franchise/publishers, provide a story synapse without spoilers, show some recorded gameplay, and provide some sort of rating scale.

So sit back, relax, and follow along as I bring the adventures to you!

Personal History with Franchise:

I’ve thought about Psychonauts since it was released in 2005 for the Xbox and PS2, but never pulled the trigger to play it until 2022 and I have to say, it’s held up well…at least on the story front. Historically, I’ve put priority on games with ‘realistic’ graphics and Psychonauts was not that, but we’ll have more on that in the Graphics section.

Story Elements:

Overall, I thought Psychonauts did well with the story. They have a main setting, a problem that needs correcting, and the climaxes to reach the finale. To hear the entire story, though, the player must interact or run to a specific trigger area in the game to have a cutscene play. If you unknowingly travel to a specific location in the world hub, you may miss the opportunities to see some of the minor storylines of the campers as main storyline cutscenes change what the campers are doing at that time. For the minor cutscenes you do trigger, they are well worth it. The personalities of the characters and the comedy relief written in provide a relaxed experience as you figure out how to become a psychonaut.

The story revolves around how to get Raz to become a Psychonaut. Along the way, additional issues are brought to light. These range anywhere from small tasks to help the other campers, all the way to facing your own mental fears. The majority of the game is played inside NPC’s minds as you attempt to save their mental states. Triumph all and welcome aboard!

Gameplay:

Psychonauts is an action platformer with emphasis on the latter. While there are enemies to defeat, Psychonauts made it a point to focus on the platforming aspect of the game. Unlock abilities, run, jump, and levitate your way through the many levels.

Combat:

When you finally take control of your character, Raz, you’ll find you can’t do much, but you can at least punch at the start. Later on, you’ll get an ability called Marksman that will let you shoot from a distance and your abilities can be upgraded as you complete Ranks by collecting PSI Cards and Figments.

Most enemies are no problem, only taking a punch or two or a shot or two, but some elite enemies will show up from time to time and more often later in the game.

Game overs, or in this case, level restarters, are uncommon as you’ll have multiple ‘astral projections’ (lives), but it’s not impossible, especially if you don’t find Astral Projection collection items along the way. If you run out of health, or ‘mental power’, you’ll load back at the most recent checkpoint and try again with full mental power. Damage done by enemies varies and even though you start off with 3 brains of mental power, damage can be divided down to 1/4th of a brain per hit.

Abilities:

As you complete tasks and levels, you’ll unlock many abilities (PSI-Powers) to use along the way. Akin to most video games with unlockable abilities, the ones you unlock in the current level are typically the ones that will be used in said level, but you may find the need to use any previously unlocked ability in all the levels. The Legend of Zelda franchise really comes to mind when thinking about this aspect of the game.

Abilities in the game include:

PSI-Punch
Marksmanship
Telekinesis
Pyrokinesis
Levitation
Clairvoyance
Shield
Confusion
Invisibility

PSI-Punch is with you from the start of the game. It’s just a simple mental punch projection that gives you a little bit of range, while maintaining that melee feel.

Marksmanship is no more than a range shooting ability. You can lock onto enemies with L2 and then shoot with R2. As you get upgrades, the bullets shot will be able to bounce off of enemies and hit others in the area.

Telekinesis gives you the ability to pick up, usually small, objects in the world, but can also be used to toss around choice enemies as well.

Pyrokinesis allows you to mentally set fires on certain objects and burn enemies.

Levitation will be talked about in the Mobility section, but it essentially allows you to move around faster and jump higher. While sacrificing your double jump.

Clairvoyance is probably my least favorite, worthless ability, except it’s needed in some areas of the levels to get through. I will say it provides some comedy relief to see how the NPCs view you.

Shield is exactly how it sounds. A barrier forms around your body and blocks incoming damage, but your mobility is gone. If you move, the shield goes away. This ability is pointless during platforming sections and later in the game, you’ll wish you could activate it and continue to move. I would have much rather had a Sonic style shield instead of what Psychonauts decided to do or even allow us to be able to move around and add a hit counter that will disable the shield after so many hits.

Confusion is a ranged ability, like Marksmanship, but instead of damaging the enemy, it acts as a stun, allowing you to maneuver or get into melee distance to attack. Confusion has limited ‘ammo’ that you can collect more of from defeating enemies or destroying objects in the world.

Invisibility was only used a time or two by me in my playthrough, mainly to sneak around NPCs to get into their home or behind them to move forward in a level. Same with the shield, there’s a timer on how long you can remain invisible as well as a cooldown period after use.

Mobility:

As with most platformers, you’ll find yourself walking, running, climbing, and swinging your way through the levels. The controls aren’t too bad, with an exception for the Levitation ability, but your worst enemy is going to be the camera. It’s decent, depending on how fast you’re moving, the level designs, and how it handles walls that are out of view, but I found myself fighting with it more times than not.

There’s nothing too special about how you can move around in the game, but you are given a double jump and when using Levitation, your jumps will be much higher, movements will feel slower in the air, and you’ll have less control while running on the ground. I found it troublesome when trying to move through the game faster using Levitation, because the ability followed the lay of the land a little too well. Your movement is already sped up when using the ability, but when a downhill section comes, the ability to control your movements is frustrating. I found myself having to attempt simple platform jumps over and over again because of the constant fight with Levitation as I jumped a frame too late. Sometimes, it made more sense to cancel Levitation while running through levels, especially if you were trying to go uphill. For whatever reason, while levitating, going uphill slows you down and significantly at that.

After unlocking Levitation, you’ll also get the gliding ability. Use these two abilities together and you can find yourself in areas of the level that feel like you’re not really meant to be there. Not out of bounds, but nothing to collect or accomplish in those spots. You’ll also be able to use the Glide ability to help sore up in the sky while over air drafts or in wind currents.

Lastly, there’s a ‘fast travel’ system throughout the main world. You access the fast travel by jumping in hollowed out tree trunks. You’ll land in a vehicle on an underground track system. Using the prompt, you can choose what area of the hub you want to load into.

Gear:

I wanted to separate abilities and gear because I consider abilities non-items that can be used at any time to figure out a puzzle or situation, while gear are items that are equipped and unequipped for specific reasons or used to trigger events.

Gear in the game include:

Cobweb Duster
PSI Energy Colorizer
Mental Magnet
Dowsing Rod

Cobweb Duster is a snatching item that allows you to collect cobwebs in levels. This is described more in the Collecting section.

PSI Energy Colorizer gives you the ability to customize the colors of your abilities. It’s not required to finish the game at all and at 250 arrowheads, that’s a bit expensive to spend time on to purchase.

Mental Magnet pulls mental items in levels toward Raz. I never purchased this item and don’t feel like it’s really needed as the mental items in the game are not hard to get to, except for maybe a few, but still not impossible with a couple extra seconds of trying.

Dowsing Rod allows you to track arrowheads that are underground in the main world hub. This is explained more in the Collecting section.

Collecting:

All throughout Psychonauts you’ll find yourself collecting different items:

PSI Cards
Arrowheads
Cobwebs
Figments
Luggage Tags
Scavenger Hunt Items
Vaults
Mystery Item (Spoilers, so won’t discuss)

Nine PSI cards matched with a PSI Core will increase your PSI Rank by 1. You can get your rank to 101, but it’s not necessary to finish the game. I think I got my PSI Rank to 60 by the time I finished and I didn’t have any problems with enemies. It was the platforming that I failed at the most.

Arrowheads are the main currency in the game. These are found singularly on the ground and the respawn rate isn’t too bad, but you can also get a Dowsing Rod for 50 arrowheads and that item helps you find arrowheads underground. Those have different quantities when found. It’ll help you collect enough arrowheads to be able to afford the Cobweb Duster, which is needed to open up additional areas in levels.

Cobwebs are found in the levels and can only be collected after buying the Cobweb Duster from the cook in the camp cafeteria. Sometimes, by collecting the cobwebs, you’ll discover hidden areas, additional rooms, and/or gain access to other collectibles, while on a few occasions, collecting the cobweb was all there was to do. You can redeem PSI Cards from the cobwebs in Ford’s Sanctuary.

Figments are found everywhere in the mental worlds (levels) and after collecting so many, I think 100 points worth, you’ll increase your PSI Rank by 1. Each figment has different values, so don’t think you have to collect 100 to rank up. There are some levels where figments are really dense, but other areas and levels don’t have as many. Some are even hidden, so exploring is encouraged!

Luggage Tags are also found in the mental worlds, with 50 total. After finding the tags, you’ll then need to find the luggage it goes to. There are different types of luggage and tags, so there will be times when you collect a tag, but the next luggage you see may not match up with it. Keep exploring and you’ll find their owners!

Scavenger Hunt Items are found usually in out of the way or hidden areas of a level, but if you do find them, for every 8 collected, your PSI Rank will increase by 4! There are only 16 scavenger hunt items, so you have the opportunity to rank up a total of 8 PSI Ranks just from those by the end of the game.

Vaults remind me of piggy banks and they hop and run around, trying to stay away from you. Punch them and you’ll unlock picture albums for the character of the mental world you are in at that time. These albums tell a story about the character and a situation they found themselves in. These albums are a way of helping you learn some backstory about the character and I found it helped to feel invested in whose mind I was in.

Graphics:

Whenever I look at Psychonauts in action, I see Tim Burton as the main inspiration. The shapes used for the world are exaggerated and stretched.

While Raz and the campers are humanoid, a lot of their features are unique, to say the least. You can tell what type of personality they were going for for each camper and they nailed their features 100%.

Level designs have a lot of angles and ‘Nightmare Before Christmas’ shapes and styles. But the color palette of the game is well balanced, so don’t think it’s dark or halloween themed or anything.

I think the graphics hold up well for being a 2005 release. With today’s technology, ports and updates, the game itself isn’t blurry and honestly, could pass as a decent indie title of today. It’s really the controls and cutscenes that give away the aging factor here.

Don’t expect to see a massive poly count by any means, but you can tell that smaller studios and indie developers appreciated this style and have kept it alive, even if Tim Burton wasn’t an inspiration.

System:

Platform - PC
OS - Windows 11
GPU - NVidia RTX 2070 Super
CPU - Intel i7 7700
RAM - 32GB DDR4
Storage - M.2 drive
Screen - 55” Sony Bravia 4K HDR Android TV

Settings:

I had all settings maxed, but had to have the resolution set to 1920x1080p in order to get the game to launch. I also had to set the compatibility mode to Windows 8.

Performance:

Performance wasn’t an issue for me with my machine and as a 2005 title, it would be hard to find a modern PC or laptop that wouldn’t be able to keep up with Psychonauts.

I didn’t have any crashes with the game, though I did have a time or two of graphical stuttering, but I’m going to chalk that up to my GPU since it happens every so often with any game I play lately.

Rating:

Don't Bother
Check It Out
WORTH FINISHING
100% It

Since the game is 17 years old and can be found physically for the Xbox, PS2 and digitally for the PC for cheap, there’s not too much of an investment to pick it up and play. Time wise, it only took me 16 hours to finish and I’m sure there were a few pauses and delays along the way within that time. There’s nothing about the game that gets too frustrating and if you really find yourself lost, there is the in-game helper, by using your bacon item and since the internet exists, there are many articles, blogs, videos, and walkthroughs to help you get back on track. I did find myself looking up a few strats on bosses, but if I kept trying different abilities, I’m sure something would have clicked in my head eventually.