Best of the Decade: Psychonauts

Psychonauts

Platforms: Xbox, Xbox 360, Playstation 2, Windows

Release Date: April 19, 2005 (Xbox version)

Publisher: Majesco Entertainment

Developer: Double Fine Productions

I’m still plagued with Gamer Guilt because of this game. I’ve supported many an underdog of a title in my time. I’m proud of my early purchase of Beyond Good & Evil, even before the price entered its deadly spiral downward after only a few weeks on shelves. I’m proud to have purchased Amplitude, giving me a small part in supporting the brilliant minds at Harmonix that eventually gave us Guitar Hero and Rock Band. 

Psychonauts, sadly, is the one that slipped away.

I rented Psychonauts, though at this point I can only vaguely remember when. I seem to recall it avoiding my radar for some months when finally I tried it on a whim. I devoured it during that rental period and fell in love, but I never properly gave my money to the game. To this day, the only copy I have is a beaten up used Xbox disc I’m lucky to have even found. I know my single purchase wouldn’t have made a difference, especially months after it had been released, but I can’t help it. I feel bad because this masterpiece deserved better, from both myself and the rest of the gaming community. Becoming a cult classic is small comfort when your game is a retail failure.

The nature of gaming doesn’t mesh well with comedy. The two forces seem to be diametrically opposed. On the one hand you have humor, which relies on precise, guided timing. On the other hand you have gaming, which is controlled by the player and in which anything could happen at any time according to the whims of the human holding the controller. Perhaps you can see the fundamental problem. Outside of stuffing funny dialog into cutscenes here and there, which are conveniently outside the player’s control, few games even attempt to be humorous. It’s exceedingly difficult and results in failure more often than success. 

Take the recent game DeathSpank, for example. It tries to parody the hack-and-slash adventure game while relying on the tired tropes it’s lampooning in its dialog. Listening to the chatter between missions is funny, but mashing the attack button thousands of times and completing monotonous fetch quests is not. In other words, like many games that have attempted humor, DeathSpank wraps a layer of lighthearted icing around a fundamentally mediocre action game cake. 

There are a select few games that get the combo right. These elite few manage to work the gameplay and the environment into the humor. Conker’s Bad Fur Day is one, taking players through a hilarious romp around a cartoony platformer world gone horribly wrong. Portal is another, with GLaDOS’ snarky dialog making you laugh even as you incinerate your dear friend the Companion Cube. Psychonauts belongs in the pantheon of titles that manage to get it right. 

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Best of the Decade: Conker's Bad Fur Day

Conker’s Bad Fur Day

Platform: Nintendo 64

Release Date: March 5, 2001

Publisher: Rareware

Developer: Rareware

As I was browsing my memories for candidates to place on this esteemed list, I came across a game that holds a special place in my heart. I lamented that it had the misfortune of being released at the tail end of the 90s, thus depriving me of my opportunity to recognize its brilliance.

Then I looked up the release date.

Turns out, Conker’s Bad Fur Day, despite being on the seemingly ancient Nintendo 64, was actually released in 2001. Who knew? I certainly didn’t remember.

No matter! This realization marked a glorious day for my memories and me. Forget being one of my favorite N64 games or one of my favorites of this decade, the delightful humor of the drunk, furry squirrel and his ridiculous pals is one of my favorites of all time.

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Tales from Reach: Death from Above

Whilst exploring the vast expanses of the planet Reach, my cute little Spartan caught the daredevil bug and decided it would be fun to jump off of a cliff. At first I just thought she was nuts. Maybe the beautiful view had overloaded her brain with too much pretty and she just couldn’t take it any more?

It was certainly a nice view all right. Well, except for the looming inevitable doom represented by the Covenant ships hanging in the background. But besides that very pretty.

It didn’t take me long to figure out what she was after, however. At the bottom of the cliff could be spotted the orange outline of an Elite, minding his own business, probably being bored because he hadn’t killed anything in quite long enough. 

She wanted to assassinate the bastard. From the top of the cliff.

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Movies Can Never Be Art - So Says Me

Author's note: If you read more than a couple lines of this and don't realize I'm being facetious, then please go away. This article is a deliberate parody wherein I try my damndest to sound and monumentally stupid as I think Roger Ebert does in his blog post where he argues that games can never be art. No, I'm not going to link to his article because he's a closed-minded, out-of-touch hack that doesn't deserve the meager traffic I wouldn't send his way because no one reads this website.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that I’m vastly more intelligent than everyone else I’ve ever met. 

I mean, obviously. 

So it stands to reason that my opinion is the only one that actually matters. You’re welcome to consider it pretty much the textbook that defines our world. I highly encourage you to compare your own opinions to mine and see where you’re wrong. There are bound to be plenty of areas in which your opinion needs correcting, and nobody wants you to look like a misguided fool by showing the public that you disagree with me.

Maybe I should provide a handy checklist.

Nah, that would probably take too long.

Anyhow, I have recently had an amazing revelation that I knew I just had to share with the world. It has changed the way I view both art and entertainment. It has altered how I perceive the world around me. It had added an entirely new category onto the list of things which I do not understand and therefore rightfully despise. 

More importantly, it has kept me from having to waste any of my precious time watching those blasted moving picture thingamajigs. Anyone who spends their time watching fake people do fake things in a fake world according to the whim of some poor joke of a “writer”, who probably spends most of his meager salary on brownies and marijuana that he consumes in rabid binges while pretending that he doesn’t need any of that “human contact” that he’s heard so much about, is clearly a moron.

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Twilight: Journey Into the Abyss (Part Twenty-One)

Wow. I had forgotten what a horrible, unforgivable cliffhanger I ended on last time. Oops. Sorry about that. Well, without further ado. 

Here we go again.

Chapter Thirteen

Alternate motive: “Edward in the sunlight was shocking. I couldn’t get used to it, though I'd been staring at him all afternoon.”

This had nothing to do with his stupidly shiny skin, of course. I just find his gorgeous arm hair absolutely fascinating for some reason.

Get the shovel!: “His skin, white despite the faint flush from yesterday's hunting trip, literally sparkled, like thousands of tiny diamonds were embedded in the surface.”

Thar be diamonds in that there skin! Get the shovels, boys! We’re going on a mining expedition. That boy oughta be worth millions.

MILLIONS, I SAY! Muahahaha!

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