9 reviews liked by Freakles


i adore psychonauts. amazing writing and characters and music... and the environment designs especially are beautifully done. in the first level, you go into the Head Coach's mind and like -- all the plants are made of things like bullets because of his fascination with war and the military. and it all looks so natural. there's so many tiny details in this game that could go unnoticed. so many small things you could miss

i love the psychic summer camp as a hub. its really cozy and feels lived in. and things change as time goes on... you can miss certain interactions since all the kids will be in different places at different times. and a lot of them are really funny. the jokes in this game are a hit

i didn't play psychonauts for so long because i thought it was pretty ugly. and... i still think it is a lot of the time. but i think it actually works very well for what they were going for tonally. the 2d art is amazing, though. i always looked forward to cracking open the vaults and taking in the slideshows. one of my favorite parts of the game

its sometimes rough gameplay wise... it only gets really slow during a few specific parts. i see people talk about how they hate how this game controls but i think it feels amazing to run around and do anything. a couple of the boss fights i did not have that much fun with but they were still pretty interesting. every level is super charming

Clairvoyance is one of the coolest game mechanics i've ever seen in my life. being able to like, see the world through another creature/character's eyes and how they perceive you is so fun. the main guy who trains you - he sees you as like a younger version of himself... since he sees a lot of himself in you. and there's funny ones too... it's an amazing way to illustrate how everyone views the world differently

i think i would not actively recommend going for 100%. collecting all the figments is not really necessary. i spent way too much time looking for figments after beating each level. but you should absolutely get all the vaults and emotional baggage. you get cool concept art for getting all the bags.

just a really good game. it was hard getting the pc port to run well... but it was very much worth it. i had to install and configure a widescreen mod that fixes a lot of things. i also had a lot of controller issues early on. not a perfect game but it's one of my new favorites

There's a bit halfway through this game where you enter a diner and there's a girl making pancakes out of random things she psychically made a bunch of woodland animals gather for her. The girl is more then a little off, and it immediately becomes clear that the animals are absolutely terrified of her and are trying to hint to Raz that he should help them. It is, by far, the funniest part of the game that I saw. It's also the only part of the game where I really felt like I was playing a psychonauts game, and it made the rest of the game feel kinda jarring by comparison.
The original psychonauts was a black comedy in a madcap world that didn't include very sensitive portrayals of mental illness, but did make you feel a lot of genuine empathy for the people whose brains you ran around in, even if they were sometimes cartoon characters. Psychonauts 2 is much more responsible and adult with these elements, which is fine and frankly it makes me feel like an asshole to complain this kind of thing, but it doesn't feel congruous with what the last game was. The first game was about an insanely unsafe summer camp for psychic children run by 70s era superspies who taught them how to brainwash people and set fire to squirrels with their minds. Why is Sasha Nein, a man who taught Raz how to shoot lasers with his brain five days ago in canon, now giving him lectures on not invading peoples mind without consent? Why is this game now about interning at what appears to be a failing start-up?
The game introduces a bunch of older teens who become Raz's peers, but they almost immediately become irrelevant as the game shifts to being about resolving the trauma of Raz's new mentors, in particular Ford Cruller. Ford Cruller used to be a joke! You summoned him to pop out of your ear by waving bacon around your head! Now he's much less absurd, his insanity something to be treated and cured, and I just struggle to actually care. The game gives you big lectures about the power of empathy, how you just need to listen to people and it just feels dumb coming from a game about figuring people out by turning their mental illness into a series of jumping puzzles. I understand, on some level, psychonauts has always been a game kind of for kids, but the former game was for kids by being funny and weird and gross. And it was ABOUT kids-about kids stuck in a summer camp with no supervision while a plot to takeover the world happened around them. Now it's about old men trying to deal with their guilt and raz is kind of just along for the ride, putting them back together while they teach each other life lessons about how to be nice to one another and I can't imagine this wouldn't come across as any less patronizing if I was still a kid.
The game plays just as sloppily as it used. Jumping and dodging is floaty, swapping between powers is inelegant, it's a game that feels unnecessarily hard to be good at. The only reason to play the game is for the story and level design, and while the latter is still great and creative and bursting with character, I just can't bring myself to care about the rest of it.

slubcat i lov.e scugcat sbucat love this lttile fellow

I was born post-Y2K so I'm not gonna pretend to act like I have any experience with what the internet was actually like at the time, but even as a spectator to that whole era I can still see this as maybe the best piece of art ever made about how much it means to be a part of a community you belong to. About knowing your roots and preserving your history, even in the face of societal adversity. About how capitalism can ruin art whenever it feels like it. It feels universal. It lures you in with goofy character writing and funny observations of days gone and then punches you hard in the gut with the force of how much those types of things mean to you.

they got me cryin over the heavyhanded christian theming at the end!!! goddammit passionate collective of talented artists who made this thing i hate u!!!!

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.

very conflicting game. on one hand, the very unhinged and wistful nature of the first game was it's best aspect in my opinion. there were dozens upon dozens of different interactions with the random camp characters that really breathed life into the experience of the game. After each major junction, (even one as small as the timeframe between the first brain tumbler experiment and completing sasha's basic training) you were treated to new interactions with those characters, and the writing was actually funny. The second game eschews this; possibly because even in developer interviews they mention how they toiled away, implementing features and things to a game with a myriad of logistical issues that most people just wouldn't end up experiencing. There are only a few different things a character can say at a given time, and what they say doesn't really change throughout the course of the game until near the very end; where the game's latter half is segmented by being set appropriately, at night, just like the first. the game's subtext isn't as beautiful as the first's; aside from the best mental worlds in the game (Hollis' Hot Streak, Cassie's Collection, Compton's Cook Out, ) almost everything leading up to that respective mental world gives you TOO much context about them, and then whatever you learn within doesn't feel particularly earned or as insightful as it did in the first game. And I can't tell if that's just me or not; The reasons why I love Psychonauts are very personal and unique, I can't exactly explain why I love that game so much. It's not due to a lack of words, but because there are so many little things that make the experience of that game one of the best I've ever had; Perhaps expecting the 2nd game to deliver on that level of charm is unfair; I mean, it's still a great game, the writing's still way more than passable; As a "game" it's much better than Psychonauts 1, it has some of the best 3d platformer controls since Mario 64 pretty much. By no means is it somehow way worse than the original, but when you make a sequel it inherently exists in reference and in contrast to something else. I think this game as is is a very healthy product, and although it's not as great as I think I want it to be, it's probably one of the best sequels ever created.

Somtimes I have periods in my life where I think my choices don't matter. Some actions just don't feel relevant enough to have an important outcome, right? The first "The Stanley Parable" really proved me wrong on that matter. I bought this game expecting a very simillar experience to what I remebered back when I bought the first game - just a simple redo. That said, I got really surprised with this game. "The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe" is a game with new content really adding up to the subject of choices and the story of the game. I'd really like to express what a pleasant experience the new game has been to me.

I'm going to start with reviewing the original aspects of the game that I feel are important. That said, let's talk about Narrator and the style of narration. The person speaking to the player during the game doesn't behave like a typical narrator would, as this one is clearly trying to write his own story, being emotional and engaged about it, not just commenting on the events that take place in the game. Trying to derail from the story makes the narrator kind of sad and angry, as he doesn't like player making choices. It breaks his perception of the story, because it makes it harder to go along the planned outcome.

Speaking of choices, I'd like to talk about that a bit more. Stanley - the main character from the game - is a person who initially didn't make any choices in his life. That's what gives the contrast in Narration and Gameplay when the choices you make as Stanley give massive outcomes in result. The whole game is made to push your curiosity to its limits, giving you plenty of opportunities to make choices, and see their results; not one being insignificant. This shows the selfishness of humans, as they want to satisfy that tingly sensation on the back of their heads, even at the cost of other people, in this example - the Narrator.

From the new content, we could certainly notice a little shift in the message. Stanley was presented all this new content mainly because of one aspect - other people's opinions. The game tries to show how much the behavior, enviroment and people can change just from words of other people. With the ocean of reviews, the Narrator tried to make the game even better in this new title. Narrator pushes it to extremes though, trying to make the game perfect in every possible aspect. This gives us another aspect of the game - Perfection. Nothing is perfect, and nothing ever will be. No matter how good even this game would be, there still will be people who will dislike it. If a person tries too hard to reach perfection, it can make the enviroment around them very hard to be in, and just straight up uncomfortable which the game shows really well.

On the finishing note, I feel that this game is a great addition to the original "The Stanley Parable". In my opinion, the original aspects of the game that made it so thought-provoking were left intact and the new content added a lot of good comedy and new things to think about. I bet there is still some stuff that is not discovered from this game, but that's my thoughts on it for now. So grab your favourite bucket, and play the game as soon as you can!

This review contains spoilers

TRUCK?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

it gave me a headache when i played it when i was little