DigiTamerRiley's Digital Hub

Psychonauts

The Psychonauts game are some of the most innovative examples of game design that I've ever seen. Not counting the overworlds for each respective game, every single level takes place in the mind of a different character, and the level design reflects that fact with each world you visit being radically different from the last, as each person's world view as well as the experiences that created that world view differ from one another. The job of a Psychonaut is to help the people whose minds they enter work through their pain and learn to move forward from it, as well as engage in psychic battle with those who wish to bring destruction to the world. Think psychic secret agents who moonlight as really great therapists. The protagonist of these games is Razputin Aquato, a young boy who ran away from the circus as his psychic powers began to manifest, fearing his family would shun him due to the curse a psychic had laid on the Aquato family, dooming them all to die in water.

Of course when I first played this game I was a dumb preteen and I didn't care about any of that, all I cared about was that my older brother had started the game but gave up on it, so this could be the first ever video game we both played that I beat before him. And despite getting stuck on the Milkman Conspiracy level for a few months -- which, can you blame me? Look at this mess -- I did eventually beat it before he did, which was enough to solidify it as an important game to me. And it's great that it did, because otherwise I never would have decided to revisit it and rediscover just how fantastic the story these games tell really is, especially with the addition of Psychonauts 2. The story of Razputin Aquato is one of overcoming generational trauma, your fears of not being enough, your guilt over your past mistakes, and the importance of community. Psychonauts 2 took all the brilliant ideas that Psychonauts laid the seeds for, and built on them all to tell one of my favorite stories that I've experienced in years, and honestly I can't remember the last time I felt so satisfied with a conclusion. I certainly wouldn't be upset if we got a Psychonauts 3 some day in the future, but if we never did I wouldn't be disappointed, because with just two games (technically three but I never played the VR game between Psychonauts 1 and 2) they told the story they set out to tell about as well as I could possibly imagine them telling, and I wouldn't change one detail.