(shouting)

Psychonauts - end

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🦆 RedMageSusie
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Re: Psychonauts - Manic Depressive Screenplay

Post by RedMageSusie »

I like this level :( I enjoyed it more than Fred's level tbh.
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Re: Psychonauts - Manic Depressive Screenplay

Post by Blue »

RedMageMike wrote:I like this level :( I enjoyed it more than Fred's level tbh.
Same. I don't remember anything at all about this level, but do remember getting annoyed at Fred's.
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Re: Psychonauts - Manic Depressive Screenplay

Post by Ditocoaf »

Yeah, this was always my least favorite level too.

The space isn't that interesting to explore, you have to sit through a grating cutscene nearly every time you go between "rooms", and both musics are really repetitive and unpleasant. I like its ideas, but actually spending time navigating through them is cumbersome and unsatisfying.

(the stuff after where raocow just reached is better, but it's the script/set/mood reshuffling puzzle stuff that defines this world).
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Dark Hunter
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Re: Psychonauts - Manic Depressive Screenplay

Post by Dark Hunter »

Yeah, I think raocow hit it on the head as to why I hate this level so much: that god-awful acting. If it was supposed to be endearing, funny, or cute, it failed horrifically on all levels. It just made me want to pyrokinesis the entire damned stage.

The fact that I really do not like stage theater as a whole may have something to do with it as well.

Although Raz drowning in cardboard water is pretty funny, I will admit.

Glad raocow got the tedious crap out of the way and some actually good gameplay will happen next time.
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Re: Psychonauts - Manic Depressive Screenplay

Post by tirakai »

I think it's supposed to be a way to show more of Gloria's backstory than what they could fit into memory vaults and some of it is pretty interesting if you focus on the content but the over the top bad acting makes it hard to focus on anything other than how not funny the scenes are to watch.
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Re: Psychonauts - Manic Depressive Screenplay

Post by Blue »

tirakai wrote:I think it's supposed to be a way to show more of Gloria's backstory than what they could fit into memory vaults and some of it is pretty interesting if you focus on the content but the over the top bad acting makes it hard to focus on anything other than how not funny the scenes are to watch.
Does her backstory really need exploring, though? The two memory vaults cover the gist of it, and the only bits that aren't covered by them are mostly unimportant details like implying her mother and her mother's manager were banging each other, or that her dad wasn't present in her life. Neither of those are particularly important.

Besides, the fact that the terrible acting is telling you her backstory instead of the game showing it is a mistake to even begin with! You're inside a metaphorical representation of someone's damaged psyche. Why not turn it into a cartoony Silent Hill 2 and cover the whole area with symbolism to tell the story without words?
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Re: Psychonauts - Manic Depressive Screenplay

Post by DullahanDodgeman »

Honestly, my favorite part of the level was probably the music and how it shifted when switching the moods. That happy music is some of the catchiest music ever, I swear. I will say that of the three worlds, this was my least favorite. Although not as tedious as Fred's, it just doesn't have much in terms of level design in the first half and the gimmick gets old fast because of the acting. I wasn't that bothered by it in my first run, but I hardly liked it.
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Re: Psychonauts - Manic Depressive Screenplay

Post by YelseyKing »

RedMageMike wrote:I like this level :( I enjoyed it more than Fred's level tbh.
S'okay, I'm getting the distinct impression that I'm one of the few people here (if not the only one) who really liked Fred's level. :P
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Re: Psychonauts - Manic Depressive Screenplay

Post by Alice »

YelseyKing wrote:S'okay, I'm getting the distinct impression that I'm one of the few people here (if not the only one) who really liked Fred's level. :P
I dunno why people are so hard on that one. It's pretty interesting, just not raocow's thing since it requires you to actively think your actions through or get hopelessly lost.
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Re: Psychonauts - Manic Depressive Screenplay

Post by Ditocoaf »

Oh, I absolutely love Fred's level. It's really fun to explore. I haven't spoken up because I figure we'll have plenty of time to talk about it when raocow actually gets there.
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Re: Psychonauts - Manic Depressive Screenplay

Post by Charlemagne »

I played this game years ago, back when the PS2 was actually current-gen, and decided to replay it on Steam when cowrao started. It's remarkable how much easier everything was, even when I hadn't played in a while... but my playstyle was pretty much opposite. I decided to try 100%ing every area before moving on.

...I admit, it makes me twitch a little whenever he passes RIGHT BY a figment.
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Re: Psychonauts - Manic Depressive Screenplay

Post by Blue »

holy crap that bossfight

i had totally forgotten everything about this stage but as soon as i saw that bossfight i remembered how frustrating and unclear it was
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Re: Psychonauts - Manic Depressive Screenplay

Post by YelseyKing »

Hrm. I actually found that boss fairly straightforward. They introduced the "candle to light the spotlights" mechanic earlier, did it again just before the fight to refresh your memory, and I figured that cloud of musical notes that blows you upward to the rafters had to be for *something*. I also tended to take out the minor enemies before attacking Jasper (it helped that I had the upgrade to Pyrokinesis before that, allowing me to easily fry the spinning plant kids), because I spent so much time wandering around having to deal with them earlier, I really wanted *nothing* to do with those fire-breathing dogs. The fight took a *little* bit longer, but I was never in any real danger of dying, either.

I can't blame the game for that one... That's not a *great* boss fight, but it was nowhere near as difficult as raocow made it look.
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Re: Psychonauts - Manic Depressive Screenplay

Post by SAJewers »

I think it only looked hard because raocow was trying to melee the enemies, when the game probably wanted you to take them out from range.
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Re: Psychonauts - Manic Depressive Screenplay

Post by BobisOnlyBob »

There's actually a trick to make Jasper an easy-peasy three rounder... you can get behind him and use his own corpulent mass as a shield against the fire dogs.
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Re: Psychonauts - Manic Depressive Screenplay

Post by Grounder »

Yeah, any difficulty yesterday was really rao's fault.
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Re: Psychonauts - Manic Depressive Screenplay

Post by Money »

The boss looks p fun but the "on fire" status and the enemies in general are way too op, and just mar the whole thing. Maybe a bit more liniency on the float up would also be appreciated. And yeah obligatory "problems w/ clarity are p much just on raocow's end"
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Re: Psychonauts - Manic Depressive Screenplay

Post by Grounder »

super mario odyssey is looking great so far
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Re: Psychonauts - Manic Depressive Screenplay

Post by Blue »

Oh hey, black velvetopia. Generally agreed to be to the best of the three. Odio means 'hatred' in latin!
MoneyMan wrote:And yeah obligatory "problems w/ clarity are p much just on raocow's end"
The boss destroying two of the spotlights but only extinguishing the candle on the third goes totally against what basically every other game in existence trains you for. In almost every other game you'd have to get more candles or move on to a new area with new spotlights and candles.

The rest was totally raocow's fault though.
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Re: Psychonauts - Manic Depressive Screenplay

Post by Voltgloss »

I'm fairly sure I'd have had many of the same difficulties raocow had in the Theatre level simply because so much of it was dark. I get that the level had a "darkness vs. light" gimmick going, but the darkness was so dark that I had more trouble seeing things in that level than any other level so far since Oleander's dark-at-night obstacle course area.
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Re: Psychonauts - Manic Depressive Screenplay

Post by BobisOnlyBob »

Black Velvetopia <3 And here I was sure we'd be visiting Fredpoleon's mind games next.
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Re: Psychonauts - Manic Depressive Screenplay

Post by tirakai »

One positive thing about the theatre is that it's one of the few stages where getting all figments is actually pretty easy. There's very few moving ones, they're all in easy to reach places, you don't need to go back through the stage taking multiple paths, and for the most part they're easy to spot against the backgrounds (especially in comparison to the stage raocow just started).
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Re: Psychonauts - Manic Depressive Screenplay

Post by Dark Hunter »

Fun fact: "el odio" translates as "the hatred".

Also art jokes in this episode. Most of which I missed the first time around because visual art has never really been my thing.
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Re: Psychonauts - Manic Depressive Screenplay

Post by YelseyKing »

Blue wrote:The boss destroying two of the spotlights but only extinguishing the candle on the third goes totally against what basically every other game in existence trains you for. In almost every other game you'd have to get more candles or move on to a new area with new spotlights and candles.
He only destroys the spotlights after you deplete a third of his health bar. The reason he didn't destroy the first one was because he got up before that health threshold was reached. Moreover, he clearly announces *when* he's destroying the spotlights. If you don't notice that obvious cutscene, that's on you, not the game.
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Re: Psychonauts - Intermittent Explosive Neon Gallery

Post by kurt91 »

So, after this long of watching raocow struggle with Psychonauts, I think that we need to be a bit more careful on the game recommendations. Yeah, he's probably going to enjoy the atmosphere, but we need to either clue him in ahead of time of the type of game (adventure game with platforming, not traditional platformer) so he knows what kind of mindset to get into when he starts playing, or something. raocow's proven with the Milkman Conspiracy level that when it finally does dawn on him to think of this as an adventure game, he's more than competent. The issue with this game seems to be that the time spent between recording sessions causes him to forget that, and he begins each episode with a traditional platformer mindset.

Something that's more straightforward with the type of game it is, such as Bomberman 64 as an example, would probably be an easier experience not because of the simpler puzzles to it, but because it's fully transparent on what kind of game it is. We need to either make absolutely sure raocow knows what he's getting into ahead of time without actually spoiling the game content for him, or pick games that are more straightforward on what kind of experience it's going to be.
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