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jp's Psychonauts in The Rhombus of Ruin (PS4)

[October 7, 2025 06:32:22 PM]

I finished this in one sitting! (literally, because I played it on PSVR while sitting down).

I enjoyed it. Didn't get nauseated (from the VR, not the game...) and also had some fun. I think it helped that I recently (last year?) played some Psychonauts - and that the platforming experience there was...pretty bad, so perhaps I wasn't expecting too much. But that seems unfair, and this game was clearly designed in a thoughtful way with regards to the common issues in VR. So, there's no locomotion - you jump from character to character by "possessing" them (I forget what it's called in the game), and the entire first area (you're on a plane with some of the characters from the first game) serves as a tutorial for the different interactions (read, powers) you'll have to use later on.

The plan you're on crashes - and everyone is scattered so you need to make your way around (outside of your own brain, because you're captured/tied to a chair) and rescue them, all the way until you get to the final baddy. As expected it's all puzzles, and there's humor (it wasn't terribly funny, but that's not a complaint), and a few clever uses of VR - for example there's a moment when you need to lean forward to peer into a periscope - and from there you can see another character you can possess (and thus continue making progress).

Most of the puzzles were pretty straightforward with two exceptions. One took me a while - you had to possess a flea and "get inside" (I don't recall how this worked - but I did it) inside the music box to fix it. The second I had to look up - this was partly a UI thing I didn't understand, because I knew what I had to do, just not exactly how to do it. It involved a cow. And a haystack. Used separately.

I think what I enjoyed the most - again, this is not a complaint, I thought it was really nice - was the intro. It's done in a James Bond intro style - with different creators names projected onto fish and stuff... the theme song is even done in that style - it's not the Bond theme but it evokes it.

Curiously the game ends - in the final credits - with a message stating that Psychonauts 2 was coming. Huh. No cliffhanger thankfully, which I appreciate. I also appreciated the game being short and not overstaying its welcome. I'm going to guess that some people complained about it being too short..but whatever. Short and good is better than longer and less good.