I know people cream their jeans about the first Psychonauts game but that wasn’t really my experience with it. Big uppies to the visual style and really unique level-design, but the controls and platforming were uhhhh… POOP?? It was still a really fun game, but I just didn’t find it to be the game that everyone held up so high at the time. There were things I found odd with it like how some powers were only useful for short sections of the game and then never again, and generally just how annoying it was to platform and move around. The story though? That shit rules, dog. Psychonauts uses everything in its crayola box bussy to personify ideas and mental concepts into living designs, be it through the enemies or the overall builds of the levels as they shapeshift around you. The levels were just as much characters as the characters were, and the exploration was rewarded with interesting character writing that was shown instead of told without force feeding you a novel of it at the same time. It’s a game that I wish I liked more and I think I’m only babbling about it because I reviewed it when I was new to this site and didn’t really understand how to barf up how I felt in words yet.
Anyways, this is a review for Psychonauts 2 and the short of it is that it was by and large a tremendous upgrade from its predecessor. My main gripes revolving around the game’s controls and camera angles flew right out the window pretty much immediately. Movement and platforming was so buttery smooth and that dodge roll they gave Raz might as well have renamed him Rizz instead. I was so happy that they gave most of the essential powers in the first few minutes, allowing you to play around with them from the get go. With the added addition of the new enemies, now just about every power has a place on the table, allowing you to dish out pain in any way that you see fit in the moment. While there are particular enemies that require certain powers to be exterminated, the Pyrokinesis and PSI Blast abilities still carried most of the weight. The Time Bubble power is pretty much a must have moving forward, and the upgrades to all of the abilities makes them so much more useful than some of the abilities from the first game. My only minor gripe with the combat was having to assign powers mid-battle through the power wheel. For whatever reason I just would not budge from removing Levitation from LT and anytime I had to remove it during a wave of Panic Attacks and Enablers, I did audibly groan but that only happened a few times in the late-game. I definitely appreciate the challenge even if it meant swapping hotkeys like I was playing a speedrunner’s version of ball in a cup. However, hitting the objects that dropped health would send them into the fucking stratosphere sometimes, which made them pointless in my time of dire need. I would say that my least favorite boss fight was the plant one just because it was probably the most restrictive, but that’s one boss out of several who generally made for some really fun segments.
Aside from this game basically Kingdom Heartsing me by being a direct sequel of a 2nd game that I don’t own the console to, it was still a groovy time from start to finish. While none of the levels hold their own version of “Milla’s Secret” nearly at the same intensity, it was still a rather warming story about a group of friends working through their regrets with the help of Raz. It’s a story that still “went there”, just in different aspects. I don’t personally need the most fucked up thing to happen that lands this game into another 4,000 Top 10 Darkest Moments in video games lists until the end of time for it to be compelling. People are still DYING, Kim. I found the deep dive into the other Psychonauts to be rather interesting as it helped build the world that exists outside of the levels to a higher detail, closer to the ones that represent the actual brains where all the showmanship is. Of course the actual brain levels are still the best part of the game too and a whole heaping of them really delivered. I found both the cooking and concert levels to be the stand outs, as they represented the chaotic unraveling, or re-raveling, of their mindscapes so well. Like honestly, is the character losing his damn mind through sensory overload or am I, because that was quite the adventure into horrible ASMR that I didn’t expect to fall into.
And that’s where this series really shines because who else is crafting level design in a way that really puts you in the shoes of it’s characters in the same way that Psychonauts does? Where it really asks you to maybe reflect on your own trauma by dousing you in colors and sometimes difficult climbing; where mental healing and overcoming your obstacles is truly the ultimate goal at the end of the day. As someone who has mental illness in my family, it’s such a tender way of showcasing forgiveness for not just someone else but also yourself. It’s exquisite art design that is packed in just about every crevice and corner with some sort of metaphorical punch to each character’s inner turmoil, whether they have an addiction, horrible regrets, or unimaginable shame. There was care in connecting the platforming mechanics to the overall visual storytelling that combines into this whirlwind of gameplay that tells its story, with narrative twists that really make ya go “ZOINKS”. Interactivity is so fucking cool, bro!!!!
With that too, the game still has its comedic beats of course. The comedy is still written in a way that isn’t competing with the more downer sides of the plot because it’s written in a way that understands when each tone has its place to shine and both lift the cutscenes up without overshadowing each other. That is an aspect of both games that still rings very true. Unrelated to this though, Raz is voiced by Richard Steven Horvitz who also voices Billy from The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, which made his blood curdling screams that he makes upon falling off a ledge really funny to me for some reason. Dying really wasn’t an issue because I genuinely laughed every time he screamed, as horrible as that sounds.
Related to Raz’s voice though, my real complaint of this game, that is still rather minor, is that Raz honestly talks way too much. I know that I’m 3 years late to this game, but I’ve been noticing a trend lately with any game involving a puzzle that if you don’t solve it in 2 seconds, the characters feel the need to just blurt out the answer for you as if you can’t figure it out for yourself. I am all for accessibility features for kids and everyone else but I really wish you could turn off tips without having to mute the voice audio in the menu. Sometimes I just want to examine what I’m working with before jumping into it and I don’t need Raz backseating the shit out of me- “I need to focus more with my Clairvoyance to-” at every chance- “I hear some emotional baggage around”- he could get- “I think I need to connect blank with blank in order to progress the level” Raz, please, I beg of you.
But all in all, this was a really good time and I felt like it would be. I really wanted to like Psychonauts 1 a lot more than I actually did and when I heard this sequel turned out great, I was more than excited to play it. Overall, I found the levels to be a lot more memorable here as well. I’m sorry Milkman fans, but I have made a solemn oath to never lie in a Backloggd review unless it was about how good I am at the games I’m criticizing. While this game does have things that irk me, they’re really not something that dings it in any grimy way. I guess they’re just more of a personal preference. But, having played this and Portal immediately after beating Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, it was a huge breath of fresh air. Give me more games like this pretty please, please, please please.
Also, stop posting this fucking meme every November, you goddamn selective assholes. Whoever made this image and then dropped it into the piss ocean that is Xitter needs to answer for their crimes.
Anyways, this is a review for Psychonauts 2 and the short of it is that it was by and large a tremendous upgrade from its predecessor. My main gripes revolving around the game’s controls and camera angles flew right out the window pretty much immediately. Movement and platforming was so buttery smooth and that dodge roll they gave Raz might as well have renamed him Rizz instead. I was so happy that they gave most of the essential powers in the first few minutes, allowing you to play around with them from the get go. With the added addition of the new enemies, now just about every power has a place on the table, allowing you to dish out pain in any way that you see fit in the moment. While there are particular enemies that require certain powers to be exterminated, the Pyrokinesis and PSI Blast abilities still carried most of the weight. The Time Bubble power is pretty much a must have moving forward, and the upgrades to all of the abilities makes them so much more useful than some of the abilities from the first game. My only minor gripe with the combat was having to assign powers mid-battle through the power wheel. For whatever reason I just would not budge from removing Levitation from LT and anytime I had to remove it during a wave of Panic Attacks and Enablers, I did audibly groan but that only happened a few times in the late-game. I definitely appreciate the challenge even if it meant swapping hotkeys like I was playing a speedrunner’s version of ball in a cup. However, hitting the objects that dropped health would send them into the fucking stratosphere sometimes, which made them pointless in my time of dire need. I would say that my least favorite boss fight was the plant one just because it was probably the most restrictive, but that’s one boss out of several who generally made for some really fun segments.
Aside from this game basically Kingdom Heartsing me by being a direct sequel of a 2nd game that I don’t own the console to, it was still a groovy time from start to finish. While none of the levels hold their own version of “Milla’s Secret” nearly at the same intensity, it was still a rather warming story about a group of friends working through their regrets with the help of Raz. It’s a story that still “went there”, just in different aspects. I don’t personally need the most fucked up thing to happen that lands this game into another 4,000 Top 10 Darkest Moments in video games lists until the end of time for it to be compelling. People are still DYING, Kim. I found the deep dive into the other Psychonauts to be rather interesting as it helped build the world that exists outside of the levels to a higher detail, closer to the ones that represent the actual brains where all the showmanship is. Of course the actual brain levels are still the best part of the game too and a whole heaping of them really delivered. I found both the cooking and concert levels to be the stand outs, as they represented the chaotic unraveling, or re-raveling, of their mindscapes so well. Like honestly, is the character losing his damn mind through sensory overload or am I, because that was quite the adventure into horrible ASMR that I didn’t expect to fall into.
And that’s where this series really shines because who else is crafting level design in a way that really puts you in the shoes of it’s characters in the same way that Psychonauts does? Where it really asks you to maybe reflect on your own trauma by dousing you in colors and sometimes difficult climbing; where mental healing and overcoming your obstacles is truly the ultimate goal at the end of the day. As someone who has mental illness in my family, it’s such a tender way of showcasing forgiveness for not just someone else but also yourself. It’s exquisite art design that is packed in just about every crevice and corner with some sort of metaphorical punch to each character’s inner turmoil, whether they have an addiction, horrible regrets, or unimaginable shame. There was care in connecting the platforming mechanics to the overall visual storytelling that combines into this whirlwind of gameplay that tells its story, with narrative twists that really make ya go “ZOINKS”. Interactivity is so fucking cool, bro!!!!
With that too, the game still has its comedic beats of course. The comedy is still written in a way that isn’t competing with the more downer sides of the plot because it’s written in a way that understands when each tone has its place to shine and both lift the cutscenes up without overshadowing each other. That is an aspect of both games that still rings very true. Unrelated to this though, Raz is voiced by Richard Steven Horvitz who also voices Billy from The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, which made his blood curdling screams that he makes upon falling off a ledge really funny to me for some reason. Dying really wasn’t an issue because I genuinely laughed every time he screamed, as horrible as that sounds.
Related to Raz’s voice though, my real complaint of this game, that is still rather minor, is that Raz honestly talks way too much. I know that I’m 3 years late to this game, but I’ve been noticing a trend lately with any game involving a puzzle that if you don’t solve it in 2 seconds, the characters feel the need to just blurt out the answer for you as if you can’t figure it out for yourself. I am all for accessibility features for kids and everyone else but I really wish you could turn off tips without having to mute the voice audio in the menu. Sometimes I just want to examine what I’m working with before jumping into it and I don’t need Raz backseating the shit out of me- “I need to focus more with my Clairvoyance to-” at every chance- “I hear some emotional baggage around”- he could get- “I think I need to connect blank with blank in order to progress the level” Raz, please, I beg of you.
But all in all, this was a really good time and I felt like it would be. I really wanted to like Psychonauts 1 a lot more than I actually did and when I heard this sequel turned out great, I was more than excited to play it. Overall, I found the levels to be a lot more memorable here as well. I’m sorry Milkman fans, but I have made a solemn oath to never lie in a Backloggd review unless it was about how good I am at the games I’m criticizing. While this game does have things that irk me, they’re really not something that dings it in any grimy way. I guess they’re just more of a personal preference. But, having played this and Portal immediately after beating Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, it was a huge breath of fresh air. Give me more games like this pretty please, please, please please.
Also, stop posting this fucking meme every November, you goddamn selective assholes. Whoever made this image and then dropped it into the piss ocean that is Xitter needs to answer for their crimes.
Bumped this up to my #2 of all time after this replay. Reviewing it is incredibly daunting for some reason! We'll just say that the sheer scale and scope of its wacky creativity bring the purest joy to my jaded millennial heart, and that in a post-Yooka-Laylee world it's delightful to have a long-awaited 3D platformer actually turn out amazing.
Probably my favorite story of any game too. Raz and Lili win Cutest Couple forever.
Probably my favorite story of any game too. Raz and Lili win Cutest Couple forever.
I never thought this day would come but I guess it has.
Psychonauts 2 has finally been released, and it FUCKS HARD.
Pretty much all control problems from the first game are gone, and everything feels so smooth to play; that feeling you get when the controller just melds with your hands making you emerged with your surroundings, very few games can truly give you an experience like that.
Not only does the game look fantastic from a graphics stand but it also looks fantastic from a style aspect. Even 16 years later and it still has the charm and humor the original had and then some. Almost every character looks deformed; like someone a really crap drawing on a napkin and then used that as concept art, but it's so charming and oddly fitting with the world of this game that you just learn to accept it after a while.
The level design in the first was some of the best of that generation and it's just as good here. Not only are the levels masterfully designed from a gameplay angle but they're also outstanding in narrative and stylistic. Each mind is unique for each character, one mind might be a psychedelic Woodstock like concert, and another might be a hospital casino hybrid. The levels become character onto themselves making exploration a treat rather than an obligation.
The one aspect that really caught me off-guard was the game's story and writing. For how funny the game can be it also balances the emotional and heartwarming moments amazingly. This game also gets an award for outstanding portrayals of mental illnesses such as "PTSD, Depression, Anxiety, Schizophrenia, and Panic Attacks" just to name a few. This game also gets the award for having a gay couple that actually acts like real-life gay people. IE regular people.
This was such an amazing surprise. Going into this I was thinking to myself "There is no way in hell this is gonna be as good as the first, at best it's gonna be a fun time with some characters I haven't seen in years"; oh how wrong I was. This game has surpassed the first game in pretty much every category and is now in my Top 5 favorite games ever. Psychonauts 1 will always have its place in my heart, but this game is just so great I just couldn't resist giving this a 10/10. (with a BADASS seal of approval)
Psychonauts 2 has finally been released, and it FUCKS HARD.
Pretty much all control problems from the first game are gone, and everything feels so smooth to play; that feeling you get when the controller just melds with your hands making you emerged with your surroundings, very few games can truly give you an experience like that.
Not only does the game look fantastic from a graphics stand but it also looks fantastic from a style aspect. Even 16 years later and it still has the charm and humor the original had and then some. Almost every character looks deformed; like someone a really crap drawing on a napkin and then used that as concept art, but it's so charming and oddly fitting with the world of this game that you just learn to accept it after a while.
The level design in the first was some of the best of that generation and it's just as good here. Not only are the levels masterfully designed from a gameplay angle but they're also outstanding in narrative and stylistic. Each mind is unique for each character, one mind might be a psychedelic Woodstock like concert, and another might be a hospital casino hybrid. The levels become character onto themselves making exploration a treat rather than an obligation.
The one aspect that really caught me off-guard was the game's story and writing. For how funny the game can be it also balances the emotional and heartwarming moments amazingly. This game also gets an award for outstanding portrayals of mental illnesses such as "PTSD, Depression, Anxiety, Schizophrenia, and Panic Attacks" just to name a few. This game also gets the award for having a gay couple that actually acts like real-life gay people. IE regular people.
This was such an amazing surprise. Going into this I was thinking to myself "There is no way in hell this is gonna be as good as the first, at best it's gonna be a fun time with some characters I haven't seen in years"; oh how wrong I was. This game has surpassed the first game in pretty much every category and is now in my Top 5 favorite games ever. Psychonauts 1 will always have its place in my heart, but this game is just so great I just couldn't resist giving this a 10/10. (with a BADASS seal of approval)
Full of creative ideas and incredible writing, Psychonauts 2 is a rare beast - a longed for sequel to a cult classic that delivers in pretty much every aspect.
So 2000's, like a PS2 game with 100x the polish and budget. Some people are amiss to the game's shift away from low-stakes comedy to something more 'therapy-core', but the cast felt very and endearing. Psychonauts' visual metaphors and plastercraft dioramas mean even the most perceivably corny moments were given great care and attention. You all see fuckers praise games for things like 'the designers really cared!' but no like, Double Fine packed way too much shit in here, a single level will have as many fully-fleshed ideas as an entire game. There's one world populated by pagesketch people, and they're all voiced by dozens of different actors and all have unique dialogue when you attack them. It's fucking insane. We need more insane AAA budget games like this.
This is also an offhand but, after Hogwarts Legacy and Sirona Ryan being the most embarrassing damage control in games this year (so far), I couldn't stop beaming with joy at Helmut Fullbear, the gay hippie rockstar voiced by motherfucking JACK BLACK. And it's like, excellent rep, 'cause (1) he's a prominent character who gets his own world and musical number, and (2) they spend equal amounts of time with his husband, Bob, another banger character (not my favorite world to play, but the one whose story and environmental imagery was most resonant to me). This hit my soul so warm man.
Weakest part for me was the larger Maligula plot, which went over my head or mostly bored me, plus some odd ethnic baggage thrown in. This chunk of the plot feels like it was a written immediately after 1, right on the heels of Middle Eastern xenophobia and terror rhetoric, and instead of starting from scratch, they tried their damnedest to chop into something more reflective of the times. You know exactly what direction it's gonna go, it not-so-subtly tiptoes around the larger moral implications, and it never feels much better than being 'hollow'. When Oleander is forgiven in 1 after kidnappings and building war machines, it just feels like the universe's silly rules and a big joke in a larger comedy. These 'forgiving hitler' riffs feel out of place and in the tender, repressed story they're trying to tell here. You can't play shit like this straight.
This is also an offhand but, after Hogwarts Legacy and Sirona Ryan being the most embarrassing damage control in games this year (so far), I couldn't stop beaming with joy at Helmut Fullbear, the gay hippie rockstar voiced by motherfucking JACK BLACK. And it's like, excellent rep, 'cause (1) he's a prominent character who gets his own world and musical number, and (2) they spend equal amounts of time with his husband, Bob, another banger character (not my favorite world to play, but the one whose story and environmental imagery was most resonant to me). This hit my soul so warm man.
Weakest part for me was the larger Maligula plot, which went over my head or mostly bored me, plus some odd ethnic baggage thrown in. This chunk of the plot feels like it was a written immediately after 1, right on the heels of Middle Eastern xenophobia and terror rhetoric, and instead of starting from scratch, they tried their damnedest to chop into something more reflective of the times. You know exactly what direction it's gonna go, it not-so-subtly tiptoes around the larger moral implications, and it never feels much better than being 'hollow'. When Oleander is forgiven in 1 after kidnappings and building war machines, it just feels like the universe's silly rules and a big joke in a larger comedy. These 'forgiving hitler' riffs feel out of place and in the tender, repressed story they're trying to tell here. You can't play shit like this straight.
Psychonauts 2 isn't just a follow-up to an old video game, it feels like the Psychonauts game Double Fine always wanted to make, but they had to make the first game in order to be able to tell this story.
Psychonauts 2's story is the star of the show and everything you do in the game works in favor of the narrative. The story is so good, in fact, that it makes the previous Psychonauts games feel like origin stories to the true story of The Psychonauts they tell in this game. Psychonauts 2 is not the sequel to Psychonauts 1. Psychonauts 1 is the prequel to Psychonauts 2.
The writing in the game is wonderful. The major story beats hit hard, the small character moments made me smile, and almost all of the jokes got a good chuckle out of me. But while 95% of the humor is solid, there’s that last 5% that involves a weird amount of barfing jokes that I could’ve done without. There’s one level where the bad jokes paired with a recurring problem where background NPCs trigger dialogue too frequently. I had to actually mute the game in one section to stop hearing an NPC repeat the same barfing noise every few seconds.
Psychonauts 2 not only delivers an incredibly meaningful story continuation to the first game, it also builds on the gameplay foundations Psychonauts established in ways that make Psychonauts 2 feel simultaneously like an old-school 3D platformer from the PS2 era while still managing to go toe-to-toe against modern platformers. I had a blast wandering around the world and collecting everything, so much so that I didn’t mind the little bit of cleanup I had to do at the end of the game. While some of the collectibles were occasionally annoying as they were on non-repeatable sliding sections, or they were designed to blend into the environment, for the most part the game does a good job of making it easy to find what you’re missing during cleanup.
The presentation of the game is also spectacular. They managed to take the goofy style from the original PS2 game and modernize the graphics while remaining faithful to the art design of the Psychonauts world. The visuals and sound design fit the story and game so perfectly, I cannot imagine one without the other.
Weirdly, I did not love the first Psychonauts game. I enjoyed the characters and the story but I didn’t love actually playing it. So, I wasn’t sure what to expect going into the sequel. I certainly did not expect a game that not only feels great to play, but also has one of my favorite video game stories of all time. Psychonauts 2 is one of those video games where you can feel every ounce of love put into it. Tim Schafer and Double Fine really made something special with Psychonauts 2.
+ Phenomenal writing that shines not only in the big moments, but the small moments as well
+ Excellent visuals and art design
+ Great world and level design that are fun to explore
+ Feels great to play
+ Mostly fun collectible hunting
- Stray Thoughts collectibles occasionally annoying to find
- Environmental NPCs trigger dialogue way too frequently
Psychonauts 2's story is the star of the show and everything you do in the game works in favor of the narrative. The story is so good, in fact, that it makes the previous Psychonauts games feel like origin stories to the true story of The Psychonauts they tell in this game. Psychonauts 2 is not the sequel to Psychonauts 1. Psychonauts 1 is the prequel to Psychonauts 2.
The writing in the game is wonderful. The major story beats hit hard, the small character moments made me smile, and almost all of the jokes got a good chuckle out of me. But while 95% of the humor is solid, there’s that last 5% that involves a weird amount of barfing jokes that I could’ve done without. There’s one level where the bad jokes paired with a recurring problem where background NPCs trigger dialogue too frequently. I had to actually mute the game in one section to stop hearing an NPC repeat the same barfing noise every few seconds.
Psychonauts 2 not only delivers an incredibly meaningful story continuation to the first game, it also builds on the gameplay foundations Psychonauts established in ways that make Psychonauts 2 feel simultaneously like an old-school 3D platformer from the PS2 era while still managing to go toe-to-toe against modern platformers. I had a blast wandering around the world and collecting everything, so much so that I didn’t mind the little bit of cleanup I had to do at the end of the game. While some of the collectibles were occasionally annoying as they were on non-repeatable sliding sections, or they were designed to blend into the environment, for the most part the game does a good job of making it easy to find what you’re missing during cleanup.
The presentation of the game is also spectacular. They managed to take the goofy style from the original PS2 game and modernize the graphics while remaining faithful to the art design of the Psychonauts world. The visuals and sound design fit the story and game so perfectly, I cannot imagine one without the other.
Weirdly, I did not love the first Psychonauts game. I enjoyed the characters and the story but I didn’t love actually playing it. So, I wasn’t sure what to expect going into the sequel. I certainly did not expect a game that not only feels great to play, but also has one of my favorite video game stories of all time. Psychonauts 2 is one of those video games where you can feel every ounce of love put into it. Tim Schafer and Double Fine really made something special with Psychonauts 2.
+ Phenomenal writing that shines not only in the big moments, but the small moments as well
+ Excellent visuals and art design
+ Great world and level design that are fun to explore
+ Feels great to play
+ Mostly fun collectible hunting
- Stray Thoughts collectibles occasionally annoying to find
- Environmental NPCs trigger dialogue way too frequently
Hacer un videojuego sobre agentes secretos de la psique. Adentrarnos físicamente en los pensamientos de los demás, cada mente un mundo. Sin reglas, sin necesario apego a lógica espacial alguna, con la imaginación como único límite a lo que pueda presentarse en pantalla. Y que no haya nada nuevo ni original ni creativo ni salvaje ni sorprendente en él. Que todo sea apenas adorno pseudosurrealista para las ideas más masticadas, el diseño más convencional, el desarrollo más anodino, la jugabilidad más blanda. Supongo que los rincones más recónditos de la mente se rigen a rajatabla por el good-game-design.
El término disonancia ludonarrativa se nos ha aparecido hasta en la sopa, pero cuando la discrepancia es entre fondo y forma, ¿qué nombre le ponemos? Para eso todavía no han sacado un palabro. Por el bien de este texto digámosle, no sé, incoherencia formafondil. Bueno, pues la incoherencia formafondil es a Psychonauts 2 lo que la disonancia ludonarrativa a BioShock. Vamos, que la contradicción es sangrante, y el videojuego un plataformas del montón repleto de coleccionables engañifa.
En su día ya me disgustó notoriamente el Psychonauts original, pero al menos aquel diseño primerizo, tedioso y chapucero poseía ambición, intentaba cosas. Cada mente una forma de operar diferente. Lo que se llama tener espíritu. ¿Esta secuela? Un doblaje con chispa en un videojuego sin alma.
El término disonancia ludonarrativa se nos ha aparecido hasta en la sopa, pero cuando la discrepancia es entre fondo y forma, ¿qué nombre le ponemos? Para eso todavía no han sacado un palabro. Por el bien de este texto digámosle, no sé, incoherencia formafondil. Bueno, pues la incoherencia formafondil es a Psychonauts 2 lo que la disonancia ludonarrativa a BioShock. Vamos, que la contradicción es sangrante, y el videojuego un plataformas del montón repleto de coleccionables engañifa.
En su día ya me disgustó notoriamente el Psychonauts original, pero al menos aquel diseño primerizo, tedioso y chapucero poseía ambición, intentaba cosas. Cada mente una forma de operar diferente. Lo que se llama tener espíritu. ¿Esta secuela? Un doblaje con chispa en un videojuego sin alma.
Okay possible hyperbole, but I think Raz might be one of the best video game character designs ever, up there with Mario, Pyramid Head, the King from Katamari, et al. He embodies so perfectly (apart from a lack of gender options which would have been nice, though I understand logistically why they were nigh impossible to provide) what every ten-year-old kid imagines they would look like as a cool spy. Like, oh hell yeah, I would wear some big-ass goggles on my head. I don't know why, I just would—and you bet your ass they would start glowing whenever I put them on. Oh and as a spy I would naturally rock a trenchcoat and gloves. And maybe, like, a turtleneck? Yeah, adults wear those. They seem classy. And one unruly lock of hair would always be escaping from my cool helmet, to show that I live on the wild side...
I fixate on this point because, if Psychonauts 2 illustrates anything, it is the power of good art design. The art team pretty much carries the game imo. Of course there are other elements at work here—gameplay, level design, writing, acting—and they certainly do their part, but I don't think any of it would have gripped me without the visual presentation. Maybe I am just a sucker for stylized graphics over realism, but I found this ineffably mid-2000s vaguely Dreamworks-adjacent eccentric animated film world so gosh-darn inviting. Given that I haven't even played the first game, I was surprised by how nostalgic this one made me feel.
So the throwback vibes are A+, while the rest is...a solid B? I have no major complaints—everything works insofar as I was compelled to keep playing until the end. But I was left feeling that, despite the nostalgia factor hitting me like a bull's eye, the substance of the story was aimed at someone younger. The characterization is, ironically, a little on the superficial side—although you ostensibly spend the game delving into the darkest corners of the psyche, I never felt like I got to scratch too far below the surface. The internal worlds, although visually dazzling and richly varied, are often quite simple thematically, reducing characters to a primary habit, illness, or fixation ("uh oh, this one's got anxiety!"). I am probably asking the game to be something it is not; if more time was spent developing complex character portraits, there would be less time for all the conventional game stuff—the hopping around and punching things and so on. But in my perfect world, there would have been fewer characters and fewer brains to explore in Psychonauts 2, with more unexpected depths revealed in each one.
I have to give a special shout-out to Raz's goofy family of circus acrobats, who are one of the most endearing families in video games. It's kind of wild that I can hardly think of any other games in which the main character has a big family. Usually you're some detached lone wolf with no connections, or your family is dead, or you have, like, a Pokémom who never leaves your house.
EDIT: Upon further reflection I'm docking another half-star because I really think the game bites off more than it can chew thematically and and there are inconsistencies in how things like consent are portrayed—like the game wants to say that tampering with minds, especially without permission, is bad and can't "fix" anyone, but then [redacted for spoilers] in the end?? Ultimately the game oversimplifies its subject matter a little too much to leave a good taste in my mouth, and I really do wish the characters were given more attention and development.
I fixate on this point because, if Psychonauts 2 illustrates anything, it is the power of good art design. The art team pretty much carries the game imo. Of course there are other elements at work here—gameplay, level design, writing, acting—and they certainly do their part, but I don't think any of it would have gripped me without the visual presentation. Maybe I am just a sucker for stylized graphics over realism, but I found this ineffably mid-2000s vaguely Dreamworks-adjacent eccentric animated film world so gosh-darn inviting. Given that I haven't even played the first game, I was surprised by how nostalgic this one made me feel.
So the throwback vibes are A+, while the rest is...a solid B? I have no major complaints—everything works insofar as I was compelled to keep playing until the end. But I was left feeling that, despite the nostalgia factor hitting me like a bull's eye, the substance of the story was aimed at someone younger. The characterization is, ironically, a little on the superficial side—although you ostensibly spend the game delving into the darkest corners of the psyche, I never felt like I got to scratch too far below the surface. The internal worlds, although visually dazzling and richly varied, are often quite simple thematically, reducing characters to a primary habit, illness, or fixation ("uh oh, this one's got anxiety!"). I am probably asking the game to be something it is not; if more time was spent developing complex character portraits, there would be less time for all the conventional game stuff—the hopping around and punching things and so on. But in my perfect world, there would have been fewer characters and fewer brains to explore in Psychonauts 2, with more unexpected depths revealed in each one.
I have to give a special shout-out to Raz's goofy family of circus acrobats, who are one of the most endearing families in video games. It's kind of wild that I can hardly think of any other games in which the main character has a big family. Usually you're some detached lone wolf with no connections, or your family is dead, or you have, like, a Pokémom who never leaves your house.
EDIT: Upon further reflection I'm docking another half-star because I really think the game bites off more than it can chew thematically and and there are inconsistencies in how things like consent are portrayed—like the game wants to say that tampering with minds, especially without permission, is bad and can't "fix" anyone, but then [redacted for spoilers] in the end?? Ultimately the game oversimplifies its subject matter a little too much to leave a good taste in my mouth, and I really do wish the characters were given more attention and development.
Despite losing the grunge that I think defines the first game, this game felt like a fairly direct improvement in almost every aspect.
Level designs are continuously fun and creative, psychic abilities felt far better utilized, upgrades and pins helped to freshen up gameplay, and I felt like I vastly prefer the narrative and its themes in this entry compared to the first.
Small complaint though I did feel like the side cast I loved from the first game got sidelined for most of it. Also the combat is definitely more varied than in the first game but it ultimately still felt a bit stiff and bland.
Level designs are continuously fun and creative, psychic abilities felt far better utilized, upgrades and pins helped to freshen up gameplay, and I felt like I vastly prefer the narrative and its themes in this entry compared to the first.
Small complaint though I did feel like the side cast I loved from the first game got sidelined for most of it. Also the combat is definitely more varied than in the first game but it ultimately still felt a bit stiff and bland.
This review contains spoilers
Psychonauts 1 was a great example of using gameplay mechanics to explore narrative themes - every level had a unique gameplay gimmick designed to represent a character's personal trauma.
A level centered on bipolar disorder would flip between 'manic' and 'depressive' states at the drop of a hat. A level on how anxiety can hold you back featured a raging bull that would pull you to the start of the level whenever you slip up.
A level on paranoia turned into a pseudo-stealth mission where you had to avoid the gaze of security cameras and secret agents.
I'm not gonna pretend that these themes were super deep or couldn't be improved upon, but they set a high standard that few experiential games have ever lived up to.
Sadly, Psychonauts 2 doesn't live up to the first game's standard of blending mechanics and themes. In the sequel, the level gimmicks are purely visual, using motifs and metaphors to represent a character's repressed memories. The gameplay is static and rarely intersects with the marrative - each level will introduce a new enemy type or a new psychic power, but for the most part it's just the same old combat and platforming but with a new skin. You'll play through levels with wildly varying concepts like gambling addiction, losing touch with a loved one, and experiencing synesthesia, but the gameplay always feels like I'm just going through the motions. Compton's Cookoff and Bob's Bottles are the 2 exceptions to the rule, being the only levels that seriously mix up the gameplay.
Thankfully, the combat and platforming are deeper and more polished than the original, but they're still not good enough to hold up on their own. The combat system suffers from excessive visual clutter and the platforming still lacks satisfying movement mechanics or compelling obstacles course. This is mid-tier action-platforming and has nothing on games like ratchet and clank or mario odyssey.
I don't want to spoil too much of the story, but I was disappointed with how it relied on constant contrivances and retcons, creating links to the first game that felt totally unearned. I also think a lot of the character arcs were unfufilling and devoid of consquence, letting characters sidestep any real responsibility for their actions.
As negative as this sounds, I still REALLLLY enjoyed this game. The writing is just as charming and funny as the original, the new characters are all super likeable, and the visual design is absolutely GORGEOUS! It just.. didn't capture what I loved about the original, and I needed to ramble about it.
A level centered on bipolar disorder would flip between 'manic' and 'depressive' states at the drop of a hat. A level on how anxiety can hold you back featured a raging bull that would pull you to the start of the level whenever you slip up.
A level on paranoia turned into a pseudo-stealth mission where you had to avoid the gaze of security cameras and secret agents.
I'm not gonna pretend that these themes were super deep or couldn't be improved upon, but they set a high standard that few experiential games have ever lived up to.
Sadly, Psychonauts 2 doesn't live up to the first game's standard of blending mechanics and themes. In the sequel, the level gimmicks are purely visual, using motifs and metaphors to represent a character's repressed memories. The gameplay is static and rarely intersects with the marrative - each level will introduce a new enemy type or a new psychic power, but for the most part it's just the same old combat and platforming but with a new skin. You'll play through levels with wildly varying concepts like gambling addiction, losing touch with a loved one, and experiencing synesthesia, but the gameplay always feels like I'm just going through the motions. Compton's Cookoff and Bob's Bottles are the 2 exceptions to the rule, being the only levels that seriously mix up the gameplay.
Thankfully, the combat and platforming are deeper and more polished than the original, but they're still not good enough to hold up on their own. The combat system suffers from excessive visual clutter and the platforming still lacks satisfying movement mechanics or compelling obstacles course. This is mid-tier action-platforming and has nothing on games like ratchet and clank or mario odyssey.
I don't want to spoil too much of the story, but I was disappointed with how it relied on constant contrivances and retcons, creating links to the first game that felt totally unearned. I also think a lot of the character arcs were unfufilling and devoid of consquence, letting characters sidestep any real responsibility for their actions.
As negative as this sounds, I still REALLLLY enjoyed this game. The writing is just as charming and funny as the original, the new characters are all super likeable, and the visual design is absolutely GORGEOUS! It just.. didn't capture what I loved about the original, and I needed to ramble about it.
It's like the original in terms of writing but with way better combat and platforming and tons more content. This might be my favorite release of 2021, it's got the same charm and personality and is such a thrill to explore. In fact, I found its quality so compelling that I uninstalled my Game Pass version and bought a copy on Steam after finishing the tutorial level. If it takes 16 more years for a game of this quality to be produced from the franchise... well I wouldn't be happy with the wait, but at least we'd have a pretty damn good game.
I still can't believe this game exists. better than I ever could have expected.
One of the best games of this generation
Gameplay is good, art design is amazing and story is engaging. Level design is repetitive sometimes but it's not a big problem because thanks to the atmosphere every level feels different. My only major complain is bosses are so boring in terms of gameplay. Other than that this game is a must play for everyone who loves video games
Gameplay is good, art design is amazing and story is engaging. Level design is repetitive sometimes but it's not a big problem because thanks to the atmosphere every level feels different. My only major complain is bosses are so boring in terms of gameplay. Other than that this game is a must play for everyone who loves video games
This game is exactly what a sequel should be - better in every way. This is one of those games I wish I'd played when it first released, because it truly is something special. Very interested in where Double Fine will go after this
big brain. bigger heart. put elijah wood and jack black in more games please
Mascot character platformers are one of the most exciting genres in gaming to me. They have the potential to be an intriguing concoction of every visual, aural and story element that normally goes into games, but benefit strongly from their bend towards the main controllable character being the mechanical focus. Characters like Rayman, Ratchet & Clank, Hat Kid, their games are informed by their personalities and rulesets in a way that contextualises the player’s involvement in their worlds. Conceptualised well enough, the degree of exploration and interaction afforded to the characters can elevate these titles to surprising degrees, and give them a unique voice with a sense that they really have something to say.
This is pretty much where Psychonauts comes in. The first game came about in the full swing of the mascot platformer craze of the 00’s - and with the help of Double Fine’s history in sharp character writing and adventure exploration, concocted a game where the themes are both broad and accessible: Psychics exist and can explore people’s mental planes to empathise with visualisations of their own unique psychological issues.
Part of my adoration for the first Psychonauts comes from its strong visual direction, with off-beat and illustrative takes on individual character’s mindscapes. Psychonauts goes above and beyond with its core concepts by allowing its cast to express themselves through clever writing and impressionistic environmental caricature. Likely inspired by Rankin Bass stop motion movies and the artwork of Tim Burton, who’s styling has roots in ideas of eccentrism, depression and nonconformity - as well as have a level of cheeky humour that complements its attempts to depict darker themes. It sets the perfect stage for what Psychonauts is setting out to do; to let its cast express themselves in unique and personal ways of which the player is tasked with physically navigating, a visual metaphor for the therapist and the client. All these abstractions never go too far into sheer chaos because they’re balanced wonderfully and grounded with stereotypical visual metaphors that help keep things grounded, like “censors”, “emotional baggage”.
Psychonauts 2 is great, I’m amazed that it not only delivered on its promise of being a follow-up to the original title, it also exceeded it in almost every aspect. My main complaints are that I simply didn’t find it anywhere near as laugh-out-loud funny, and that the climax is a little contrived to the point it simply wasn’t satisfying. One of the strengths of the original was the level of interaction you had with the world in the form of use-items and environmental objects, and character count… something Psychonauts 2 seems to have made an effort on trimming down. I think a lot of my disappointment in the humour of this game stems from how little there is to reveal, by comparison? Still, it’s a fun story to see unfold - I’m hugely fond of how there is a throughline across the levels in the form of a kind of shared trauma within the cast.
This is simply one of the best looking games I’ve ever seen from a technical standpoint. Uses, and masters every trick in the Unreal Engine book while also inventing new ones. Unbelievable work with gravity tricks, false scale, shaders and portals. Every area is simply stunning. I can’t believe how good it looks. Oh my god. Platforming feels wonderful and mercifully there’s an easy mode for the less-than-stellar combat.
This review feels bad to me so I'll just end it here.
This is pretty much where Psychonauts comes in. The first game came about in the full swing of the mascot platformer craze of the 00’s - and with the help of Double Fine’s history in sharp character writing and adventure exploration, concocted a game where the themes are both broad and accessible: Psychics exist and can explore people’s mental planes to empathise with visualisations of their own unique psychological issues.
Part of my adoration for the first Psychonauts comes from its strong visual direction, with off-beat and illustrative takes on individual character’s mindscapes. Psychonauts goes above and beyond with its core concepts by allowing its cast to express themselves through clever writing and impressionistic environmental caricature. Likely inspired by Rankin Bass stop motion movies and the artwork of Tim Burton, who’s styling has roots in ideas of eccentrism, depression and nonconformity - as well as have a level of cheeky humour that complements its attempts to depict darker themes. It sets the perfect stage for what Psychonauts is setting out to do; to let its cast express themselves in unique and personal ways of which the player is tasked with physically navigating, a visual metaphor for the therapist and the client. All these abstractions never go too far into sheer chaos because they’re balanced wonderfully and grounded with stereotypical visual metaphors that help keep things grounded, like “censors”, “emotional baggage”.
Psychonauts 2 is great, I’m amazed that it not only delivered on its promise of being a follow-up to the original title, it also exceeded it in almost every aspect. My main complaints are that I simply didn’t find it anywhere near as laugh-out-loud funny, and that the climax is a little contrived to the point it simply wasn’t satisfying. One of the strengths of the original was the level of interaction you had with the world in the form of use-items and environmental objects, and character count… something Psychonauts 2 seems to have made an effort on trimming down. I think a lot of my disappointment in the humour of this game stems from how little there is to reveal, by comparison? Still, it’s a fun story to see unfold - I’m hugely fond of how there is a throughline across the levels in the form of a kind of shared trauma within the cast.
This is simply one of the best looking games I’ve ever seen from a technical standpoint. Uses, and masters every trick in the Unreal Engine book while also inventing new ones. Unbelievable work with gravity tricks, false scale, shaders and portals. Every area is simply stunning. I can’t believe how good it looks. Oh my god. Platforming feels wonderful and mercifully there’s an easy mode for the less-than-stellar combat.
This review feels bad to me so I'll just end it here.
Pyschonauts was a very charitable and warm game in his treatment of mental health. Far from drawing a world divided into healthy and sick, sane and crazy, his characters were built around psychiatric diagnoses, but they were presented as people with problems and fears who needed help to overcome them; suicidal tendencies, lewd behavior, amnesia, verbal incontinence ... or even aquaphobia, which is also presented as an excuse for the inability to swim in-game. an extensive field of traits and behaviors that were treated with humor, but at the same time with more respect than what real psychiatry would treat these symptoms, since it depends on the situation, they would be classified as "pathological", but mental illness is constructed for reasons beyond us, and can be deconstructed.
Psychonauts 2 takes the ending of the first game after Raz himself resolved his own traumas and learning to offer real help to people. It is sad to see that this sequel is a step back in the interactive, because navigating minds is an even more automated process and it formally feels conservative. the peculiarities outside the playable nucleus that appeared in the first psychonauts such as the strategy game against "napoleon", or the adventure game to solve the mystery of the milkman gave each mind a playable and thematic personality (level), and here they are barely present since most worlds are resolved through a mental power as a key to advance, a step back if you ask me.
However, the environmental narrative endows the minds-worlds that we visit with epic and intimacy in equal measure; an architecturally giant and twisted post office, the misivas are actually love letters and newspaper clippings recounting the fall of a country is the scene that personifies the loss of the war, and at the center of it all, a brain with a splinter stuck in, a piece of mirror in which Ford Cruller can no longer be seen
_____________________________________________________
Level design as a representation of the mind, architecture as a personification of desires, traumas and regrets
For me, the most special thing about Psychonauts was its excellence in using social conventions and applying them to its mechanics to form platformer game design elements, conventional, formally contemporary (classic these days), safe, but unexpectedly readable and expressive outside of how video games often use these social conventions.
In gaming, Mario, a short plumber who skilfully performs stunts on abstract architectures, or Sly Cooper, an anthropomorphic thief raccoon who can't swim (what the fridge !?) are perfectly valid narrative constructs, but outside the validation of his own environment and the bizarre internal logic of their platform worlds, neither makes much sense While most platformers from the early 2000s fought in this wave called "mascot platformers" re-adapting collect-a-thon structures, psychonauts chose to build a more cohesive diegesis, with more human and narrative-driven concerns.
The only thing that prevents me from recognizing Psychonauts 2 as a masterpiece, is its playable conservatism, justified, yes, but excessive
Psychonauts 2 takes the ending of the first game after Raz himself resolved his own traumas and learning to offer real help to people. It is sad to see that this sequel is a step back in the interactive, because navigating minds is an even more automated process and it formally feels conservative. the peculiarities outside the playable nucleus that appeared in the first psychonauts such as the strategy game against "napoleon", or the adventure game to solve the mystery of the milkman gave each mind a playable and thematic personality (level), and here they are barely present since most worlds are resolved through a mental power as a key to advance, a step back if you ask me.
However, the environmental narrative endows the minds-worlds that we visit with epic and intimacy in equal measure; an architecturally giant and twisted post office, the misivas are actually love letters and newspaper clippings recounting the fall of a country is the scene that personifies the loss of the war, and at the center of it all, a brain with a splinter stuck in, a piece of mirror in which Ford Cruller can no longer be seen
_____________________________________________________
Level design as a representation of the mind, architecture as a personification of desires, traumas and regrets
For me, the most special thing about Psychonauts was its excellence in using social conventions and applying them to its mechanics to form platformer game design elements, conventional, formally contemporary (classic these days), safe, but unexpectedly readable and expressive outside of how video games often use these social conventions.
In gaming, Mario, a short plumber who skilfully performs stunts on abstract architectures, or Sly Cooper, an anthropomorphic thief raccoon who can't swim (what the fridge !?) are perfectly valid narrative constructs, but outside the validation of his own environment and the bizarre internal logic of their platform worlds, neither makes much sense While most platformers from the early 2000s fought in this wave called "mascot platformers" re-adapting collect-a-thon structures, psychonauts chose to build a more cohesive diegesis, with more human and narrative-driven concerns.
The only thing that prevents me from recognizing Psychonauts 2 as a masterpiece, is its playable conservatism, justified, yes, but excessive
Psychonauts 1 is a game aggressively from the 00s. Lots of obtuse collecting, antiquated view of mental health, and general excessive 00s cartoon-isms. As excited as I was for a sequel, I can't say I felt there was anything justifying its existence beyond the fact that people wanted a second one.
This game shatters those expectations handily.
Psychonauts 2 is just tighter, both mechanically and narratively. All the flaws of the original are gone and the story is polished to a fine sheen. There's incredible touches across the game to show the respect and care the story has for its world. From the opening trigger warnings to the way Raz asks permission before entering a mind to the way characters are more willing to be genuine and honest with each other. The entire first real level is about Raz fucking up in someone's mind and learning that he needs to be more responsible in how he behaves. This isn't summer camp anymore. These are people's lives.
But what really propels the story is its core idea. This is a story about trauma. Its about people making awful mistakes that haunt them. Its about people lashing out after trauma because they need to justify that trauma somehow. Its about how we try to rewrite the complicated parts of history to ourselves to make it easier to understand. And its about the trauma we pass on to the next generation from what remains of the histories we tell.
Its just... an incredibly compelling and exciting story. As the big Broken Age defender, I take no shame in saying this is Double Fine's greatest work.
This game shatters those expectations handily.
Psychonauts 2 is just tighter, both mechanically and narratively. All the flaws of the original are gone and the story is polished to a fine sheen. There's incredible touches across the game to show the respect and care the story has for its world. From the opening trigger warnings to the way Raz asks permission before entering a mind to the way characters are more willing to be genuine and honest with each other. The entire first real level is about Raz fucking up in someone's mind and learning that he needs to be more responsible in how he behaves. This isn't summer camp anymore. These are people's lives.
But what really propels the story is its core idea. This is a story about trauma. Its about people making awful mistakes that haunt them. Its about people lashing out after trauma because they need to justify that trauma somehow. Its about how we try to rewrite the complicated parts of history to ourselves to make it easier to understand. And its about the trauma we pass on to the next generation from what remains of the histories we tell.
Its just... an incredibly compelling and exciting story. As the big Broken Age defender, I take no shame in saying this is Double Fine's greatest work.
This review contains spoilers
I don’t think I really have anything positive to say about the story that hasn’t been said by people who played this game right when it came out so before I go ham picking apart how much the second half of it bums me out I do want to say that I more or less like it and I think a lot of the positive reviews I’ve been reading here on backloggd are good, and that I agree with them! Me slapping this bad boy with a two point five and spending the next thousand words criticizing the bits that I couldn’t shake is not me saying that the writing in the game as a whole is bad, or that I didn’t enjoy it for the most part. Just wanna make it clear up front. I Like Psychonauts 2. I just haven’t really seen anybody talk about what I’m about to talk about which is wild to me because it has been a huge blinking light casting a terrible shadow over the back half of this experience for me, beginning as a small niggle and only growing larger and uglier the deeper we go.
So. Psychonauts 2 positions itself as a game about self-acceptance. Our ability to be cool to ourselves as much as we are other people, to cope with our traumas, to handle adversity in a healthy way. In a much more explicit way than in the first game, Raz every mind Raz enters involves him actively seeking to aid but not cure people. He gives them the push they need, or squeezes their hand in assurance when they’re wavering. This is a sweet premise to work from, and it works, mostly, in a vacuum. This is the real way the psychonauts are supposed to use their powers, we’re told, and the first lesson Raz has to learn is that responsibility and empathy. This is the first hitch, though; the psychonauts aren’t therapists, they’re mercenary spies, and ambiguously pseudo-nationalist ones at that? These two things, the “ask for permission before you enter a mind and only help people out” ethos and the “governments hire us to do spy work to protect people” work they actually do are simply incompatible. I would have accepted an argument that this is a game, if not for kids, then set in a childish universe, but Psychonauts 2 goes out of its way to forbid me from framing it that way, what with its central plot revolving around genocide, putting front and center imagery of violent suppression of peaceful protests even as it’s too PG to directly voice a character’s struggles with alcohol in dialogue.
Genocide really is the word I would prefer not to be typing right now and the Deluge of Grulovia is the event from which all of my little frictions with the game’s story blossom into full on disappointments. For as much as the actual battle with Maligula is key to the game as the event that shaped the lives of most of the people Raz interacts with, changed the course of his family history, and with the lengths the game goes to portray that specific event from many different points of view, it’s shocking to me how intensely uninterested it is in the context surrounding it.
Lucrecia is painted as a sympathetic character who was manipulated by people she trusted because of forces she couldn’t control within herself, but that’s not really true? It’s stated in the game that Maligula didn’t become her dominant personality until after the first time she committed mass murder, and it’s implied that it wasn’t the mass murder that did it, only the fact that she also killed her sister in the event. And sure, the first deluge event was an accident, but Lucrecia was still voluntarily and completely under her own volition aiding a fascist dictator in the violent suppression of people who were openly stated at multiple times throughout the game to be protesting the regime peacefully. When a fragment of Ford’s memory blames the Grulovian people for “pushing her too far” by…asking to not be oppressed, I think that there’s room to take that as a bitter piece of his psyche indulging in some dark thoughts, but honestly given the way the rest of the game portrays Lucrecia and the first generation of psychonauts it’s hard to say! Outside of the actual physical confrontation that had with Maligula that broke so bad, there’s just too little to contextualize how anybody else in the game felt about her, and what little we do see in Ford’s memories seems to portray it more along the lines of “we’re all worried about you!! You’re not acting like yourself!!” rather than treating her like the state sanctioned fascist she was?
And this is the thing right like, Ford should be the villain of this game, and it does seem like it’s gonna go this way with the initial reveal of what he did to Lucrecia and to Raz’s dad, but he never really answers for it. Raz forgets he’s mad at him after like two scenes. We see Raz’s dad experience the grief and trauma of remembering the truth but that’s the last time we see Raz’s family in the game – there’s no reckoning or reconciliation, no coming to terms at all. It’s a combination of two factors, one of which is a common problem in Tim Schafer games and the other a certainly unintentional but more insidious one. The first is that the end of this game is rushed as hell, and there’s no room for any real thematic resolution after the big climax. Any resolution, really. Lilly’s subplot, her dad’s, Raz’s family, Ford in particular, none of them get any time. There’s no denouement.
The other is the bigger thematic issue at play across this whole game. I’m loathe to use these words because they make me sound like a chud asshole but they’re shorthand that I think people will understand so I’ll just try to explain myself to the best of my ability. Psychonauts 2 feels like a Cozy game to me. Like a Wholesome game. I’ve seen a lot of people mention that it feels like some of the teeth are gone from specifically the comedy in this game and I would agree with that but I don’t mind it, the goofs are cute in this game and it got real actual laughs out of me a few times. But this sensibility has tendrilled out into the rest of the writing in a very uncritical way, to the detriment of this game having anything impactful to say about almost anything it wants to.
There’s a desire in Psychonauts 2 to be kind and respectful of people with mental illness and people who are struggling in general. This is good. But the aforementioned Wholesome Mentality shorthand is what gets you to the point where you’re accidentally saying that people who have been addicted to alcohol and people who resign themselves to self-pity and people who make selfishly unilateral harmful decisions for other people’s lives fully aware of the consequences that will ripple out across generations and people who commit genocide are equally worthy of forgiveness and reevaluation. It’s how you get a game that emphasizes the importance of asking for consent to enter a mind and then has you almost exclusively entering the minds of people who don’t have the faculties to provide actual consent, or worse, has Raz openly tricking people or asking people he knows can’t answer him, with every intention of doing it either way, and finally eschewing the consent thing altogether once we’ve decided that the guy we want to go into is a bad guy. In all of these cases there are justifications, and often good and reasonable ones, but there is also a lack of self-reflection. Why do we have these rules if we can so easily explain them away? How can we not consider our own relationship to power and institutional authority when we make these decisions and our excuses for them?
Psychonauts 2’s biggest failing isn’t that these things happen in the game, it’s not even that the game is so uninterested in interrogating the way it handles or presents them. It’s that it doesn’t seem to understand that there’s anything contradictory here at all.
So. Psychonauts 2 positions itself as a game about self-acceptance. Our ability to be cool to ourselves as much as we are other people, to cope with our traumas, to handle adversity in a healthy way. In a much more explicit way than in the first game, Raz every mind Raz enters involves him actively seeking to aid but not cure people. He gives them the push they need, or squeezes their hand in assurance when they’re wavering. This is a sweet premise to work from, and it works, mostly, in a vacuum. This is the real way the psychonauts are supposed to use their powers, we’re told, and the first lesson Raz has to learn is that responsibility and empathy. This is the first hitch, though; the psychonauts aren’t therapists, they’re mercenary spies, and ambiguously pseudo-nationalist ones at that? These two things, the “ask for permission before you enter a mind and only help people out” ethos and the “governments hire us to do spy work to protect people” work they actually do are simply incompatible. I would have accepted an argument that this is a game, if not for kids, then set in a childish universe, but Psychonauts 2 goes out of its way to forbid me from framing it that way, what with its central plot revolving around genocide, putting front and center imagery of violent suppression of peaceful protests even as it’s too PG to directly voice a character’s struggles with alcohol in dialogue.
Genocide really is the word I would prefer not to be typing right now and the Deluge of Grulovia is the event from which all of my little frictions with the game’s story blossom into full on disappointments. For as much as the actual battle with Maligula is key to the game as the event that shaped the lives of most of the people Raz interacts with, changed the course of his family history, and with the lengths the game goes to portray that specific event from many different points of view, it’s shocking to me how intensely uninterested it is in the context surrounding it.
Lucrecia is painted as a sympathetic character who was manipulated by people she trusted because of forces she couldn’t control within herself, but that’s not really true? It’s stated in the game that Maligula didn’t become her dominant personality until after the first time she committed mass murder, and it’s implied that it wasn’t the mass murder that did it, only the fact that she also killed her sister in the event. And sure, the first deluge event was an accident, but Lucrecia was still voluntarily and completely under her own volition aiding a fascist dictator in the violent suppression of people who were openly stated at multiple times throughout the game to be protesting the regime peacefully. When a fragment of Ford’s memory blames the Grulovian people for “pushing her too far” by…asking to not be oppressed, I think that there’s room to take that as a bitter piece of his psyche indulging in some dark thoughts, but honestly given the way the rest of the game portrays Lucrecia and the first generation of psychonauts it’s hard to say! Outside of the actual physical confrontation that had with Maligula that broke so bad, there’s just too little to contextualize how anybody else in the game felt about her, and what little we do see in Ford’s memories seems to portray it more along the lines of “we’re all worried about you!! You’re not acting like yourself!!” rather than treating her like the state sanctioned fascist she was?
And this is the thing right like, Ford should be the villain of this game, and it does seem like it’s gonna go this way with the initial reveal of what he did to Lucrecia and to Raz’s dad, but he never really answers for it. Raz forgets he’s mad at him after like two scenes. We see Raz’s dad experience the grief and trauma of remembering the truth but that’s the last time we see Raz’s family in the game – there’s no reckoning or reconciliation, no coming to terms at all. It’s a combination of two factors, one of which is a common problem in Tim Schafer games and the other a certainly unintentional but more insidious one. The first is that the end of this game is rushed as hell, and there’s no room for any real thematic resolution after the big climax. Any resolution, really. Lilly’s subplot, her dad’s, Raz’s family, Ford in particular, none of them get any time. There’s no denouement.
The other is the bigger thematic issue at play across this whole game. I’m loathe to use these words because they make me sound like a chud asshole but they’re shorthand that I think people will understand so I’ll just try to explain myself to the best of my ability. Psychonauts 2 feels like a Cozy game to me. Like a Wholesome game. I’ve seen a lot of people mention that it feels like some of the teeth are gone from specifically the comedy in this game and I would agree with that but I don’t mind it, the goofs are cute in this game and it got real actual laughs out of me a few times. But this sensibility has tendrilled out into the rest of the writing in a very uncritical way, to the detriment of this game having anything impactful to say about almost anything it wants to.
There’s a desire in Psychonauts 2 to be kind and respectful of people with mental illness and people who are struggling in general. This is good. But the aforementioned Wholesome Mentality shorthand is what gets you to the point where you’re accidentally saying that people who have been addicted to alcohol and people who resign themselves to self-pity and people who make selfishly unilateral harmful decisions for other people’s lives fully aware of the consequences that will ripple out across generations and people who commit genocide are equally worthy of forgiveness and reevaluation. It’s how you get a game that emphasizes the importance of asking for consent to enter a mind and then has you almost exclusively entering the minds of people who don’t have the faculties to provide actual consent, or worse, has Raz openly tricking people or asking people he knows can’t answer him, with every intention of doing it either way, and finally eschewing the consent thing altogether once we’ve decided that the guy we want to go into is a bad guy. In all of these cases there are justifications, and often good and reasonable ones, but there is also a lack of self-reflection. Why do we have these rules if we can so easily explain them away? How can we not consider our own relationship to power and institutional authority when we make these decisions and our excuses for them?
Psychonauts 2’s biggest failing isn’t that these things happen in the game, it’s not even that the game is so uninterested in interrogating the way it handles or presents them. It’s that it doesn’t seem to understand that there’s anything contradictory here at all.
Following canonically only a day or so after the first game (almost 20 actual years ago), Psychonauts 2 is a sequel so faithful that it almost feels like the same game: with all the same charmingly funny dialogue, zany-brained plot and annoying abundance of collectibles. The characters you know and love are back to resolve the issue of a mole amongst the titular organisation; Raz, our hero protagonist, is exactly as you remember him, just as obnoxious but now in 4K. The snazzy next-gen treatment smoothens the gameplay and quickens loading times: there are some incredible level transitions rendered within a mere doorway. The levels don’t quite match the bizarre heights of the first game’s Milkman Conspiracy, but many are no less dazzling, most notably an acid-trip rescue mission of music instruments belonging to a psychedelic band of ‘senses’ - a strange combination of words in and of itself but I promise it sort of makes sense in the game.
The game’s old-fashionedness shows even its flaws: navigating previously completed levels feels disjointed and clunky, where the player has to go to a specific tool, and then a creature that transports them to different stages of the level - it could all be simplified with an easier menu. The combat and navigation of all the different powers you accumulate also feels very stop-and-start compared to its contemporaries. The gameplay strengths are still in the strange puzzles and old-school platforming, made all the more interesting by strange and wonderful worlds conjured by the troubled minds of the game’s characters.
Whilst Psychonauts 2 feels more like an extension than an improvement on the first game, it still packs enough hours of fun to be enjoyed in its own right. I was pleasantly surprised to become as engrossed in this game as I would have done as a child with both its predecessor and other classic PS2 era platformers such as Jak & Daxter and the Sly games.
The game’s old-fashionedness shows even its flaws: navigating previously completed levels feels disjointed and clunky, where the player has to go to a specific tool, and then a creature that transports them to different stages of the level - it could all be simplified with an easier menu. The combat and navigation of all the different powers you accumulate also feels very stop-and-start compared to its contemporaries. The gameplay strengths are still in the strange puzzles and old-school platforming, made all the more interesting by strange and wonderful worlds conjured by the troubled minds of the game’s characters.
Whilst Psychonauts 2 feels more like an extension than an improvement on the first game, it still packs enough hours of fun to be enjoyed in its own right. I was pleasantly surprised to become as engrossed in this game as I would have done as a child with both its predecessor and other classic PS2 era platformers such as Jak & Daxter and the Sly games.
Ed Edd n Sigmund Freud.
I 100%'d this game yesterday after beating the main story 3 days ago, and I just can't get it out of my mind. A nonstop joy-ride with amazing characters, level design, visuals, dialogue, and plenty of other aspects I could tack on, but that would take away from the simple fact that I couldn't stop being happy playing this game. Can't recommend it enough, please check it out if you ever get the chance!
Psychonauts 2 is the scenario you'd want for a sequel where it does everything in it's power to blow the first game out of the water when that first game was already pretty damn good.
The writing is on point, the levels are creative as well as thematically meaningful, and the combat is probably the best I've seen out of a platformer. Definitely recommend this game, especially to fans of the first game.
The writing is on point, the levels are creative as well as thematically meaningful, and the combat is probably the best I've seen out of a platformer. Definitely recommend this game, especially to fans of the first game.
It's insane that I didn't write a review for this game (though probably because I got it on PS5, so where to put it?) after I finished playing it in 2021. It's even MORE insane that I still didn't write one in 2023 after watching the monumentally insightful PSYCHODYSSEY.
Which you can also do, anytime you want. For free (maybe with ads? it's on youtube)), but you can also 100% legally download it or watch it from archive.org too.
It's a play-by-play account of the entire development process of Psychonauts 2, and I mean the ENTIRE development process. From Tim getting a niggling feeling it's time for a sequel, all the way to launch in 2021, moments of all these people's lives captured in 4k amber.
I've never designed a game, sometimes I think I might try to get involved in a game jam. That literally happens to the camera guy in this doc. He pitches an idea that takes off so much that it becomes part of THE GAME HE IS MAKING A DOCUMENTARY ON.
This is honestly just me telling you to watch Psychodyssey. Maybe if/when I play this game again I'll write a proper review.
Which you can also do, anytime you want. For free (maybe with ads? it's on youtube)), but you can also 100% legally download it or watch it from archive.org too.
It's a play-by-play account of the entire development process of Psychonauts 2, and I mean the ENTIRE development process. From Tim getting a niggling feeling it's time for a sequel, all the way to launch in 2021, moments of all these people's lives captured in 4k amber.
I've never designed a game, sometimes I think I might try to get involved in a game jam. That literally happens to the camera guy in this doc. He pitches an idea that takes off so much that it becomes part of THE GAME HE IS MAKING A DOCUMENTARY ON.
This is honestly just me telling you to watch Psychodyssey. Maybe if/when I play this game again I'll write a proper review.
Of course I was going to love Psychonauts 2, the 20-years later miracle sequel to one of my all-time favorite games. Every level was fun to play at worst and stunning at best, and if there were no Milkman-level levels then at least there were no meat circuses in the entire bunch. Deeper characters? We got deeper characters, baby. We’re talking Jack Black as a gay hippie learning how to use his five senses again after spending years without a body, his alcoholic depressed husband finally learning to process his grief, dogen boole’s father battling a nasty case of co-dependency, and Raz learning about the importance of consent in a riff on the meat circus from the last game, this one being a casino-hospital. We have a great surprise twist villain late in the game with probably the most fun level out of all of them, and czarist Russian kitsch to boot. We have Lilli no longer just a stock tsundere character but a fun supporting character with motivations of her own. I mean the first game treated its mentally ill characters sympathetically, but it was still a Saturday morning cartoon tone, they never made me want to weep. Psychonauts 2, you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll fard and shid your pant.
Why did I only give it 4.5 stars instead of a perfect five? I’m so glad you asked. The one thing that cost the game an entire half star is the interns. The goddam interns. I hate the interns so much.
One of the small joys of the first game among many is interacting with the other children in the camp. It’s a microcosm of any typical middle-school age group of kids: some of them are kind of awkward and weird, some of them are pretty cool, some are annoying but you can’t help but like them anyway, some are irrationally mean and you just stay away from them, and a few of them are just straight-up bullies. It’s entirely optional to interact with the kids after a mission, and often rewarding if you do.
In Psychonauts 2, this diverse group of kids is replaced by about six or so insufferable little cunts. They start out mean to Raz for no reason, and they stay mean for the whole game. And not just mean, but mean in a way that is completely narratively flat. There’s no context in the intern program itself that motivates this behavior, competition or what have you, since no one’s like in danger of getting kicked out one by one, reality-tv show style or anything like that. Theres nothing that differentiates either of them also; one of them is mean but likes yo-yos, one is mean but can also control ice, one of them is mean but also likes indie rock music. One of them fools you by being somewhat nice at first before actually being meaner than all the others. And oh yeah, let’s not forget my favorite one, who is mean to you but ALSO mean to animals! Har de har har.
There is barely a whiff of an opportunity for them to change their attitude when Raz saves them from a tough spot, with Raz having absolutely no motivation to do so outside of “I’m a decent human being and I suppose even these dickheads don’t deserve an eternal I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream fate.” Would you be surprised if I told you they don’t? And after this moment, every single collectible side quest is given to you by these asshole kids. Worse still, the collectibles are all extensions of them being shitty to you. The scavenger quest given to you by Ford Cruller in the first game is like a fun camp activity, whereas here its obviously a waste of time given to you by the head bitchy character who is holding your clothes hostage. Another one involves turning off machines which surprise surprise, the mean intern forgot to tell you are dangerous.
Check out this scene, for example. First of all, it’s important to understand that I already do not like this character at all, and then this game insists that it’s hee-larious to see her treat animals like an emotionally abusive mother for like a minute and a half. It’s an ugly and honestly hard to watch scene, and for what? There’s no narratively-significant reason for this, it just automatically plays when you enter the diner. Look, I’m not that thin-skinned, it could have been funny if like there was a reason for Raz to be here, if like he had to put up with it to get the pancakes from her, or if she was unexpectedly nice before and he was like “sure, pancakes, Sam should be a pushover, how hard could it be,” just like, something, man.
When the bully in the first game, a far less interesting one by the way, first starts doing his bully shit, Raz immediately sticks up for himself. It’s baffling that such a huge chunk of this game, with so many wonderfully-realized supporting characters elsewhere, forces you to watch Raz just become a human punching bag for so long, and it’s exhausting every time you have to sit through it. And then your family shows up, and they’re mean to you too! Jesus!
All this, and then for the tiniest token gesture of support during the final boss where they all get no-scoped anyway, they become junior agents along with Raz! Why? Raz did all the work! I bet you, just like the people you went to high school with who were mean to you and then wonder why you don’t give them the time of day as adults, they’re all going to act like they have a shared experience or some shit that’s going to make them think they’ll be friends forever. Bitch, you stole my clothes on my first day of school, get out of my goddam life!
A stupendous game otherwise, of course, and I guess to be fair, despite all the ink I spilled on it, it’s a small enough issue to just ignore if you really want to.
Why did I only give it 4.5 stars instead of a perfect five? I’m so glad you asked. The one thing that cost the game an entire half star is the interns. The goddam interns. I hate the interns so much.
One of the small joys of the first game among many is interacting with the other children in the camp. It’s a microcosm of any typical middle-school age group of kids: some of them are kind of awkward and weird, some of them are pretty cool, some are annoying but you can’t help but like them anyway, some are irrationally mean and you just stay away from them, and a few of them are just straight-up bullies. It’s entirely optional to interact with the kids after a mission, and often rewarding if you do.
In Psychonauts 2, this diverse group of kids is replaced by about six or so insufferable little cunts. They start out mean to Raz for no reason, and they stay mean for the whole game. And not just mean, but mean in a way that is completely narratively flat. There’s no context in the intern program itself that motivates this behavior, competition or what have you, since no one’s like in danger of getting kicked out one by one, reality-tv show style or anything like that. Theres nothing that differentiates either of them also; one of them is mean but likes yo-yos, one is mean but can also control ice, one of them is mean but also likes indie rock music. One of them fools you by being somewhat nice at first before actually being meaner than all the others. And oh yeah, let’s not forget my favorite one, who is mean to you but ALSO mean to animals! Har de har har.
There is barely a whiff of an opportunity for them to change their attitude when Raz saves them from a tough spot, with Raz having absolutely no motivation to do so outside of “I’m a decent human being and I suppose even these dickheads don’t deserve an eternal I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream fate.” Would you be surprised if I told you they don’t? And after this moment, every single collectible side quest is given to you by these asshole kids. Worse still, the collectibles are all extensions of them being shitty to you. The scavenger quest given to you by Ford Cruller in the first game is like a fun camp activity, whereas here its obviously a waste of time given to you by the head bitchy character who is holding your clothes hostage. Another one involves turning off machines which surprise surprise, the mean intern forgot to tell you are dangerous.
Check out this scene, for example. First of all, it’s important to understand that I already do not like this character at all, and then this game insists that it’s hee-larious to see her treat animals like an emotionally abusive mother for like a minute and a half. It’s an ugly and honestly hard to watch scene, and for what? There’s no narratively-significant reason for this, it just automatically plays when you enter the diner. Look, I’m not that thin-skinned, it could have been funny if like there was a reason for Raz to be here, if like he had to put up with it to get the pancakes from her, or if she was unexpectedly nice before and he was like “sure, pancakes, Sam should be a pushover, how hard could it be,” just like, something, man.
When the bully in the first game, a far less interesting one by the way, first starts doing his bully shit, Raz immediately sticks up for himself. It’s baffling that such a huge chunk of this game, with so many wonderfully-realized supporting characters elsewhere, forces you to watch Raz just become a human punching bag for so long, and it’s exhausting every time you have to sit through it. And then your family shows up, and they’re mean to you too! Jesus!
All this, and then for the tiniest token gesture of support during the final boss where they all get no-scoped anyway, they become junior agents along with Raz! Why? Raz did all the work! I bet you, just like the people you went to high school with who were mean to you and then wonder why you don’t give them the time of day as adults, they’re all going to act like they have a shared experience or some shit that’s going to make them think they’ll be friends forever. Bitch, you stole my clothes on my first day of school, get out of my goddam life!
A stupendous game otherwise, of course, and I guess to be fair, despite all the ink I spilled on it, it’s a small enough issue to just ignore if you really want to.
I loved the first Psychonauts the most for its weird movement system which revolved around circus acrobatics and the psychic levitation ball. It was perfectly weirdo. But I grew to appreciate so much more on my replay before this game. I got to see every interaction the game has to offer, and noticed just how clever it all is. I've seen how easily replayable the game is and how effortless going through all the interactions is, how fast things just fly by. And they're all incredibly clever, from dialogue to collectible placements, their shapes, colors, just everything. So much is explained in-universe too. It's just such a fantastic world, one of the best video games have to offer. It deserved a sequel so much.
Playing this game, I couldn't help but be disappointed by the changes made to the levitation ball and to how the minds were structured. So much of this game is just room after room with collectibles placed for you to see without much effort, rather than these big, open spaces. It was a whiplash. But the more I went on, the more engrossed I got by the story. Once again, everything is so well thought out. The direction they took this world is so compelling. The art style is so well preserved. They're doing weirdo camera and perspective stuff, as they should for a new title in this franchise. This is Psychonauts.
I disagree with the statement that this is less weird of a game. Sasha seeing his father's thinking about his dead wife is perhaps undefeated, but, I mean, one of the greatest Psychonauts ever only becoming one because he blew up an entire animal shelter? It's up there. There's this great line that this game rides, where it is unabadeshedly open about death, suffering, even mass murder in this case, but it doesn't stray away from humor for a minute. It grabbed me in the first game and it grabbed me here again, it's still such a fresh approach in the world where players expect games that "don't break immersion." This game owns. Absolutely loved the story and the cutscenes and the emotion when it did come through.
The writing is not as clever in the moment-to-moment, and there is simply too much of it to be honest. I could totally do without the dialogue system, there's either too many jokes or too little of anything interesting in each dialogue tree. The comedic pacing is largely killed in them. Cutscenes are still largely very good, but it only shows that the best stuff comes from not what you select, but what the characters say on their own, without your input. Let them talk damn it.
I really undervalue the combat in this because I just don't care much, it wasn't much of a challenge and I really just wanted to get to the next segment, but I feel this need to say that it is very good platforming combat. You use the exact same stuff in the exact same way as you do when platforming, it's snappy, it works ideally, there is never a disconnect between the combat and the rest like there is in the first game. It owns, perhaps the best platformer combat ever.
And while there aren't that many true exploration segments, the ones that are here are genuinely fantastic. The movement system, though different and less suited for my preferences, absolutely shines when it is allowed to. When you can set a task for yourself and go at it, rather than follow a predestined path, it is so, so, so good. And the collectibles are best hidden in those. There's more of these as time goes on, and it only makes me wish the entire game was like that.
But, so many years have passed. This is no longer a tiny critical darling, this is an Xbox Studios-published game with Jack Black and Elijah Wood voice acting in it. In the time between the two games, indie 3D platformers have rose to the occasion, and there's plenty of those with weirdo movement systems and even more weirdo geometry. But there are still moments where Psychonauts can hang with the best of them, I kept thinking about Sephonie which I played a few months back, how I approached collecting and exploration in a similar way, and that is one of the best games of that type I've had the pleasure of playing.
There might have been some changes that must have been made to accomodate the status that Psychonauts now holds within gaming, but among its AAA platformer peers, to me, there is no rival. Perhaps those things had to happen to accomodate this particular story, and if that's the case, then I am totally fine, I managed to adapt to this style at some point without even realizing how drawn in I was. I still have not only the first game to come back to at any time, but the dozens, perhaps hundreds of platformers that it inspired. The key emotional beats from the story of the Aquato family are strong enough to be worth anything, honestly.
Playing this game, I couldn't help but be disappointed by the changes made to the levitation ball and to how the minds were structured. So much of this game is just room after room with collectibles placed for you to see without much effort, rather than these big, open spaces. It was a whiplash. But the more I went on, the more engrossed I got by the story. Once again, everything is so well thought out. The direction they took this world is so compelling. The art style is so well preserved. They're doing weirdo camera and perspective stuff, as they should for a new title in this franchise. This is Psychonauts.
I disagree with the statement that this is less weird of a game. Sasha seeing his father's thinking about his dead wife is perhaps undefeated, but, I mean, one of the greatest Psychonauts ever only becoming one because he blew up an entire animal shelter? It's up there. There's this great line that this game rides, where it is unabadeshedly open about death, suffering, even mass murder in this case, but it doesn't stray away from humor for a minute. It grabbed me in the first game and it grabbed me here again, it's still such a fresh approach in the world where players expect games that "don't break immersion." This game owns. Absolutely loved the story and the cutscenes and the emotion when it did come through.
The writing is not as clever in the moment-to-moment, and there is simply too much of it to be honest. I could totally do without the dialogue system, there's either too many jokes or too little of anything interesting in each dialogue tree. The comedic pacing is largely killed in them. Cutscenes are still largely very good, but it only shows that the best stuff comes from not what you select, but what the characters say on their own, without your input. Let them talk damn it.
I really undervalue the combat in this because I just don't care much, it wasn't much of a challenge and I really just wanted to get to the next segment, but I feel this need to say that it is very good platforming combat. You use the exact same stuff in the exact same way as you do when platforming, it's snappy, it works ideally, there is never a disconnect between the combat and the rest like there is in the first game. It owns, perhaps the best platformer combat ever.
And while there aren't that many true exploration segments, the ones that are here are genuinely fantastic. The movement system, though different and less suited for my preferences, absolutely shines when it is allowed to. When you can set a task for yourself and go at it, rather than follow a predestined path, it is so, so, so good. And the collectibles are best hidden in those. There's more of these as time goes on, and it only makes me wish the entire game was like that.
But, so many years have passed. This is no longer a tiny critical darling, this is an Xbox Studios-published game with Jack Black and Elijah Wood voice acting in it. In the time between the two games, indie 3D platformers have rose to the occasion, and there's plenty of those with weirdo movement systems and even more weirdo geometry. But there are still moments where Psychonauts can hang with the best of them, I kept thinking about Sephonie which I played a few months back, how I approached collecting and exploration in a similar way, and that is one of the best games of that type I've had the pleasure of playing.
There might have been some changes that must have been made to accomodate the status that Psychonauts now holds within gaming, but among its AAA platformer peers, to me, there is no rival. Perhaps those things had to happen to accomodate this particular story, and if that's the case, then I am totally fine, I managed to adapt to this style at some point without even realizing how drawn in I was. I still have not only the first game to come back to at any time, but the dozens, perhaps hundreds of platformers that it inspired. The key emotional beats from the story of the Aquato family are strong enough to be worth anything, honestly.
Ironically, despite its mindblowing art direction and endlessly clever visual metaphors, Psychonauts 2 feels like it suffers from a lack of ambition. The original Psychonauts's memorability entirely stemmed from its willingness to consistently put Raz in increasingly unconventional situations. It came close to fully fulfilling one of the greatest video game concepts ever, but it was also a mess. It was buggy, poorly thought out mechanically, bizarrely paced, possibly unfinished, and generally just not a very good platformer. It's not clear if these problems were the result of monetary constraints or the-technology-just-wasn't-there-yet-ism, but I was sincerely hopeful that, 16 years of technological advancement and millions of crowdfunded dollars later, DoubleFine's second crack at it would live up to its premise. What disappointed me was how little it breaks the basic gameplay mold, something that the original did in nearly every mindscape that Raz visited. This time around, brains are almost unanimously simple running-and-jumping tours of their owners' memories, absolutely gorgeous but confoundingly boring. It shouldn't be a surprise that the two best levels, Compton's Cookoff and Strike City, are the ones that borrow the most from the first game's design philosophy, and yet neither of them compares to The Milkman Conspiracy or Lungfishopolis. This wouldn't sting as much if the standard platforming wasn't still middling, if the upgrades weren't pointless, and if the modern age didn't bring about a new set of technical problems. Raz will often find himself hitting invisible walls, awkwardly sliding off of geometry that's just too pretty to be platformed on, and interrupting his own dialogue. Psychonauts 2 is a sequel that's deservedly confident in its visual creativity, but, as far as everything else goes, I walk away empty-minded.
The original Psychonauts never felt small to me when I first played it, but god damn this game expands the world and possibilities of Psychonauts so much that it does feel almost comically quaint in retrospect. Everything here is bigger, but also just as laser-focused and not bloated at all. Making all the levels here connect to one bigger story was a really great move, I think I'm just a sucker for sad old people finding ways to heal and come to terms with the past. The story in general really makes good on the "unanswered" parts of the first game, while still introducing great new stuff. I'm also a sucker for the structure of "mostly linear levels connected by big hub worlds full of nooks and crannies to find stuff in", this game was candy to me nearly the whole way through.
As for things I'm not really sure about, this is going to sound crazy but I'm a little disappointed didn't have it's Meat Circus moment. Every level here is cool visually and does a really good job at portraying each character's mind, but they're also all pretty easy and sort of samey. Hollis' level easily makes the biggest impression and is the most unique in structure, and nails the balance between platformer and adventure game that the series (is this a series now?) is known for. Every level after sort of feels like it's strictly platforming with some unique setpieces. I think about the board game level from the first game, or the structure of The Milkman Conspiracy, or the nightmare that is Meat Circus, and while the strange nature of those levels lead to frustrations, moments in those levels stick in my mind a lot more than most of the levels in 2, even when 2 delivers some honestly breathtaking visuals in these levels.
The hardest parts of this game were always the combat rooms, and I gotta say, while the combat in Psychonauts 2 isn't bad by any means, I never had much fun doing it. I've said in other platformer reviews that I like my platformer enemies to serve as occasional hindrances or obstacles, and not something you need to stop everything for in order to fight. The new enemies they introduce have fun concepts behind them but it's never a thrill to fight them. Something that would help combat a lot is the having access to more powers at once, as only having 4 feels limiting. I mean, I'm not going to unequip levitation or PSI blast, so there's really only two optional powers. Someone brought up the idea of being able to switch between different customizable sets of powers, and this would honestly make combat a lot more fun, because I do really like the way the moves you use for platforming and puzzle-solving can also be used for combat. Allowing you to have access to a larger amount of powers at once would make the combat way more enjoyable.
I have other, more minor complaints, like how the group of interns aren't really anything noteworthy outside of Sam, or how the final full level is sort of underwhelming, but I mostly just have glowing praise for this game, and most of that praise has already been expressed by other reviews (although I should mention how the voice acting is legit incredible and there's not a single bad performance in this game. Richard Horvitz deserves a lifetime achievement award or something). I really hope they make another one of these, would be a shame to stop here considering how endless the possibilities of this world have become. I mean, considering how long it took Double Fine to get this one out, we're probably not gonna hear anything about a sequel for a while, but I just really hope we get to come back here someday.
As for things I'm not really sure about, this is going to sound crazy but I'm a little disappointed didn't have it's Meat Circus moment. Every level here is cool visually and does a really good job at portraying each character's mind, but they're also all pretty easy and sort of samey. Hollis' level easily makes the biggest impression and is the most unique in structure, and nails the balance between platformer and adventure game that the series (is this a series now?) is known for. Every level after sort of feels like it's strictly platforming with some unique setpieces. I think about the board game level from the first game, or the structure of The Milkman Conspiracy, or the nightmare that is Meat Circus, and while the strange nature of those levels lead to frustrations, moments in those levels stick in my mind a lot more than most of the levels in 2, even when 2 delivers some honestly breathtaking visuals in these levels.
The hardest parts of this game were always the combat rooms, and I gotta say, while the combat in Psychonauts 2 isn't bad by any means, I never had much fun doing it. I've said in other platformer reviews that I like my platformer enemies to serve as occasional hindrances or obstacles, and not something you need to stop everything for in order to fight. The new enemies they introduce have fun concepts behind them but it's never a thrill to fight them. Something that would help combat a lot is the having access to more powers at once, as only having 4 feels limiting. I mean, I'm not going to unequip levitation or PSI blast, so there's really only two optional powers. Someone brought up the idea of being able to switch between different customizable sets of powers, and this would honestly make combat a lot more fun, because I do really like the way the moves you use for platforming and puzzle-solving can also be used for combat. Allowing you to have access to a larger amount of powers at once would make the combat way more enjoyable.
I have other, more minor complaints, like how the group of interns aren't really anything noteworthy outside of Sam, or how the final full level is sort of underwhelming, but I mostly just have glowing praise for this game, and most of that praise has already been expressed by other reviews (although I should mention how the voice acting is legit incredible and there's not a single bad performance in this game. Richard Horvitz deserves a lifetime achievement award or something). I really hope they make another one of these, would be a shame to stop here considering how endless the possibilities of this world have become. I mean, considering how long it took Double Fine to get this one out, we're probably not gonna hear anything about a sequel for a while, but I just really hope we get to come back here someday.
Remember when I said the first Psychonauts was an interesting case of having extremely creative ideas, themes and elements with fun characters and writing, but when it remembered "oh right, I'm supposed to be a 3D platformer", it didn't really do a remarkable job at it at all? With Psychonauts 2, not only is the actual platforming improved by a considerable margin, but the themes, ideas, creative visuals, story and characters are even BETTER than they were before.
The levels are far more mind-bendingly creative, as impressive illusions stretch around you while the ground twists turns and warps in all sorts of directions, it's such a huge visual treat to traverse through. The level design itself is also improved, while not outstanding it scratches a fine enough itch for a solid 3D platformer with decent mechanics. Raz's controls are so much tighter and responsive compared to the original, which makes these stages all the more fun to play. Combat has been made far more interesting and involved, and while it isn't great (being forced to swap your eventual 8 psychic abilities just to counter specific enemies can be a bit of a chore), these psychic powers are far more fun to use and are far more interesting than they ever were in the first game. Honestly I don't have much to say, I was pleasantly delighted by how fun witty and heartwarming this game turned out to be. I might actually come back to 100% it considering I've already knocked out a good chunk of the collectables in each world.
The levels are far more mind-bendingly creative, as impressive illusions stretch around you while the ground twists turns and warps in all sorts of directions, it's such a huge visual treat to traverse through. The level design itself is also improved, while not outstanding it scratches a fine enough itch for a solid 3D platformer with decent mechanics. Raz's controls are so much tighter and responsive compared to the original, which makes these stages all the more fun to play. Combat has been made far more interesting and involved, and while it isn't great (being forced to swap your eventual 8 psychic abilities just to counter specific enemies can be a bit of a chore), these psychic powers are far more fun to use and are far more interesting than they ever were in the first game. Honestly I don't have much to say, I was pleasantly delighted by how fun witty and heartwarming this game turned out to be. I might actually come back to 100% it considering I've already knocked out a good chunk of the collectables in each world.
Psychonauts 2 follows its predecessor's equally bizarre and witty narrative through it's course of mindbending levels and set pieces.
Comparatively Psychonauts 2 shares the same mechanics and sense of progression as you unlock new abilities while sweeping through segments of platforming, puzzle solving and the oddity out-of-nowhere concepts.
It is also a much easier game occasionally suffering from its more railroad venture of basic platforming segments with less of the grandiose puzzle solving concepts which were a big thing with the first game.
Mind the word occasional since there are still a good string of strong and daring segments that are an absolute blast playing through.
Even despite the level design at times being simplistic, the aestetical value, sound design and insane narrative never fails to capture the same fun and surreal energy throughout the game.
It is nice to see mysteries unsolved from the first game being explored and fleshed out, and while each character don't get much time for individual development, it oddly works fine as the game never really takes itself serious enough anyway and you get enough from everyone to either like or dislike
them as well as understand their motivations and ongoing roles.
Outside of the main story there's a reasonably sized hubworld to explore with some extra character sidequests, which are worth doing for the character interactions and dialogues. the side content is just enough for a good cooldown at your choosing until you wish the main story to hold your hand again.
I had fun with Psychonauts 2 and despite its occasional simplicity, the narrative style and core personality kept me hooked until I suddenly finished it.
Comparatively Psychonauts 2 shares the same mechanics and sense of progression as you unlock new abilities while sweeping through segments of platforming, puzzle solving and the oddity out-of-nowhere concepts.
It is also a much easier game occasionally suffering from its more railroad venture of basic platforming segments with less of the grandiose puzzle solving concepts which were a big thing with the first game.
Mind the word occasional since there are still a good string of strong and daring segments that are an absolute blast playing through.
Even despite the level design at times being simplistic, the aestetical value, sound design and insane narrative never fails to capture the same fun and surreal energy throughout the game.
It is nice to see mysteries unsolved from the first game being explored and fleshed out, and while each character don't get much time for individual development, it oddly works fine as the game never really takes itself serious enough anyway and you get enough from everyone to either like or dislike
them as well as understand their motivations and ongoing roles.
Outside of the main story there's a reasonably sized hubworld to explore with some extra character sidequests, which are worth doing for the character interactions and dialogues. the side content is just enough for a good cooldown at your choosing until you wish the main story to hold your hand again.
I had fun with Psychonauts 2 and despite its occasional simplicity, the narrative style and core personality kept me hooked until I suddenly finished it.