Incredibly well-crafted, insanely well-written, superbly scored, constantly entertaining and all held together with a colurful graphical style that belies its true narrative depth.
They don't make 'em like they used to - but this is certainly the exception that proves the rule.
Aside from Mario Odyssey, there's not a lot of "3D Action Platformers" in the market and this game helped me understand why...
Back in the days of PS1/N64 every other game was a 3D adventure, each with its own reason to send you across 5 seasonal worlds collecting MacGuffins to progress. This was in itself a natural evolution of the ubiquitous 2D platformer during the previous 16 bit generation.
There wasn't a whole lot else in the way of originality, paradigms were set and the market was filled with what was already proven to be successful (see superhero movies since 2002) because of course it was.
Making (and publishing) games was expensive, so why take the risk on a new genre when a small tweak, new mechanic or just reusing an established character would guarantee a solid ROI (see Sonic, Crash Bandicoot. Spyro etc..)
The landscape has long-since shifted and nowadays with big publishers there's only really room for a new WWII-based FPS, or this years' open world box-ticking exercise - meanwhile Indie studios are going for pixel loveliness or pushing boundaries in storytelling.
With the technological improvements in the years since, 3D action adventures have become super-gritty Tomb Raiders or Uncharteds with super-realistic stormy weather, bloody combat and a boner for dramatic cinematics.
So we find ourselves in a games market almost devoid of new 3D platform/action/adventure games, that are actually just fucking FUN (and suitable for under 18s).
Pyschonauts 2 absolutely obliterates this void on every level.
The core concept is very much inception (which in turn may have been inspired by the original Psychonauts), which is a phenomenal excuse to get crazy on the level design.
And level design in a game like this is basically the gunplay in an FPS or the ball physics in Rocket League – it is the very core of the experience.
Psychonauts 2 levels are not merely worth playing this game for – they are Oscar-quality set pieces that are quite simply some of the best places I have ever been taken to in games:
A fantastic neon-octopus casino where you must cure someone's gambling addiction, by going into a sideways gambling hospital and earning 3 Quadrillion $ by disguising yourself as a card suit in a horse race to beat the stacked odds, or by rigging the game itself to enable a rich couple win the biological lottery – i.e. a baby
A psychedelic Woodstock festival, where drive a VW van around a colourful wonderland building a superband of senses, topped off with an amazing performance that pulls the rug on you right at the crescendo.
A set of desert islands maintained by an alcoholic gardening loner where you jump between empty whisky bottles to uncover the story of his mother’s similar decline and isolation following the death of her husband (you are brought here by his gigantic sentient spiky vine who also wants to stop him drinking, obviously).
A fucking masterchef cooking gameshow where ingredients beg to be thrown into the boiling water, put in a blender or - in the case of a piglet – chopped into slices by own their knife-wielding uncle.
So yeah, this game has enough surrealism and depth in one of its stages to drown a Naughty Dog Dali biopic with a twisting story that hits harder than any Mass Effect quest line or Oblivion twist.
The only thing this game lacks is the one thing that Mario (and your traditional 3D platformers) offers in spades – freedom.
Whilst you do get a “hub world” that grows exponentially after the first 10hrs, each stage itself is fairly linear and I was frequently pushing against invisible walls to make sure I wasn’t missing anything.
Not that this is a problem, as what is here is essentially a perfect distillation of everything I could ever wish for in a game like this. Or like, anything, really.
You hold a controller and get taken on a journey of discovery, both internal and external.
I think this game was a real challenge to get built, especially after the commercial failure of its predecessor.
And that is why they don’t make them like they used to, as making something of this level of quality is just not going to happen without considerable resources, it’s too much of an artistic risk for a major publisher to get past their shareholders and no way can a small studio afford to spend the time to build something this perfectly polished.
So please, do yourself a favour and dive in – or just watch someone else do it, such are the ways of the media consumption these days - this is really rather rare and equally really rather special.
They don't make 'em like they used to - but this is certainly the exception that proves the rule.
Aside from Mario Odyssey, there's not a lot of "3D Action Platformers" in the market and this game helped me understand why...
Back in the days of PS1/N64 every other game was a 3D adventure, each with its own reason to send you across 5 seasonal worlds collecting MacGuffins to progress. This was in itself a natural evolution of the ubiquitous 2D platformer during the previous 16 bit generation.
There wasn't a whole lot else in the way of originality, paradigms were set and the market was filled with what was already proven to be successful (see superhero movies since 2002) because of course it was.
Making (and publishing) games was expensive, so why take the risk on a new genre when a small tweak, new mechanic or just reusing an established character would guarantee a solid ROI (see Sonic, Crash Bandicoot. Spyro etc..)
The landscape has long-since shifted and nowadays with big publishers there's only really room for a new WWII-based FPS, or this years' open world box-ticking exercise - meanwhile Indie studios are going for pixel loveliness or pushing boundaries in storytelling.
With the technological improvements in the years since, 3D action adventures have become super-gritty Tomb Raiders or Uncharteds with super-realistic stormy weather, bloody combat and a boner for dramatic cinematics.
So we find ourselves in a games market almost devoid of new 3D platform/action/adventure games, that are actually just fucking FUN (and suitable for under 18s).
Pyschonauts 2 absolutely obliterates this void on every level.
The core concept is very much inception (which in turn may have been inspired by the original Psychonauts), which is a phenomenal excuse to get crazy on the level design.
And level design in a game like this is basically the gunplay in an FPS or the ball physics in Rocket League – it is the very core of the experience.
Psychonauts 2 levels are not merely worth playing this game for – they are Oscar-quality set pieces that are quite simply some of the best places I have ever been taken to in games:
A fantastic neon-octopus casino where you must cure someone's gambling addiction, by going into a sideways gambling hospital and earning 3 Quadrillion $ by disguising yourself as a card suit in a horse race to beat the stacked odds, or by rigging the game itself to enable a rich couple win the biological lottery – i.e. a baby
A psychedelic Woodstock festival, where drive a VW van around a colourful wonderland building a superband of senses, topped off with an amazing performance that pulls the rug on you right at the crescendo.
A set of desert islands maintained by an alcoholic gardening loner where you jump between empty whisky bottles to uncover the story of his mother’s similar decline and isolation following the death of her husband (you are brought here by his gigantic sentient spiky vine who also wants to stop him drinking, obviously).
A fucking masterchef cooking gameshow where ingredients beg to be thrown into the boiling water, put in a blender or - in the case of a piglet – chopped into slices by own their knife-wielding uncle.
So yeah, this game has enough surrealism and depth in one of its stages to drown a Naughty Dog Dali biopic with a twisting story that hits harder than any Mass Effect quest line or Oblivion twist.
The only thing this game lacks is the one thing that Mario (and your traditional 3D platformers) offers in spades – freedom.
Whilst you do get a “hub world” that grows exponentially after the first 10hrs, each stage itself is fairly linear and I was frequently pushing against invisible walls to make sure I wasn’t missing anything.
Not that this is a problem, as what is here is essentially a perfect distillation of everything I could ever wish for in a game like this. Or like, anything, really.
You hold a controller and get taken on a journey of discovery, both internal and external.
I think this game was a real challenge to get built, especially after the commercial failure of its predecessor.
And that is why they don’t make them like they used to, as making something of this level of quality is just not going to happen without considerable resources, it’s too much of an artistic risk for a major publisher to get past their shareholders and no way can a small studio afford to spend the time to build something this perfectly polished.
So please, do yourself a favour and dive in – or just watch someone else do it, such are the ways of the media consumption these days - this is really rather rare and equally really rather special.