Psychonauts 2

Originally posted on Facebook on 9 September 2021 

Wowee, Psychonauts 2 is really really good. 😃

It's a 2021 sequel to a 2005 game, which is something you don't see very often.

I'm very pleased that it manages to live up to its predecessor despite the huge gap between their releases.

The general gameplay style is kept the same and improved upon. The weird character designs are kept the same, and of course everyone looks much nicer on modern hardware. The storyline is kept consistent and is expanded upon significantly. And they even got the exact same voice cast back for every returning character. It really feels like you're properly back in that world, seeing the next chapter of the story. I'm really impressed with how they managed to make a new game feel so consistent with the old one.

3D Platforming games were pretty popular back in the mid 00s, but there haven't been all too many of them in recent years. Earlier this year there was Bowser's Fury... and that's pretty much all I can think of off the top of my head. And I managed to beat Bowser's Fury the day I bought it, it wasn't that long, though it was really good.

So I'm super happy to see that Psychonauts 2 is a brand new, proper 3D platforming game with a lot to play through. You don't get all that many of them these days, so it's great to see such a high-quality one come out.

Psychonauts 2 focuses much more on platforming than Psychonauts 1 did. Psychonauts 1 had a lot of adventure game-style puzzle elements to it, but Psychonauts 2 leans much more on the platforming side of things for the most part. I'm perfectly okay with this myself, since it does a great job at being a cool platformer with crazy environments to explore and jump around in, but I have heard some opinions from fans who are a little disappointed with this direction, since it reduces the variety within the levels. Psychonauts 1 has a mix of puzzle levels and platforming levels, while Psychonauts 2 is almost entirely platforming levels.

And it also doesn't include a lot of the funny interactions that were possible - in Psychonauts 1 for instance, you could show each of your items to each of the characters around the camp, and they would all have something unique and funny to say about them - but Psychonauts 2 doesn't even have an inventory at all, so something like this isn't really possible. Psychonauts 2 does have a lot more in-depth dialogue trees throughout the game, however, so it looks like they went for depth over breadth for the optional dialogue here.

The game also has a bigger emphasis on storytelling, and a little less emphasis on comedy. It's still funny overall, but the story is a little darker and more serious this time around, so there is less room for constant joking around. I'm okay with this - the story is very interesting and engaging... but I sometimes do miss the over-the-top humour from the first game.

So yeah. Overall I really like this game. Even if it's a little different here and there, they managed to capture the Psychonauts feeling perfectly. And that is an amazing thing, to get brand new a sequel to a beloved game from so long ago.