"But DoTT fits the same place in my mind with Psychonauts: I plainly don't get why so many people are so stoked about them."
I really, really like almost anything that involves manifesting the inside of the mind, as long as it's halfway decently done. (That is, it doesn't have to be excellent, just not terrible.)
But even as one who rather liked the game, I will say Psychonauts has a particularly horrible pacing problem where it takes too long to get to the first level, and the first level is (IMHO) the worst one in the game that most fails to take advantage of the premise, and then it takes too long to get to the second level, which is the second worst one in the game in terms of taking advantage of the premise. Also both those levels are themselves too long; I'm pretty sure they're padded out to try to make all the major levels similar in length, but "learn how to use the jumping controls" simply doesn't warrant the same amount of time as "resolve a paranoid schizophrenic's conspiracy issues". Things don't really start feeling unique until the third level, but it's a lot to swallow to get that far. I've tried to replay it a couple of times and bounced off of this; if I ever try again I'm going to try to go online and steal someone's save file just before the third level.
As much as I liked it, I've had a really hard time recommending it to anyone for this reason.
I really, really like almost anything that involves manifesting the inside of the mind, as long as it's halfway decently done. (That is, it doesn't have to be excellent, just not terrible.)
But even as one who rather liked the game, I will say Psychonauts has a particularly horrible pacing problem where it takes too long to get to the first level, and the first level is (IMHO) the worst one in the game that most fails to take advantage of the premise, and then it takes too long to get to the second level, which is the second worst one in the game in terms of taking advantage of the premise. Also both those levels are themselves too long; I'm pretty sure they're padded out to try to make all the major levels similar in length, but "learn how to use the jumping controls" simply doesn't warrant the same amount of time as "resolve a paranoid schizophrenic's conspiracy issues". Things don't really start feeling unique until the third level, but it's a lot to swallow to get that far. I've tried to replay it a couple of times and bounced off of this; if I ever try again I'm going to try to go online and steal someone's save file just before the third level.
As much as I liked it, I've had a really hard time recommending it to anyone for this reason.