I can see the spark of charm that earned its reputation and the soundtrack is great, but so much of the writing is just bad, and the dated point and click adventure gameplay is the epitome of what nearly killed the genre.

I loved the writing in both Psychonauts games earlier this year and assumed this would be similarly imaginative and funny, but it’s so much worse. There’s no attempt at an emotional connection so it’s all up to the gag writing, and unfortunately it relies on volume instead of quality. Why tell two great jokes when you can tell fifteen kinda okay jokes instead? And if you stumble into a great joke, why not repeat it four or five more times to make sure everyone’s tired of it by the end? I also couldn’t believe they included unoriginal hack jokes like “is that a banana in your pocket or are ya just happy to see me?”

The old school point-and-click stuff is mostly awful; I can’t imagine trudging through this without an internet walkthrough. Aside from the typically bizarre puzzle solutions, everything is just so tedious and clunky and time-wasting, which makes all the exploring and trial-and-error that much more punishing. The handful of solutions that must be done against a real-time stopwatch are particularly galling given how bad the input controls are.

I wanted to play this and its sequel before trying out the recent sequel, but I’m heavily considering skipping straight to Return now.