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PC Demo - impressions?


Jake

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You can change the controls by pressing escape, and going to the options menu. There's a controls area, where you can also invert the mouse camera (which I found immensely helpful).

 

Anyway, I'm very impressed. The atmosphere of Whispering Rock is truly great, and I've just spent ages randomly looking around and exploring the area, interacting with anyone and anything. The music is similarly great, and really adds to the feel of the location.

 

Raz himself handles awesomely, too. Everything about how he moves just feels fluid and natural, and he behaves exactly how I want him to. Often in other platform games I grow incredibly frustrated from ridiculous mistakes caused by the character just not stopping when I want him to. This isn't the case in Psychonauts.

 

The graphics are just glorious too, although seemingly, too glorious for me. Even though my computer is fairly powerful and can for the most part run the game smoothly on the highest settings, there are times when you can see a lot of the scene at once where it'll crawl slightly. I'd suspect I can cure that by turning some stuff down, although it'll be painful not seeing Psychonauts in its full glory. :~

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If I hear that "Punch Punch Punch" line again, I am going mental!

 

Just spent two hours before the gate trying to pass that blasted test to no avail. I wish there was an option to lower the arcade difficulty after failing N times. As it is, I might have to pass this one up, as it is likely to only get harder as things progress. Pity, as the game seems to have some excellent qualities (art/sound/humour/dialogue/setting..) Oh well...maybe someone comes up with a hack for us "lazy-finger" types.

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I think after I realized that I needed to fully invert the mouse, and bumped up the brightness a little bit, I really liked the demo. It's cool because after you learn the moves on basic training, you can go back and play the demo again except that you can mess around more at the camp...

 

Now I worry whether I'm biased because I haven't really played any 3d platformers. I really never got a chance to play with Mario 64 or Sunshine that much and other games like Rachet and Clank or whatever. Though, I do remember as I tried out some of these games (Crash Bandicoot, an oldie), and there was no story motivation for me to go on. The last game that really got me motivated to play was Zelda: The Wind Waker (and Ocarina of Time, of course!)

 

Anyway, things that I liked:

- Puzzle-inspired levels, which leads to:

- No worries about messing up. You "die", and you just restart right before you screwed up (full throttle, anyone?)

- The characters are just fun. I really like Dogen!

- Tim Schaferness. ie, the way raz goes inside the mind is very reminiscent of travelling through time in DOTT, or the thing about repeating screw ups, or the way the game just starts right in the middle of the action.

- The music. I like the coach's mind music specially.

- The way the game changes. This is the most amazing part of it all. You get to the end of the level and you really don't expect what happens.

- Replayability.

 

Things that might get tiring:

- The intro cutscene was kind of long. Um.. well, I have seen it like a million times, maybe that's the reason.

- Where's the title screen? I love that stuff!

- Sometimes I felt overwhelmed with the things happening on the screen. There is a point where you talk to a kid and he starts saying something, but then a projection of the coach starts talking above him and it's chaotic. This might not be too bad, it's just that I wasn't expecting to pay this much attention, which is good!

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So I take it you guys were able to pass that infernal punching ground test? Any pointers, as I really want to see what happens next. The highest number of points I managed to get was 16 (though I usually end up with under 11) I guess there is a reason why I tend to shy away from platformers :)

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that's one of the only things like that in the entire game (straight "punching a bunch of targets"), so hopefully you can get past it and over your fear of it and enjoy the rest of the game when the real one comes out in a few days :D

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Thanks for the encouragement :)

BTW I am happy to report that my method worked and I managed to move past that point. If anyone finds that area too difficult to manage, just use the highest resolution/level of detail and things will get much easier (unless you are unfortunate enough to have a very hi-end machine :) )

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Okay, the emotional baggage? So damn cute!

The animals all over the campground are a really nice touch too. And the architecture! Makes me want to roast some marshmallows, man.

The kids are awesome, cute voice-acting, hilarious conversations. There were a couple of repeated phrases that got old quite fast, though I never actually minded the "Punch punchy punch-punch!" one, personally.

All in all, I want this game so bad.

Also: I notice someone's in the Special Thanks section of the credits. (Some ones, really. Whatever.)

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It is awesome reading your posts on this. If the demo is doing it for you, the full version is gonna knock your socks off! Dogen is one of my favorites too, but there's so many cool characters it's hard to pick a favorite. I hope you all continue to enjoy the Excellent Game Psychonauts!

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Overall, I was impressed. The voiceacting was amazing and Raz turned out to be a lot more interesting than I had thought of him, having previously judged by movies only.

 

However, I was a bit disappointed that some of the kids' facial textures were so obviously less detailed than that of Raz. His entire character was so razor sharp but several of the kids looked a bit botchy in the face close up.

 

Oh, and I loved the music in the campgrounds! And the trapeze!

 

Anyway. I can hardly wait to play the real thing, I hope EB Games ship to Sweden quickly. :)

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I'm a strong Tim Shaffer fan.

 

The animation is excellent, the graphics are great, the voice acting is interessting, the music kickass and the ambiance is a success...

 

But I felt like some stuff was quicklyh done, or too much cartoon stylish looking, and bad done because it's in 3D (when we free up emotional baggage, that's so strange don,t you think ?) or I felt like the entering in the coach's mind was cheap. I don,t know... i'm kind of dissapointed...

 

the Mario 64 background is there, but i know and i'm conivnced that as long as the game go trought, the level will have deeper contain.... and what about that day were my RAZ will be doing kynestesis....

 

That a great game, but with that demo, i'm kind of dissapointed a little bit ... (catching figment to get new psychic power.... hey ? )

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I can't say that I agree with you, but you're entitled to your opinion.

 

I've also just noticed the funky subtitles which you can turn on in the sound options. The characters have cute little avatars and everything. Man.

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I just signed up on this forum to say how how I enjoyed the demo. I had never even heard of the game, but I downloaded the demo on a whim (file size isn't an issue with a cable modem) anyway.

 

I just love the whole feel of the world - it's like being in a surreal lucid dream! The characters are wacky, the voice acting is very professional, and the music is very unique and quite relaxing. I like the attention to detail too. For instance, try punching the kid looking through the peephole.

 

As someone else already mentioned, the controls are just perfect. I'm using a PS2 Dualshock 2 gamepad (USB adaptor) and I didn't have to change any of the default buttons. The left analogue stick gives you more control over Raz's moves, while the right controls the camera.

 

I didn't find the demo particularly challenging, but I'm still young and pretty good at reflex games. :D It looks like the game will have a lot to explore though, and trying to collect all the tags, etc., should be fun.

 

This game is definitely a winner!

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Awsome game.

 

I had a little bit of a control problem with the swinging part, though. You know, that part with the fire shooting out of the wall.

 

The problem is that, at some point, you have to turn around (with the F key) and then you also have to use the opposite key to swing (I mean, both a and d work to swing, but only one of them enables you to actually jump). It turned me nuts! I had to hit d, space, d, space, d, space, f, a, space, f, d space. Maybe I was doing something wrong, though.

 

Other than that, I'm thrilled.

 

--Erwin

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Well, I've just played through the Xbox demo, and I'm impressed. No slowdowns and perfect controls right out of the box is something the Remi enjoys a whole lot, and Psychonauts+Xbox=:D in that department.

 

Other than that I can only echo the praise being expressed about the PC demo. Top stuff.

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Originally posted by Erwin_Br

Awsome game.

 

I had a little bit of a control problem with the swinging part, though. You know, that part with the fire shooting out of the wall.

 

The problem is that, at some point, you have to turn around (with the F key) and then you also have to use the opposite key to swing (I mean, both a and d work to swing, but only one of them enables you to actually jump). It turned me nuts! I had to hit d, space, d, space, d, space, f, a, space, f, d space. Maybe I was doing something wrong, though.

 

Other than that, I'm thrilled.

 

--Erwin

 

don't know if this is helpful but you can just hold the direction you want to jump and raz will swing back and forth... you don't even need to be swinging as far as a full circle to make complete jumps - far as I can tell, the full circle swing around is just to look cool (and to allow you to change directions at the top of your swing if you want)

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Just wanted to say that I didn't have a problem with the demo. No trouble with the technical side, no trouble completing the demo. Controls are OK once you switched both axes. Using the mouse is just fine.

 

The demo itself was great, too. So far you didn't have the impression that you did the same thing over and over again. Lots of diversity.

 

MDK meets Prince Of Persia 4 meets Grim Fandango meets Beyond Good And Evil.

 

The art, dialogue and atmosphere are superb. The story has to remind most people of Harry Potter, but the theme of "a kid that doesn't fit in anywhere else, then goes into a training and its potential is finally recognized and even impresses the teachers while other students are jealous" has been used before (Ender's Game for example). Doesn't matter.

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The demo was great. I too didn't have any problems setting it up and playing it (except clearing 3.5 gb to install it ;)).

 

The story, gameplay and graphics are all great, and the controls were really good and smooth once I'd inverted the horizontal mouse movements :)

 

But:

 

1) How do you save/load?

2) If you die while you are in the coach's mind (happened to me once while i being machine-gunned) does anything happen to you? Do you have 'lives' which limit the amounts of time you can die? And if so, where does it tell you?

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Originally posted by Jake

don't know if this is helpful but you can just hold the direction you want to jump and raz will swing back and forth... you don't even need to be swinging as far as a full circle to make complete jumps - far as I can tell, the full circle swing around is just to look cool (and to allow you to change directions at the top of your swing if you want)

 

Really? Because when I tried, it didn't work. I could only jump when making the full circle swing. I'll try it out again today, to be sure.

 

--Erwin

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