Saturday, June 17, 2006
Psychonauts
I finished Psychonauts a few days ago and, at least for the moment, I am happy that I do not work for a magazine or website that would force me to place a numeric value on my experience. On a purely technical level, Psychonauts does not do anything particularly noteworthy. With a medium that moves as quickly as gaming does, where older titles are left in the obsolete bin to make way for what's shiny and new, I'm not sure how certain games will ever be able to succeed. Thankfully, Psychonauts is able to succeed in ways that can't be measured in gross sales. It may have average graphics and control in a genre that has been around since 1996, but there is so much more to this game than initially meets the eye.
It is hard to discuss Psychonauts without first bringing up the idea of gaming as an art form. I firmly believe that games can be art, but very few developers actually strive to make it so. It is the same case with every other popular form of art out there - it comes down to the intent of the designer. In a nut shell, if you have a boss breathing down your neck, a timeline that needs to be met, and dollar signs floating around your skull, you are not making art. It may still be fun. It may still be worth playing, watching or listening to. But it is not something sociologists in the 42nd century will unearth from burned vestiges and hang in their own museums as examples of the creative minds of our era. Basically, if the dreams of the lead producer are filled with dark images of buggy code and angry bosses, art is not being produced. If you wake in the middle of the night because a great idea hit you, and you wake your wife to tell her that, "Meat is the key! We should put meat in the levels!" than you may be on to something.
If you can't tell, I firmly believe that Psychonauts is a work of art. It produces an emotional impact absent from 99% of the games surrounding it. The games that mocked it as they were purchased by a happy teenage boy while it was left to weep alone on a shelf.
So what is this game? It's about a young boy, Rasputin (I've always loved that name), who sneaks into a Psychonauts training camp. This is where children with psychic powers are taught how to hone their skills. Since Raz doesn't actually have his parent's permission to attend this camp, he is not actually allowed to learn how to set things on fire using his mind. Probably a good idea there: I can imagine a lawsuit settlement would be quite pricey if he blew up his school with the information he learned. Anyway, one thing leads to another and it's up to Raz to save the camp, and the world, from some demented being.
The beauty of this game lies in the perfectly crafted pieces of story that make this adventure one you can care about. Also, the characters are constructed as (relatively) complex beings instead of just random damsel's in distress. The other kids in the camp are built using a standard, cardboard design to quickly develop their intentions (there's a bully, chicken, kid with too much power, boy obsessed with bears, and so on) but, once their specific identity is established, the developers have a blast putting them in different situations and forcing them to react. It makes every encounter in the game so enjoyable that it's easy to get sidetracked from the story completely and just walk around talking to everyone.
My favorite character is the kid who's obsessed with girls. There's one part when you can find him hanging outside the girl's cabin with some acorns in his hand. He explains that he's trying to bore a hole into the girl's cabin before night comes. Not so he can personally spy into their secret world, but so he can possess the acorns to get a floor view of all the juicy action in the bunk. When Raz, bewildered that someone could spend so much time trying to spy on girls (Raz's personality is one of obsession compulsive psychic), repeats the plan to himself, the young Romeo urges him not to say he is trying to possess squirrel nuts ever again. Yes, it is juvenile humor (who says art can't have fart jokes?) but it did make me laugh out loud. It's rare that a game has so many vibrant characters when, in actuality, there are only five who are actually important to the plot.
The element that makes this game really shine is the ability to enter the minds of many of the characters. Most of the levels have you venturing around someone's head, trying to fix the problems that make them less than stable. The highest level of psychology is not exactly on display here, but the situations are funny and at least rooted partially in reality. One level later in the game places you in the mind of a struggling artist. Not a starving artist - he's actually quite large - but one who has actually lost his mind and locked himself away in an insane asylum. Comedy gold, right? It seems his problem is, no matter how hard he tries, he just can't paint anything other than a bull fighting a matador. Sure, one or two painting depicting this barbaric sport would be fine, but when you're trying to paint a portrait it can be quite frustrating. So you jump into his skull to see what the problem is.
While inside you meet up with various entities which reside in his mind. These are all dogs who happen to be painters - they would be the unconscious representation of the artist himself in various stages of his own development. From these dogs you learn pieces of the story as you go. He used to be a great artist. Before that he was a great wrestler. Best on his team actually. But one day he lost; humiliated and berated by his teammates, he disappeared into his own mind to escape. He also had a girl he loved once. They were going to get married. But she broke up with him suddenly. Actually, she broke up with him before a match. Specifically, she broke up with him before the state championship. He was so in love with her the thought of living without her didn't appeal to him. He couldn't focus on the match. He lost every one of his matches that day - the day he blew the meet for his team and began his downward fall. Oh, and she ended up leaving him for some male cheerleader.
You learn these pieces as you go, forming a concrete explanation as to why you are seeing certain things inside his head. By the time you fight the end boss, the story is completed and, if you are good enough, you can exorcise his demons. It's really a fascinating way to structure a level. While they may not offer much challenge and there is an awful lot of collecting, it's worthwhile just to see how each of these situations is resolved. You can tell that a lot of time and energy was spent crafting these stories. Unlike most games, the stories and levels are entwined. The levels are all quite different from one another. Instead of just making generic levels and slapping the story on top of it, the two were created in tandem to make each unique and worth venturing to.
I used to complain about story in games because I absolutely hated sitting through the drivel that passes for entertainment in most games. If the developers didn't care enough to make interesting characters and a conflict that actually matters, why should I bother watching it? Psychonauts is interesting enough to be worth your time if it was the plot of a movie or a crazy novel. The beauty is that Tim Schafer, the lead designer, doesn't model this game after other mediums. The story could stand in any other medium, but it is tailored specifically to gaming.
What is so perfect about this game is how fun it is to actually play. Unlike Killer 7 and Phoenix Wright - two other fantastic games - this does not offer cookie cutter gameplay in exchange for a worthwhile story. This is the type of game that will appeal to a gamer because it is actually a fun adventure, even without all the cool story details. However, the importance of Psychonauts stretches far beyond mere video games. You know how Nintendo is trying to bring in all those non-gamers with stuff like Nintendogs and Brain Age? I love that idea, but those games are so far from what we know and love it is hard to even call those games at all. Psychonauts would appeal to non-gamers as well because it encompasses so many elements that they are familiar with from other media. But it does not stray far from what makes games fun in the first place. While fans of Brain Age will move on to Big Brain Accademy and fans of Phoenix Wright will wait for the next lawyer sim, someone who can get into Psychonauts would be ready for another meaty adventure like Beyond Good and Evil.
I know I'm always trying to force my readers to play these random games, but this is another one every fan of gaming should have on their shelf. Along with Prince of Persia and Beyond Good and Evil, this is a game that perfectly meshes story, character and gameplay into a package that is on the same artistic plane as the latest Pulitzer winner and even higher than whatever the most recent Academy Award winner is. These games started with a vision and ended with something I'll be showing my children someday. If more games strove to enlighten while entertaining, we could shut up ignorant critics like Roger Ebert once and for all. Until then, scoop up these examples of what video games should be, and feel superior to those people playing another WWII shooter.
It is hard to discuss Psychonauts without first bringing up the idea of gaming as an art form. I firmly believe that games can be art, but very few developers actually strive to make it so. It is the same case with every other popular form of art out there - it comes down to the intent of the designer. In a nut shell, if you have a boss breathing down your neck, a timeline that needs to be met, and dollar signs floating around your skull, you are not making art. It may still be fun. It may still be worth playing, watching or listening to. But it is not something sociologists in the 42nd century will unearth from burned vestiges and hang in their own museums as examples of the creative minds of our era. Basically, if the dreams of the lead producer are filled with dark images of buggy code and angry bosses, art is not being produced. If you wake in the middle of the night because a great idea hit you, and you wake your wife to tell her that, "Meat is the key! We should put meat in the levels!" than you may be on to something.
If you can't tell, I firmly believe that Psychonauts is a work of art. It produces an emotional impact absent from 99% of the games surrounding it. The games that mocked it as they were purchased by a happy teenage boy while it was left to weep alone on a shelf.
So what is this game? It's about a young boy, Rasputin (I've always loved that name), who sneaks into a Psychonauts training camp. This is where children with psychic powers are taught how to hone their skills. Since Raz doesn't actually have his parent's permission to attend this camp, he is not actually allowed to learn how to set things on fire using his mind. Probably a good idea there: I can imagine a lawsuit settlement would be quite pricey if he blew up his school with the information he learned. Anyway, one thing leads to another and it's up to Raz to save the camp, and the world, from some demented being.
The beauty of this game lies in the perfectly crafted pieces of story that make this adventure one you can care about. Also, the characters are constructed as (relatively) complex beings instead of just random damsel's in distress. The other kids in the camp are built using a standard, cardboard design to quickly develop their intentions (there's a bully, chicken, kid with too much power, boy obsessed with bears, and so on) but, once their specific identity is established, the developers have a blast putting them in different situations and forcing them to react. It makes every encounter in the game so enjoyable that it's easy to get sidetracked from the story completely and just walk around talking to everyone.
My favorite character is the kid who's obsessed with girls. There's one part when you can find him hanging outside the girl's cabin with some acorns in his hand. He explains that he's trying to bore a hole into the girl's cabin before night comes. Not so he can personally spy into their secret world, but so he can possess the acorns to get a floor view of all the juicy action in the bunk. When Raz, bewildered that someone could spend so much time trying to spy on girls (Raz's personality is one of obsession compulsive psychic), repeats the plan to himself, the young Romeo urges him not to say he is trying to possess squirrel nuts ever again. Yes, it is juvenile humor (who says art can't have fart jokes?) but it did make me laugh out loud. It's rare that a game has so many vibrant characters when, in actuality, there are only five who are actually important to the plot.
The element that makes this game really shine is the ability to enter the minds of many of the characters. Most of the levels have you venturing around someone's head, trying to fix the problems that make them less than stable. The highest level of psychology is not exactly on display here, but the situations are funny and at least rooted partially in reality. One level later in the game places you in the mind of a struggling artist. Not a starving artist - he's actually quite large - but one who has actually lost his mind and locked himself away in an insane asylum. Comedy gold, right? It seems his problem is, no matter how hard he tries, he just can't paint anything other than a bull fighting a matador. Sure, one or two painting depicting this barbaric sport would be fine, but when you're trying to paint a portrait it can be quite frustrating. So you jump into his skull to see what the problem is.
While inside you meet up with various entities which reside in his mind. These are all dogs who happen to be painters - they would be the unconscious representation of the artist himself in various stages of his own development. From these dogs you learn pieces of the story as you go. He used to be a great artist. Before that he was a great wrestler. Best on his team actually. But one day he lost; humiliated and berated by his teammates, he disappeared into his own mind to escape. He also had a girl he loved once. They were going to get married. But she broke up with him suddenly. Actually, she broke up with him before a match. Specifically, she broke up with him before the state championship. He was so in love with her the thought of living without her didn't appeal to him. He couldn't focus on the match. He lost every one of his matches that day - the day he blew the meet for his team and began his downward fall. Oh, and she ended up leaving him for some male cheerleader.
You learn these pieces as you go, forming a concrete explanation as to why you are seeing certain things inside his head. By the time you fight the end boss, the story is completed and, if you are good enough, you can exorcise his demons. It's really a fascinating way to structure a level. While they may not offer much challenge and there is an awful lot of collecting, it's worthwhile just to see how each of these situations is resolved. You can tell that a lot of time and energy was spent crafting these stories. Unlike most games, the stories and levels are entwined. The levels are all quite different from one another. Instead of just making generic levels and slapping the story on top of it, the two were created in tandem to make each unique and worth venturing to.
I used to complain about story in games because I absolutely hated sitting through the drivel that passes for entertainment in most games. If the developers didn't care enough to make interesting characters and a conflict that actually matters, why should I bother watching it? Psychonauts is interesting enough to be worth your time if it was the plot of a movie or a crazy novel. The beauty is that Tim Schafer, the lead designer, doesn't model this game after other mediums. The story could stand in any other medium, but it is tailored specifically to gaming.
What is so perfect about this game is how fun it is to actually play. Unlike Killer 7 and Phoenix Wright - two other fantastic games - this does not offer cookie cutter gameplay in exchange for a worthwhile story. This is the type of game that will appeal to a gamer because it is actually a fun adventure, even without all the cool story details. However, the importance of Psychonauts stretches far beyond mere video games. You know how Nintendo is trying to bring in all those non-gamers with stuff like Nintendogs and Brain Age? I love that idea, but those games are so far from what we know and love it is hard to even call those games at all. Psychonauts would appeal to non-gamers as well because it encompasses so many elements that they are familiar with from other media. But it does not stray far from what makes games fun in the first place. While fans of Brain Age will move on to Big Brain Accademy and fans of Phoenix Wright will wait for the next lawyer sim, someone who can get into Psychonauts would be ready for another meaty adventure like Beyond Good and Evil.
I know I'm always trying to force my readers to play these random games, but this is another one every fan of gaming should have on their shelf. Along with Prince of Persia and Beyond Good and Evil, this is a game that perfectly meshes story, character and gameplay into a package that is on the same artistic plane as the latest Pulitzer winner and even higher than whatever the most recent Academy Award winner is. These games started with a vision and ended with something I'll be showing my children someday. If more games strove to enlighten while entertaining, we could shut up ignorant critics like Roger Ebert once and for all. Until then, scoop up these examples of what video games should be, and feel superior to those people playing another WWII shooter.
// posted by Tom @ 9:53 PM 
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