Rhombus of Ruin accommodates Psychonauts with a comfortable home in virtual reality. Few aspects of its composition feel conditional, granting Psychonauts' beloved motif ample room to work through PlayStation VR's intrinsic weaknesses. Interquels, typically a model disposability, don't seem so strained or contrived inside of this peculiar parallelogram.
Staring at a rhombus isn’t too far removed from trying to make sense of Psychonauts. Double Fine’s 2005 debut was bursting with creative energy but burdened with frantic conduct, birthing a manic achievement that nevertheless enraptured an audience and qualified the odd experience as “worth it.” By comparison, a rhombi’s mixture of acute and obtuse angles preclude it from nature while its rigid commitment to equality renders it pleasing to the eye. In their respective fields, Psychonauts and rhombi are comparable measures of ambiguity.
Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin aims to not only bridge the gap between Psychonauts and its upcoming proper sequel; it attempts to mend the cerebral disparity induced by assigning its namesake with a either a genre or a definition. Rhombus of Ruin is neither a platformer adapted from Tim Schafer’s magic brain nor a wandering intellectual property in search of a suitable home. It is an adventure game that happens to take place in virtual reality, and one that leverages Psychonauts‘ inventive mechanics against PlayStation VR’s accepted shortcomings.
Rhombus of Ruin’s premise is sharp and quick. Razputin ‘”Raz” Aquato, affable protagonist extraordinaire, is now a full-blown psychonaut and part of a crew dispatched to rescue Truman Zannotto. Raz’s former camp counselors—Coach Oleander, Sasha, and Mia—have become his peers and, along with Truman’s daughter Lili, crash land their jet in the pernicious Rhombus of Ruin, an underwater, abandoned psychonaut facility. Complications ensue, mysterious opponents emerge, and soon Raz is responsible for rescuing everyone, including himself.
Raz’ psychic powers are a good fit inside of virtual reality. Clairvoyance is effective shorthand for basic movement, allowing Raz safe context to teleport/body-hop around environments. This works well, and keeps the player’s soul intact by ensuring movement doesn’t come with a side helping of nausea. Pyrokinesis (lighting things on fire), psi blast (throwing rocks, but with your mind), and telekinesis (obviously) are safer plays, and are all as simple as looking at the object you wish for Raz to affect. Moving objects around with telekinesis, using both head-movement and the left analog stick, can get a little tricky, but it’s only frustrating in one brief object-stacking instance.
Predictably, as soon as Raz’s powers are refreshed in the player’s mind and reintroduced in virtual reality, they’re taken away. The psychonauts team becomes scattered and Raz must reacquire his abilities by reassembling his team. A good chunk of Rhombus of Ruin is composed by body-hoping into successive fish prowling around the underwater facility. This moves Raz to a half dozen different environments (essentially levels) flush with adventure-game style puzzles, in addition to providing adequate room for Double Fine’s cheeky humor to fill up space.
Lili, for example, is found in the back of a train car pounding a hammer on a presumably not-inert bomb. Clairvoyance’ing into her mind reveals that she thinks she’s petting flowers, tasking Raz with a way to snap her out of it and come to her senses. This process, in a variety of manners, composes most of Rhombus of Ruin. Look around the environment, take account of all available variables, and try to incorporate them as a solution to an implicit problem.
Because Rhombus of Ruin is (1) a Psychonauts game and (2) a Double Fine game, the context powering puzzle solutions is both inventive and hilarious. When Coach Oleander is in the bathroom, you can properly supply him with more toilet paper or you can make him wipe his ass with a pillow (“any port in the storm,” is his response as he accept the pillow). Similarly, the Inception-level insanity of Clairvoyance’ing like three levels deep never acknowledges its own absurdity, projecting confidence in Double Fine’s own writing and their belief that the player will accept it as a natural extension of Rhombus of Ruin’s world. Yeah, it’s weird, but very little of Rhombus of Ruin exists without a specific purpose.
Aside from the direct transition of psychic powers, much of the intangible feel of Psychonauts remains present in Rhombus of Ruin. Hearing the original voice team from Psychonauts and a few unobtrusive call backs are expected and appreciated, but, in the case of the under-wraps antagonist, examining serious mental crises and searching for pliable solutions feel just as important as snappy writing and wacky puzzles. Psychonauts was created in an era when angry/snarky-protagonist syndrome was at an all-time high, and Raz, working through sentimentality and fear, was likable and relatable in ways his murderous peers couldn’t be bothered with. Yeah, you could (and still can) throw doors in people’s brains and indulge in the subversive motivations of obscure fish, but you don’t, ironically, have to question whether or not you are a psychopath when you are finished playing it.
Rhombus of Ruin, like Raz, is a more self-assured slice of Psychonauts. It’s not perfect—part of the unspoken Game Reviewer Code demands I have to whine about any application of a box-sliding puzzle and mention some key objects may be easy to overlook—but Rhombus of Ruin is confident in its concept of self. It’s hard to meander around the periphery or waste time when you already know what you’re doing.
$20 for a two hour experience seems to be the going-rate for the first generation of virtual reality, and, while this is outside of console norms, it’s satisfying in virtual space. Batman: Arkham VR made me feel like Batman. Driveclub VR accurately reproduced being guy in an expensive car. Rez Infinite made an atheist temporarily believe in a higher power. Rhombus of Ruin makes you feel like a psychonaut, which, after being denied any form of that sensation for a dozen years, both met and exceeded personal expectations.
New players, too, should find that Rhombus of Ruin accommodates Psychonauts with a comfortable home in virtual reality. Hardly any facet of its composition feels conditional, granting Psychonauts’ beloved motif ample room to work through PlayStation VR’s intrinsic weaknesses. Interquels, typically a model disposability, don’t seem so strained or contrived inside of this peculiar parallelogram.
