Tim Schaefers has a history of making interesting games. Day of the Tentacle and Grim Fandango are two of the best adventure games for PC - so its not entirely surprising that Psychonauts is worth more than the DVD itself..

I will not bore you with the long story of the game, as that will both spoil the game and be rather longwinding to read through. But let me just say that the characters you meet in this game, will probably stick to memory longer than you're used to.
The humour is witty and ironic; but more importantly, it fits the story like a glove... the story is perhaps one of the main reasons to play through the game. Not only will it entertain you - it also has a lot more depth to it.. though, you'll have to think more abstract to get some of the points.

Platformers aren't really my favourite games.. normally. But its surprisingly fitting to this games fast pace and quirky nature. The main character - Raz - is a psychonaut wannabe, and his overzealous nature and circus upbringing goes a long way to explain why he is such a capable acrobat. Later in the game you'll get som psychic powers, which in true adventure game style, is the key to some puzzles (as well as boss fights). The game never gets to hard, though. When you're in trouble a piece of bacon will summon help if needed (play the game in order to get a 'logical' explanation..) Maybe its kind of spoiling the experience for the more demanding players - but at the same time it helps to keep the pace at smooth level. I have played through several games where the only thing that stopped me, was boss battles with less-than-obvious solutions.. this games 'baconhelp' feature keeps the frustrationlevel at a minimum - and its optional. The games graphic style is worth mentioning as well. The use of asymmetric figures in both the characters and backdrops gives an comicbook style quality to the graphics - as well as some 'attitude' (something lacking in many games). The use of vivid colours and a design that changes according to the mood of the different levels (and 'minds'.. for explanation, play the game..) This makes the game a changing experience where part of the change is the surroundings. This may sound obvious, but compared to a lot of the games out there, which has a very narrow choice of surroundings (FEAR comes to mind..) Psychonauts keeps itself interesting part due to the visual style(s)

A quick look of the hardware requirements:
1) A gamepad is highly recommended. This is a platformer - and they've always been better with a gamepad. 2) Graphically, the game isn't too demanding - but I experienced some odd stuttering on cards with less than 512 MB of Vram - but I suspect that has more to do with lack of optimizations.. either on the driver side or game side. But it should run OK on most DirectX9 cards.

Rest should be on the package.

A quick resume: A great story and a funny platformer, lots of different challenges that doesn't get too frustrating - and a visual treat. Bring a gamepad.