If Raz entered my mental scar tissue he'd find the platforming from Psychonauts 1. Just the act of moving makes it easier to recommend. It's a rare moment of untapped potential in a sequel that improves on its predecessor in almost every regard. It's as responsive and welcoming a 3D platformer as you'll see outside of Nintendo. Well, aside from offering mundane side missions-a plodding bit of zig in a world that always strives to zag. That opening stretch does such a good job establishing characters and stakes, and delivering a payoff (honestly, it's like a Pixar film in a game) that it doesn't leave those relationships anywhere to go. Their shared standoffishness blurs together, and the story sidelines them after a fantastic first act. Bar Raz's (maybe) girlfriend Lili, none of the kid cadets make the trip, and their replacements, Raz's rival interns, don't have the same impact. One downside to the newness is that I miss the Whispering Rock gang. I'm head over heels for The Questionable Area, a daft hit of tourist trap Americana where you half expect to bump into Sam and Max, such is the powerful oddness of its rickety attractions. The puzzling is more physical, driven by Raz's evolving psychic abilities, but the number of weirdos you get to converse with, mining their dialogue trees for every last laugh, paints a world as vivid and alive as a Rubacava or Mêlée Island. I'd go further and say that as you wander the overworld and chat with fellow 'nauts it begins to resemble a lost LucasArts adventure. It's a literal joke factory, and I can only imagine the dark nights of the soul spent making every combo zing. ![]() In the game's most audacious comic set piece you're given an entire brain to rewire, with every possible combination of thoughts resulting in a punchline. What advice would Shakespeare offer Raz? How does a country's military history sound sung as a chirping Disneyland ditty? Got any gags about funicular railways? Amazingly, these are the boring questions. I'm not sure anything tops the first game's Milkman Conspiracy, but hearing an egg boast about its own execution comes close.Īt moments I wonder if Tim Schafer, as the game's writer, is playing a kind of game design Whose Line Is It Anyway?, drawing random words from a hat and attempting to roll with it. One mind's an archipelago explored like a miniature Wind Waker another, a cooking show that becomes a parody of Overcooked as you race to feed whooping strawberries into a blender. The best levels still flip the rules as the original's did. This is a game where you explore a shoe while bacteria shriek about an antifungal extinction event. This isn't one of those heart-on-sleeve misery fests you sagely nod at while secretly wishing you were playing Peggle. This maybe paints Psychonauts 2 as more dour than it is. Weirdly, it also makes Psychonauts 2 a good companion piece to Yakuza: Like A Dragon as a tale about the turmoils of an older generation than tends to hog the gaming spotlight. It's wistful and tragic, all while conjuring disasters from human hair or a vortex of unread love letters. I love the segment that revisits a relationship in an aging, fractured mind, each memory getting jumbled with the host's stints as a barber, mailman and bowling alley attendant. You don't see that in Crash Bandicoot (though I've not played 'The Wrath of Cortex', so apologies if I'm misrepresenting its psychological nuance). ![]() Sick of slippy-slidey ice worlds? Try a level set on the wedding cake of a now-mourning widower. Exploring pill-filled pachinko parlours is a visual spectacle and can be appreciated as that, but the metaphorical dimension is just as satisfying to decipher.Ĭrucially, there's not a tired genre trope to be found. Another standout sees a bureaucrat's clinical hospital of a mind hijacked by a casino. For example, one man's familial alcoholism becomes a toxic swamp where his shame manifests as a riverbed of discarded gin bottles that you navigate before booze drowns them again. And not in the hackneyed language of audio logs and ten foot-tall 'HELP ME' graffiti. Picture Mario 64's self-contained worlds, if Tiny-Huge Island was a metaphor for Wario's impotence.Įvery mind tells a story. But levels are much more than obstacle courses to tidy up. It's solid, standard stuff and will keep completionists happy for 20 hours. You hoover up hundreds of imaginary figments and earmark hidey-holes to return to with later upgrades. ![]() On one hand they serve up the comfort food of those older platformers. Picture Mario 64's self-contained worlds, if Tiny-Huge Island was a metaphor for Wario's impotence. From there, Raz hops inside heads to unpick personal traumas that both infect and shape the mental landscapes.
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