The winners of the Game Critics Awards: Best of E3 2002 are out, and two exciting games for the Xbox are their to claim their titles. Psychonauts was awarded Best Original Game, and our good friend Blinx was right there behind them as runner up.

“Tim Schafer is a man so creative that we’re almost inclined to kick him out of the gaming industry. Why? The bottom line is that he makes everyone else’s games look so damn derivative. In Psychonauts, Schafer has concocted a circus-like hodgepodge of zany characters and game environments to tell the story of Raz, a gifted little lad who must have just missed the application deadline to Professor Xavier’s school for the gifted.
Read on for the full story . . .

As a result, Raz is apparently shipped off to psychic summer camp to develop his psychic abilities, in the hopes that he one day might become a Psychonaut. At psychic summer camp, psychic-wannabe Raz can earn special psychic merit badges, one of we hope might be a badge that decrees a moratorium on the use of the word psychic in the game. But seriously, things get interesting when Raz gets to jump into the minds of 16 individuals at the nearby insane asylum, and in turn use his psychic abilities like firestarting and invisibility to defeat some real inner-demons. The third person action adventure gameplay is a departure from Schafer’s previous work, but his trademark originality is still here in spades.”, said Geoff Keighley, Associate Chairman, Game Critics Awards, Editor-in-Chief, GameSlice.


The Game Critics Awards are the only independent E3 awards, voted on by editors from nearly 40 leading outlets that cover games, including the top magazines, online sites, newspapers, and television programs. Visit the Game Critics Awards site here.

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