I’m legitimately trying to update this space more often, honest (I wrote Sunday morning before legitimately going to Costco/playing a lot of World of Warcraft/writing a terrible paper for a terrible class), but last week was my first week back at work and the first real week of the spring quarter, so the amount of time I had available to write about video games/be an idiot was sort of minimal. Then Friday and Saturday saw a complete guild breakdown in the less-fun-with-each-passing-day World of Warcraft. That was fun.

However, I still found the time to download and play through the PC demo for Psychonauts, the action/adventure platformer from Tim Schafer, the man responsible for Full Throttle and Grim Fandango. Psychonauts is a game I was interested in even when it was a Microsoft-published Xbox exclusive, so the fact that it’s coming to the PC now and the PS2 later means I’ll actually get a chance to play the damn thing. This excites me. For those of you completely uneducated on the Psychonauts front (and shame on you if you are), I highly suggest checking out the disgustingly awesome trailer over at gametrailers.com.

Anyway, the demo was pretty much proof that this game is exactly what I was hoping it would be, even if the gameplay showcased therein was extremely basic (the demo consisting of only the first level of the game). Super excellent level design (including a really neat Spiny Room O’ Death near the end) and great art direction and character design all wrapped up nicely with great writing and a great sense of humor means Psychonauts is set to hit all the right notes. Unfortunately, it features a lot of “features” that have become blatantly overused over the years such as tight ropes, rope swinging, and rail surfing. Still, the demo is incredibly solid and hopefully an indication of what the game has to offer.

Between Psychonauts, God of War, and Resident Evil 4, this is already shipping up to be quite a year for gaming. In fact, I enjoyed those latter two titles far more than anything that shipped in 2004 (aside from maybe World of Warcraft). And now that Doom 3 expansion pack is out too! I should probably pick that up, seeing as how I seem to be the only person who really enjoyed Doom 3.