”Psychonauts” is crazy good

“Psychonauts”

Majesco for

Xbox,

$49.99

••• (out of four)

Rating: T (Teen)

“Psychonauts” is a trip – a brain-bending trip to la-la land, that is. It’s also a fresh, creatively designed adventure packed with plenty of jumping, collecting and psi-blasting.

The oval-headed Razputin, the game’s goggle-wearing boy protagonist who bolted from his life at the circus, sneaks into a freak-filled summer camp for the mentally gifted in hopes of being trained to become a psychonaut, a sort of mental beat cop.

It’s not long before Raz is jumping from one mind to another, gathering figments of imagination, uncovering locked-away memories, cleaning out mental cobwebs and – get this – lugging away emotional baggage. Seriously. I couldn’t make this stuff up: It’s really that zany.

There’s even an old psychic sage lingering in his mind, whom our eager camper can summon for advice with – no joke – a piece of bacon from his backpack.

The mindscapes are also bizarre and wildly diverse, ranging from a pitfall-filled war zone to a tightly organized cube that suddenly bursts open and spews out foes eager to erase all memory of your existence. The over-the-top colorful scenery dances like a Tim Burton movie viewed through a kaleidoscope.

As he sharpens his mind at camp, Raz earns merit badges that give our crazy cadet more psychic powers. In no time, he’ll even be using his mind to torch foes and to turn invisible.

Imaginative as the presentation and supernatural powers are, the basic game play does feel a bit familiar – but in a good way. If you’ve played any other pitfall- jumping, collect-the-goodies style game (think the recent “Super Mario” games), you’ll be able to quickly hop about inside others’ brains without even opening the instruction booklet.

With its mind-jumping mayhem, “Psychonauts” is definitely a breath of fresh air. It is crazy, though. Crazy good.