Yes. Really.

You may have noticed my post about how I lost my review notes and plans and so the next few reviews are gonna be a bit later than planned.

That right folks, the well-oiled machine that delivers content about as frequently as Santa Claus has come a cropper. Without my thoughts how are you gonna know that Gunpoint is pretty good? Answer: Metacritic like anyone else.

To cut a one man brainstorming session short I had been planning to get my in-no-way-a-figment-of-my-imagination friend Ivan to do short reviews based on what he’d heard me say but while I was writing that piece while I was waiting for him to get back to me it mutated into… this.

Just for the sake of it here is the music. That right! It’s a musical review! This was my idea that no else has ever done before. Why not try sing along? Trying to guess the intended rhythm is pretty tricky and I say that as the guy that wrote it.

“_” means put a slight pause between the syllables in a word

“-” means run the two words together.

Alright! Hit the music!

Psychonauts, is the first game made by Double Fine

It is very funny yes there’s many a good line

But genre wise it is Tim Schafer’s platforming debut

Which gives us lots of fodder for a critical review

***

You play as Rasputin who ex_plores the human mind

Making many changes but your goals are always kind

And yet the mind, views you as a danger_ous aggressor

Consequently you must fight off sensor after sensor

***

Com_bat is very limited, it isn’t very fun

Yet-the presence of the en_e_mies means-that it must be done

Shield-punch-dodge and range attack it all feels like a chore

Yet the music-art-n writing keep you coming back for more

***

The jumping is quite floaty and the camera is a pain

Yet Ras’s psychic powers make you like the game a_gain

Set a bird on fire or see through a_nother’s eyes

In one fantastic section a mere-stopsign’s a disguise

***

STOPSIGN’S A DISGUISE!

***

<Rewind>

Whispering Rock is a summer camp to train a Psychonaut

But not unexpectedly: of danger it is fraught

Pretty soon the campers start to disappear en masse

It was quite surprising; y’hardly got to know the class1

***

So then you jump into the minds of oddball after oddball2

Like a paranoid schizophrenic who burned down a shopping mall

Or fighting the genetic memory of Napoleon Bonaparte

I worked that sentence in there, ho boy what a work of art!

***

You’ll help folks fight their demons and explore a giant game board

There’s a romance subplot which we really just ignored

It’s a damsel in distress plot which by now is worn out

But the rest is unpredictable of that there is no doubt.

***

Meat Circus made us angry even with the awesome song

If we could we’d award McConnell with a music gong3

This is the first game we’ve played made by Tim Schafer

And boy we sure are glad that he chose not to play it safer!

***

CHOSE NOT TO PLAY IT SAFER!

Notes:

1: This is one of the minor problems I had with the game. Your camp-mates are a diverse bunch of characters who clearly had lots of dialogue and interactions written for them. Without going into spoilery details there’s a point where very suddenly these interactions are no longer possible and the campsite becomes rather barren. While it is kind of clear from the plot that things are going that way, it still caught me off guard and so I feel like I missed out on some great moments. What’s more, later section seem to assume your familiar with which camper is which for the purpose of jokes. That said it’s true that if I’d thought of it I could’ve just played from an old save file.

2: And here we see I’ve used the “<object> after <object>” sentence construction for the second because I was too lazy to think up rhyming sentences that would naturally be the right length.

3: Peter McConnell composed the soundtrack (which is available on Spotify and can be streamed or purchased here). Gong here means trophy, I’ve no idea how widespread that usage is.