Psychonauts 2 is a mind-bending trip through the strange worlds hiding inside our brains. Freshly-minted special agent and acrobat extraordinaire Razputin “Raz” Aquato returns to unpack emotional baggage and expand mental horizons. Along the way he’ll help new friends, like this magical mote of light voiced (and sung) by Jack Black. Raz must use his powers to unravel dark mysteries about the Psychonauts team and his own family origins.
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It's Psychonauts 2, come on
It's a really interesting companion piece to the original game, simply put, but it has a different overall feel tonally as well as a different set of strengths and weaknesses. I think it's better written but less funny than the original - if the original was like a really good episode of Invader Zim or The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy (edgy dark humor that is still appropriate for kids though a little lol so randum at times), this is much more like modern Pixar - Inside Out is a pretty obvious reference point, but I think pretty obvious comparisons can also be made to Up, generally there is a darker and more mature / sincere coming of age story at play about personal responsibility, though it is very impressive in how it seems to manage to tie up all of the plot holes the original game had while seemingly potentially leaving room for a sequel (though I would be somewhat surprised). It's also nice that even if, like me, you didn't play the VR game they made between this and the original, it doesn't really matter all that much as you're able to get the gist of it.
Other strengths the game has over the original are in regard to it's music and visuals. Obviously it's a much prettier game than the original - the original was often ugly looking for a PS2 game, forget by today's standards - but they did a great job with trippy visual effects and cutscenes here too, and the music is a lot more memorable than it is in the original, with everything from Jack Black doing psych rock musical numbers to beautiful acoustic folk BGM and the most intentionally annoying fake national anthem I've ever heard (still stuck in my head days after completing it).
However, I don't think it's actually quite as good a game as the original. It can be a bit rough around the edges at times - The game glitched so hard I had to exit and re-enter it twice from me just doing ordinary stuff, which is something that never happened with the original for me (I am, however, glad it has a very generous autosave feature) and there are numerous physics-based jank issues here and there - but my main issue is just that the levels themselves aren't quite as memorable as the highlights from the original game - cool moments are usually down to the aforementioned visual effects as opposed to actually interesting level design decisions, like in the Milkman Conspiracy or the Risk / Spanish Art-based levels, so if you're looking for more of that, you're not gonna find it here. In addition to this, I didn't find the collectathon elements as compelling this time, which is down to a few different factors (lots of backtracking involved once you get the last two PSI powers, hub world being way bigger than in the original, there just being much more of them in general etc.).
In saying all this though, I still think it's a pretty essential companion piece for all but the most retro-purist fans of the original game, but you absolutely should play the original first.
Other strengths the game has over the original are in regard to it's music and visuals. Obviously it's a much prettier game than the original - the original was often ugly looking for a PS2 game, forget by today's standards - but they did a great job with trippy visual effects and cutscenes here too, and the music is a lot more memorable than it is in the original, with everything from Jack Black doing psych rock musical numbers to beautiful acoustic folk BGM and the most intentionally annoying fake national anthem I've ever heard (still stuck in my head days after completing it).
However, I don't think it's actually quite as good a game as the original. It can be a bit rough around the edges at times - The game glitched so hard I had to exit and re-enter it twice from me just doing ordinary stuff, which is something that never happened with the original for me (I am, however, glad it has a very generous autosave feature) and there are numerous physics-based jank issues here and there - but my main issue is just that the levels themselves aren't quite as memorable as the highlights from the original game - cool moments are usually down to the aforementioned visual effects as opposed to actually interesting level design decisions, like in the Milkman Conspiracy or the Risk / Spanish Art-based levels, so if you're looking for more of that, you're not gonna find it here. In addition to this, I didn't find the collectathon elements as compelling this time, which is down to a few different factors (lots of backtracking involved once you get the last two PSI powers, hub world being way bigger than in the original, there just being much more of them in general etc.).
In saying all this though, I still think it's a pretty essential companion piece for all but the most retro-purist fans of the original game, but you absolutely should play the original first.
This is simply a bloody good game. It got superb art direction, quirky characters and wild scenarios to unravel. The unbridled variation and creativity on display is genuinely quite breathtaking at times. A platformer that truly sticks out from the rest.
História muito divertida e com um dos melhores plot twists que já vi
This game should be used as a blueprint for all video game sequels. Everything has been improved from the writing, to the gameplay, and to the world design. This game just has an absolutely immaculate vibe from start to end. All the subject matter surrounding mental illness is handled with such care and attention that deserves praise. Double Fine's magnum opus in my opinion.
Psychonauts for me was a weird case of loving the world, style, creativity, music, characters... and then hate the gameplay. It's just moving around with honestly cluncky controls and physics. Why aren't all the abilities always mapped!? that's so dumb, there's a bunch of them that you don't need in combat so why not map them to the ABXY buttons? and if there's no room, only activate certain abilitiy when needed.
The worst defender is easly the combat itself, just a bunch of enemies which is not wrong by the way. But the punches don't feel satisfying enough and call it a skill issue, but I keep dying because all of the enemies group up and I can't deal with them. But guess what, staying behind and shooting lasers that don't deal damage isn't that fun either. Or what about the fact that a bunch of enemies are weak to certain abilities? Great, I love coming back to the switching ability menu.
I'm a bit sad because the cutscenes and the worlds were all wonderfull, my favorite being the cooking show. But sadly I stopped playing in the middle of the book area. I want to like this, but I can't.
The worst defender is easly the combat itself, just a bunch of enemies which is not wrong by the way. But the punches don't feel satisfying enough and call it a skill issue, but I keep dying because all of the enemies group up and I can't deal with them. But guess what, staying behind and shooting lasers that don't deal damage isn't that fun either. Or what about the fact that a bunch of enemies are weak to certain abilities? Great, I love coming back to the switching ability menu.
I'm a bit sad because the cutscenes and the worlds were all wonderfull, my favorite being the cooking show. But sadly I stopped playing in the middle of the book area. I want to like this, but I can't.