Play Diary: Psychonauts 1

I just started to play the critically acclaimed Psychonauts for free on GameTap.

I don't like the camera very much. Moving the mouse turns the camera, as does WASD. That I can handle, (though I prefer independent control) but when the game tries to fight me by applying it's own turn to the camera too it starts to get annoying. It's literally like sometimes I'm battling against the game to look in a certain direction. There is a workaround: switch to first person view, but it's quite annoying to have to switch camera modes just to be able to get a good look at the world - especially because it seems like a lot of this game is going to be about looking around to find the treasure hidden outside your normal route / view.

I do, however, like the characters, plot and humour.

I also like the way I can just start to play the game. I tried out Deus Ex and Hitman the other day too (also for free on GameTap) but I got bored with the explicit tutorial sections that lacked any broader narrative setting. In Psychonauts I got drawn in by the characters and diegetic idea of the game even before I got to Basic Braining, the ostensive tutorial mission.

When I was running around the starting area and would encounter a special object for the first time some help text would appear on screen, but when I moved away it would disappear and in some cases not come back even when I returned to the object. Sometimes this is annoying as I'd accidentally move away from the object as soon as the tip appeared, but there doesn't appear to be any way to see a log of previous messages.

Another section I had difficulty with (and maybe this is another case of missing some help text) was in Basic Braining. There's a section where you have to swing on a series of poles, jumping upward from one to another. At one point you have to turn around while hanging onto the current pole, but I didn't know how to do this, so I spent ages trying to use combinations of buttons and the environment to try to achieve this. I finally worked it out by accidentally hitting 'f' when I meant to press 'd'. I should have tried this earlier as 'f' is one of the main control keys. The settings screen tells me that 'f' is for 'use'. I think you could understand that I wouldn't associate that verb with turning-around-while-hanging-on-a-pole. A few minutes later I came to another section that required the same technique. This time the help text was displayed. Great. It would have been nicer to see it in the earlier section, when I first needed it. To get to this part of the game you must have mastered the technique already.

Similarly later on I got stuck and couldn't find a way to progress. I resorted to my previous tactic of button mashing everything in the environment, which worked as it turned out I could smash down a bit of wall. Now in fairness the wall did have cracks in it, but it didn't suggest itself as being especially different to the other, non-destructable walls elsewhere. From now on I'll try to hit all walls that look a bit weak.

Finally, when I tried to quit the game the only option I had was to return to the title screen. Once there I could exit the game. Why's this? It reminds me of how much effort it is to quit Assassins' Creed:



I do quite like Psychonauts though.

I'll report back another day.