Psychonauts: Not as good as everyone says it is

Yahtzee famously blew the Psychonauts horn in one of his early reviews. but more recently Daniel Floyd (who I have infinitely more respect for) did the same thing.

I then looked at Metacritic and found that all these guys were likewise saying it was the dogs bollocks.

Clearly, I had to check it out with that list of glowing references. Given that we're in the middle of a recession and I have no money, I decided to pirate it rather than shell out the £10 it was being sold for on steam and fuck me I'm glad I did.

Now if you're reading this, I'm assuming you've seen one or all of the above links so It's pointless me telling you what Psychonauts is so it's best to dive right in.

Psychonauts is startlingly original, very witty and absolutely no fun to play. The meat of the game is set in characters minds, which are all tarted up platform sections. They're very, very clever yes. You have to unlock emotional baggage, for example. See Daniel Floyd's video for more examples of just how clever the game is.

The problem is the gameplay consists of nothing but jumping from one platform to another, swinging on the occasional bar and using bizarely underwhelming psychic powers. The game has so much charm that this is quite well disguised but you'll play it for an hour or so and suddenly realised that whilst you've been quite engaged the whole time, you haven't enjoyed a second of the damn gameplay.

The developers should be applauded for originality and the game is often genuinely funny but the producers are absolute idiots - there's no way a game like this would sell becase it's not very good...

So if you've wanted to check out Psychonauts for ages because of all the hype, stay back. Play Braid instead, that basically does the same thing (minus the humour) but is actually fun to play.