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The Best Way to Play Psychonauts


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I just remembered that I wrote this little guide a while back for the Steam forums. Thought I'd paste it here for posterity.

 

Firstly: The PC version. (Forget the PS version, sadly.)

 

Secondly, there's the best mods that really improve the PC experience. I highly recommend them if you're considering replaying Psychonauts on Windows any time soon.
 

1. Fix the Aspect Ratio

Psychonauts supports widescreen monitors and high resolutions out of the box, but the cut-scenes (videos) and HUD got stretched in the process. This tony mod fixes that:


https://thirteenag.github.io/wfp#psychonauts

That might be good enough for you (honestly it gets you 90% of the way there), but if you want more...

2. Insert AI Upscaled Videos & HUD Textures

The 3D elements of the game still look rather good, but the UI never got a rez increase and they look really rough at higher resolutions. And the cut-scenes video look noticeably lower resolution than your game... So why not use AI upscaled versions instead?

 

  • Upscaled HUD Textures
  • Upscaled videos
  • PS4 Controller Icons


https://www.nexusmods.com/psychonauts/mods/4?tab=files

 

4-1629805167-12383971.png

 

Caveat: The Upscaled videos require a paid account from Nexus Mods (or an unearthly amount of patience for them to download at 3MB/s). But, honestly, I think they're worth it.

 

Psychonauts looks really fantastic at higher resolution... you don't need HD texture resolution projects (that never get finished). This is honestly all you need to make Psychonauts look great!

Enjoy!

Edited by ThunderPeel2001
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24 minutes ago, ThunderPeel2001 said:

Forget HD texture resolution projects that never get finished.

 

Yep BUT if you want your textures to appear nicer I highly recommend using Reshade with moderation. There are some sharpening filters (AMD FidelityFX, Lumasharpen, Quint_sharpen) that can fake some added detail, just don't go overboard with them since they can make the image look aliased or "oversharp" if you're not careful. The SMAA of Reshade is pretty good too, you can mess around with the color balance / saturation too if you want etc.

 

I just wanted to mention this since Reshade gets a bad rep because of all those videos where dem kidz turn on all the blooms and fake HDRs in the world.

Edited by Zaxx
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Posted (edited)

What with the article on the front page pointing out how the PS version of Psychonauts is "a complete mess" with "the worst- looking, sounding, and functioning version of the game", I thought I'd bump this guide on getting the best version of Psychonauts running.

 

Honestly, if Double Fine just grabbed these things and put this uprezzed version of the PC game on PS5 (and XBox, sorry Microsoft), I'd gladly buy it and play it again.

 

Edited by ThunderPeel2001
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