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Psychonauts - end

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YelseyKing
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Re: Psychonauts - New Fish City Sleep Terror

Post by YelseyKing »

Cryomundus wrote:Oh, and I don't think anyone has said this, but the "Rank Up" abilities like Pyrokinesis and Telekinesis are considered "extra" abilities that the game never forces you to actually have for level completion/boss fights, only the ones granted by the plot/story.
I'm not 100% sure, but I *think* there may be a few places you *need* Telekinesis (and

Invisibility

) late in the game. At least, I know *I* ended up using them... not sure if there were other ways to do those things.
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Re: Psychonauts - New Fish City Sleep Terror

Post by Alice »

raocow wrote:I'm sorry but there are better ways to present gameplay stuff than 'here's this giant screen-sized swatch of text in your face', especially when you are in the momemtum of playing and having a good time
I dunno, I'd think that missing an important detail of an ability would impact momentum just as much as having to read. Especially when it has results like this did.
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Re: Psychonauts - New Fish City Sleep Terror

Post by Cirno »

YelseyKing wrote:
Cryomundus wrote:Oh, and I don't think anyone has said this, but the "Rank Up" abilities like Pyrokinesis and Telekinesis are considered "extra" abilities that the game never forces you to actually have for level completion/boss fights, only the ones granted by the plot/story.
I'm not 100% sure, but I *think* there may be a few places you *need* Telekinesis (and

Invisibility

) late in the game. At least, I know *I* ended up using them... not sure if there were other ways to do those things.
You definitely do need the rank up abilities late in the game. Speedrunners have found skips for every spot that requires

Invisibility

, but it's still required in normal gameplay, and Telekinesis is required too. Pyrokinesis, I'm not actually 100% sure about but you have to get it first to get Telekinesis anyway, sooo yeah.
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Re: Psychonauts - New Fish City Sleep Terror

Post by YelseyKing »

Cirno wrote:
YelseyKing wrote:
Cryomundus wrote:Oh, and I don't think anyone has said this, but the "Rank Up" abilities like Pyrokinesis and Telekinesis are considered "extra" abilities that the game never forces you to actually have for level completion/boss fights, only the ones granted by the plot/story.
I'm not 100% sure, but I *think* there may be a few places you *need* Telekinesis (and

Invisibility

) late in the game. At least, I know *I* ended up using them... not sure if there were other ways to do those things.
You definitely do need the rank up abilities late in the game. Speedrunners have found skips for every spot that requires

Invisibility

, but it's still required in normal gameplay, and Telekinesis is required too. Pyrokinesis, I'm not actually sure about, but you have to get it first to get Telekinesis anyway, sooo yeah.
Spoilering. Just in case.

Yeah, I don't think you ever needed Pyrokinesis, but I know for a fact that you definitely need Telekinesis for ... well... [ispoiler]the second phase of the final boss[/ispoiler]. I can't see how to do it otherwise. And at any rate, you do need the abilities for 100% completion, since I'm fairly sure there are two scavenger hunt items you *need* Telekinesis and [ispoiler]Invisibility[/ispoiler] to get.
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Re: Psychonauts - New Fish City Sleep Terror

Post by Matt is me »

You definitely do need all 3 of those abilities (glitches and skips aside).

First line in a spoiler!

In Boyd's Mind, all 3 matter. You need pyrokinesis to get into the mausoleum (it's covered in burnable thorns), you need telekinesis to fight the boss (and those demon tentacle things), and you need Invisibility to get past a little girl at the end of the level. I'm not 100% sure there's no other way to get past the thorns, but you'll need pyro to get a weapon for a soldier in Fred's mind anyways, so all 3 are for sure required in the game as a whole.

Indeed, as I learned just 2 days ago, if you try to enter Boyd's mind at all without telekinesis, Ford will warn you that you may not be able to advance until you learn the new skill (though you're allowed to ignore him and go in anyway). Interestingly, there's no such warning for needing invisibility.
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Re: Psychonauts - New Fish City Sleep Terror

Post by tirakai »

The arrowheads are one of the main things people are talking about when they say the game isn't worth going for 100%, they're really tedious and grindy and not fun to get (the other big one of course being figments).
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Re: Psychonauts - New Fish City Sleep Terror

Post by strongbadman »

YelseyKing wrote:
Cryomundus wrote:Oh, and I don't think anyone has said this, but the "Rank Up" abilities like Pyrokinesis and Telekinesis are considered "extra" abilities that the game never forces you to actually have for level completion/boss fights, only the ones granted by the plot/story.
I'm not 100% sure, but I *think* there may be a few places you *need* Telekinesis (and

Invisibility

) late in the game. At least, I know *I* ended up using them... not sure if there were other ways to do those things.
Not to mention you need to be at least rank 20 before the game lets you buy the cobweb duster.
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Re: Psychonauts - New Fish City Sleep Terror

Post by YelseyKing »

tirakai wrote:The arrowheads are one of the main things people are talking about when they say the game isn't worth going for 100%, they're really tedious and grindy and not fun to get (the other big one of course being figments).
I didn't find it *that* bad. The deep arrowheads are worth quite a bit, so it really only took me maybe ~20 minutes to get enough to buy everything unique from the shop... But then, I have an extremely high tolerance to that sort of thing, and it also helped that I did it *while* exploring the areas initially to pick up cards and such, so...
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Re: Psychonauts - New Fish City Sleep Terror

Post by Blue »

raocow wrote:I'm sorry but there are better ways to present gameplay stuff than 'here's this giant screen-sized swatch of text in your face', especially when you are in the momemtum of playing and having a good time
This is a double fine game, raocow. If you want intuitive and well-designed player training and inventive gameplay mechanics instead of a watered-down copy of what its competitors are doing but better writing, you'll need to find a different developer.

I'm not saying you're wrong in any way, but there's a reason people almost solely praise the game's writing, as you experienced with the arbitrarily high mandatory grinding threshold.

But hey, look on the bright side, at least you organically collected enough figments and cards to not have to worry about farming them, since you also need to be rank 30 to beat the level that requires the cobweb duster!
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Re: Psychonauts - New Fish City Sleep Terror

Post by kurt91 »

Wanted to post this a while back, but my computer was in the middle of being taken apart and upgraded, so I didn't get the chance.

Anyways, like I had said last time, each world is based off of a real mental condition, with only one or two minor exceptions.

Milla's mental condition is one that I'm not sure that I should list off just yet. Yes, you already finished the level, but like everybody else has been saying, there's a secret room hidden there that you really should go back and find. That secret room puts absolutely everything into perspective.

Lungfishopolis is told by you in-game, I'm guessing because otherwise the interpretation would be too vague for most people to catch. Like Cruller said, it's more afraid of you than you are of it. You see the Hulking Lungfish as a huge monster, so naturally it would treat you the same.

You haven't necessarily gotten to Boyd's mind yet, but it's clear enough from what he's doing outside the gates that I don't think it counts as a spoiler at this point to just label the mental condition you deal with. Boyd has paranoid-schizophrenia (Thank god for auto-correct!), and the level is absolutely amazing when it comes to expressing it. Since I don't want to go into spoilers, I'll stop there for now.

What I'm a bit curious about is the fight with Kochamara. Considering he's calling out all of his attacks the way he does, and is fully playing along with the setting, do you think that he was giving it his all in that fight, or was too busy having fun with the setting to concentrate?
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Re: Psychonauts - New Fish City Sleep Terror

Post by Ditocoaf »

Yeah, normally you'd get all these arrowheads meanwhile exploring camp for the other collectables, earlier, so it's not a problem. You're doing this, but you're also climbing around doing the scavenger hunt, getting cards, and talking to the kids -- variety, basically.

But if you don't really like to poke around and explore casually, then later the game kinda breaks like this, suddenly forcing you to grind. It's too bad.
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Re: Psychonauts - New Fish City Sleep Terror

Post by Dark Hunter »

There are two things Psychonauts does wrong, in my opinion, and one of those is the grinding and fetch quests.

Arrowheads, figments, emotional baggage, the scavenger hunt, the PSI cards, mental cobwebs... SOMEONE in Double Fine had a completionist fetish. And all of it wholly unnecessary for the actual game! Good news is that I'm fairly certain you don't need to grind for anything else to complete the game.

As for the other thing the game does wrong? Well... you'll know it when you see it.

Also?

Best level hype!

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Re: Psychonauts - New Fish City Sleep Terror

Post by Rednaxela »

So, as someone who's playing Psychonauts for the first time, keeping a bit ahead of the LP.... I just want to say good job with Kochamara and the Pumas raocow. They both gave me more grief than they did in the LP there.

When I was fighting Kochamara, I kept not using my shield at first, instead trying to win by dodging and psyblasting.... which... I was able to get though half the fight with, but then after losing my '!' I kept trying to break buildings to replenish but they were never dropping... Then only after a while did I realize that "oh.... I can just use my shield for most of the fight and make it a piece of cake..." :roll:

Also... I'm quite looking forward to what's coming up next...
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Re: Psychonauts - New Fish City Sleep Terror

Post by Crow »

the worst part is that you missed out on a ton of dialogue by beelining through the first half of the game & it def would've helped cut down on the grind
i've honestly never played a video game in my life
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Re: Psychonauts - New Fish City Sleep Terror

Post by Dark Hunter »

Let's be honest, people, there's so much dialogue in this game raocow's not going to see half of it.

And that's not a dig at raocow: I've played through this game somewhere around four times and I'm still finding conversations I missed. Unless you go out of your way looking for all of it, you're going to miss the majority.
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Re: Psychonauts - New Fish City Sleep Terror

Post by Alice »

"Wow, why do I have to farm so much?" asks raocow after having blatantly ignored what was clearly intended as a fairly casual mechanic to be actively used between exploring mental worlds. Like I get not wanting to farm but you really have nobody to blame but yourself here. The game made it fairly clear that you should get the dowsing rod early and make active use of it. You just chose to buy it then proceed to pretend it doesn't exist until you were forced to use it. If you had explored a bit more between worlds and made use of the dowsing rod during that time you probably would have needed to do little to no grinding to get the duster.
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Re: Psychonauts - New Fish City Sleep Terror

Post by Blue »

Alice wrote:"Wow, why do I have to farm so much?" asks raocow after having blatantly ignored what was clearly intended as a fairly casual mechanic to be actively used between exploring mental worlds. Like I get not wanting to farm but you really have nobody to blame but yourself here. The game made it fairly clear that you should get the dowsing rod early and make active use of it. You just chose to buy it then proceed to pretend it doesn't exist until you were forced to use it. If you had explored a bit more between worlds and made use of the dowsing rod during that time you probably would have needed to do little to no grinding to get the duster.
Do you think the game would be made worse if the dowsing rod and arrowheads were removed?
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Re: Psychonauts - New Fish City Sleep Terror

Post by Alice »

Blue wrote:Do you think the game would be made worse if the dowsing rod and arrowheads were removed?
Not at all and it's 100% irrelevant to my comment anyways. The point is that they're there and raocow could have made things less grindy for him if he didn't actively avoid things the game was clearly encouraging him to do.
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Re: Psychonauts - New Fish City Sleep Terror

Post by heycallmeZe »

Yeah, I think because he's kind of lurching forward like Goggalor, this may be high time to step back a little bit and just re-explore the map/get all the deep arrowheads. So he can buy stuff.

Besides, as noted before, there are often 2-3 vaults in each world that that really...explain things for some of these characters. Having the Cobweb Duster helps.

Still, he's running it blind, and he's never been one to explore first, progress later...
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Re: Psychonauts - New Fish City Sleep Terror

Post by YelseyKing »

Honestly, even though I didn't see it as a significant *problem*, I also feel like the arrowhead/shop mechanic could've been done away with and there'd have been nothing of value lost. There are only four unique items there to buy, ever, and a couple consumables.

They could've just given you the Cobweb Duster the first time you talk to Cruller in the kitchen, hidden the Psychic Magnet badge somewhere, made the "customize the psychic "Saturn" ball color" thing an option from the menu, removed the dowsing rod and PSI cores all together (just having nine PSI card should've been enough), and hidden the Dream Fluff items in various places around the game. (Seriously, I *never* needed one when I played, and you can only carry three at a time. Hiding ~10 of them around the camp or in various mindscapes would have been more than enough.)
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Re: Psychonauts - New Fish City Sleep Terror

Post by Voltgloss »

What exactly does collecting the Emotional Baggage do? If anything? (Besides counting towards completion)
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Re: Psychonauts - New Fish City Sleep Terror

Post by YelseyKing »

Voltgloss wrote:What exactly does collecting the Emotional Baggage do? If anything? (Besides counting towards completion)
If you match up all five bags/tags in one stage, you get a rank up. That's pretty much it.
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Re: Psychonauts - New Fish City Sleep Terror

Post by Ditocoaf »

Alice wrote:"Wow, why do I have to farm so much?" asks raocow after having blatantly ignored what was clearly intended as a fairly casual mechanic to be actively used between exploring mental worlds. Like I get not wanting to farm but you really have nobody to blame but yourself here. The game made it fairly clear that you should get the dowsing rod early and make active use of it. You just chose to buy it then proceed to pretend it doesn't exist until you were forced to use it. If you had explored a bit more between worlds and made use of the dowsing rod during that time you probably would have needed to do little to no grinding to get the duster.
The game's cutscenes really encourage you to just go to the next main world (probably because novice players would otherwise get stuck). The game is most fun if you ignore the next main world and instead explore and mess around.

Most "gamers" instinctively ignore the goal and instead explore. Most people who play games with an audience (i.e., LPers and streamers) instinctively try to keep their audience entertained by moving on to the next real level. Psychonauts kinda punishes people who don't explore aimlessly early on. I'm not gonna blame raocow for that.



If a game is best for people who have time to waste meanderingly, it might be an amazing game for people with time to waste meanderingly, but subpar for people under pressure. I loved Psychonauts back when I had lots of time to waste.

If this LP exposes Psychonauts as bad for people under pressure, great, I'm happy to learn that. I don't have that sort of time these days anyway. I'm happy to avoid replaying it then, and happy that we're encouraging more efficient games. Sure, psychonauts had lots of positive stuff that I hope is replicated -- and that will ALSO be showcased during this LP. No Problem.

Apparently Psychonauts 2 is under development finally. I'll probably play it. but I might have to wait until a year or two after it comes out. We'll see if it learns from Psychonauts's (many, important) successes, and its mistakes.
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Re: Psychonauts - New Fish City Sleep Terror

Post by Blue »

Alice wrote:
Blue wrote:Do you think the game would be made worse if the dowsing rod and arrowheads were removed?
Not at all and it's 100% irrelevant to my comment anyways. The point is that they're there and raocow could have made things less grindy for him if he didn't actively avoid things the game was clearly encouraging him to do.
Splitting a twenty-minute grinding section into twenty single-minute grinding sections awkwardly shoved between gameplay isn't less grinding.
YelseyKing wrote:
Voltgloss wrote:What exactly does collecting the Emotional Baggage do? If anything? (Besides counting towards completion)
If you match up all five bags/tags in one stage, you get a rank up. That's pretty much it.
You also unlock concept art for that stage.
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Re: Psychonauts - New Fish City Sleep Terror

Post by raocow »

I think it's worth saying, I'd be playing that way even if I wasn't lp-ing. That's just how I play games period. When I played Vice City way way back when, I basically went from checkpoint to checkpoint, mission to mission, because... that's how I play games I guess
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