Zero Punctuation: Psychonauts

This week, in honor of The Escapist's Game Circle game of the month, Yahtzee throws down on Psychonauts and you, the consumer.

Permalink

Not quite as laugh-out-loud hilarious as the other three, but still really, really funny :) Can't wait to see what's coming next!

I am becoming a really big fan and make a point of sending this on to friends! Jolly fine work.

You, sir, are just astoundingly excellent at what you do XD
Promise me you will never slack off and sell out. I would be devastated to see such talent become monotone. Just look at Penny Arcade.

I just love Tim Schafer (Adventure-) games, especially Grim Fandango.
And it's sadly everything true what you mentioned. But nice to know that there're some normal down to earth people around like you who don't buy such main stream games for brain deads.

... and excuse my poor english ;(

I'm missing the scathing sarcasm already. This series is definitely better when it's taking the piss out of a game. :-)

That was excellent. It's good to know early on that Yahtzee can dish it out to gamers as well as games. Psychonauts was poorly marketed (symptom of being hard to classify) and the criticism about the difficulty curve is very accurate, but there's no good reason not to at least play it up until the part where it becomes so hard you want to throw things.

Games ought to be fun, too. Loved that bit. They're not going to get fun unless gamers recapture the spirit of what fun is, and there are too many games that bury fun in heaps of not-fun activities that have to be slogged through.

very excellent! man, ur soooooo pro :)

I tried the pen thing.

It didn't work.

I feel oddly disappointed.

Pen thing bloody hurt ;)

And it was very good, I agree that scathing criticism isn't all the guy can do, and its the better for it :) (although the sarcasm was still heavy). I am glad it only took a few of these to get something that he liked up there :D

I can't wait for next weeks. :)

You've made me feel rather guilty that I acquired a promotional copy through a friend at Double Fine rather than helping the market behave the way it ought to have. I'm really enjoying these reviews - kudos to The Escapist for snatching Yahtzee up!

Sir,
that was effin brilliant. Somehow The Escapist have gotten even better. May I ask who exactly it was that discovered you and brought you to international stardom?

That one wasn't as good. :colbert: Being angry and SWEARING and stuff doesn't automatically mean funny. I still watched it twice though. Bits of it were cool. Tell your bosses to let you review games that suck.

Making people cause themselves pain is always funny.

I'm impressed that Yahtzee can churn these out on a schedule, at least twice in a row. This column would get really old really fast if all he did was play crappy games and make fun of them. Thus far, ZP has had a very consistent message about what games ought to be like.

Jack.B.Nimble:
I tried the pen thing.

It didn't work.

I feel oddly disappointed.

Agreed. But I'm glad it didn't considering I bought the game - on PS2. Maybe it should have hurt - according to the game of the month circle it was broken.

Enjoying the series still! Actually started playing one of his adventure games yesterday (the DeFoe series) and I'm thoroughly enjoying that I can run them in a window and hide it from my boss when he sneaks up behind me to check what I'm doing. ;)

Rock.

Upon watching it again ... that scene regarding the Mysty-Eyed hippy and the narcoleptic ritalin popping douche is hillarious ... love the Halo 3 line as well. Does well to sum up the majority of active skim-readers and comment whores present on most gaming websites eg. Kotaku, ICGamers, Joystiq, GameSpot, NEOgaf etc.

StolenName:

Jack.B.Nimble:
I tried the pen thing.

It didn't work.

I feel oddly disappointed.

Agreed.

You can file this under "curiosity killed the cat" but I found at first that it did not work either. At first.

The trick to hurting oneself is making sure that when you squeeze, the two pairs of fingers remain in the same plane. If you allow two fingers to subduct under the other two, and the pen twists, there is no pain.

So, if you keep the fingers in a flat plane, and squeeze, it does indeed hurt. And surprisingly, while the initial pain is not very great, the dull ache produced lasts a little longer than you would think.

So, ummm... ow.

Geoffrey42:
You can file this under "curiosity killed the cat" but I found at first that it did not work either. At first.

The trick to hurting oneself is making sure that when you squeeze, the two pairs of fingers remain in the same plane. If you allow two fingers to subduct under the other two, and the pen twists, there is no pain.

So, if you keep the fingers in a flat plane, and squeeze, it does indeed hurt. And surprisingly, while the initial pain is not very great, the dull ache produced lasts a little longer than you would think.

So, ummm... ow.

Oh, dear. That's ... wow.

Dedication! I'll give it a shot after lunch :)

Leave it to gamers to spend time analyzing an activity to minimize and maximize pain.

That was a funny video and it did make feel a bit bad for never buying Psychonauts, but I still not going to go get it.

Unfortunately I hate platformers haven't played one since Crash Bandicoot 3 and the first Spyro the Dragon. Spyro ruined platformers for me and I've never looked back since then. To bad he didn't make Pychonauts a rpg, shooter or action adventure game instead, I would have bought the game if it had been in one of those genres.

LxDarko:
To bad he didn't make Pychonauts a rpg, shooter or action adventure game instead, I would have bought the game if it had been in one of those genres.

That's ... sarcasm right?

J.theYellow:
Leave it to gamers to spend time analyzing an activity to minimize and maximize pain.

It's funny though, when you follow the instructions laid out by Geoffrey42, it really does hurt.

I'll accept that as punishment for not buying the PC version the second time round and taking it on Press license instead.

Ouch.

StolenName:

LxDarko:
To bad he didn't make Pychonauts a rpg, shooter or action adventure game instead, I would have bought the game if it had been in one of those genres.

That's ... sarcasm right?

Or a healthy dose of irony?

CantFaketheFunk:

StolenName:

LxDarko:
To bad he didn't make Pychonauts a rpg, shooter or action adventure game instead, I would have bought the game if it had been in one of those genres.

That's ... sarcasm right?

Or a healthy dose of irony?

Funny. Humor is best when completely accidental.

This is awesome. I've loved these every since I saw them on SA recently. And yes, I registered and know of this site because of Yahtzee!

lightbulbsun:
And yes, I registered and know of this site because of Yahtzee!

Welcome! Hopefully you'll see more stuff you like here. If not, we'll see you every Wednesday!

Registered just to say that both of these video reviews were awesome. They've got great style and a sharp sense of humour. Look forward to more.

Excellent. Now do one of Trilby's Notes.

:D Nice.
I wanted to get Psychonauts, but never got around to it. Great review, dude! Although, now I've gone 15 seconds without killing something and am starting to feel a bit... twitchy.

Absolutely Brilliant!! Salute! http://martysmind.net/2007/08/24/zero-punctuation-psychonauts-brilliant/

Factual note: According to DoubleFine's blog, Psychonauts has been officially out of print in America since June, but there are apparently about 500,000 in circulation here and THQ is still pressing new copies in Europe. As of this writing, only the PC version was available new on Amazon and the used Xbox versions were selling for $20, the latter of which won't be making Tim any money.

The PC version's on Steam and GameTap and TryGames, though, and should you find a used Xbox version (like I did,) it runs fine on the latest Xbox 360 update -- having an 3r33t version with an attached hard drive helps. Haven't found any problems besides switching to and from the Start options menu changes Raz's outfit to the sky-blue background color for the menu.

Brought a smile to my face, but I liked the others better because you're attacking the game. I'm all for glowing reviews...but somehow seeing a game get slandered makes it laugh-out-loud funny.

...the exception being the cheap shot you took at World of Warcraft. Calling it a second job when it clearly is the first MMORPG that does NOT feel like a second job seems a bit counter-intuitive to me. :)

Either it's the "Ultima Online got a makeover" flash-ads or it's the video service you guys are using, but trying to view this entry pretty much forces Firefox to use 98% of currently available process cycles - in other words, EVERYTHING stops working, even most of Firefox itself. The only solution to regain control of my system is to open the task manager and forcibly terminate the Firefox process.

The same thing happens when people embed Youtube videos on other websites, but in those cases, it's easily fixed by pausing the video - it only uses up 98% of currently available process cycles strictly while the video is playing, which is somewhat understandable.

Not so, here. Considering I was able to watch the last two videos no problem, I'm assuming the problem is the Ultima banners - but if I enable adblock to get rid of them, the video stops showing up, too.

We're basically talking a lose-lose situation, here.

Edit: I can't even turn adblock on and make exceptions JUST for the Videoegg player, it seems. Putting all Videoegg related URLs into Adblock's exceptions/allowed URLs list makes the player window show up, but the video still won't play.

I understand you guys need the money from advertising, but I'm not going to tolerate this, sorry.

Above confirmed. Use IE. Way friendler, process-wise, for Videoegg. Only ate up 40% of cycles.