Psychonauts

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Psychonauts
Developer(s)	Double Fine Productions Budcat Creations (PS2)
Publisher(s)	Majesco Entertainment, Valve Corporation (Steam)
Designer(s)	Tim Schafer (Creative director) Scott Campbell (Art design) Peter McConnell (Composer)
Version	1.04 (September 21, 2005)
Platform(s)	Xbox, Windows, PS2, GameTap
Release date	USA April 19, 2005 (Xbox) USA April 26, 2005 (Windows) USA June 21, 2005 (PS2) EU February 10, 2006 (All) INT October 11, 2006 (Steam)(Windows) INT December 4, 2007 (Xbox Originals)
Genre(s)	Adventure / Platform
Mode(s)	Single player
Rating(s)	ESRB: Teen (13+) USK: 12+ PEGI: 12+ OFLC: M
Media	CD (5); DVD (1)

Psychonauts is a platform video game created by Tim Schafer (known for several LucasArts adventure games such as Grim Fandango and the first two Monkey Island games), developed by Double Fine Productions and published by Majesco. The game was first released on April 19, 2005 for the Microsoft Xbox, and has subsequently been ported to the Sony PlayStation 2 and Microsoft Windows; it has also been released on the Steam platform, as an "Xbox Original" through Xbox Live Marketplace, and as a free playable title on the GameTap basic subscription service.

Psychonauts is based on the exploits of Raz, a young boy gifted with psychic abilities who escapes the circus to try to sneak into a summer camp for those with similar powers in order to become a "Psychonaut". He finds that there is a sinister plot occurring at the camp that only he can stop from happening. The game is centered on the widely strange and imaginative minds of various characters that Raz enters as a Psychonaut-in-training in order to help them overcome their fears or memories of their past in order to gain their help and progress in the game. Raz gains use of several psychic abilities during the game that are used for both attacking foes and solving puzzles.

While the game suffered from poor sales and publisher Majesco suffered financial difficulties relating to Psychonauts and other titles in its catalog, Psychonauts received strong praise and is considered one of the best platformers of the sixth console generation.

Contents 1 Gameplay 2 Plot 2.1 Setting 2.2 Story 2.3 Characters 3 Development 4 Reception 4.1 Awards 4.2 Sales 5 Trivia 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Gameplay

Psychonauts combines traditional console platformer elements with the kind of strong storytelling, humor and dialogue found in adventure games. The camp itself is fully explorable by the player to find hidden arrowheads that can be used to purchase items at the camp store and psi cards that help to improve Raz's Psi Ranking, to talk to other campers and camp advisers, and to make way to the various "levels" within the game. There are also areas in the "real world" of the camp, including a nearby insane asylum, that the player will explore during the course of the game. Throughout these areas are characters whose minds Raz can enter, either through their own actions, or by use of a small door that Raz uses on the character's forehead. Each of these character levels has its own unique visual design and set of challenges, related to the demons, nightmares and secret memories of the mind that Raz is exploring; for example, within the mind of the lungfish that terrorizes the camp lake, Raz is seen as a giant monster attacking a city filled with lungfish beings, while within the mind of Boyd, the security guard at the asylum, Raz encounters Boyd's alternate personality of "The Milkman" who sees everything as a conspiracy theory. Within the mind levels, the player can collect various "figments of imagination" which can also lead to increasing Raz's Psi Ranking, and can locate tags to match with various "emotional baggage" within the level to unlock a slideshow that helps to explain the background of that character and his or her mental problem. The player must also avoid taking damage from censors that attempt to remove Raz from the character's mind. Each mind level typically ends with a boss fight that represents the main cause of the character's mental problems.

Raz gains new psychic powers through the game through either instruction by the camp counselors, or by increasing his Psi Ranking. These powers include telekinesis, levitation, invisibility, pyrokinesis, clairvoyance, PSI Shield, PSI Blast and confusion. Additional Rankings increase the range, duration or potency of these abilities. These powers are directly involved in the puzzle-solving aspects of the game as well as to defeat foes within the game, and allow the player to tailor the solutions to his or her own playing strengths. The player also gains items that can be used either for solving puzzles, to escape from a mind level if they become stuck, or to get advice for solving some of the puzzles.

[edit] Plot

[edit] Setting

The story is set in Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp (a remote government training facility under the guise of a summer camp), where students are trained to become Psychonauts. The area was hit centuries ago by a meteor made of psitanium (an element that can grant psychic powers or strengthen existing powers), creating a huge crater. When settlers began inhabiting the region, the psychoactive properties of the meteor slowly drove them insane. An asylum was built to house the afflicted, but within fifteen years the asylum had more residents than the town did. The government relocated the remaining inhabitants and flooded the crater to prevent further settlement, creating what is now Lake Oblongata. The asylum still stands but has fallen into disrepair. The government took advantage of the psitanium deposit to set up a camp for training Psychonauts.

The local wildlife has been profoundly affected by the psitanium as well. Bears are able to attack from afar using telekinetic claws, and cougars are endowed with pyrokinesis. Also, the rats in the upper levels of the old asylum are kamikaze creatures, running at anyone that comes close and exploding in a cloud of Confusion. One pet turtle displays human-like intelligence due to his human-sized brain. At one point in the game, levitating velociraptors are said to have lived there (although, the game also mentions that the meteor crashed 500 years ago, long after dinosaurs went extinct).

[edit] Story

Raz (short for Razputin) is a young boy whose family is part of a circus. Raz finds that he is gifted with psychic abilities but his father refuses to let him attend Psychonauts training at Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp; Raz disobeys his father's wishes and sneaks off to join the camp. After sneaking into the camp, Raz is discovered by the camp advisers, Sasha Nein, Milla Vodello, and Coach Morceau Oleander. Though they discover that Raz has strong psychic abilities,^[1] they allow Raz to stay only until his parents can come collect him, and bar him from participating in any activities.^[2] However, Sasha asks Raz if he can explore his powers further,^[3] and puts him through the "Brain Tumbler", both inside Sasha's mind as well as Raz.^[4] While in his own mind, Raz discovers that one of his fellow campers, Dogen, is about to have his brain pulled out by what seems to be a dentist, calling it a "bad tooth",^[5] but is unable to surmount an obstacle to learn more. In the real world, Raz find that Dogen in fact now is lacking a brain,^[6] and tries to warn the others, but they shrug it off, accounting for Dogen's odd behavior by his eccentricity. Raz learns a Psi technique that allows him to re-enter his mind and to get past the obstacle blocking him before and finds that the "dentist", Doctor Loboto, is working with Coach Oleander to extract all the minds of the children at camp to make them the power source of psychic death tanks. When he returns to the real world, he learns from Ford Cruller that Sasha and Milla have been called away on important Psychonauts business and takes it upon himself to rescue the next victim, Lili, who has been kidnapped and taken to the insane asylum across the lake. Ford offers as much help as he can, though he is unable to leave the camp, but offers Raz a piece of bacon that Raz can use to telepathically talk to Ford at any time.

After using a bathyshere and defeating the monstrous lungfish that inhabits the lake, Raz finds himself at the base of the insane asylum, and uses his abilities on the few that reside in its ruin to gain entry to the upper levels of the asylum. He finds that Oleander and Doctor Loboto have taken Lili, Sasha, and Milla hostage. Raz is able to free them, where they turn to fight Oleander and Loboto. As they fight, the insane asylum is burned down, and while the others escape safely, Oleander transfers his mind to one of the death tanks and attacks Raz. Raz nearly defeats the tank before Oleander is able to force Raz's brain out, but Raz acts quickly and moves his brain into the tank, where it merges with Oleander's.

Raz finds himself in a mental world that combines his own fears of the circus with Oleander's childhood features of his father, a butcher. Raz escorts "Little Oly", the child version of Oleander, safely through the world, and is able to defeat the gruesome visions of both of their fathers successfully. However, as their minds are still melded together, the two visions combine into a overall amalgam of the two that Raz attempts to fight unsuccessfully. Suddenly, Raz's real father shows up in the mental world, and explains to Raz that he too had psychic abilities, and did not mean to dissuade Raz from exploring them further. Together, the two are able to defeat the amalgam, and pull Raz' and Oleander's brains apart, restoring them to their proper bodies. As the rest of the children's brains are restored, Raz is congratulated for his outstanding work, and is allowed to become a Psychonaut. As he is leaving camp, news arrives that the Grand Head of the Psychonauts, Truman Zanotto (who is revealed to be Lili's father), has been kidnapped. Raz and his fellow Psychonauts fly off to rescue him.

[edit] Characters

Main article: List of characters in Psychonauts

Psychonauts features a large cast of characters, led by the game's protagonist, Razputin. These include camp Coach Oleander, Psychonaut agents Sasha Nein and Milla Vodello, Raz's mentor and idol Ford Cruller, Raz's love interest Lili Zanotto, and Bobby Zilch, the camp bully. Many of the other camp goers, despite being bit parts, have very fleshed out back stories which the player may learn about through optional conversations throughout the first half of the game.

[edit] Development

The back-story for Psychonauts was originally conceived during the development of Full Throttle, where Tim Schafer envisioned a sequence where the protagonist Ben Throttle goes under a peyote-induced psychedelic experience. While this was eventually ejected from the original game, Schafer kept the idea and eventually developed it into Psychonauts.^[7]

Schafer's team was partly made up of several people he worked with on Grim Fandango at LucasArts. Amongst the art design crew was background artist Peter Chan and cartoonist Scott Campbell. Voice actor Richard Steven Horvitz, best known for his portrayal of Zim in the cult favorite animated series Invader Zim, provides the voice of Raz, the game's protagonist. Raz was originally conceived as an ostrich suffering from mental imbalance and multiple personalities. Tim Schafer killed the idea because he strongly believes in games being "wish fulfillments," guessing that not many people fantasize about being an insane ostrich.^[8]

Originally, Psychonauts was to be published by Microsoft for release exclusively on their Xbox console, but in March 2004, Microsoft pulled out of this deal. It emerged in August 2004 that Double Fine had negotiated a new publishing deal with Majesco to release the game on Windows as well as the Xbox. Tim Schafer was quoted as saying "Together we are going to make what could conservatively be called the greatest game of all time ever, and I think that's awesome."^[9] In October 2004, it was revealed that Psychonauts would be released on yet another platform, the PlayStation 2, ported by Budcat Creations. The final US release date for the game on Xbox and Windows was April 19, 2005, with the PlayStation 2 port following on June 21, 2005. Psychonauts was re-released via Valve Corporation's Steam content delivery system on October 11, 2006.^[10] It is also available on GameTap.

Although initially unplayable on the Xbox 360, Tim Schafer spearheaded a successful e-mail campaign by fans which led to Psychonauts being added to the Xbox 360 backwards compatible list on December 12, 2006,^[11] and on December 4, 2007, Microsoft finally acknowledged the importance of Psychonauts by making it one of the initial launch titles made available for direct download on the Xbox 360 through their Xbox Originals program.

Music for the game was made by Peter McConnell. A soundtrack featuring all the music was also released[1].

[edit] Reception

Psychonauts
Publication	Score
Compilations of multiple reviews
Compiler	Score
Metacritic	88/100 (Xbox)[12] 86/100 (PS2)[13] 87/100 (PC)[14]
Game Rankings	90% (Xbox)[15] 86% (PS2)[16] 90% (PC)[17]

Psychonauts received generally positive reviews, with many reviewers citing its originality and sense of humour as particular good points.

• Metacritic score of 88
• GameSpot: "The whole look of the game feels like the unholy love child of Tim Burton and a Pixar animation team, and it's just wonderful stuff...anyone looking for a fun and whimsical adventure with a brilliant presentation and a fantastic story will find just that in Psychonauts."^[18]
• IGN: "The first half of this game is easily one of the most enjoyable I've had in the past year. But as is the case with many humorous games, the laughs begin to fade in the home stretch and in the end Psychonauts started to wear on me."^[19]
• GameSpy: "It's one of the best platformers the system has seen, mostly thanks to its amazing visuals and downright hilarious dialogue."^[20]
• GameShark: "The best platform game ever to grace the Xbox."^[21]
• Electronic Gaming Monthly: "Anyone who doesn't fall for the unique characters, hilarious dialogue, and brilliantly conceived environments of Psychonauts has no soul. The James Brown of games, Psychonauts' personality overcomes its flaws."^[22]
• New York Times: "Insanity is what makes Psychonauts entertaining and unusual, so it is a shame you have to spend several hours in the mildly eccentric minds of instructors before getting to the cool part of the game."^[23]
• Sydney Morning Herald: "A wildly imaginative, frequently hilarious and hugely entertaining platforming romp through the subconscious."^[24]
• PC Gamer: "A refreshingly funny Escape From Twitch Mountain." (90/100)
• Total Gamer: "The greatest game of all time." (A+)
• Ben Croshaw: "I'm just going to list out of context some of the things that occur in Psychonauts: A telekinetic bear, a dentist who harvests brains, a sequence wherein you become a giant Godzilla style monster and terrorize a society of talking fish, and a shadowy trench coated government agent who disguises himself as a housewife by brandishing a rolling pin and talking disjointedly about pies. A game that features all of these thing simply cannot be criticized... its against the law or something."

[edit] Awards

• E3 2002 Game Critics Awards: Best Original Game
• GameSpot Best and Worst of 2005: Best Voice Acting, Best Graphics (Artistic), Funniest Game, Best Game No One Played, Best Platformer. Nominated for Best Story and Best Original Music. Razputin was nominated for Best New Character.
• IGN 2005 Awards: Best Platformer, Best Game No One Played
• Razputin was placed #2 on the Game Informer "Top 10 Heroes of 2005" list.
• EuroGamer: Overall Game of the Year 2005
• PSM: Buy or Die award in issue #100, #5 on Top 10 Games of 2005 list, Best Characters
• Electronic Gaming Monthly 2005 Awards: Best Game No One Played
• PC Powerplay: First full 10/10 score after the magazine's switch from the 100-point scoring system to its current 10-point scoring system
• PC Gamer magazine 2005 Awards: Best Game You Didn't Play, Editor's Choice Award
• GameShadow Innovation in Games Awards nominee (Best Game, Innovative Visual Effects, Best Narrative)
• G4's X-Play deemed Psychonauts the funniest game ever in their "Funniest @#%& Ever" episode and was voted #6 in the top ten games on the Xbox in the "Best of the Xbox" episode.
• British Academy Video Games Awards 2006: Best Screenplay^[25]
• Games magazine: 2006 Electronic Game of the Year
• 6th annual Game Developers Choice Awards: Best Writing, with Tim Schafer and Erik Wolpaw accepting

[edit] Sales

Despite the game's critical success, its sales have been lacklustre. Although the game was cited as the primary contributing factor to a strong quarter immediately following the game's release,^[26] a month later Majesco revised their fiscal year projections from a net profit of $18 million to a net loss of $18 million,^[27] and at the same time its CEO, Carl Yankowski, announced his immediate resignation.^[28] By the end of the year, the title had shipped fewer than 100,000 copies, and Majesco announced its plans to withdraw from the "big budget console game marketplace".^[29] However, this figure predated the game's European release, its release on Steam, and its inclusion on the Xbox 360's backward-compatible list.

According to Schafer, as of June 14, 2007 Psychonauts had sold 400,000 copies (not counting digital distribution, or the Double Fine company store). Also, Psychonauts is now officially 'out of print'.^[30]

On June 14, 2007, GameTap added Psychonauts to its subscription service game library, and will be free until December 31st, 2008.^[31]

On December 4, 2007, the game was amongst the first games to be added to the Xbox Live Marketplace for the Xbox Originals download service on the Xbox 360. The European marketplace download is not compatible with the VGA cable because the game runs at 50Hz.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Trivia

Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.

• Examining the tree stumps used as part of a system for traveling around the campsite gives a reference to a joke used in The Secret of Monkey Island, a game Tim Schafer also worked on. This line was also included in Grim Fandango.^[32]
• In some of the campground levels there is background music that is reminiscent of Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit." A song with references to "mind expanding" drugs.
• Erik Wolpaw, a member of the original Old Man Murray team, worked as a writer on Psychonauts contributing story and dialog.^[33]
• While once suffering from writer's block, Tim Schafer came up with the idea to develop many of the supporting characters of Psychonauts by giving them fictional online identities on the Friendster social network service and posting messages in-character.^[34]
• The term psychonaut literally means a "sailor of the psyche," and is often used to describe users of psychedelic drugs.^[35]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Official Psychonauts website
• Official Double Fine Productions website
• Razputin's Domain website
• Psychonauts at MobyGames
• Psychonauts profile at The International House of Mojo
• Psychonauts Explorer - A resource viewer/dumper for Psychonauts
• Psychonauts Saved Game Editor - A saved game editor for the PC version.