Psychonauts

Downloaded Psychonauts off Steam for $20... seems like everyone talks it up. It's a great game, the gameplay is unbelievably fun and addicting... however, it, like Bioshock, is a great game that ends with a fucking escort mission.

Who has ever played a game and said, "...and my favorite part was the ESCORT MISSION!!! It was totally awesome!!!" NO... NOBODY FREAKING LIKES ESCORT MISSIONS!!!

Yeah, I'm raging against a game that is two years old, but Bioshock pulled the same shit and that was released last month, so...

...I haven't finished Psychonauts yet, I should really spend more time making music and less time playing games. I'm on a bit of a binge lately, I updated my computer back in April/May, went from P4 1.6ghz PC-133 SDRAM with an ati Radeon 9800 to an AMD X2 (4200, whatever that means) with PC-667 RAM (motherboard can handle PC-800) and a Geforce 7600, so I'm kind of catching up with the past few years of PC gaming. Steam has been absolutely addicting for me. I downloaded Half-Life 2 and Episode 1, bought the Dawn of War games before they were available on Steam (if you're like me and hate multiplayer gaming (I hate people, I hate teenagers and I hate assholes) just buy Dawn of War: Dark Crusade. The singe player campaigns for Dawn of War and Winter Assault are totally weak compared to other RTS's. Dark Crusade is actually lots of fun, and you can be all the races in single player but not multiplayer). Then I bought S.T.A.L.K.E.R., didn't like it at all (sorry Phil, real life sucks enough!), Bioshock, Hitman: Blood Money, and finally Psychonauts. I'm still in the middle of Hitman: Blood Money, I like the Hitman games, but I tend to play them a little bit, leave them alone for a while, then come back to them. I'm not really big into "stealth" games, but the premise of the Hitman games is too cool for me to pass up.

So yeah, Psychonauts. Awesome art, awesome setting... best of all, it's a game that is obviously designed around the gameplay. Old school classics, like Super Mario Brothers, Zelda, hell, even Donkey Kong and Pac Man, they were all about the gameplay. None of that shit makes any fucking sense, narratively. Narratives and stories and concepts have become primary in the video game industry, some games are just plain not-fun to play - hello S.T.A.L.K.E.R.! Hitman too, although moreso the old games than Blood Money... and fucking Manhunt... oh god. But Psychonauts is just plain fun to play, it's fun to mash the buttons, it's fun to do everything in it.

Except escort that little shit around the meat circus. FUCK YOU PSYCHONAUTS!!!