3D Platformer

Psychonauts – Critical Miss #30

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Ra-Ra-Razputin

I never went to summer camp as a kid. Closet thing I had growing up was a thing called P.I.T.S., Parks in the Summertime, where kids from the town would go to the park on Thursdays and a group of volunteers would have games and activities for them to do. Even this I didn’t attend very often, always being a more indoor, bookish kid. So I’m glad I got to experience summer camp vicariously through Psychonauts. Released upon the world in 2005 from the brain of Tim Schafer, the game received critical acclaim, but disappointing sales led it to be one of the most famous cult classics in video games.

Whispering Rock in the game is no ordinary summer camp. It’s actually a camp for psychic children—a place that trains and nurtures the psychic abilities in the campers and a place the main character, Razputin, dreams about attending. He is so determined that he runs away from his acrobatic, circus-performing family to sneak into the camp. The counselors at Whispering Rock inform Raz he only has one day at the camp until his father comes to pick him up. So Raz decides to get as much psychic training as he can in that single day. Along the way he will meet new friends, make new bullies, and unravel an evil plot to steal children’s brains in the works. 

Psychonauts’ art direction is a great balance of ugly yet charming. It takes inspiration from movies like A Nightmare Before Christmas with its darker color palette and grotesque character models—all unnaturally, sickly skin tones, uneven teeth, and lopsided, bulging eyes. Usually I’m not a fan of this type of character design, but there’s something about Psychonauts that makes it work. Possibly due to how charming and well-written the characters themselves are and possibly just due to how well the humor is done in the game. I laughed a lot while playing Psychonauts. The strong character designs also lead to strong level themes since the levels in the game take place inside different characters’ minds.

Much like the characters in the game, levels vary wildly in Psychonauts in terms of art style, mechanics, skills used, and puzzles to solve. The game is constantly changing things up with each and every level and the art style chosen for each one perfectly represents the personality whose mind you are exploring. Levels range from more combat focus in Sasha’s Shooting Gallery, which has a sort of 50’s retro style, to pure platforming challenges like the 60’s inspired dance party of Milla’s mind. A lot of levels are more based on solving puzzles than platforming or combat. Gloria’s Theater has the player finding the right play scene and mood to put on in order to gain access to the cat walks and Waterloo World has Raz shrink down in order to act as a piece in a board game. These more puzzle focused levels were my favorite in the game because when the game demanded quick or precise platforming, it started to show cracks.

Razputin comes from a family of acrobats and inherently has a moveset for fun platforming. He can walk and bounce on tight ropes, swing around and leap off poles and trapeze swings, and can grind down railings. For the most part, the controls work fine, but there is a clunkiness to them that’s a little hard to explain. There is a sort of lag that needs to be accounted for when trying to string moves together. This makes simple things like jumping off poles or railings touchy since it’s a crapshoot whether or not the double jump will work. As Raz does more psychic training, he learns how to enhance his physical abilities with his psychic powers. He can use his mind to double jump, levitate and move faster, and let himself float slowly to the ground when falling. These abilities help with some of the trickier platforming and the camera in the game, which also feels like it’s fighting the player, but the weird lag is still present when trying to combo these moves together. It’s only a real problem in certain parts of the game where platforming challenges get tricky. Levels like Black Velvetopia and The Meat Circus are terrible for these moments, but pretty much every level seemed to have a section that took me much longer than it should due to the controls. It was frustrating, but not so much that I ever wanted to quit the game. However, the controls were the major reason why I decided early on in the game not to 100% complete it.

Every level has many collectibles to grab. Figments are the stand-ins for the common collectible like Mario’s coins or Sonic’s rings, there is emotional baggage that need a corresponding tag to open, and repressed memories to be discovered that are represented by locked safes. Collecting these items help Raz level up in camp rank, rewarding the player with new skills and upgrades to existing skills, concept art, and back story on the character whose mind you are playing around in. But figments are just too faint and hard to see since they are paper thin and transparent to spot easily in the busy levels of the game. A lot of baggage and safes are hiding in plain sight along the main path, but some are tucked away in sections that require precise platforming to find. While it’s a nice thought that you are helping someone clear out their emotional baggage, it would have been great to see that reflected in the character themselves once you leave the level. There is a theme of helping people through their trauma or mental blocks in the game’s story, so I feel having characters improve the more baggage you clear out in their mind would be a great tie between story and gameplay.

The story in Psychonauts is very enjoyable, even if it suffers from some weird pacing issues. The game feels very episodic with how characters, themes, and mechanics are picked up for a single level and then nearly forgotten for the rest of the game. By the halfway point of the game, all the children at camp have had their brains stolen and turned into drooling mindless zombies that only moan out to watch TV. Even Milla and Sasha, the two teachers who have been helping Raz train, disappear at this point, only to return for the conclusion of the game. I use this term to describe a colorful art style a lot, but Psychonauts’ story feels very much like a Saturday morning cartoon: episodic, character’s coming and going in each episode and hardly having a bearing on the overall plot, and setting changing up as needed with every adventure. This isn’t a bad thing though, it works extremely well for the story being told, but it did make me wish we could spend more time with the characters I liked like Dogen, Milla, and Lili. 

While the clunky controls made playing Psychonauts more frustrating than it had to be in the moment as I was playing, I still ended the game extremely positive on it. There is so much creativity and clever design in the game not to like it. From the juxtaposition of the mundane setting of the summer camp and the fantastic world of psychics and people’s individual mindscapes to the varied mechanics and puzzles in the level, Psychonauts is too unique not to try out. It’s not the best 3D platformer I’ve ever played, but it has some of the most interesting levels and charming, fleshed out characters of any. The game can be picked up for pretty cheap now on most modern consoles, so check it out. 

Ape Escape – Critical Miss #28

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Image by KFHEWUI. Found at gamefaqs.gamespot.com

Just Monkeyin’ Around!

Over the past few years, there have been a slew of remakes of PS1 games coming out. Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, and even MediEvil all have seen great success with updating their PS1 games with modern graphics—hell, Crash just got a brand new game in the series focused around its classic gameplay after the success of the N. Sane Trilogy. It’s a trend I’ve honestly been loving. While I did have a PS1 growing, I didn’t really have the classic games one would associate the console with so it’s been great experiencing these games with modern graphics. There are a lot of games from the console that would be great to see remade, but one series always seems to dominate the conversation when PS1 remakes are discussed and that is Ape Escape. Released in 1999, Ape Escape was an in-house Sony developed 3D platformer closely tied to the Playstation for being a console exclusive and being the first game to require a DualShock controller to play. While I agree that it would be amazing to see a modern remake of this first game (or, better yet, the series as a whole), after playing it, I think I understand why it hasn’t happened yet or may not ever happen.

The story of Ape Escape is very straightforward. A little white monkey named Specter gets his hands on a helmet that makes him super intelligent and he hands out similar helmets to all his monkey friends. Using the Professor’s time machine, he sends all these annoying apes throughout time in order to rewrite history in their favor and make them the dominant species on Earth. It’s up to Spike, a neighborhood boy who is friends with the Professor, to travel through different time periods to capture all the menacing monkeys before they can cause too much mayhem. 

The set up is enjoyable and very silly, feeling like a goofy Saturday morning anime, but it’s not particularly engaging. This is due partly to cut scenes between levels being rather static and just dropping exposition, and partly due to the rather odd audio mixing in the game. Characters all seem to speak at different volumes with the likes of Spike and the Professor’s assistant, Natalie, being perfectly fine, while Specter and the Professor are distractingly quiet. I’m not sure if it was due to bad recording or direction given to the actors, but it makes some lines incredibly hard to hear at a normal volume.

The time travel set up is a great idea, lending itself naturally to a huge variety of possible level settings, but it’s never explored to its fullest. You start in the prehistoric ages with dinosaurs and lust jungles then move on to the ice age, all snow and mammoths and glittering white. From there you find yourself in feudal times, a few Japanese castles and a European one, then go into the modern age where you explore a Japanese town and a tall television station tower. These are the really the only time periods you explore spread out across over twenty levels and I feel like the idea could have been expanded more. I would have loved to see some see some other periods with more human structures for the monkeys to mess around with, like an ancient Egypt or Greek level, a pirate level, or a cowboy level—besides the one room in Specter Land, which feels more like the developers were reusing a scraped idea from earlier in development.

Image by TerrorOfTalos. Found at apeescape.fandom.com

The lack of time periods to explore is really only disappointing because the levels themselves are mostly well designed and fun to explore. There are a handful of apes to capture in each level, but only about half of which are needed to move on to the next level, with only a few needing new gadgets from later in the game to nab. This gives the player options in which monkeys they want to go after so it’s never too stressful if a particular monkey is giving you trouble or you miss any while exploring. The art direction is colorful and pleasant, seemingly taking inspiration from kids anime like Samurai Pizza Cats and Pokémon, giving the game a strong sense of identity within the confines of the limited hardware. 

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the draw distance. Limited draw distance is not uncommon for fully 3D games in the fifth generation, with structures popping in when close enough as if coming out of a fog (or sometimes literally with games like Superman 64 and Silent Hill). While poor draw distance is hardly ever a deal breaker, especially in older games with more limitations, I have never found it so distracting as in Ape Escape. Anything more than fifteen feet away will pop in and out of existence as you move around—trees, walls, platforms, even enemies themselves. It’s only slightly immersion breaking when the world seems to materialize around you, but the biggest problem with this is it can make the levels hard to navigate since it can be difficult to know if a path leads to a new part of the level or a dead end until the walls pop in to block you. 

The core gameplay loop of running around level to catch monkeys is still very fun and engaging. It feels a natural evolution to 3D collectathons like Super Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie since now the collectables will try to evade you or fight back. Each level offers a good balance of deliberate platforming and fast-paced monkey catching. You will be equipped with many gadgets throughout your journey across time—starting with just a net and stun baton, but acquiring more as you progress through the levels—and this is what gives Ape Escape its unique selling point.

As said before, Ape Escape was the first game that required the DualShock controller to be played and this is because it necessitated the use of both joysticks. The left stick is used to move your character around like any other 3D game, but the right stick is used to control your gadgets, which are selectable with the face buttons. This means you swing your club or net by flicking the right stick, the Dash Hoop and the Sky Flyer by rotating the stick in a circle, and slingshot by pulling back on the right stick. It adds a lot of unique charm to the game as well as control since items like the baton can be used in any direction at a moment’s notice. However, this unique control method also leads to some strange choices. Since the face buttons are where you equip the gadgets to be swapped at any time, the jump button is relegated to the R1 button. This is a little clunky at first, but I got used to it in time and really only suffered from muscle memory pressing the X button to jump in the beginning of the game. The camera can be pretty awful at times, though, with the only real way to control it being with the L1 button that immediately swings it behind the character. This isn’t a huge deal to me since bad cameras are pretty much synonymous with 3D platformers of the time—especially on the N64 with it’s weird, single-joysticked trident controller. 

The gameplay could become repetitive to some since you are only catching monkeys, but I found that each monkey offers a fun and frantic little challenge to nab. The game’s pacing is quick and fairly easy throughout the playthrough. At least, until the end. Specter Land, the final level in the game, is just too long, taking me around two hours to beat. It’s just a gauntlet of monkeys to catch and platforming challenges to beat. These challenges are where the game’s poor draw distance and stiff camera decide to team up for a final desperate attack of frustration. The only saving grace of this final level is the amount of checkpoints and the fact that shortcuts you unlock are still active after a game over. If this was not the case, I may have pitched my controller out the window—but most likely I would have just stopped playing.

Ape Escape is still a fun, charming game. I liked running after the monkeys, bonking them over the head and scooping them up in the net. I enjoyed the different locations you visit even if I would have liked to see more. I went into the Monkey Book after every level to see the names of the apes I caught and the few word descriptors the game gives them. But I’m not sure it will ever get a modern remake like Crash or Spyro’s games did. The video game industry has become more homogenized since the Wild Western days of the PS1 with more conventions that player’s expect, especially with controls. I can just imagine the backlash an Ape Escape remake would get if the right stick was kept for controlling gadgets and not the camera, if the jump button was still mapped to R1. There are ways around this—as the version on the PSP can show—but for a big shiny new remake I think the game should stay as close as possible to the original. I still hope Sony does remake the series. I would gladly pick it up whether they remake all the games or just the first one. But I’ll be a monkey’s uncle if they ever do. 

Image by Golden Spect. Found at apeescape.fandom.com

Banjo-Kazooie – Critical Miss #22

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Bear Pace

I’ve been a big consumer of YouTube content since rediscovering my love of video games around 2014. If there is one game I’ve heard more praise for than any other, it would have to be Rareware’s 1998 3D platformer for the Nintendo 64: Banjo-Kazooie. The Completionist, Antdude, videogamedunkey, they all laud the game as one of the best ever, a perfect, or at least near perfect, game. I’ve always liked 3D platformers, but haven’t played many from the N64 era, arguably the golden age of the genre, besides Super Mario 64. So I was excited to check out Banjo-Kazooie once I finally bought a used Xbox 360. 

Upon booting up the game, the player is met with a Saturday morning cartoon’s worth of color and bouncy music. Everything, from the characters to the locations to the collectibles, are bright and cheerful, full of personality and charm. The music masterfully arranged, being catchy and bubbling and adapting to changes in the game like going under water or entering a differently theme area. There is a simple joy of picking up a collectible in 3D platformer and hearing a jingle play and Banjo-Kazooie is the best at this. Everything you pick up, be it eggs, feathers, or Jiggies, everything has a unique little fanfare that plays. Where the presentation fails is with repetitive noises. The stop-and-start gibberish all characters speak in is the usual suspect for complaints, but I didn’t find it too bad. It’s not great, but it’s charming enough to look past. The thing that started to irritate me most was Kazooie’s panting while doing the Talon Trot move. Seeing how this is the quickest way to travel, you will be using it a lot and hearing Kazooie’s “mer-her, mer-her” constantly.

The Talon Trot is the best mode of transportation because Banjo-Kazooie is a slower paced game than other 3D platformers. I was surprised how heavy the characters felt when starting the game. Banjo’s default walking speed feels like he has lead covering his paws, the swimming controls are slow and very slippery, and most utility moves have a delay to activate them. Attacks like the Rat-at-tat Rap and Forward Roll require the characters to jump or run (respectively) first before they can be used and even more situational moves like the Shock Spring Jump require the player to find a special pad in the world and hold down a button before it activates. It creates a game that feels more restrictive than the likes of Super Mario 64, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, just a different gameplay style. If freeform 3D Mario games are like jazz (as I have said in my Mario Odyssey post), then Banjo-Kazooie is a damn great pop song.

By far the best aspect of the game are the levels. There are nine levels (not including the opening Spiral Mountain and the hub world, Gruntilda’s Lair) and they are all vastly different. While most fall into the usual platforming template of forest level, desert level, water level etc., they are filled with uniquenesses that help them stand out. Gobi’s Desert if filled with pyramids and other tombs to explore, Freezeezy Peak is a Christmas wonderland decorated with lights, presents, and giant snowman as the center focus, and Bubblegloop Swamp is a southern bayou infested with poisonous water and alligators. Even the two levels that are strikingly similar, Clanker’s Cavern and Rusty Bucket Bay, feel completely different. 

Along with varied levels, the collecting Jiggies is also very varied. There are the standard platforming challenges and a few boss fights, but you will also have to complete mini games, compete in races, collect Jingos, and even get flushed down a toilet at one point. Seeing as Banjo and Kazooie are a bipedal bear and a bird chilling in a backpack, all but sewn together like the pigeon-rat from The Simpsons, the game does a great job of exploring all the abilities those creatures would have when collecting Jiggies. However, some require the duo to change forms with the help of the shaman, Mumbo Jumbo, and I was nervous about this. I was expecting them to all have different play styles like the different characters in Spyro 3, an aspect about the game I did not enjoy at all, but the different forms in Banjo-Kazooie are not bad at all. This is mostly due to the fact that their controls are simplified to just being able to run and jump. The forms are really only needed to gain access to areas and collectibles Banjo and Kazooie cannot get themselves. For example, the walrus form in Freezeezy Peak can swim in the freezing water without taking damage and is welcomed into another walrus’s home, something they refuse to do for Banjo because they are afraid of him, being a bear and all. There is a great difficulty curve in Banjo-Kazooie with levels and the challenges becoming bigger and more complicated as the game progresses. However, a difficulty curve is not the same as pacing, and that is what the game struggles with the most, especially near the end.

I went into Banjo-Kazooie with the intention of 100% complete it, but by the end of the game, I had decided not to bother. Early in the game, the levels were great. Large and explorative, but confined enough to not drag on like the last few levels did. Longer levels are not necessarily a bad thing, but levels like Rusty Bucket Bay and Click Clock Wood feel artificially lengthen to the point of feeling bloated. This is mainly due to the harsh punishments for making slight platforming mistakes. Most platformers will either have something to catch a player if they fall during a long platforming challenge, cutting down on the amount they have to redo, or they make the time between failing and restarting short, ensuring players stay determined more so than frustrated. Banjo-Kazooie has a problem with this and the game suffers because of it. If you miss a jump while climbing the very tall central tree in Click Clock Woods, you are falling to the very bottom. 

Rusty Bucket Bay is the worst offender of this seeming oversight. There is a ship in the center of the level with a Jiggy hiding behind its whirling propellers. To shut off the propellers, you must first enter the ship’s bridge to hit a button to slow down the fans in the engine room, then exit the bridge and go to the engine room. There you have to complete some of the toughest platforming in the game including walking across narrow paths, climbing spinning gears, and jumping through spinning fan blades that periodically slow down and speed up. It’s actually really tough, but the real kick in the shin is that it all takes place over a bottomless pit. If you make one mistake and fall into the pit, you restart at the beginning of the level and have to repeat everything again. You don’t restart at the beginning of the engine room section, which would be fair with such a harsh punishment. You restart at the level entrance and have to repeat the steps in the bridge to slow the engine fans down first. You have to do this every single time. It takes about a minute or two to have another chance to retry the section and in a game like this, that is forever

The only other real issues I have with the game are pretty minor. The first is Grunty’s Furnace Fun, the board game Gruntilda makes you play at the end of the game. Simply put: it isn’t fun and definitely not why I play platformers. It’s unique, no doubt, but it’s sluggish and having to answer trivia questions about the game feels little self-indulgent. The second issue is Gruntilda’s Lair, the hub world of the game. I’ve heard a lot of praise for this particular hub world but I don’t understand why at all. I found it to be overly spacious and not very interesting. Rooms and areas all have unique set dressing and atmospheres, you can even collect some Jiggies in it, but I always prefer a more contained space for a hub world. Make it smaller with more interesting things to find. Larger hubs like in Banjo-Kazooie just add a commute between levels, adding on to the other pacing issues I found in the game.

Overall, though, I still enjoyed Banjo-Kazooie, even if the ending did leave a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. It’s a great game filled with varied levels, a charming art style, and fun but kind of clunky gameplay. The pacing issues and overly long final levels means I cannot say it’s a perfect game, even for what it was striving to be, but it’s pretty close to it. To go back to the pop song comparison earlier: the game is still fun and I now understand the mass appeal of it, I am not immune to its charms myself, but it’s not my preferred genre and not the first thing I would think to pop in and jam out to.