G-pinions

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.

I don't usually tend to kiss the asses of those whom I respect with such blatant disregard for my own self-respect (lie), but this week's 1UP Yours Podcast is the single most interesting discussion of games and game journalism that I've heard, possibly ever. The show is good fun too, but much more along the lines of visual entertainment and not a lot to do with incisive game coverage. If you don't feel like listening to the entire thing (though you're missing out), just skip to minute 23 when they begin the discussion on the state of gaming journalism - I just sat there listening completely glued, smiling like an idiot, every word validating my interest in being a part of this industry and wanting to discuss such things with like-minded folk. Seriously, check it out, even if you don't have a man-crush on Mark McDonald like I do.

I started playing Halo 2 again a couple of nights ago. I tend to ignore the impact it had on my gaming life - after all, I did play it three to four nights a week, several hours a night, for eleven months. Hopping back on now is quite the experience; equal parts nostalgia and reverence for the flawless gameplay, couple with the fact that the internet is still full of racist, annoying asses and the fact that I'm not the player that I once was.

My first matchmaking game in a good three months started with a lobby of people making incredibly offensive racist jokes, leading into a game where the other team would shriek loudly every time they killed one of us. Ultimately it doesn't shock me that these people exist in rather large quantities, but the idea that they can afford the purchase and maintenance of a gaming console and comprehend the online operation of such is quite a quandary. I would have thought that most of these subhumans would have moved on to the next game, but let's face it, there isn't another game to move on to.

The other part holding me back from enjoying it as much as I should (besides not playing with my clan anymore) is the feeling of wanting to throw myself through my bedroom window every time I get killed. I'm sure it has something to do with being grossly out of practice, but every slightly lopsided death makes my skin crawl with fiery frustration. I get so mad I can barely speak, and it just compounds as I play more games. Maybe it's because I'm partially adjusted to the stress-free environs of Uno and Hexic these days, or maybe I'm losing my edge. I just don't recall it being quite so bad with any other game.

That said, the gameplay and matchmaking is still absolutely perfect.

Here's a shock: the third entry in the re-invented world of Prince of Persia is complete garbage. Maybe not the rubbish that's piled under mounds of trash at the bottom of a landfill, maybe it's just the banana peel you toss onto the top of your own pile of mess, but garbage is still garbage no matter where it lives within the hierarchical scale of tossed away crap. It's a damn shame, too, because, like a painting that is covered in grape juice but still has a usable frame surrounding it, PoP: TTT actually has some worth as a video game. Unfortunately, when compared to its high art brother Sands of Time, its worth may only be that of a warning sign. Read: Do Not Do What Two Thrones Does. I repeat, for the love of God, do not mimic this abomination.

Maybe I should mention what actually makes this game fun from time to time before I get into the many ways it fails. It is still vaguely a Prince of Persia title. Nick and I are about half way through the game and we've come across a few really cool environmental puzzles. I love this stuff. In fact, if the game was just built around this, it would probably be even more fun than SoT. Every sequel adds new moves into the mix, but TTT actually adds moves that make the whole adventure more fun. You can spring off of triangle jumps while wall running now, as well as latch on to soft spots in the wall. Heck, you can even use a grappling hook when you're the Dark Prince. Who doesn't love those bad boys?

And that's about it for the good. Anything else you can think of that would be found in a video game is of the lowest quality in TTT. Take, for instance, sound. I don't think I've ever complained about sound before. Sure, music can be bad at times, but who actually messes up the raw application of how sound is processed? The TTT team apparently tried their hardest to make every aspect of this game below par; you'll find your left speaker doesn't emit sounds most of the time. You'll also find that the initial volume is all messed up. Keeping the sound effects and music on high like the default has means you won't be able to hear the voice, the narrated story, at all. It's things like this that show just how sloppy this game was put together.

The worst part is the combat. I honestly think there is as much combat in the first five hours of TTT as could be found in the first five hours of God of War. This is a very bad thing when you consider that GoW is centered around fighting whereas TTT is centered around environmental navigation. I guess I could forgive their love of blood if it was at least fun to fight. Sadly, it's a chore. The buttons simply do not correspond to what is happening on screen. To illustrate my point when I was playing with Nick, I would hold the controller with one hand and push A or Y (the jump/dodge buttons) while yelling "I'm hitting A!" and we would both see the Prince swinging away as if I was still hitting X. This is bad control. When I go up to an enemy and hit X to hit him and, instead, jump off of him and fly in the other direction, this is bad control. When my enemy does a three hit combo to me and I can neither move nor defend, whereas my three hit combo gets blocked on the second hit, this is frustrating combat. Eventually, I realized I can just run up to enemies, hit Y, and toss them off buildings. Nick was angry that I was avoiding every fight, but when fighting is tedious and offers no leveling up rewards, why go through the pain?

Honestly, this would be tolerable if the art design was on par with SoT. Unfortunately, it's garish. It's bleak and uninviting. I understand you want this city to seem like the last place on earth you would want to vacation, but shouldn't the player want to explore? Shouldn't the game look good enough that I am anxious to see the next room? Instead, it all looks the same and quite atrocious. I don't know how you make something worse than the predecessor. Just use the same models and textures from SoT if you must, but make an environment I want to be in.

And then there's the Prince. Wow. I'm not sure if he's the hero or anti-hero because I know I wasn't rooting for him. He has this whole dual personality thing - hence the Two Thrones moniker - that just drives home the point that marketing ignoramuses made this game. He has no personality yet is quite hate-able. And, for some reason, his right arm is wrapped with barbed wire. It is so hideous to look at that I actually had to turn away during the cut-scenes. Do you really think a main character that I can't look at is a good idea Ubi?

A below average game becomes unplayable when your dark side surfaces. You actually have to play as the Dark Prince sometime and I have to say it is one of the least fun things I have done in any game since sailing the boat in Wind Waker. In fact, after playing through one section as the DP, I decided to simply hand the controller over whenever I am forced to control this horrible identity. There is almost no exploration at all in this form, just non-stop combat. Worse still, if you don't kill things constantly, you die. What? Does anyone think this is actually fun?

I did play five hours because I was hoping against hope that the TTT exterior would be scraped away to make room for SoT. Unfortunately, it only gets worse. The last hour Nick and I played featured no exploration. We stopped while fighting a lame, pattern-based boss which should not be in a PoP title. Please avoid this title. I would rather Ubi Soft just sit on the PoP franchise forever than make another game like this.

Picked up my DS Lite yesterday, and played a couple hours of multiplayer Big Brain Academy with Tom last night. Firstly, the game is an absolute riot. While the concept and daily scheduling methods that Brain Age uses to "entertain" are interesting and often enjoyable, BBA is simply more fun minute to minute. It's much more visual, and as a visual person it's nice to be able to play on intuition as well as smarts, instead of rote memorization and mathematics.

We played only on hard, and set the 'score to win' to the maximum amount every time - meaning we had quite a few epic battles. If you answer correctly more quickly than your opponent, you move ahead ten spaces on the road to victory, while a late correct answer will still get them four points (though they only have so long to answer after you have). A wrong answer will move you back a few spaces, so a battle can rage for quite a while if one person isn't consistently getting everything right. We had several sessions where we would top fifty questions, every moment tense, waiting to find out if the other's DS would beep happily with a correct answer or not.

The best is when I would get a question right, then Tom would eventually answer incorrectly, a hilarious moment of crushing victory for me and utter frustration for him. We came up with quite a few marketing slogans for Nintendo to put to good use on a commercial for BBA, including "Fuck that!" and "Bullshit, no goddamn way you answered that faster than me!". Seriously, what would make you want to buy a game more than watching two friends swear heartily at one another while playing it? As for the actual games, they're not really worth describe in detail individually, but they often involve studying the top screen for a few seconds, then going with your best guess by tapping or typing or drawing on the bottom screen. A lot of them involve ridiculously cute animals too - guide an elephant back to his mate with an extra line to complete a path, decide if three stag beetles outweigh two penguins and a seal based on their placement on a set of scales, etc. Even the relatively mundane numbers games quickly get insane on the harder levels.

Finally, as for the DS Lite? Well, Tom asked that I not throw sexual slurs in it's direction like I did the last time I brought it up, so I'll just say that it's an incredibly beautiful system that makes me want to caress it's sleek new edges late into the night. I actually had to turn the brightness down after the first hour last night since I'm fairly sure it was cooking my retinas. I was however, able to hold it casually in one hand in the air as I lay on my back - a shocking comfortably feat that the old DS would stodgily not allow. So yes, it's now the quintessential DS, and if you have the means, indulge as soon as possible (if you can find one).