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.