I'm not sure you can find a game more original than Tim Schafer's Psychonauts. On the surface a kid friend adventure-platformer, it doesn't take long before you realize this is a darkly funny, high concept little game that can be devilishly challenging at times.Let me set the scene. You play Raz, a ten year old who breaks into a summer camp for psychically gifted children that is, in reality, a military training facility for the next generation of super soldiers - the psychonauts. The majority of levels in this game take place in the psychic landscape that represent particular characters' minds, and considering that many of the characters are bat-s**t crazy, some of these levels are bizarre to say the least.
For example, in one level you enter the mind of a paranoid milkman whose true personality has been pushed back thanks to the efforts of the game's villain. Here a quiet suburban neighbourhood is twisted into a gravity defying pretzel where every hint that may lead you to the true milkman is guarded by barely disguised government agents whose superiors are a troup of girl scouts (cookies - milk - get it?).
In another level, a giant mutated fish is being controlled by another villain. Here the fish's mind is an urban metropolis populated (quite amusingly) by fish - Fishopolis. Raz becomes a giant, Godzilla like, interloper that must thrash his way through the city to confront the similarly sized villain in a building destroying show down. How the hell can that not be fun?
And it keeps going like this. I don't want to give too much away but the game truly blows me away when the minds of Raz and the chief villain mix together and the two must team up to defeat their own perceptions of their fathers. Man, Freud would have a field day!
Story: 5
Interface: 4
Game Play: 4
Challenge: 4
Fun: 5
Overall: 9.0/10
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