Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin VR review

I have been plowing through VR games in the £15-20 range recently. I recently finished Until Dawn: Rush of Blood and then, grateful for the complete change of scene, I thought I would try Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin. Until Dawn was a horror shooter on a roller-coaster with a ton of jump scares, whereas Psychonauts is a humorous and mostly stationary adventure game. I highly recommend doing things this way round.

In the Rhombus of Ruin you play Raz, the newest member of the team of Psychonauts. I haven’t played any of the other games in the series but it really doesn’t matter. The characters are fun and the story is standalone. If you are new to VR and are worried about motion sickness, then this is highly recommended for reasons that are best explained by the plot.

The team is on a plane and as Raz, you are still experimenting and learning about your psychic abilities. Because you are on a plane, this is done from a seated position. The plane crashes and the team is scattered and when you awaken you are strapped motionless to a chair. Fortunately, your psychic abilities allow you to transport your conscious into the various minions and creatures you see and you can get them to press button and so on. Essentially, this is a puzzler and as everything is viewed from within stationary minds, there is no threat of dreaded VR motion sickness.

At first, your abilities are essentially mind jumping and psychic prodding. As you release other members of the psychonaut team, you get better abilities like being able to blast stuff and set things on fire. You also travel around quite a bit and soon find yourself jumping into things like jellyfish, rats and all sorts (mild spoiler: you are underwater).

I really enjoyed this game and highly recommend it. It’s fun and the VR is top notch. The only real negative was that it was short. I finished it in about 2 hours. So while the story was enjoyable and the characters were great, it felt slightly perfunctory and never really had a chance to go anywhere too deep. The fact I wanted a bit more is a good thing I guess, it just depends how much action you want for £15 (roughly).

Personally I loved Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin. It could have been longer and I will never play it again but if a sequel came out I would definitely get it. Recommended.