S1E35 - Psychonauts

Welcome back to another episode of Discrete Air, the podcast where every week we dive into the extensive and fascinating library of the greatest selling video game console of all time. I'm the PlayStation Two. I'm Derek Kicker.

I'm Ian Golding.

And this week we are fucking up your mind. Yes, with psychonauts.

You were born with a special gift, but the people around you treat it like a curse. Your mother is afraid of you, and your father looks at you with shame in his eyes. Come to Whispering Rock's Psychic summer camp and you can show them all back home. Your powers make you a loner, an outcast, a circus freak. But in this dojo, in this psychic dojo, they make you a hero.

Psychonauts motherfucker.

Hell, yeah.

So you didn't play this game when it came out?

No, this is a game that I have heard of, I've been hearing of for, what, damn near 20 years now. Never played it.

Never.

Didn't really know what it was about until I got to play it a few days ago.

Yeah. So I had played it when it came out, but I liked it. But it was like the game you played because everyone was talking about it.

Okay. Reputational, power there.

Yeah, and you're right. It does have kind of like a mythos.

Absolutely does. Yeah. And to be full disclosure here, the way I played it was what you call it on the Xbox Game Pass store. But from what I read, it's the exact same game other than the controls. Yeah.

And I did play it on the old PlayStation Two. I got a nice little copy.

Nicely done. Nicely done.

A nice little copy. I think it's a somewhat expensive game, too. We're bringing back the segment. How much is it?

How much is it?

$33. I guess it's expensive on PS Two. Apparently, there is a physical copy on PS Four, which is interesting, and that's $86.

The rear Master, I don't think it's a remaster.

I think it's just a direct port.

Oh, that's right, it's a port.

Maybe like an HD upres, possibly.

Yeah, I saw it on the store. It was $10. But again, the Xbox version was on Game Pass, so I was like, I might as well play it for free if it's the same exact game.

I do have also a physical copy of the sequel, psychonauts Two Mother Lobe Edition that I have never opened on PS Four. Never opened it. Okay, so that's worth $50.

All right. Not bad. Not bad.

But replaying this game. I kind of want to play part two now.

Yeah, I probably want to play part two as well.

Yeah. Well, the legacy of Psychonauts becomes public facing on April 19, 2005, when it is released on Windows, Xbox, PlayStation Two, Mac OS.

Fascinating.

And Linux.

Linux.

So some straight up no nerd shit.

Yeah, super nerds playing it.

And this game is the brainchild of famous video game designer tim Schaefer, the Shafe old Schaeff. I mean, at this point, I think he was probably most famous for Grim fandango at this point.

Yeah, of course.

Which is an incredible game. Also available on the PlayStation Store for, like, really cheap.

Yeah, it's super cheap. Yeah.

He was an assistant designer on the secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island Two Leshuk's Revenge. And you can see the influence of the Monkey Island games in his games. There's a lot of story, but it's also fun and it doesn't take itself too seriously.

Very much so.

It was developed by Double Fine Productions, which is an Xbox first party video game developer. Another game you might have heard from them was Brutal Legend with Moon lots.

Over the you right, yeah.

It was like Jack Black.

Oh, that's right, I forgot.

The star of sure, sure, sure. And the company was founded by Tim Schaefer after he left Lucas Arts. Psycho Nuts was actually their first game.

Wow.

I know. Coming out strong. Then they did a bunch of browser games, which is weird. But then they did brutal legend.

Okay.

And then costume quest, which I've never even heard of. Yeah, I've never heard of that stacking, which I've never heard of. Iron Brigade, which I've never heard of.

Dear, oh, dear.

Then a psychonauts game for iOS, then Sesame Street. Once upon a Monster for Xbox 360. Yeah, it is looking real bad for them up until 2016 or 2015, when they rerelease Grim Fandango Remastered.

Right.

Which seems like a good call.

Yeah, a very good call.

Yeah. And then they did a game called Rad, which I'd never heard of. But then they did Psychonauts Two in 2021, and it doesn't look like they've done jack shit since.

Okay.

It was published by Majesco, famous video game publisher. Famous for the Aeon Flux.

Sure. All right.

I think they've done a bunch of the Double Dragons games.

Okay, sure.

Yeah. Blood Rain betrayal the Blood Rain games. All the Blood Rain games.

Looks like I like Blood Rain games.

I like blood rain. Though I did play the remaster of One and Two a little bit on the switch and who. Boy, do those controls not translate to.

The switch, I'll bet.

Yeah. But they also published a game we recently reviewed, which is Jaws Unleashed.

Oh, fuck. Yeah. Murder simulator in water.

Hell yeah. Love a good murder. SIM yeah. But the genesis of Psychonauts narrative traces back to the development of Full Throttle.

I love full throttle. That's such a good game.

Tim Schaefer originally conceived a sequence where the protagonist, Ben embarks on a peyote induced psychedelic journey, which you can see that for a game that is really kind of about kids.

Yeah.

It's very yeah, yeah. And while this idea didn't fit in with Full Throttle's family friendly tone and was removed, schaefer kind of held onto it. Like, we talked about how Shinji Mikami kind of holds on to ideas. And it eventually became oh. The majority of the game's dialogue and script came from Schaefer and Eric Woolpaw, the latter being a columnist for the website Old Man Murray at the okay.

Yeah.

And Schaefer, as part of character development, imagined how each character would present themselves on a social media site similar to Friendster, a platform he admired, and where he happened to meet his future spouse. Which is a wild story.

Yeah. That's fucking wild.

Yeah. Because that was back when if you met a woman online, you didn't tell anyone.

No. You didn't lie.

You lied about it.

You're a fucking loser. Yeah.

So during the development of Psychonauts, there were numerous setbacks exacerbated by Double Fine's lack of experience in managing this kind of first timers. Big of a lift. They changed offices. the.com bubble burst affected the earliest stages of development, and by 2003, the team had to relocate to a better office space, but encountered further delays. And then so Tim Schaefer brought on Carolyn S. Murdoch on board as the producer to oversee the gas production while he focused on the creative aspects, which ain't that how it goes?

Yeah.

That's like the Madman shit, right? Don Draper doesn't know how to do fucking payroll.

Yeah. He's not fucking cutting.

He's got he's sitting there drinking and getting smashed midday and falling asleep on his couch and then dreaming up the perfect solution. It was originally going to be an Xbox exclusive, which in my head, it feels like it is.

It feels like an Xbox game.

Yeah.

It has Xbox vibes.

Yeah, it really does. I thought that was just because I played it on Xbox that I got that sense.

But yeah. One of the interesting things I found out while doing research on this is that S. Murdoch disclosed that the development of Psychonauts, including all the fuck ups complications, was around four and a half years. Wow.

Okay.

Which is a long time for then.

Now it's not. Now. It's like someone was saying, like, AA games are, like, ten years.

Yeah. Eldon Ring. From what I'd heard, eldon Ring actually went into production before Sekiro.

Right. That's what I heard. Well, for kind of on the same GTA Six before GTA Five released. That's insane to me.

Yeah. And the game was created by a team of 42 full time developers, which seems huge by then by those standards nowadays, and additional contractors with a final budget of eleven and a half million, which a game like God of War these days would, like Scoff at. Right. Someone was saying that God of War costs, like, $100 million to make.

Yeah. They're, like, bigger than features now.

Yeah. Which is fucking wild.

Bonkers.

But I think from the very beginning, from the main title screen, you kind of see how much work was put into this game.

Yeah. Well, not one of the first things, but one of the biggest things I wrote down when I was playing. This was there is a lot of game here.

There is there is a ton of game.

There's more than you are used to or expect when you hit start. Yeah. Especially for this era. Like, it's crazy.

And before we dive into the story of the game and the world of psychonauts, I do want to talk about the main title screen because it is pretty fucking cool. So the main title screen is like a brain, right? It says psychonauts and you press start and then you're raz. And at first you're like, what the.

What do I well, he just walks to the top of the brain and just stands there.

Yeah, but then you move him, but you're not prompted.

You just are like, oh, is something wrong? Like, I was like, oh, is this freeze? And then I moved my control stick and the brain started rotating as he walked around. And I was like, okay, that's a really cool what a great first impression. Yeah.

And you walk around to the other side of the brain and gives you the option to load a game or start a new game. And it's a great introduction. One of the best introductions to a game that I can think of.

Yeah. Just charming from the jump, I'd say.

Yeah, but let's get into the story because I think there are games where story doesn't matter too much.

Yeah, this isn't one.

I think the story is very well crafted and there was a lot of intent and effort put into the story. So let's dive in.

I have a chance to be something to make a difference. They may come for me, dogan, but they'll be looking for Raz the boy. What they're going to find, what they don't expect, is raz the psychonaut. And then you'll make their heads explode. No. Do you do that? No. Well, once, kind of.

So the story of psychonauts unfolds in the intriguing back drop of the Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp, a covert US government training facility cleverly disguised as a children's summer camp in 1982. And you get the 80s vibes from this a little bit, for sure. And we learned that centuries ago, a meteor made of an element called titanium struck the area and created this massive crater. And the titanium had a peculiar effect on the local wildlife, giving them some psychic abilities. So, like bears with telekinetic claws, cougars that can control fire, and rats that have a knockout gas. Sure, yeah. And the Native Americans named titanium Whispering Rock and used its craft arrowheads, which is kind of like the in game currency. However, when settlers arrived in the region, they fell victim to the meteor's psychoactive properties, gradually succumbing to madness. Let's just say the colonizers got what they had coming.

Fuck, yeah.

So to manage these afflicted settlers, an asylum named Thorny Towers, home of the disturbed, was constructed. But it soon housed more residents than the town itself. And the founder, Houston Thorney, tragically killed himself by leaping from the asylum's tower curse plat.

It's a good way to go.

Yeah. So the government, realizing the potential of titanium, established a training camp for the psychonauts, which are a group of gifted secret agents with psychic abilities derived from titanium. And the training facility operated undercover as a summer camp for kids, but served the dual purpose of honing the children's powers and training them to become psychonauts.

Yeah.

And you have to be hand picked to get into a psychonaut academy.

This is very what you would call it, inception. Before Inception. Right. That was technology. But this is like magic. Magic.

Well, that and it also seems like a little ender's gamey.

Okay. Yeah. I could see ender. Yeah.

With the kids without the impending doom of the buggers. And that's kind of the setting for this whole thing, is this summer camp for kids. And it's very charming.

Very charming.

This game is very the art style is incredible. It's very fun.

It's kind of this exaggerated elf people. It's hard to describe because everyone you can't really pin down. What? Because at first I was like, oh, no one has a nose. That's the thing. But then I was like, no, he has a huge nose. And this guy it's just very exaggerated kind of elfie. It's just a lot of fun. Like, it's a very nice art style.

It reminds me and this obviously came first, but it reminds me of Leica Studios movies.

Okay. Yeah.

So, like, box trolls or coraline or kubo and the two swords ParaNorman. Shit like that.

Yeah.

It seems like that kind of art style. If you like those movies, I think you'll enjoy this art style. And I don't know why, but the whole time I was playing this, this time around, being older and having read a lot more books than when I was in high school, there's a Neil Gaiman vibe for me. And I don't know what exactly it is, but there is to me, I may be the only one there seems like an undercurrent of Neil Gaiman vibes.

Yeah. I would agree with that. I don't know. Yeah.

And I can't put my finger on it. I can't articulate it perfectly.

But there's something they occupy kind of the same space. Right?

Yeah. Particularly, like, ocean at the end of the lane and maybe Neverware a little bit, but that's beside the point. This game also has an insane and large ensemble of characters. Absolutely.

A fuck time.

So you have our protagonist, Raz raz. Putin Raz. And he comes from a family of circus performers but yearns to become a psychonaut against his father's wishes.

Right.

And then you have Sasha Nine, who is like he's a psychonaut.

Like big wig James Bond psychonauts. Yeah.

And he's very kind of powerful. And then there's Mila Vaudello, who is, like, the kind how do you describe her? She's like the nurturing one of yeah.

I was going to say. Yeah.

And then there's Coach Oleander, my favorite. Yes. Clearly. He's got a funny version of PTSD.

Yeah, it's great. Hilarious.

And then there's the Ford Crawler, who was once the greatest leader the psychonauts ever had. Well, sure, yeah. And then, of course, there's all the kids.

Yeah. All his campmates or psychonauts mates, I guess. Yeah.

Including the protagonist love interest, Lily.

Yeah. Wednesday Adams vibes.

Yeah. And dojan, I think Pugsley Adams? Yeah, a little bit. And a bunch of other ones, including there's a bully, Billy.

No. Bobby. Yeah.

And his lackey.

Always got to have that lackey.

And we could do an entire podcast just on the story of this game.

We absolutely could. Yeah.

But the long and short of it, now that you know, the setting and the characters, is that Raz is kind of in a rush to become a psychonaut before his parents come pick him up because he snuck into the camp.

Yeah.

But everything doesn't quite go according to plan.

No, sir.

So if you want to know more, it's a very involved story. It's too much to, like, it feel like reading a novel to tell you the whole story in any way. That's, like, super satisfying.

Right.

But it's interesting. And what I like is it doesn't really drag. So this is a lot of game. Right. But I want to say that this game is maybe tops, like 15 hours.

Yeah. Tops. Obviously, with collectibles and different routes through all the levels, you could extend that. But, yeah, 15, probably.

Yeah, 15 hours to get through the story where you're not missing a ton. You could probably rush it and do it quicker, and then you could probably get 20 hours out of this game if you're going for all the figments of the imagination tagging and bagging all the emotional baggage. There's very funny kind of literal representations of, like, metaphorical phrases. Yeah. It's pretty interesting. But as much as our story is a hook, the game also shines in its gameplay.

Absolutely.

And I know it seems like we're sucking off this game right from the jump, but too bad.

We have to. We have to.

It's so good.

It's so good. Now, I do want to ask you a question before we get into gameplay. You had said that the speech at the beginning of Resistance was, like, one of your favorite ever. Yeah. Oleander's speech at the top of this might be my fucking might. I don't know if it surpasses resistance.

But I'm just wondering how zone?

Kill zone. I'm sorry? Oh, shit. Yeah, kill zone.

Sorry.

Yeah, kill zone. Does this rank near the kill zone.

Speech Orlanders it does, and I think it's very funny. I think once you realize that it's like he's talking to kids. He's talking to kids. And then he's like, you'll either become psychonauts or you'll die. It's very funny.

Very funny. Yeah.

Let's put it this way. The story of this game is so good. I'd watch a series, I absolutely would. And luckily there is an animated series.

And there is a ton of cutscenes, which also is I don't know, I feel like people got sick of cutscenes, but I was like, I love these.

I didn't skip a single one, not a one. I don't even know if you can skip them because I didn't even try.

I never tried.

Yeah, it's just kind of that good. And as good as the story is, the gameplay matches even better, somehow better, I think.

The human mind, 600 miles of synaptic fiber, five and a half ounces of cranial fluid, 1500 grams of complex neural matter, a three pound pile of dreams. But I'll tell you what it really is. It is the ultimate battlefield and the ultimate weapon.

So you could call this game a 3D platformer in the same vein as Jack and Daxter.

Yeah.

In fact, especially in the beginning. So this game is very heavy up front in tutorials, but the tutorials don't feel like lame ass tutorials.

Right.

They are fun levels within themselves. And then when you go to the mental world, it's just awesome. But in the beginning, it feels very much to me like Jack and.

Mean.

Or kind of Banjo Kazooie.

Yeah. I actually because maybe because I'm more familiar all of the mechanics early on, I was like, this is Tomb Raider and I'm happy about that. You could do a lot of the same things. Jump, shimmy, blah, blah, blah. You know what I mean? It was a lot of similar stuff.

And this might be the first fucking time we say this. I've said this on the show. This is a PlayStation Two game that kind of nails the camera controls.

Yes.

So we're getting near the very end of the PS Two's lifespan here in 2005. And they've kind of got it now.

They've got it.

They kind of understand it. I won't say the camera is perfect. It's not.

No. But the wonkiness is the exception instead of the rule now.

Yes. So you run around, you swing from trapeze, you jump gaps, you dodge landmines, you shimmy. There's all kinds of collectibles. You're running around, you're collecting shit, you're punching through walls, you're fighting things.

And each of the levels is someone's mind, right?

Yeah. These mental worlds.

Yeah.

So you collect figments of the character's imagination, whoever's mind you're in. And then there's emotional baggage, which you match with a tag, and it helps ease a character's emotional turmoil. There are memory vaults that you can memory vault beat open and unveil slides that give you, like, a deeper insight into a character's backstory.

So good.

And most of the mental worlds culminate in a boss battle, right? And that's the cool thing about the mental worlds, right, is because the boss battle kind of provides a resolution to the character's emotional struggles and drives the storyline forward exactly. And the game and here's another way. This game is a lot of game. You can revisit these worlds at any time.

Yeah. If you want all the collectibles, you're going to have to.

Yeah.

There's stuff you can't open right away in each time and it's like, get back in there.

Yeah. And you have all kinds of items that you can use, ones that get you out of mental world, ones that give you hints, ones that you can use to attack certain foes. But other than running and jumping and punching, the real ability of Raz is his psychic powers, which you gain over the course of the game. So there's like telekinesis levitation invisibility Pyrokinesis, and like, when you gain more skill this is not a new gameplay idea. Right. You gain new skills and the new skills allow you to explore new areas. And that's obviously a hallmark of Metroidvania games. Right. That's the core of Metro. But I don't think that's this there's less backtracking and it's more linear than that.

Yeah.

And you can enhance your powers. So there's a little bit of, like, RPG kind of stuff, of like which power do you want to spec up?

And I got to say, as you just said, it's like, as far as mechanics go, there really isn't that much new here.

But it's how it gets put together.

Right. So I was just going to make the analogy of, like going to a gas station fucking cupcake from Hostess versus whatever that really good cupcake plate is. It's how the ingredients are put together. It's the care, it's the level, it's like how it's used is what really makes it good. There's nothing brand new here, but holy shit, the way they put it together and just the setting. It's so fucking fun. Yeah.

This is a game that I think there are a few games where when you play it, you can kind of feel the creator of the game's love for it.

Yes.

And this is one of them. I think another one is like iko.

Yeah.

Iko kind of feels like.

Yeah.

You know, that's a game where clearly the creator had, like, a love for.

This world, right, and exploring it.

Yeah. So there's some combat, there's some platforming, there's exploring, there's collecting, and you can be damaged. But Raz is super vulnerable to water. And there's a story reason for it. I won't spoil it. But the cool thing about this game is you will die.

Oh, yeah.

But it's not super annoying. You just go back to a checkpoint and it loads very quick.

Very quick, which is shocking one of my favorite. And I don't think many games do this anymore, probably because platformers are gone, but sometimes there will be a figment or something you want to get, and the only way you can get it is like jumping off a platform knowing you're going to die. But the game's cool with that. And you're cool with that? And you're like, Well, I'm going to grab it because I want to grab it. And I just really appreciate that. Kind of like, fuck it, just do it. You know what I mean?

Yeah. You got to risk it to get the biscuit.

There it is. Yeah.

But like I said, we're clearly fans of this game.

Huge fan.

Huge fans. But let's see what everyone else thought.

Very curious about this.

And so that brings us to the end, where, as you can clearly see, the personal demons causing my negative behavior have all been eradicated, leaving me sane once again. This is also corroborated in Cat scan number three on page 59 of your handouts. On a personal note, I would just like to reiterate how extremely, extremely sorry I am for stealing all of your brains and trying to take over the world.

Funny enough, the PS Two version is the worst ranked of all the versions.

God damn it.

But it's close. It's very close. And it basically got universal acclaim. So the Xbox version has an 88 out of 100 on Metacredit. Bam. PC 87 out of 100, PS 286.

I mean, so close that it's like those are the same score.

Yeah. Alex Navarro of Game Spot raved about the bizarre cast of characters, highlighting how their conversations evolved as the story unfolded, which it kind of reminded me of Bully a little bit. That kind of happens in absolutely, yeah.

Absolutely.

Yeah. Their conversations evolve as the story unfolded, preventing the usual monotony found in platform games. Tom Bramwell from Eurogamer was so captivated by the comedic dialogue that he couldn't resist revisiting the game's levels to unearth more humor. It is very funny.

I mean, early on, fucking little doggin, or whatever his name is, blows up some squirrels.

That's true.

I fucking love that moment. That was so fucking great.

I love the moment when you first meet him, when he's like, we should blow his head up.

Yeah.

Do you do that? And he's, no, no, of course not. Kind of. But I wear this hat now, right?

Oh, my God. So good.

Jason Hill of the Sydney Morning Herald described the dream world as memorable journeys through the bizarre inner psyche of the characters.

Agreed.

Which is dope. Yeah. Some reviewers found fault with the game structure, though. They felt that the initial hours were bogged down with tutorials, which is true, making them less engaging than the later mental worlds. Now, I can agree with that, but I also think that the I guess I was going to say girth. That's not the word. I think the size of the tutorial, I think it being so big is important for when you get to the mental worlds.

I think so.

I think you could easily get very frustrated if you were just thrown into it. So this game has a difficulty curve, which is more forgiving than a game. Like, I don't know, crash bandicoot.

Right.

Which basically, right off the bat, kind of throws you in the deep end.

Yes.

There was overall a lot of praise from the industry for this game. So at E three 2005 Game Critics Awards, it won best original game. Should The British Academy Video Game Awards of 2006 gave it best screenplay. Computer games magazine in 2005 gave it the award for best art direction and best writing. PC Gamer. US's best Game You Didn't Play in 2005 was Psychonaut, and it got a nomination for Game of the Year 2005. It also got the best writing award at the 6th annual Game Developers Choice Awards.

Okay.

Yeah.

These are all well earned hardware there.

Absolutely. Eurogamer gave it an eight out of ten GameSpot, an 8.4 out of ten game, spy, four and a half out of five stars, IGN, 8.7 out of ten, and the Sydney Morning Herald, a 4.5 out of five. A resounding yes, please.

Yes, please. Yeah.

But there is some, I guess, downside. Not downsides. There is some negative stuff, especially with the sales. Right. So it didn't reach Majesco's sale expectation.

No.

In fact, a month after its launch, majesco revised their fiscal year projections from a net profit of 18 million to a net loss of 18 million.

Wow.

And at the same time, CEO Carl Yankowski announced his immediate resignation. So this might have been the game that ruined Carl Yankowski's career.

Poor Carl.

And by the end of the year, the title had only shipped had shipped less than 100,000 copies in North America.

Bonkers.

And Majesco announced its plans to withdraw from the big budget console game marketplace altogether.

I would, too. And I'm going to say why. They were right to believe in this game. They were right to stick with this game and not, shit can this game, because this game is incredible. But as my fucking Little League baseball coach used to tell us when we were crying in the locker room when we lost a game, you can do everything right and still lose. And that's just the world. He was real fucking dark to kids.

He fucking sounds like it. But Schaefer had stated that by March 2012, the retail version of Psychonauts had sold 400,000 copies, which still isn't a ton.

No, it should be at least in the millions.

Come on. Yeah, I think it's in the millions probably now.

Yeah. After all the other releases and stuff. Yeah.

After the sequel and the VR game, psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin. I love it. Which looks like it was a PS Four VR game.

Oh, boy. Cool.

But, hey, you're listening to this?

Yeah.

Because you want to know what the fuck we think. And, Ian, out of your patent pending, out of a thousand ranking system, where do you place Psychonauts?

Psychonauts is a delight. It was a delight to play this game. I discovered a game that I'd heard of but never. Really had any interest in them. And I'm one of the outside of that 400,000 that never played this game, never bought this game. And I regret it because this game is a delight. It's what games should be and should always be, is striving to add that next level. The controls are great, the story is great, the setting concept, everything is great. But they just keep piling on the good until you have this complete package when the fucking splash screen, the opening start screen, press start. At that moment, I fell in love with this game and I never stopped loving it. So out of 1000, I will give Psychonauts 934. You will be hearing me discuss this game unless some crazy shit happens in the next couple of months in my top five PlayStation Two games. Because love this game.

You stole everything I was going to say, you motherfucker. So I love this game. I love this game more now than I did when I first played it, when it came out. I'm going to bust open Psychonauts Two now.

Yeah.

And I'm giving this game a 9.5 out of ten. And same. I think this busts into the top five.

Absolutely.

PS two games. List.

It has to. It has to.

It's like too good.

It's too good. It's just too fucking good of a game. And we say this whenever we like this game, but if you ignored us before, I'm giving you the secret code that this time we actually fully mean it. If you haven't played this game, play this game. There's ways to get it.

You can play on Xbox game pass. I think it's stupid cheap on the PlayStation Store. I think it might be $10.

999.

Yeah, you can play it. And I think it probably plays great on the PS Five, to be honest.

Yeah, I'm sure of it. It plays great on the Xbox series. Whatever. I have the one with the disc.

Yeah. So find it and play it.

Please play it.

It's awesome. It has a great soundtrack. It looks great. The story is funny. It's not heavy.

No. Its world makes sense within itself. I know that's a weird thing to say.

It follows its own rules.

Yes. And it doesn't cheat and it doesn't break those rules when it thinks it needs to. It finds a way to stay within its own confines and fuck, is it fun?

It is super fun. The platforming feels great.

Yes.

The collectibles aren't, so there's a lot of them, but it's not to the point where you're like, jesus, fuck, do I collect another one of these fucking things? No, it is not like that. It doesn't feel that way. And the levels change up enough to where it doesn't get tired by the time you reach the end. It doesn't feel tired.

No, it fucking doesn't. And just because, I don't know, sometimes I'll play a game and there'll be a collectible and be like I don't give two fucks about whatever that thing is over there. Here I was just like, I want to get that. Not because I felt like I wanted to complete it, because I didn't beat this game. And I probably will go back and do all the collectibles, but I wasn't in the hoarder mode that I get in games. I just wanted to get them because they were there and I was having fun playing. Yeah.

And the difficulty there are some end game levels that are pretty difficult.

Yes, of course.

But that's what you want from a platformer. You want platforms that are hard to hit.

Of course.

But I don't think it ever gets so hard to where it doesn't feel fair. And I think that everything is just hard enough to where you feel satisfied when you do it. Yes, but it doesn't feel like you're killing yourself.

It's a challenge, but it's not. What the fuck is this bullshit? Yeah, play it. Play Psychonauts. Get out there. Game pass. PS five store free, $10. You got to do it. You've heard about it. We're here to tell you it's lived up to its reputation.

Play it.

Play it now.

Play it, you sons of bitches. But before you do that, make sure you head on over to Instagram and follow us at Discrete AirPod. It would make us and our social needs guy Ron very happy.

Ron needs this.

I wonder if it's going to be like if people think Ron is like have you ever listened to hardcore history?

Sure.

That like Dan Carlin's assistant. It's like nobody knows if he's a real person.

People are going to think that about.

Ron and maybe they're right. Maybe he's not a real person. Or maybe he is mystery.

You'll never know unless you engage with us and do tests with talking to him. US, I mean him only.

Yeah. And then you can find me at funeral. Casual games.

I'm at Ian Golden Games.

And tune in on Thursday for our weekly update episodes, which for the next three weeks is still going to be twisted Metal reviews.

Sorry.

But then we'll review something else or we'll talk about something else or fuck, maybe we'll just talk about psychoanalyst, who knows? But then you'll get an episode like this every PS motherfucking tuesday, tuesday. So check us out. Hit that like button, follow us on all the social medias, download us wherever you get your podcast and we will see you on the next one.

We'll see you next time. Thank you for listening.