Am I crazy? That's what some staff members were asking me when I let on to the fact that I was awarding yet another game with a 4.5 out of 5 rating score. I don't think I've ever given out this many in this small a time period. It all started with the likes of Oddworld Inhabitants' final foray into gaming, the brilliant Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath; then ESPN MLB 2K5 proved to be the ultimate in baseball heaven and garnered the rating; Unreal Championship 2, God of War, Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition; Doom 3 for the Xbox; and Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. I began to sit back and wonder, am I being too charitable? Or am I simply running into a streak of genuinely outstanding games more often that I expected? Maybe it's just a matter of more dedicated development teams taking me by surprise.

Leave it to Tim Schafer and Double Fine Productions to join the 4.5 club. At first I questioned the idea, and even took a look back at the troubled history of Psychonauts. I remember when Microsoft Studios first picked up on the game's distribution and then, in the midst of its development heights, dropped it like a sack of potatoes. Fortunately, Majesco, a company that's on the rise with a lot of good games of their own, picked up on the game's distribution and released it with flying colors this month. It's seen a troubled road, but, fortunately, it hasn't affected the final product, as Psychonauts is a brilliant step into the evolution of platforming as we know it. Maybe it was the presentation, maybe the gameplay, or maybe a little bit of everything that eventually made me happily stick the high score on this one.

The plot itself is enough to scratch a few heads. The game focuses on the goings-on at a summer camp that's actually working a double purpose and training up-and-coming psychic soldiers, called Psychonauts. Running the camp are a blunt, strict sergeant and a couple of bland counselors, as well as some folks behind the scenes who may not be quite what they seem. Getting into the middle of all this is a rambunctious youth by the name of Rasputin, or Raz for short, who surprisingly has a few Psychonauts skills even though he hasn't taken a single lesson at the camp yet. At first, the counselors are hesitant about taking him in, but the sergeant sees potential, and decides to enroll Raz in the facility's teachings, pending his parents' approve. So they're on the way to the camp, and Raz is in a hurry to make himself a full-fledged psychonaut.

But there's something afoot at the camp. Some evil-minded genius has plans for the riff-raff attending the courses, and intends on using their brains to power up a new arsenal of weapons. And seeing how most of the kids are unable to really defend themselves (one even wears a hat made of tin foil to avoid infiltration), it's up to Raz to literally enter their heads and traverse into some imaginary worlds, based on their memories, to unravel the madness and stop the madman before his plan comes into fruition.

The game unfolds across a number of levels, some of which take place in the camp itself so you can interact with different students and items, and the others inside the imagination of a number of characters, ranging from the madcap sergeant who seems incredibly focused on all things war to an underwater fish who paints Raz as a figure of fear, trashing a gigantic city. Each one has certain objectives to complete, like reaching particular points in the level or finding specific items. Along the way, there are other things that Raz can pick up, including a number of different psi-induced neon patterns that can allow him to power up once a certain amount are acquired.