one of the talking points around psychonauts NUMBER_TOKEN is that its gameplay is clunky i think that's broadly true controlling raz doesn't feel great he is nowhere near as snappy or responsive as his mascot counterparts and his suite of abilities all feel kind of thrown together rather than a neatly compiled kit that would result in satisfying feeling combat where we might play mario for the sheer joy of his triple jump or ratchet and clank for the breadth of its arsenal there's no equivalent of that here in psychonauts NUMBER_TOKEN but i think it'd be really unfair to suggest that psychonauts NUMBER_TOKEN's gameplay isn't good because so much imagination has been put into set pieces and encounters that it really squeezes every last drop out of the limited mechanics on hand the cook-off is a really superb example this is such a tiny area in terms of real estate but it really feels like the most dense gameplay space in the entire game you have to pull ingredients from the crowd boil the egg chop the bread blend the watermelon while you're doing all of this you're using your levitation your mental connection your rail grinding you're slowing down time to make it easier to run across spinning cylinders this is one of the best sequences that i played in any game this year because it was so diverse in what it was asking me to do and even more impressively it wasn't on rails i think if another aaa game were to do a sequence like this it would be a lot more guided there wouldn't be the same margin for error to boil the wrong ingredient or fall off a ledge while you're carrying the pork you just sliced up i suspect the whole sequence would have been over engineered to smooth out any rough edges but i think the rough edges make this a far more tactile and satisfying experience in the end
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