Psychonauts review and why I quit 8 hours in

This post contains spoilers about Psychonauts (2005). 

Primarily I quit this game because it suffers from obtuse Schafer Logic^TM, which is inconsistently applied and lends itself to considerable amounts of time trying to work out which item or which power can be used to kill a boss/navigate an area. Games with a good plot, funny dark humor, but terrible gameplay, camera and controls are not a unique game design experience for Schafer and company (see: Grim Fandango).

Combined with obfuscated level progression checkpoints, you can't be sure of your saved progression in a level. This makes for an incredibly frustrating experience. It is also frustrating that you don't get to choose when to leave a level and are kicked out. Sometimes you see a bunch of Figments or Tags you want to get, but there are some in another direction too. So you go in one direction to grab them and BOOM, you're in a non-skippable cutscene. As soon as you complete the cutscene task, you're thinking you will go grab your previously identified collectables. BAM you're kicked out of the level and the story advances. Tough titties, you should have known in exactly which order to collect everything, n00b. What a frustrating mechanic, punishing exploration in the 'right direction' in a platforming adventure game. This is something Banjo Kazooie (1998) had already solved. When you collect a Jiggy, you aren't kicked out of the world (ala Mario 64). Instead you can continue roaming and complete more tasks (which Super Mario Odyssey mastered).There is no excuse for Psychonauts (2005) not including this. It unnecessarily reduces player immersion and control. 

Bosses

A good example of the frustrating elements within the game is its bosses. I like puzzle bosses. I really do. Knowing what their attack looks like, their range, how long they take to recharge, when to hit them. Having a wide range of abilities means you can choose your approach on how to kill them. Not in Psychonauts. Your regular 'attack' is used surprisingly little against bosses and generally only one of your abilities will work. This is the Schafer Logic^TM coming into play which makes you groan each time you finally work out how to kill the boss. A good example of this is the:

The Hideous Hulking Lungfish boss fight

This has three major problems which notably soured the game for me. After a timed platforming level (which for the first time you are not playing with the player controlled camera), you fight the fish in an underwater town.

Issue 1: The non-player controlled camera mechanic should have been addressed prior to this boss fight. Good game design ramps up challenges by first teaching a skill in a simple way, then applying it in a variety of higher stake environments. The security camera views in The Milkman Conspiricy (the game's best level) skill should have been introduced earlier. Why can Raz see from this perspective if he doesn't have the Clairvoyance power (which you get in The Milkman Conspiricy and does this exact thing?) This makes me think the Lungfish battle was clearly meant for after the Clairvoyance power was gained and was initially meant to be used in the fight but was changed late in the production of the game. The underwater level could have been dark and the only way to see through it would be to use Clairvoyance on fish that can see in the dark to navigate the level. I admit the idea of seeing yourself from a chasing boss' eyes was a cool idea. But the gameplay implementation was poor and also didn't make sense. Why wouldn't the Lungfish just follow me 100% of the time? Why would it keep changing directions if it wanted to eat me? Why do I keep changing from the Lungfish's perspective to mine? Why not have the entire battle from the Lungfish's perspective?

Issue 2: Inconsistent damage: the clams. So, you trap the Lungfish's lil light bulb with clams. Then you hit him with your attacks. There is no way to damage the Lungfish without trapping his bulb in a clam. Sure, fine, I worked that out after trying every attack and ability I had. Fun. The only reason I worked out you can trap his bulb with a clam is by accidentally doing it. You see, the game teaches you NOT to step on clams because they can trap you and leave you open to attacks. So I therefore kept avoiding clams during this boss fight.
There are two ways to shut a clam in Psychonauts and only one works in this boss fight. You can hit a clam which will instantly shut it, or you can walk over it and 2 seconds later it shuts. To me, it made sense to wait just before he attacks, then hit the clam and catch the Lungfish's bulb. A perfectly timed attack which would leave him exposed. A classic gameplay mechanic which rewards player reflexes, pattern recognition and response times. Only it doesn't work. You actually need to walk over the clam then stand in range, then he gets caught in it. Why have players be able to attack clams if it will never be a teaching moment/be useful in any way? Why put ambiguity in the game like this? 
I understand that bosses sometimes are invulnerable in specific states until you expose a weak spot, but come on. If I can use my regular attack on a boss when his bulb is stuck in a clam, I can do that damage when his bulb isn't stuck in a clam. The boss fights in this game are an exercise in pure pedantry. 

Issue 3: Walking outside of the water is a get out of jail free card. If you drown outside the bubble, you just die and respawn. You loose nothing. It permanently broke the immersion for me. If the Lungfish attacks you, you at least loose health or a life. If you drown, you respawn at the boss' feet and they patiently wait for you to get up. I actually started running into the water when I had nowhere else to go when trying new ways to actually damage the boss.

The El Odio boss fight

This is the boss which made me quit the game. God, what a terrible boss fight. So the idea is El Odio charges and rams his head into a wall. You attack him when he's stuck in the wall. Then you kill the matador. Sure.

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/psychonauts/images/7/7a/Bull.png/revision/latest?cb=20140207121507

Issue 1: El Odio usually runs around the larger Black Velvetopia level. You are familiar with him before this fight begins. He charges you for 0 damage, which 95% of the time cannot jump over (even with Levitate). The only way to stop him for a brief period of time is to use a Confusion Grenade. These are lessons the game teaches you. Unfortunately this is not the way to fight him. Turns out, you can jump over him (with Levitate) and confusion grenades don't really work. You have to use telekinesis...

Issue 2: The throwing range of Telekinesis range is limited. I thought I was doing something wrong when the bull got his head stuck in the wall. I threw the spear. It landed 10m short. I was like: oh, this isn't the way to kill him. I was wrong. To kill the bull, you need to telekinesis a spear. Aim and throw the spear. Run forwards. Telekinesis the spear again. Aim and throw the spear again. All in a very short amount of time. What? Why? What's worse is that once-thrown spears will actually fade and disappear in a short amount of time, so you can't pre-throw a bunch closer to the edge.
Why not just increase the range of telekinesis so you can just throw the spear and hit the bull? Or make the level smaller so it's in range. Or make the spears start closer to the edge of the arena. Also, why only spears damage him? When his head is stuck in the wall, that would be the perfect time for regular attacks to damage him. The matador can attack the bull when it is charging with nothing but a sword. Why can't I kill a bull by shooting its ass with freaking mind lasers?

Issue 3: The matador Dingo. You kill Dingo by throwing a confusion grenade (yes we're back to this mechanic) then spearing him. What I don't understand is that after lobbing a confusion grenade, why can't the bull El Odio can't hit him. What the fuck is that? Seriously? A thrown javelin will do more damage to him than a giant stampeding bull? Also this would have been far more therapeutic for Edgar Teglee (whose mind we are in). Instead of me defeating Edgar's tormentor alone, he helps tackle his own demons and delivers the final blow. I thought we were tag-teaming, but instead I am meant to spear the matador before he kills the bull. Schafer Logic^TM. 

Schafer Logic^TM

The Milkman Conspiricy is one of the greatest levels I have ever played in a game. I really understood the level of paranoia Boyd felt. The feel and tone of the level was amazing. Even being seen in video cameras when you break into houses. It was a trippy level which Mario Galaxy seems to have even borrowed from.

I had this one moment where a bunch of little Rainbow Scouts were following me and I got a bit freaked out because I didn't know what they were doing or what they wanted from me. I felt like I was being watched at every point, from every bush and bin and they weren't even trying to hide it. Everything felt hostile, but nothing was. I loved it. Being pulled into an interrogation with G-men who asked you about stuff you actually did ("Why did you hit the little girl?", "Why did you burn the bushes?") was incredible. It is a genius level and stands above the rest of the game. 
Unfortunately Schafer Logic^TM invariably found its way into this level. I think it also really sums up the issue with this game and games like it. 
When you try to get to the book repository with your gun, you get shot and killed by a sniper.

 This is the first time a single attack kills you in one hit. 'Okay, lesson learned. Don't step out in the open. Use the trees for cover, no issues.' 
But it is an issue. Because the sniper shoots you THROUGH trees! Trees you can't walk through.
'Oh fuck' you think. 'Maybe I can just go invisible and I won't get-' BOOM headshot. 
'Okay, I'm running out of lives here. What to do? I can't unequip the gun because the G-men won't let me in the zone. Maybe if I use Levitate and move really fas-' BOOM headshot.
I had to look this one up. You're meant to shield just before you get shot, then keep moving.
Seriously? Any of those ideas should have worked. But they didn't. Because this is a PuZzLe GaMe in which there is only one obtuse answer. Where bosses only take damage when their bulbs are caught in clams. Where obstacles for the player are not obstacles for an NPC. It's not a challenging puzzle, it's just bad puzzle design. If you give a player an ability to throw heavy things but also a ground pound, don't punish them when they use a ground pound to press a floor button. It should work. Both should work. They solved the puzzle.

Invisibility

Fucking useless. Why give us such an ability if it can never be used? It is useful like 3 times throughout the game, and never where you think it will be. Most abilities are like this. Fire is barely useful. Throw is only used to hurl projectiles at situational enemies, not solve puzzles etc. Instead, developers should have fleshed out a smaller amount of abilities with deeper gameplay mechanics. Again, this is something Banjo Kazooie seven years prior had already worked out.

The camera and controls (on PC) are awful

There appear to be glitches on my Good Old Games version, during target lock dodging. When you target lock an enemy and jump dodge in a certain direction (say backwards or sidewards), after 1 - 2 jumps, Raz will start flipping forwards. This has straight out killed me/put me in hot water multiple times. 
The camera is just as bad. There's not much more to say about this. The camera sucks. It makes platforming and determining enemy ranges more difficult than it needs to be.

What I liked and summary

I liked this game as a low stakes adventure platformer (see: the Camp area). I loved the camp area, with it's little platforming puzzles and environments. 

Unfortunately, combat is janky, awkward and a bit of a struggle, even for basic enemies. I just feel like there are no straight up good attacks. All attacks feel sluggish and weak, with the exception of Lungfishopolis. Which was incredible.
Constantly-respawning Censors just add unneeded stress in a game which sometimes requires constant backtracking (see Black Velvetopia).

I loved the levels, they were dark, different, creepy. It is a cool idea for a game and I liked all the characters.


I just hated playing it.

'Not novel enough'

Reviewer comments such as 'lacking novelty' or 'why bother repeating previous experiments?' are not only unhelpful, they are harmful to science on the whole. Science is predicated upon the accumulation of data and evidence, collected by independent studies over time. This underlying principal increases the likelihood that seminal/non-seminal studies came to the right conclusions. Synchronicity within the scientific literature demonstrating similar observations allows for independent verification. Meta-studies, our most robust and reliable sources of evidence could not be performed without this. Though we may never reach it, we get one step closer to 'capital-T Truth'.

Accusing manuscripts of lacking novelty is saying: 'people don't need to hear this because I already know what is True'. Historically in science this is almost never the case. Just about every theory, mechanism and explanation will be refined or rejected over time. For this to continue we need to ensure as much high-quality data as possible enters indexed academic search engines. If data collection and analysis are sound and reasonable conclusions drawn, why is novelty given priority?

Everyone is always concerned with 'ThE rEpLiCaTiOn cRiSiS' but when it comes to 'less novel' research, reviewers don't always stand by these concerns. Sometimes we haven't read EVERYTHING and aren't aware our work isn't as 'novel' as we thought. How can one possibly be aware of all relevant publications on a topic while knee-deep in experiments? It is like trying to drink a tidal wave through a straw. Sometimes things will be missed, even with daily alerts. Regardless, independently coming to a similar conclusion as another publication is a great finding. Novelty is overrated.

The research funding crisis has forced overpromising on 'iMpAcT' and embellishment of 'sIgNiFiCaNcE'. Most science is derivative and that's okay. That's where the details are worked out anyway. I'm okay with #notnovel.

This letter was rejected from several journals and now is published on my hIgH iMpAcT tea blog.

500 word entry for ATA Scientific

THE QUESTION:

Dr Who is a long running BBC Sci-Fi program in which Dr Who uses a time machine called the Tardis to travel back forth in time.

Imagine that you could borrow the Tardis time machine and travel back in time (and return). What past scientist/engineer or moments of discovery would you choose to visit and observe? Do you think you could gain new insights into history that would give us a greater appreciation of the past achievements?

https://www.atascientific.com.au/awards-events-training/entry-form/

My response:

This is a bit of a cheat, but I would want to observe the moon landing. This has the bonus of putting me being in outer space, which is something I’ve always wanted to experience but never had the opportunity. Unfortunately for me, molecular biology doesn’t require extra-planetary field work.

The vacuum of space did not plan for humans to be zipping through it, despite the enticing thought of frictionless movement. The fragile little blue marble we splash around in like a bowl of perfectly warmed porridge sits within a cold and hostile universe, which clearly has no intention of allowing organic life to freely scuttle about it. Yet, it couldn’t stop us landing on the moon.

Hundreds of years of human ingenuity coming together, thousands of people, combining physics, orbital mechanics and gravity with advances in engineering and materials science to produce a stage-three liquid-propelled rocket and a lunar module, refined and manufactured from materials which at one stage existed as part of a complex mix beneath our feet we call ‘Earth’. The sheer audacity of the moon landing! That is what I want to experience. We reconstructed and recycled particular components that make up our home planet and turned it into something with vision, with purpose and into something that is capable of transporting humans by shooting propulsive fucking explosions out of one end. If you told ANYONE who lived before the moon landing what would be achieved that day, they would lock you up. It was a moment when science fiction became plausible and tangible, and our mouths have been watering ever since. The promise of space exploration was solidified after this moment; the dream that one day we will forge a path amongst the stars. That moment we gained some ground against the ever-redshifting, monolithic universe.

Just going there to stand on the moon, it was an insignificant gesture really. It didn’t really help anyone or solve any of society’s problems. It was just standing somewhere new. Just to see if we could. Humans have been attempting to stand on something new since before we moved out of Africa. But it wasn’t just that. It opened the floodgates of inspiration, revitalising interest and passion for reaching out to the titanic abyss; one of humanity’s greatest achievements.

There are many times I am not proud of humanity, to be human. To see the things we do and realise I too am capable of them and the actions of humanity also reflect upon me. But the moon landing gives me hope that we can be better. The moon landing was humanity at its absolute best. The culmination of many things gone right, only possible in an advanced society. A great time for science and exploration where science was the hero, but so were the people. The everyday taxpayer who helped fund the project, contributed. On paper it was a waste of money and an infantile competition. As you can see by these some-500 words, clearly it was not.

Anger and the piling up effect

Something which has been welling up inside of me over the past few years as I've become more attuned to the news, politics and thinkers largely ignored by regular media is an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness and powerlessness. I am so pessimistic about humanity's future and I exist in a perpetual state of annoyed and/OR pissed off. Being angry and frustrated all the time really sucks. I spend time doing things I really enjoy, work a job I adore and live with a girl I love. However at the back of my brain, from which I can recall it at a moment's notice, exists a dreaded bundle of existential pessimism. This feeling leaks out of these larger, Sword of Damocles-like situations like a corrosive miasma, corrupting smaller everyday life events which shouldn't even warrant a response, let alone an emotion one. This sense of being already wound up, then having tiny non-events pile up on top results in a disproportionate emotional response.

Things like driving or small inconveniences really frustrate me to a disproportionate levels. I hate that about myself. I used to be so chill. Anger spills into everything, and it's pure poison.

I got into a series of arguments with a friend's family member (one of the topics was he did 'not trust the numbers the government is telling us for herd immunity to be a thing'). It worked me up so much, and nothing I said was able to even doubt his perspective. I was drunk at the time, but completely unable to communicate science effectively enough for someone not trained in science to understand. I was so disappointed in myself for not being able to argue for it effectively and persuasively. I am so defeated by this situation. It should not be that big of a deal and it's not the end of the world.

How I think I should be feeling is to learn what I did wrong, read up on what information I'm missing, then try to make sure it doesn't happen again. Which I'm doing, but the piling up effect is a heavy burden. 

So that's where I'm at. I want to be less angry and more chill. I want to care though. Can you care about things without getting angry when they're compromised?

TENTATIVE potential bruxism/teeth grinding prevention idea

tl;dr

Sleep with your head at an angle of ~95° - 110° angle, as long as it's comfortable.

zzzzz liek dis ^.  Adapted from here

Introduction

I, like many of you (8% to 31.4%) experience bruxism or teeth grinding during sleep. It's that feeling when you wake up and your jaw muscles are sore already, and your teeth feel like they've had a rough night.

The dentist will give you a dental guard, and this will generally reduce wear and tear on teeth, but it won't prevent bruxism itself. I am going to get one in a few months myself for my check up.

I was thinking about sleep, how I sleep and why my bruxism is occurring. I am not stressed, don't have sleep apnoea, have no physical or oral ticks and I get regular, high quality sleep. Despite this, teeth grinding occurs for me on a nightly basis, and it is starting to tornado into a positive feedback cycle, because now I am a little stressed my bruxism is going to destroy my teeth, so it may have led to an increase in grinding, and so on and so forth.

So the question becomes, how to reduce the chance of teeth grinding? 

The idea

I have come up with a tentative idea which I've been trying out, with fairly decent success. I am in the middle of graphing it over a year, so I'll post that when I'm done, to see if there has been any statistical improvement.

It involves the angle of the head during sleeping. I usually sleep with my head tucked down, which looks something like this, with some meat and skin stretched over it:

A quick image edit using GIMP2, showing how tucking your head will compress your mandible (jaw) into your maxilla, forcing your teeth together in close proximity. This is a quickly edited image and in reality the spine would bend more, resulting in a realistic tucked head. Adapted from here.

Tilting your head down to sleep, while allowing you to drift off peacefully, creating a safe, somnolence-inducing sleeping position, nested upon your own bosom brings your mandible (jaw) which houses your bottom row of teeth, into contact with your upper teeth, attached to the maxilla (face bone where in which your upper teeth are embedded).

Now the opposite should be true. Try tilting your head up at 95° - 110°. The only way to grind your upper and lower teeth is by engaging 4 major masticating (chewing) muscles attached to these bones: the masseter, temporalis medial pterygoid and ateral pterygoid. Not only do you have to engage them, but they will need to contract across their full dynamic range for your teeth to come together. This is probably a bigger ask compared to keeping your head tucked in/lower than 90°.

The pillow

Something which may be contributing to the bruxism-inducing angle (<90 font="">°) or BIA which I am now coining, is your pillow. If your shoulders aren't also on your pillow, it will put your neck at the BIA, which you should try to avoid if you want to PROBABLY reduce bruxism.
Now I don't know enough about proper sleeping positions to recommend anything, but I've also been sleeping up higher on my pillow and it may be helping me.

Considering there is no true 'treatment', just ways to deal with the symptoms, I can't see how this will hurt.

The drawbacks

Firstly, any sleepytime adjustments will render this moot. I don't recommend tying/fixing anything to your neck or head for sleep either, as this can be dangerous and lead to asphyxiation. 

Secondly, this may not even work. It hasn't been proven yet, and I could still be under the placebo effect. I would like to see it tested on a large number of people to see its impact. Even being mindful of the angle of head during sleep may help. Who knows?


Maybe something to keep in mind.