Welcome to our review of Psychonauts 2, a game so crazy, I gave it a crazy score too!
Razputin “Raz” Aquato, trained acrobat and powerful young psychic, has realized his lifelong dream of joining the international psychic espionage organization known as the Psychonauts! But these psychic super spies are in trouble. Their leader hasn’t been the same since he was rescued from a kidnapping, and what’s worse, there’s a mole hiding in headquarters.
Combining quirky missions and mysterious conspiracies, Psychonauts 2 is a platform-adventure game with cinematic style and tons of customizable psychic powers. Psychonauts 2 serves up danger, excitement and laughs in equal measure as players guide Raz on a journey through the minds of friends and foes on a quest to defeat a murderous psychic villain.
Experience an imaginative, cinematic story that mixes humor and intrigue, brought to you by legendary game designer Tim Schafer (Grim Fandango, Brütal Legend, Broken Age). Explore unique environments using Raz’s ability to dive into people’s brains to battle their inner demons, unlock hidden memories, and resolve their emotional baggage.
Leap acrobatically through the air, traversing tightropes and trapezes in a varied, challenging, and joyful platforming experience. Wield a powerful array of psychic powers to blast, burn and levitate things, or even slow down time itself to solve environmental puzzles and battle strange enemies.
Psychonauts 2. The legendary first game is often dubbed as the best game of its era. While I disagree with that statement, it is not because it was not a bad game, it was great, there were just so many other great games in the PS2 era and I always think it is weird to dub a game as the best ever. I think Psychonauts was great for its time and with the release of its second coming, we got a whole bunch of weird again.
First, I want to talk about the bad. Well, the one bad point I found in the game because quite frankly I loved the absolute chaos. The bad part is without a doubt the controls. More specifically, the controller in your hand. Raz gathers psychic powers to help him solve basic puzzles and platforming, powers being used by the shoulder buttons on the Xbox controller.
Now, I do not want to spoil things, but suffice to say you are getting more powers than buttons. You knew where I was going as you were reading this, didn’t you? While there is nothing wrong here, I did fall in the deep end more than once because a minute earlier, a different power was set to that same button I was pressing. My own fault for sure, but it kind of got at me more than once.
But that is about all that I can think of that is bad. Everything else is plain psychedelic and awesome. First off, the graphics and the entire game world are stunning. Even during the final fight with the final boss, even at that point, I was admiring the way this game looks. I would go as far as to call it a perfect approach for this 3D fluidity the game brings.
From stairways that are crooked as heck to gigantic exploding flowers that detonate upon approach. Some parts of the game are so far out there, we even decided to record a complete playthrough of the game and share it on our YouTube channel, but as you all know by now, we will be sharing the ending only after a few days so that you can enjoy the game yourself without us spoiling you.
Talking about spoiling, the story really spoils you big time, not by telling you the ending, but by being so darn amazing. While I did figure out the mysterious villain from around 2 hours into the game,I think most of you will be caught off guard when things unravel. Yes, you can watch our gameplay, but in this review, it is mostly a no-spoiler zone as per usual.
Gameplay-wise, taking aside that button thing I mentioned, this is actually a really great platformer. Many big jumps, many big leaps of death and so much more. Our little Raz has to do it all, exploring every nook and cranny in order to grab the tons of collectibles, not to mention the weirdness they encompass. There is so much to do and so much weird sh*t going on, it will make you smirk, giggle and cry at the same time.
Psychonauts 2 really did a weird number on me, a lot of the story revolves around helping people face their phobias or problems and considering my extreme case of fear of heights, which is so bad, I can not even play games like Assassin’s Creed, you can imagine I had my fair share of “delight” playing certain parts of the game. But, I must be honest here, a lot was negated by the amazing game worlds. Game worlds that flipped 360 degrees at times, even changing completely.
In one part of the game, you suddenly find yourself in a 2D environment where you are climbing on top of letters, grabbing those collectible fragments, and trying to fulfill the request given beforehand. This change of scenery just fits every single time. Psychonauts 2 really left quite the impression…
In conclusion, Psychonauts 2 proves to me three things, games can break the third dimension and still be light-hearted, games can be gorgeous as fudge one second and incredibly dark the next, and Microsoft was right to buy Double Fine and make this an Xbox Games Studio because they just brought us a masterpiece.
