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.