The Excellent Game Psychonauts

[edmundito]

The game is out! At least in the United States. PS2 version coming out the 21st of June.

Formerly known as the Psychonauts PC demo available for download thread

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For those of you who have a PC and broadband, you might want to check out the demo for the excellent game Psychonauts. It's 457 MB big, and you can download it from:

http://www.fileshack.com/file.x?fid=6682 (registration required)
http://dlx.gamespot.com/pc/psychonauts/moreinfo_6121978.html (registration required)
http://www.filerush.com/download.php?target=PsychonautsDemoInstaller.exe (Bittorrent but no registration)
http://www.3dgamers.com/dlselect/games/psychonauts/psychonautsdemoinstaller.exe.html (Bitorrent but no registration)

END OF TAPE

[scotch]

Finished it earlier, I must say it exceeded my expectations.  I wasn't sure I'd enjoy it as a platformer, even if it was by Tim, but I did.

[earlwood]

Most definitely on my to buy list..I especially loved the intro..

[Krazy]

Downloading know, by the way the first bit torrent link offers a normal free download too 

[Domino]

I just recently purchased the official Playstation Magazine the other day and it only had a video of this game.  But the video looked amazing.  The characters looked great and was in an art style i like.

I would really like to test this thing out (i have DSL) so i might as well download it.

Shawn

[shbaz]

Apparently my computer isn't hardcore enough to play it.

[Ghormak]

I like this. I never was very interested in it previously, but the demo is certainly cool. It's very well polished, and runs very smoothly on my machine. The cut-scenes are excellent, and the overall feel of the game is quite nifty.

Only thing I could complain about are the controls, I guess. Not that they're any different from other 3rd person console platformers, so it's not exactly a complaint about Psychonauts itself.

I may have to buy this.

[Kweepa]

Looks great!
Possibly a bit too collecty-itemy...

I notice Yufster got her name in the credits. Way to go!

[shbaz]

I notice Yufster got her name in the credits. Way to go!

That's hilarious.. can you elaborate? I can't play it.

[Kweepa]

It just says

Special Thanks:

Double Fine
...
...
Rusalka Clarke
...
...

[shbaz]

I just checked over at Idle Thumb Forums and apparently Chris Remo (Remixor) is also in there for being a playtester.

[InCreator]

Ouch! My head hurts more than after finishing Grim Fandango.
This cartoonier-than-cartoons! style isn't universally likeable, I guess.

Quite cool game it is... but.... it's for kids.

[Krazy]

Wow, that was AWESOME! Highly fun and original and had heaps more character and story in it than most platformers. Seems almost like an adventure game. Oh, and I really liked the style of it, better than most boring realistic 3D.

[rodekill]

I loved it long time.
So no groceries for me the week it comes out.

[edmundito]

Don't read if you haven't finished the demo!

Spoiler

I love how you don't really finish the level mario style with fireworks and victory music but instead you get there and nothing is there for you because aparently Raz did it faster than anyone else, and then a bit of the future plot is revealed. The story itself is embedded as the ending of the level, and that's just beautiful.

[close]

[auhsor]

Based on these recomendation, I think I must go and check it out. I am a fan of platform games if they are done well, and this one is by Tim, so it must be good.

[HillBilly]

I don't usually like 3rd person platform games, but since everyone seems to love it, I'll give it a try.

[Vince Twelve]

My useless two-cents-

The game was undeniably fun with an amazing array of well-designed, well-animated, characters each with their own interesting personality.  I love how the story is built into the game, with little bits of character popping out during the levels, especially in the case that netmonkey mentioned.

There are a few things that really bugged me, though. 

The camera, for one, is just as annoying, if not more annoying, that all the other 3D platformers.  I found myself fighting the camera many times. 

The "figments" are quite difficult to get sometimes because of how tough it is to get a proper sense of perspective on a 2D sprite (esp. a moving one) in a 3D world.

I wasn't sure of the point of the "mental baggage." I'm sure you learn later, but I didn't like the way too long cutscene of the bag chumming it up with the tag when you unlocked one.

This game requires far too precice of a degree of movement than four arrow (WASD) keys can give you.  I'm sure this game will be quite a bit more playable on XBox... too bad I don't have one.

A few of the platforming mechanics... most notably, swinging on the rods and tightropes, just didn't work out very well.  Too slow.  It took me a while to figure out to press 'F' to turn around.  Not very intuitive.

Finally, good god there's a lot of shit to collect in this game.  That may appeal to a lot of people, but I'm too obsessive compulsive to play a game like that.  I pay more attention to making sure I didn't miss anything than I do to having fun.  Not necessarily a fault of the game, mind you.  Just a way that this particular game doesn't jive with this particular gamer.

All in all, the game could be great, especially if the camera gets ironed out, but with the fast approaching release date, I'm afraid that's not going to happen.  Too bad.  There are a few things holding this game back from being up there with other comparable platformers like "Ratchet and Clank" and "Jak and Daxter" (one of those things being the comparatively tiny budget, but even ignoring that...) but the game has so much potential with the focus on story, great characters and dialog, and classic Schafer humor.

I hope it does well.  For the sake of proving to publishers that gamers like stories in their games.  Good ones.

[Kweepa]

The camera, for one, is just as annoying, if not more annoying, that all the other 3D platformers.  I found myself fighting the camera many times. 

The default setup is retarded in my opinion. When you "invert" both axes of the camera movement in the options it makes a lot more sense - the mouse steers the character, just like a FPS.

[modgeulator2]

 
Anyone else have problems running it? After the intro movie plays it goes to the loading screen and then it crashes out with the following message box:

---------------------------
Encountered Error
---------------------------
(null), line -1
Crash: 0xc0000005
If you have VS.NET installed, you can try to attach the
debugger
Otherwise, click OK
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OKÃ,  Ã, 
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