The International House of Mojo

The demo is so cool. Could I still download it?

I guess Psychonauts could run over Mainsoft's Java Sharepoint for PC?

Shit! The game doesn?t start.

Tooooo bad!
I downloaded the psyco-demo during last night, today I installed it and after the first run a dialog window says "Impossible to detect Direct3D hardware". Grrr!! How come, my hardware is perfectly configured....
Guess I'll have to try the demo on a friend's machine... :-?????

I'm guessing you're using something like Intel's video chip or whatever, which is not compatible with the game.

Oh, for the love of...
Psychonauts startup problem
"The DirectX has reported that your video card does not support pixel shader 1.x. The game requires support for pixel shader V1.0 or later in order to run properly."
When will I ever learn? Guess I'll be waiting for the PS2 version.

well, on the plus-side, there are movies that come with it. They're in bink format, so you can play them without having to load the game.

Heh, that's my problem too. Come on new computer...

One word. *glee*

Just finished the demo and I'm excited. Guess it's time to preorder. ;)

There's this new-fangled "DVD"-thing. Might be useful so you don't need *5* CD's to install a game.

Yeah, I thought the same thing.
Then I though about the incredible home-made packaging which is going to make me aprdon that.

I found this demo quite charming and enjoyable.

Gameplaywise it has the feel to me of games that I used to play when I was a lot younger, but without being frustrating. It was quite varied, and the things it got you to do were fun and pitched at around the right difficulty level for the start of the game... easy, but not -too- easy. The whole thing had a lot of character and makes me hope for a full game packed with lots of varied scenarios and set pieces.

I shall probably be getting the X-Box version .. while the controls work fine, it was always made for the X-box and that's the finished version I want to play.

The gameplay style reminds me of Warrio Land (before 4) for the Game Boy. If you haven't played it, unlike Mario where the emphasis is on beating the level (not sure about 64 and above, though), Warrio was more about solving the puzzles to beat the levels, and it was just fun because you kept trying without worries.

I wish they had rendered the cutscenes in real time. They probably had to pre-render them to cut down on the load times for the console versions (see also: Mafia). It's probably also the reason that the game will ship on 5 CDs. Most of the space will be taken up by movie files.

My impressions:

First thing that struck me was the fantastic music! Peter McConnell did the score, which immidiately reminded me of Monkey Island and Grim Fandango, but not at all without its own distinctiveness. I love games that have music all the time, which give me that good old C64/adventure feeling. I can't wait to hear more of his music in the full version of the game.

As for the design, both the environment and the character design were top notch. I don't know where the idea for the little green blob who can send you back to earlier levels came from, but I loved it. The same goes for all the other characters, in particular the little guy who was all head and feet. The campground squirrels were bloody scary though. The game ran smooth on my computer, with absolutely no slowdowns whatsoever.

The controls I loved as well. They were easy and intuitive to learn, but did in no way stop me in any way in letting me do what I wanted.

Then the negative remarks... I got this thing in the bottom right corner that said 4 Q 6 there all the time. Possible bug? Also, there were no option for enabling subtitles... as english isn't my first language, it's sometimes difficult to pick up dialogue - and subtitles would definitely make it easier. Maybe in a patch / the full version?

All in all, this demo had me sitting with an open smile for an hour or so giggling like a school girl, not boring me for a second (which is quite an accomplishment). There were these funny little moments all over, like the two kids cheering merrily at me when I played a minigame, or the great timing when some kids lost grip from something and fell.


I'll definitely buy it when it gets to Europe ... which is when?

"I got this thing in the bottom right corner that said 4 Q 6 there all the time"

Having looked at the screenshot you sent, those show where the psychic powers will bind once you unlock them. I don't know whether those fade away during gameplay, but I remember most of the menu stuff going away when you're just wandering about. Have a look at some of the more recent Xbox screens to confirm that those spaces are for psychic powers.

There is an option for subtitles... I think it's under "camera" for some reason, which is a level or two down in the options.

Actually, it's under Sound.

I snapped a screenshot of what I suspect is a bug, have a look:

http://img64.echo.cx/img64/7847/naut6vv.png

Argh, I have no idea why that PNG file is 800 k.

I uploaded a jpg version at http://img64.echo.cx/img64/6931/naut5ke.jpg

Where's the bug in that? Looks like he's trying to pull his head out.

What I suspect to be the bug is the GUI item to the lower right. Is that supposed to be there 100 percent of the time you're playing? It seems to block out all other GUI's, for example the lives / health GUI.

I don't quite know what you mean? Those things are there because later in the game you use those slots to assign psychic powers to those 3 different keys. Health/lives shows up in the opposite corner (top left), but only when you get hurt or lose a life.

Ah, everything's all right then! :)

Wow, 5 CDs...

I've posted this at AGers and IdleT but you can get it from Games Domain (Yahoo):
http://gamesdomain.yahoo.com/pc/psychonauts/files/96344

Oooh, nice, I'm getting 950K from the yahoo link :D

Thanks for the mirrors Jake, the Gamespot download died and wouldn't resume, but now 3DGamers is working quite fast. Still a few hours before I'll have all 468 magical megabytes of Psychonautical fun, but I'm stoked.

Fileplanet has it now as well. Go fileplanet.

Fileplanet isn't a good service though, unless you pay for it.

I'm on the case!

It also requires some whopping system requirements. Too whopping for me, so I guess I'll hold off for the Xbox version.

It's running surprisingly well on my 2+ year old computer... It was a good computer at the time, granted, and can run Half Life 2 on "medium" settings (and can run Doom 3 on "low" settings ? ?), but yeah. Psychonauts does great, and looks as cool as those other games :)

Awesome. Too bad you needed to register... but still awesome

*downloads*