1/31/2024 0 Comments Psychonauts in the rhombus of ruinOn a boat, Raz has to help the sailor, First Mate Loboto, to find the compass needed to steer the ship and to fend off the attacks of the giant Monsto-Loboto. When he turns around, Oleander sneaks in from below to hand Raz the Psychic Portal which Raz uses to go inside Loboto's mind. Loboto appears and states that he kidnapped Truman Zanotto on orders from another client whom he refuses to expose. After pointing out the mutated fish guards, Oleander realizes that he likely knows who's in charge of the facility and warns Raz to run after hearing he's in a dentist chair. He gives Oleander a fake mermaid fish tail to allow him to swim. When Raz locates Oleander, he's forced to flood the room to make him stop singing. Raz eventually saves them all by playing music to snap them out of their hallucinations. He discovers that Milla, Lili, and Sasha were victims of Psylirium exposure which causes them to hallucinate. Using Clairvoyance, Raz travels around the facility using the eyes of whatever body he lands in. ![]() ![]() Raz wakes up strapped to a chair and notices that none of his allies are around. Just as the jet approaches the Rhombus, it's suddenly brought down and crashes. Sasha, Milla, and Oleander deduce that Truman must be in the abandoned underwater Psychonauts facility located in the Rhombus of Ruin. Raz discovers that Truman is in an underwater laboratory that houses the Psychic material known as Psylirium, which is harmful to Psychics. Raz uses Clairvoyance on Lili's Music Box that her Dad gave her in order to help locate him. Razputin, Lili, Agent Nein, Agent Vodello, and Agent Oleander head off to investigate the disappearance of Lili's father, Truman Zanotto, in a jet. I really wish it would’ve let me pop into the headspace of more of characters that I’ve loved and missed for the past decade.Psychonauts In the Rhombus of Ruin takes place immediately after the ending of the first Psychonauts game in the year 1982. Compared to the first game, which had us popping from Vaudeville theaters and Napoleonic board games to psychedelic discos and abstract recreations of the JFK assassination, Rhombus ironically feels one dimensional. Most of your time is spent underwater or in submerged vehicles, save for one awesome trip into the mind of a familiar character. My one big disappointment with Rhombus of Ruin is that it’s so centrally located around one area - a Bermuda Triangle-esque underwater wreckage of vessels - and doesn’t display the diversity that made me adore the original game. And, unlike some of Tim Schafer’s classic adventure games like Grim Fandango and Day of the Tentacle, at no point was I stumped by any of the mental hurdles placed in front of me. Interacting with the environment is accomplished by just looking at an object to target it and then hitting the corresponding button on the DualShock to initiate said power. While the simplistic controls make for a smooth VR experience, it also means that the “puzzles” that impede you in the world just barely fit the definition of the word. I really appreciated the fact that Rhombus of Ruin responded to my weird decisions. Whether it was using Pyrokinesis to set some books on fire and see how the characters reacted to my chaos or using Telekinesis to toss objects across the room, I found myself lingering in scenes just to see what sorts of optional trouble I could get in. There’s a playful nature to using these abilities from a first-person VR perspective that I really appreciated. ![]() It provides a nice dangling-carrot element that propelled me forward since I always wanted the next fun ability. Rhombus of Ruin pulls a Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, in that it shows you all of your cool powers from the start before stripping them all away for plot reasons and making you recover them one by one. This gave me a slew of unique perspectives from which to view and solve puzzles without leaving me disoriented or nauseous, even in the slightest. This works really well within the fiction of Psychonauts, because over the course of the three-hour adventure Raz uses his Clairvoyance ability to mentally project himself inside the bodies of other characters/animals in the world. In essence, you can look around in all directions, point to various predetermined spots in the environment, and warp to them to survey the environment from a different angle. Rhombus of Ruin implements the same first-person, node-based movement of VR games like Batman: Arkham VR. That said, the immediacy of the story and complete lack of introduction to who the characters are will make the events carry little weight for newcomers of the series, as well as folks who might not’ve played Psychonauts in over a decade.
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