KickStarter Psychonauts 2

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[MadMaxHellfire]

i came to complain about the sort of bad tutorial which left a bad taste and little to no will to go back, in the hope you'd convince me otherwise. holy shit i strongly doubt you'll ever anymore.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

I’m almost done, just one more mental realm to go. One thing I can’t figure out is

Spoiler

how to get the really high-up figments in the quilted section of Lucrezia’s Lament. They’re the top of a parabola that looks like it should follow a basic levitation jump arc, but even with the charged jump I can’t quite reach a couple of them.

Overall the game is still quite good, albeit slightly weaker than the first one. Controls, graphics, and music are all top-notch and substantially improved from the first game, but the plotting is a bit too meandering, and the worlds rarely achieve the thematic relevance to their characters that the first game did so well (exceptions would be PSI King and Bob).

Also I have to give a big laugh at the assertion they’re trying to ignore heterosexual relationships because

Spoiler

the entire fucking main plot is about a heterosexual relationship

Seriously guys, bark at bigger shadows.

 

[Darth Slaughter]

I’m almost done, just one more mental realm to go. One thing I can’t figure out is

Spoiler

how to get the really high-up figments in the quilted section of Lucrezia’s Lament. They’re the top of a parabola that looks like it should follow a basic levitation jump arc, but even with the charged jump I can’t quite reach a couple of them.

You may find an unlit campfire in the area. If you ignite it, you can boost with the levitation baloon.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

I’m almost done, just one more mental realm to go. One thing I can’t figure out is

Spoiler

how to get the really high-up figments in the quilted section of Lucrezia’s Lament. They’re the top of a parabola that looks like it should follow a basic levitation jump arc, but even with the charged jump I can’t quite reach a couple of them.

You may find an unlit campfire in the area. If you ignite it, you can boost with the levitation baloon.

I'm pretty sure I've found all the campfires. The ones I can't reach (there are 2) are roughly in the middle of the second quilted area above the curving hillside path. It's possible I'm just missing the timing and sequencing on the high jump necessary, but if so it's a very finicky jump.

 

[Sore Loser]

.

 

[Ivan]

you latched our doors at night?

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

So I logged off tonight with, no joke, 2 figments and 1 nugget left to find in the whole fucking game before achieving 100% in it. As soon as I quit, Steam starts downloading an update. I go to look at it and note that DF has labeled this a "small" update.

It's 14 fucking Gigs.

I can't even.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

This game really feels like the ultimate love letter to corrupt government bureaucracies and the neoliberal ideology in general. The Psychonauts as an organization are portrayed as secretive and above the law, with a sassy black woman in charge along with bugmen and bugwomen interns set to be the new generation of agents. The Psychonauts screw up sometimes and do unethical things like fuck with people's memories, but hey it's not easy bringing freedom to the world at the request of the "international community" after all. These are the good guys even if they torture people and hold them without trial!

The thing that really nailed this interpretation to me is that everyone in these games is redeemable no matter what they do (ie steal children's brains because of daddy issues) or how many people they kill, except for one dude. Why is he irredeemable? He's a blood and soil style nationalist who is opposed to the Psychonauts and their world order. That is why he is written as the true bad guy of the franchise without even an ounce of empathy allowed.

The sassy black woman is temporarily in charge, and otherwise has no interest in being in charge.

Are the Psychonauts even affiliated with any international organization? They were called into Grulovia at the behest of the deposed Gzar, but otherwise it seems that they're wholly independent. (Which is actually worse.)

The reason the true villain appears irredeemable is due to two reasons: He's only introduced towards the end of the second game and therefore doesn't get the needed time to develop as a character, and that he's clearly delusional. He can be redeemed, but the game doesn't get any time to show us that.

What people should be thinking about is this: How could a non-psychic individual get the drop so hard on the Psychonauts? How could he stay undetected within the organization for so long? How could he hypnotize Dr. Loboto so effectively? How could he discern the location of a decommissioned top secret Psychonauts research facility and appropriate it for his own use? The short answer: He couldn't, which exposes one of numerous plot holes in the game's script.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

And finished.

TL;DR: It's a good sequel to a great game. If you liked Psychonauts 1 and the prospect of playing through a videogame with a homesexual relationship doesn't make you want to shit/cream your pants in fear/rage, you should play Psychonauts 2. $60 is pretty steep though (never pay more than $20 for a computer game).

Psychonauts 2 is an odd game. It's a sequel to a game that came out 16 years ago, and obviously the cultural climate has changed quite a bit in the intervening years, and presumably Tim Schafer has also changed quite a bit in the 16 years. I suspect that it's a combination of these two factors that results in Psychonauts 2 being a much darker game than the first one. To be sure, the first game had some very dark moments (notably Milla's buried nightmares and Sasha's grief over his mother), but for the most part the game was pretty zany and absurdist; Boyd's paranoid schizophrenia, Fred's multiple-personality-disorder, and Edgar's anger issues are all played for laughs in the first game. That's really not the case in Psychonauts 2. For example there's a mental world exploring the isolation and addiction of an alcoholic and it is very much presented as tragic; what comedy there is in this world comes from the gameplay and from some occasional one-liners, not from the environs.
This is not to say that Psychonauts 2 is not funny or well-written, it's both (albeit less frequently laugh-out-loud funny than its predecessor), but it's also tonally quite far from the first game. This extends to nearly every aspect of the game, from the mental worlds to the main plot. The main plot in this game is both much more epic in scope and a much more personal story for Raz and

Spoiler

Ford

, and I actually think that the main plot is much stronger than in the first game (which was not trying to have a particularly elaborate plot) for it. The major problem with the main plot is the glacial pacing. It moves very slowly, particularly in the first half of the game, and if you're anything like me you will have figured out nearly all of the major reveals looooong before the game reveals them. As a matter of fact the only one I didn't see coming was

Spoiler

Nick's true identity

which, while an enjoyable enough plot development on its own, was basically completely out of left field.
The other major criticism I have of the game is that it has far too large a cast of characters. The first game had this problem to a certain degree as well, with some of the campers getting short-shrifted compared to others, but it's far worse in P2. I would have had zero problem with the content associated with the interns and Hollis being folded into other characters (and I think it could have been done quite easily). As UC mentioned above, Sasha, Milla, Coach, and, to a lesser extent Lily, are all basically relegated to glorified cameos in favor of new cast members. It's especially baffling in the case of Sasha and Milla because in the first game they're basically described to have the job functions of what P2 assigns to Hollis, but here they just sort of hang out doing nothing for the entire game (it doesn't help that Hollis has one of the worst and first levels in the game). The rest of the new cast (Raz's family and the surviving members of the Psychic 6) are mostly fine, although a couple of them do feel a little underdeveloped; again it feels like more dev focus could have been spent on them if they had just scrapped some of the more extraneous characters.

Also regarding the Psychic 6:

Spoiler

What's up with Otto? The game clearly throws a few red herrings at the player to make them suspect he's the mole (which instantly made me know he wasn't), but he does have a lot of suspect behavior. He sits on Helmut's brain without telling anyone, he's the only member of the Psychic 7 whose brain you don't explore, and he has a fairly antagonistic relationship with Ford specifically. I'm not sure if these are just plot holes, or if they're setting him up as a potential antagonist later down the line.

So far I've focused on what I disliked about the game, but that's not truly indicative of my experience.

The Good:

+Writing. It's generally much darker and less gag-filled than the first game (although there are still some great gags), but it's well done.
+Plot (not to be confused with plotting). As much as the game drags its heels, when it actually decides to tell its story the story itself is very good.
+Visuals. I've seen some people mentioning this, but honestly I don't think it's getting enough attention. The game is absolutely beautiful in motion. Easily one of the best looking games I've played.
+ Music, Sound Design, and VA. Top-notch across the board. I would be hard-pressed to find better
+Controls. The platforming feels much cleaner and more responsive, and I never found myself wrestling with the camera, unlike in the first game. Overall a straight improvement.
+ Much improved enemy variety. This point is slightly undermined by the extreme ease of the game, but it still helps to shake up combat a bit.
+Some great Psychonauts levels, albeit overall weaker than P1. Psi King's Sensorium is the obvious high-point, but Bob's Bottles, Strike City, Cruller's Correspondance, Compton's Cookoff, and Cassie's Collection are all quite good as well. And despite the linearity and (in the case of the final level literally) on-rails nature of the last two levels I enjoyed them quite a bit too. The hubs are all quite well-done too with the optional side-quests giving further incentive to thoroughly explore them.
+Performance. I had zero CTDs, and the only performance issues I had were after walking away and leaving the game running for multiple hours afk (obviously I shouldn't do that). I did experience one persistent bug where the mouse would cease to function in menu screens after redefining certain controls. Alt+Tab generally fixed it, and if not a game restart would. Annoying, but hardly game-breaking. Overall impressively stable for a Day 1 release.

The Meh:

)Underdeveloped characters that feel like a result of dev staff being spread too thin and result in established characters being short-shrifted.
)Some of the figments are truly a fucking bitch to find. Psi King's Sensorium is pretty rough, and Bob's Bottles in particular is just fucking sadistic in this regard.
)The game is extremely easy. Easier than P1, which itself was a game that I would describe as "very easy". I don't really care that much about this because I wasn't expecting any sort of major difficulty (and in fact really difficult platformers tend to be above my skill-threshold for the genre), but some people may be turned off by it.
)New powers are a mixed bag. It's nice that DF made sure that they all had combat uses, but other than that they all just basically function as very obvious "keys" for certain areas. None of them require intelligent use or critical thinking, and none of them have any applications in a "puzzle" context.
)The inventory system has been removed. I personally liked this aspect of the first game, clunky though the UI was, but I didn't really notice its absence here until roughly halfway through. It definitely linked the first game more closely to its PnC roots, so it's a bit of a bummer that it's gone, but... yeah its absence doesn't really affect the gameplay in a material way.

The Bad:

-Incredibly slow paced and meandering plotting. Someone at DF should have been pushing the less is more mantra.
-The game takes quite a while to get going. This was a flaw with P1 as well, but it's worse here.
-The optional "scenes" that you could stumble upon in the first game (Maloof and Mikhail torturing Benny, Crystal and Clem's suicide pact) are not present. Those scenes were one of my favorite parts of the camp section of the game. They helped flesh out the more incidental characters and helped add some comedic moments to the game's downtime.
-Fucking psitanium collection. It's not as egregious here as the fucking dowsing rod from the first game, but the psitanium collection here operates at the intersection of "very easy" and "very tedious" which is my most hated intersection when it comes to gameplay systems. I hope that for future games DF will take a page from the Zelda games and make currency accumulation primarily dependent on finding hidden chests. They sort of moved that way in this game, but not nearly to a large enough degree. Or they could just get rid of currency altogether and I won't shed any tears.
- Some weak levels. Loboto's Labyrinth, Ford's Follicles, and especially Hollis' Hot Streak feel like a drag and, in concert with the plot pacing, really hurt the early-game.

So yeah, that's basically my wall o' text on Psychonauts 2. Overall I liked it a lot. I can honestly say that it was much better than I feared and actually even better than I dared hope. If DF make a Psychonauts 3 (which after this I hope they will) I will certainly check it out, although P2 leaves way fewer plot threads dangling than the first game. The only ones I really caught were:

Spoiler

Several characters hint at a return to whispering rock
Loboto is implied to be Bobby Zilch's father (which, although definitely a retcon, fits pretty well imo)
Raz's Dad may be headed for a major identity crisis (possible antagonist in P3?)

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

I'm sooo gonna buy this once it drops to €30. Hopefully no later than December.

Fuck this GamePass bullshit.

 

[Ivan]

I'm sooo gonna buy this once it drops to €30. Hopefully no later than December.

Fuck this GamePass bullshit.

What's the problem, Chief?

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I'm sooo gonna buy this once it drops to €30. Hopefully no later than December.

Fuck this GamePass bullshit.

What's the problem, Chief?

What's the problem, Mr. Day-1 Purchase Man?



Is it that you're nothing more than a cheap shill? :D

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

You guys are mean. But the dough all goes into Microsoft's pocket. Think about that.

 

[Melmoth]

You guys are mean. But the dough all goes into Microsoft's pocket. Think about that.

Look at this old man paying real money for tim's game

microsoft can't take what you don't give them

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Turns out there's a bona fide Easter Egg in the game.

Go to the Maternity Ward in Hollis' Hot Streak after you've completed the world. Look behind you at the tunnel. Get on top of that tunnel (using Mental Connection) and you'll find a pen sticking out of the ground.

Use Telekinesis to rip out the pen, then aim and fire it between the W and the A in the 'WARD'-neon light ahead of you.

A cutscene will play.

Now fetch copious amounts of brain bleach and forget you ever saw it.

For context

Double Fine asked Pendleton Ward (of Adventure Time-fame) to make a silly sketch. You're throwing a pen at a ward-sign to trigger it.

 

[Ivan]

An excellent experience that lives up to what I had in mind for a sequel both in graphical fidelity and subject matter. During my play I was impressed at how well the game controlled. Raz always felt responsive and there were very few instances of invisible walls that would hinder my enjoyment. I had a great time thoroughly exploring the map for collectibles and engage with as many NPCs as I could find. The writing always put a smile on my face and I thought it was smar that the game presented a new cast of characters for the us to meet rather than retreading too much from the first. I came away impressed with the gameplay variety presented by the different worlds and the nifty camerawork that's done during the many transitions therein. Some that standout: the cake hallway from Bob s Bottles, the coffin from Ford's mind. I also particularly loved the visual of being inside Ford's fractured mind, the visual was delightfully creepy and reminded me of something out of Majora's Mask.

strengths:
-presents a new cast of characters to meet and enjoy. I was afraid it would tread too much content from the first

-art and graphical fidelity are outstanding, complemented by a great variety of level themes

-Raz controls buttery smooth. I loved using the telepathy ball to navigate the levels as quickly as I could. I loved how much airtime it grants you to skip over platforms

-Combat: I liked that different enemies encourage you to switch to particular powers to take them down. I think it was smart of them to have some of them dole out a good amount of damage to keep you on alert

-smart employment of a fast-travel system

-music was great throughout, going to comb through the soundtrack online for favorites

weaknesses (i.e. irritations/annoyances):
-audio-lines overlapping was common

-for OCD players (not me): the audio for the baggage items seems oddly quiet, making it more difficult than it ought to be find. The figment tracker doesn't tell you which particular map in a world contains missed items, so you may very well spend a lot of time looking for those few handful figments across the many maps per level

-minor UI gripes: not being able to go to the above or below category when shopping at Otto's shop if an item doesn't exist on the current row (e.g. row 1 has 2 items, row 2 has 4, you can't go up from row 2 to row 1 if you have items 3 or 4 selected)

In sum: a great continuation of the series that nicely shuts the door on Raz's arc. I think it's likely the next entry will feature a different protagonist. I like the move toward more deliberate use of specific tools in combat and would like to see this emphasized more in the future.

Now on to some postgame play and chat up with the npcs. Gonna enjoy reading other Codex members' thoughts on this thread.

 

[Ivan]

"review" out of the way, what were your personal favorite/least favorite levels? which NPC/interaction did you feel were well done? did you find any levels superfluous/irritating?

things that will "stick" with me, surely:

Spoiler

-the visual inside Ford's head where you acquire the shards (very Majora's Mask)
-the really cool camera transitions (coffin/cake)
-music from PSY King's level
-Compton's level theme

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

There’s no way they will move away from Raz as protagonist. I could see them making Lily a secondary protagonist perhaps, but Raz is definitely staying front and center.

 

[Cunt Dickula!?]

And finished.

TL;DR: It's a good sequel to a great game. If you liked Psychonauts 1 and the prospect of playing through a videogame with a homesexual relationship doesn't make you want to shit/cream your pants in fear/rage, you should play Psychonauts 2. $60 is pretty steep though (never pay more than $20 for a computer game).

Psychonauts 2 is an odd game. It's a sequel to a game that came out 16 years ago, and obviously the cultural climate has changed quite a bit in the intervening years, and presumably Tim Schafer has also changed quite a bit in the 16 years. I suspect that it's a combination of these two factors that results in Psychonauts 2 being a much darker game than the first one. To be sure, the first game had some very dark moments (notably Milla's buried nightmares and Sasha's grief over his mother), but for the most part the game was pretty zany and absurdist; Boyd's paranoid schizophrenia, Fred's multiple-personality-disorder, and Edgar's anger issues are all played for laughs in the first game. That's really not the case in Psychonauts 2. For example there's a mental world exploring the isolation and addiction of an alcoholic and it is very much presented as tragic; what comedy there is in this world comes from the gameplay and from some occasional one-liners, not from the environs.
This is not to say that Psychonauts 2 is not funny or well-written, it's both (albeit less frequently laugh-out-loud funny than its predecessor), but it's also tonally quite far from the first game. This extends to nearly every aspect of the game, from the mental worlds to the main plot. The main plot in this game is both much more epic in scope and a much more personal story for Raz and

Spoiler

Ford

, and I actually think that the main plot is much stronger than in the first game (which was not trying to have a particularly elaborate plot) for it. The major problem with the main plot is the glacial pacing. It moves very slowly, particularly in the first half of the game, and if you're anything like me you will have figured out nearly all of the major reveals looooong before the game reveals them. As a matter of fact the only one I didn't see coming was

Spoiler

Nick's true identity

which, while an enjoyable enough plot development on its own, was basically completely out of left field.
The other major criticism I have of the game is that it has far too large a cast of characters. The first game had this problem to a certain degree as well, with some of the campers getting short-shrifted compared to others, but it's far worse in P2. I would have had zero problem with the content associated with the interns and Hollis being folded into other characters (and I think it could have been done quite easily). As UC mentioned above, Sasha, Milla, Coach, and, to a lesser extent Lily, are all basically relegated to glorified cameos in favor of new cast members. It's especially baffling in the case of Sasha and Milla because in the first game they're basically described to have the job functions of what P2 assigns to Hollis, but here they just sort of hang out doing nothing for the entire game (it doesn't help that Hollis has one of the worst and first levels in the game). The rest of the new cast (Raz's family and the surviving members of the Psychic 6) are mostly fine, although a couple of them do feel a little underdeveloped; again it feels like more dev focus could have been spent on them if they had just scrapped some of the more extraneous characters.

Also regarding the Psychic 6:

Spoiler

What's up with Otto? The game clearly throws a few red herrings at the player to make them suspect he's the mole (which instantly made me know he wasn't), but he does have a lot of suspect behavior. He sits on Helmut's brain without telling anyone, he's the only member of the Psychic 7 whose brain you don't explore, and he has a fairly antagonistic relationship with Ford specifically. I'm not sure if these are just plot holes, or if they're setting him up as a potential antagonist later down the line.

So far I've focused on what I disliked about the game, but that's not truly indicative of my experience.

The Good:

+Writing. It's generally much darker and less gag-filled than the first game (although there are still some great gags), but it's well done.
+Plot (not to be confused with plotting). As much as the game drags its heels, when it actually decides to tell its story the story itself is very good.
+Visuals. I've seen some people mentioning this, but honestly I don't think it's getting enough attention. The game is absolutely beautiful in motion. Easily one of the best looking games I've played.
+ Music, Sound Design, and VA. Top-notch across the board. I would be hard-pressed to find better
+Controls. The platforming feels much cleaner and more responsive, and I never found myself wrestling with the camera, unlike in the first game. Overall a straight improvement.
+ Much improved enemy variety. This point is slightly undermined by the extreme ease of the game, but it still helps to shake up combat a bit.
+Some great Psychonauts levels, albeit overall weaker than P1. Psi King's Sensorium is the obvious high-point, but Bob's Bottles, Strike City, Cruller's Correspondance, Compton's Cookoff, and Cassie's Collection are all quite good as well. And despite the linearity and (in the case of the final level literally) on-rails nature of the last two levels I enjoyed them quite a bit too. The hubs are all quite well-done too with the optional side-quests giving further incentive to thoroughly explore them.
+Performance. I had zero CTDs, and the only performance issues I had were after walking away and leaving the game running for multiple hours afk (obviously I shouldn't do that). I did experience one persistent bug where the mouse would cease to function in menu screens after redefining certain controls. Alt+Tab generally fixed it, and if not a game restart would. Annoying, but hardly game-breaking. Overall impressively stable for a Day 1 release.

The Meh:

)Underdeveloped characters that feel like a result of dev staff being spread too thin and result in established characters being short-shrifted.
)Some of the figments are truly a fucking bitch to find. Psi King's Sensorium is pretty rough, and Bob's Bottles in particular is just fucking sadistic in this regard.
)The game is extremely easy. Easier than P1, which itself was a game that I would describe as "very easy". I don't really care that much about this because I wasn't expecting any sort of major difficulty (and in fact really difficult platformers tend to be above my skill-threshold for the genre), but some people may be turned off by it.
)New powers are a mixed bag. It's nice that DF made sure that they all had combat uses, but other than that they all just basically function as very obvious "keys" for certain areas. None of them require intelligent use or critical thinking, and none of them have any applications in a "puzzle" context.
)The inventory system has been removed. I personally liked this aspect of the first game, clunky though the UI was, but I didn't really notice its absence here until roughly halfway through. It definitely linked the first game more closely to its PnC roots, so it's a bit of a bummer that it's gone, but... yeah its absence doesn't really affect the gameplay in a material way.

The Bad:

-Incredibly slow paced and meandering plotting. Someone at DF should have been pushing the less is more mantra.
-The game takes quite a while to get going. This was a flaw with P1 as well, but it's worse here.
-The optional "scenes" that you could stumble upon in the first game (Maloof and Mikhail torturing Benny, Crystal and Clem's suicide pact) are not present. Those scenes were one of my favorite parts of the camp section of the game. They helped flesh out the more incidental characters and helped add some comedic moments to the game's downtime.
-Fucking psitanium collection. It's not as egregious here as the fucking dowsing rod from the first game, but the psitanium collection here operates at the intersection of "very easy" and "very tedious" which is my most hated intersection when it comes to gameplay systems. I hope that for future games DF will take a page from the Zelda games and make currency accumulation primarily dependent on finding hidden chests. They sort of moved that way in this game, but not nearly to a large enough degree. Or they could just get rid of currency altogether and I won't shed any tears.
- Some weak levels. Loboto's Labyrinth, Ford's Follicles, and especially Hollis' Hot Streak feel like a drag and, in concert with the plot pacing, really hurt the early-game.

So yeah, that's basically my wall o' text on Psychonauts 2. Overall I liked it a lot. I can honestly say that it was much better than I feared and actually even better than I dared hope. If DF make a Psychonauts 3 (which after this I hope they will) I will certainly check it out, although P2 leaves way fewer plot threads dangling than the first game. The only ones I really caught were:

Spoiler

Several characters hint at a return to whispering rock
Loboto is implied to be Bobby Zilch's father (which, although definitely a retcon, fits pretty well imo)
Raz's Dad may be headed for a major identity crisis (possible antagonist in P3?)

Great review! Good job!

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

https://www.pcgamer.com/psychonauts-2-is-a-masterclass-in-level-design/

Psychonauts 2 is a masterclass in level design
By Rick Lane about 1 hour ago

The worlds of Double Fine's sequel are far more than just zany visual spaces.

(Image credit: Microsoft)
After having mixed feelings about the original Psychonauts, I spent my weekend playing the sequel and I am hopelessly in love. Double Fine's follow-up fixes virtually all the problems I had with the first game, the pacing, the awkward puzzling, the random, punishing difficulty spikes, while also heightening everything that was great about the original. The wonderful writing. The charming characters. The empathetic representations of mental wellbeing.

Yet where Psychonauts 2 most astounds is in its level design. Its levels aren't simply brilliant, they're brilliant in several different ways, dazzling showcases of how to build unique and captivating 3D spaces. Each level demonstrates a huge amount of imagination and ingenuity, and I want to break down exactly what makes Double Fine's amazing spaces tick.

Use of technology

Before diving into design specifics, it's important to acknowledge the remarkable balancing act Psychonauts 2 pulls off in its general approach to visual presentation. Double Fine clearly wanted Psychonauts 2 to look modern and snazzy. The game is built in Unreal Engine 4 and obviously has a fair whack of budget behind it. But the original game's art-style is almost wilfully anti-snazzy, with characters who all look like they suffered horrible accidents in a Play-Doh factory.

Adding reflections to Ford Cruller's forehead seems like an action that would rend a hole in the universe. Somehow, though, Psychonauts 2 not only succeeds in rendering its weird, Claymation-ish world with modern materials and realistic lighting, it's one of the most visually spellbinding games I've played this year.

I'm not wholly sure how Double Fine has achieved this marriage of curation and modernisation, beyond lots of hard work and possibly some kind of Faustian pact. But one key tenet of Psychonauts 2's design is that the more modern elements always exist in service to the art. In the game's already-infamous tooth-world, for example, the game strives to make the world's disembodied teeth, gums and tongues look as realistic as possible, because it's more disgusting that way. Contrast that with the psychedelic realm of the Psi-King, which adopts a more cartoonish, hyper-saturated style to maximise its '60s vibes.

True surrealism

Most mainstream video-games struggle with surrealism, evidenced by how many of them resort to floating islands as shorthand for 'weird'. It's a trope you'll see everywhere, from games like Arkham Asylum and Spider-Man, to Doom Eternal and Bioshock Infinite. Even Dishonored 2, which has some of the best level design around, reverts to floating islands for its "Void" sections.

Psychonauts 2 thrives on surrealism. Its levels are a delightful medley of bizarre visions, a whirling carousel of fantastical, grotesque and carnivalesque spaces. There are worlds made of hair, worlds made of teeth, cooking gameshows with hand-puppet hosts and anthropomorphic food. Some of the ideas Psychonauts 2 cranks through could serve as the basis for entire games.

Such wild variation could easily descend into incoherent nonsense. But there are several features of Psychonauts 2's dreamlike worlds that prevent them from feeling like randomness for the sake of it. Firstly, like a dream, each world has its own functional internal logic that makes sense while you're in the dream. For example, in Ford's Follicles, the liberally scattered hairdryers are not just silly set-dressing, they can be used to create new pathways through the level. The same goes for the disgusting tooth-doors in Dr Loboto's mind, or the prismatic rainbow bridges in the Psi-King's rekindling consciousness.

Moreover, everything within these spaces serves a purpose, either functional or representational. And not in a vague way, like how other games use floating islands as an all-purpose metaphor for a fracturing reality or mentality. These are specific, cumulative references designed to tell the player what is happening in this particular mind. Which brings me onto the next point.

"Levels as exposition"

This wonderful phrase was coined by Matthew Castle in his review of Psychonauts 2 to differentiate from the concept of 'environmental storytelling' which has been mocked into oblivion by a thousand jokes about putting skeletons on a toilet. Instead, Psychonauts 2's worlds are designed to communicate a specific idea at a conceptual level, one which builds over the course of the player's time in that place.

Perhaps the clearest evocation of that is Hollis' Hotstreak, wherein Raz deliberately manipulates the mind of a Psychonauts agent so she'll allow him to go on an important, possibly dangerous mission. Prior to Raz's mental meddling, Hollis' consciousness is represented as a hospital, a clean and orderly space where thoughts are treated with care and consideration. When Raz starts messing around, however, the hospital transforms into a casino, representing Hollis' increased impulsiveness and recklessness.

Taken broadly, it's a simple juxtaposition. But it's the way the level represents the process of Hollis' mental change, and how Raz attempts to undo the damage that he's done, that makes it such a brilliant example of level design as storytelling. At one point Raz enters Hollis' "Cardiology Department", which has been converted into a horse racing-style betting shop where the horses have been replaced with card suits. Here, Raz must convince Hollis' 'heart' to stop 'racing' on its own, and instead acknowledge that help from other people is a good thing, thereby stopping her from rushing off in the real world and doing damage both to herself and others around her.

Such use of juxtaposition and metaphor runs right through Psychonauts 2, with the game often using two conflicting or overlapping ideas at the foundation for its various worlds. The result is a gradual and consistent unveiling of each level's story, rather than having it fed to you in chunks by audio-logs or expositional graffiti.

Pacing

This is particularly important in the context of the first Psychonauts, which is similarly stuffed full of clever ideas, but struggles to execute them in ways that are consistently fun. Some levels are too long, while others are unclear as to how you're supposed to complete them. A few are just miserably hard, such as the infamous Meat Circus.

All this is fixed in Psychonauts 2. You always know where you need to go, either because the game visibly places your objective in the distance, or provides a clear path that lets you feel out the route. Levels still vary in length, but are broken down into digestible segments that minimise frustration and boredom. The difficulty curve is more gradual, and the game further complements this with a wide array of accessibility aids. The finicky, LucasArts style conundrums have been replaced with more physical, action-based puzzles, which means you spend far less time standing around in befuddlement.

All of this gives players more space and time to appreciate Psychonauts' level design. The remarkable artistry, the way they play with gravity and space, the way they help to tell the story. They're far more than platforming challenges designed to break-up the plot, and become holistic spaces designed both to explore the thoughts and feelings of its characters and provoke emotional reactions in you.

It's fitting that Double Fine's masterpiece sees the studio return to the game that put them on the map. For 15 years Schafer & co has tried but never quite succeeded in making something truly great, whether that was due to technical limitations, budget constraints, or unfortunate creative decisions like making Brutal Legend a strategy game (yes, that one still stings). But with every stumble Double Fine has learned and adapted. And with Psychonauts 2, they've blasted it into orbit.

 

[Visperas]

So, any QoL mods or mods in general that you recommend to play the original Psyconauts today?

 

[Darth Slaughter]

completing 100% in this game made me return to mario's odyssey to collect all thos remaining 600 moons...

So, any QoL mods or mods in general that you recommend to play the original Psyconauts today?

To be honest, the first game is fine vanilla and aged very well due to it's art direction.

- What you will probably need is the widescreen patch:

https://thirteenag.github.io/wfp#psychonauts

Fixes hud and cutscenes.

- And Cap framerate to max 120 FPS. the game can have gameplay issues if it passes beyond that.

- If you want some more upgrades, there's an upscale mod that enhances textures and cutscenes:

https://www.nexusmods.com/psychonauts/mods/4

It requires an addional software to inject textures, running behind the game, called umod, it's kind of annoying but it's worth.

If you play with a PSX controller, there's even a mod to add button prompts. but completelly optional.

 

[Diggfinger]

Oh yeah me too Im a total badass I get soooooooo much pussy but I barely tell any1 unless its some diamond-studded pussy and the bitch has cute feet and cooks eggs to perfection

 

[Ivan]

completing 100% in this game made me return to mario's odyssey to collect all thos remaining 600 moons...

So, any QoL mods or mods in general that you recommend to play the original Psyconauts today?

To be honest, the first game is fine vanilla and aged very well due to it's art direction.

- What you will probably need is the widescreen patch:

https://thirteenag.github.io/wfp#psychonauts

Fixes hud and cutscenes.

- And Cap framerate to max 120 FPS. the game can have gameplay issues if it passes beyond that.

- If you want some more upgrades, there's an upscale mod that enhances textures and cutscenes:

https://www.nexusmods.com/psychonauts/mods/4

It requires an addional software to inject textures, running behind the game, called umod, it's kind of annoying but it's worth.

If you play with a PSX controller, there's even a mod to add button prompts. but completelly optional.

quality post, thanks for the good info. I myself had the itch to replay the first after finishing the sequel