Video games, by nature, are a technology-driven medium, probably more so than any other form of entertainment today. The day-to-day advancements in the various technologies behind gaming leave players and developers both salivating at the possibilities of photorealism, motion control and deeper immersion. New play mechanics/gimmicks like cover systems and bullet-time challenge our skills every year. It’s easy to get lost in all the bells and whistles that go along with this medium and even easier to forget that, even with the best graphics and most popular gameplay trends, a game without heart is nothing more than a cold mess of pixels on your screen.
That’s what makes Psychonauts such an incredible experience. It doesn’t rely on fancy control schemes, and while it certainly isn’t ugly, it doesn’t have the photorealism that most gamers crave today. What it does feature are platforming gameplay mechanics that we’ve seen a hundred times before. There’s jumping, killing enemies, a few boss fights and collecting. Lots and lots of collecting. Wait, this is a positive piece on Psychonauts, right? Indeed it is, and that’s the point. In spite of breaking the apparent rules of current game development that say you have to cram as many new features into a game as possible, Tim Schafer has managed to create an incredibly unique experience while sticking with gameplay mechanics that most seasoned gamers could master in their sleep. How did he manage this?
Psychonauts, at its core, is a 3D platformer, which I know isn’t exactly popular with the kids these days. However, to write it off simply because it exists in a genre that most gamers consider to be for kids would be to rob yourself of a trip to a fully realized world that shouldn’t be missed. It’s the creation of this one-of-a-kind place that allows Schafer to sidestep the necessity of cutting edge play mechanics. Instead, he concentrated on creating characters that are endearing, funny and dynamic while weaving a story that is equally as gripping. For those who have yet to play the game, here’s the skinny. You play as Raz, a young psychic who has run away from home to attend the Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp in the hopes of becoming a psychonaut. Psychonauts are a sort of mental special agent. They have the ability to enter a subject’s mind in order to get to the bottom of whatever needs solving. Pretty cool stuff.
Obviously, a great premise isn’t enough to make a good video game. We’ve all played games that had a great premise and still managed to suck it up. Assassin’s Creed, I’m looking at you. Not to mention, if all you have is a good premise but no way to make it into a good game, then you may as well look at one of the passive narrative mediums like books or film. Psychonauts, however, takes the strengths of the narrative and infuses them into the admittedly simple gameplay elements in a way that gives them such a polish that you don’t realize you’re having a blast with a genre that you may have thought you outgrew years ago.
While I certainly don’t want to spoil anything for those who haven’t played the game yet, I need to give a few examples so you know what I’m talking about. As I said before, platformers and most of the mechanics within them haven’t changed much in the last decade. So, let’s look at two of the worst offending traits of the platformer and examine how Psychonauts gets them right.
The first mechanic is collecting. Ever since Mario burst onto the 8-bit scene, gamers have been collecting everything from coins to rings to car parts. I’d be hard pressed to come up with a platformer that didn’t have the player collect something for reasons as important as getting extra health and lives or reasons as arbitrary as…well…just to do it. Psychonauts is no different. There are all manner of things to collect in this game, but because they are presented in a way that works so cohesively with the narrative, it actually makes you want to collect them. By simply naming the collectible items things that go along with the themes of the narrative, it gives these mundane acts a sort of flair. The game is all about the mind. So what would a traveler of the brain collect, coins? Stars? Try figments of the imagination. These figments are crudely drawn figures of various things that may be frightening the mind that you inhabit at the time. While these aren’t totally necessary to the game, they do add to the back-story of the character. There are also mental vaults running around. These are literally small safes that run around on their four legs. It’s where the mind has hidden their darkest or most hurtful memory. Finding this will often give the player the darkly humorous catalyst event that altered the mind they currently inhabit. Another fun play on words collectible is the finding of “emotional baggage.” There are pieces of crying luggage that must be reunited with their tags in order to be happy again. With some clever naming and rewards, collecting is no longer something the player has to dread.
Secondly, I’d like to discuss level design. Most platformers are filled with the same repetitive shit we’ve seen for years now. Slippery ice level. Quicksand-filled desert level. Lava Level. Regular forest level. Am I missing any? Psychonauts throws these conventions completely out the window. The levels take place within the mind of some seriously effed-up individuals, this made for some of the most creative level design ever developed. But, it doesn’t end there. What sets Psychonauts over the top is that, much like the collecting, even the levels aid in the narrative and character development. One such level takes place in the mind of a crackpot conspiracy theorist. His mind features paths that lead to nowhere. They twist and turn, and no jump is ever a safe bet. Inhabiting this level aren’t your standard NPC’s and enemies, in fact, each level in Psychonauts has NPC’s unique to the psyche you are in. In this level, it’s cloak and dagger G-Men parodies that pop up from behind bushes, within-trash cans or disguised as telephone workers. All of it adds up to give the player a greatly detailed sense of who the owner of this mind is, and in some cases, manages to create a fair amount of empathy for the character.
Psychonauts is a game that proves an amazing experience can be had just by tweaking and innovating the gameplay mechanics we already have. Developers need to learn that just because they may be ahead of the technology curve, they are not guaranteed to end up with a game that will provide any sort of meaningful experience to the player. The industry has such a short attention span that it constantly moves ahead to the next thing without ever perfecting the things it leaves behind. It has left us with a landscape of half-finished foundations that have so much left to offer if only a developer would take the time to complete the thoughts of the architects that came before them. Psychonauts is the product of taking one of those foundations to its apex; hopefully it won’t be the last to do so.