Indie Game of the Week 301: Psychonauts 2

I think this is probably the furthest I've stretched the definition of "Indie"—Psychonauts 2 is a moderately-budgeted game helped into being by Xbox Game Studios, a decidedly un-Indie publisher—but darn it I've been looking for an excuse to play some more Psychonauts ever since I activated this Game Pass trial. Following from the 2005 PS2 platformer, and also the 2017 VR half-sequel I'm not sure anyone played, Psychonauts 2 picks up the story almost immediately afterwards. Having helped save the day twice, former circus acrobat Razputin "Raz" Aquato is finally brought to Psychonauts headquarters, The Motherlobe, to be officially enrolled in... the intern program. Well, he is still ten years old. Naturally, he won't be spending the whole time fetching coffee; there's whispers of the return of the most powerful evil psychic who ever lived, Maligula, that required all of the Psychic Six—the founders of the Psychonauts—to bring down some twenty years ago. It just so happens that this psychic tyrant hailed from the same vaguely Eastern European-sounding country as Raz and his performer family and their water-related curse, so Raz might have a past history with this Maligula that not even he is aware of.

Psychonauts 2 is very adamant about being more of the same given the sort of fan fervor to bring it back, though without necessarily resting on its laurels. Quickly reintroducing the four psychic powers Raz picks up in the original game—the versatile Telekinesis, the combat-ready Psi Blast, the traversal-enabling Levitation, and the short-range but deadly Pyrokinesis—the game soon adds another four, awkwardly creating a radial powers wheel that you must constantly revisit to edit your four active powers to match the enemy types or obstacles you're facing. And I mean you do this a lot: since you always need Levitation and Telekinesis, you tend to juggle the other two slots between powers new and old as required. Most of the game's flow remains intact: you're free to explore the Motherlobe and, eventually, the surrounding outdoor areas as a sort of open-world hub between missions, while the "levels"—each of which take place inside someone's mind and tend to be where most of the game's creativity is focused—are more linear affairs that still tend to have a lot of collectibles to find. The game hasn't become any less collectible-heavy, much to my own gratitude and everyone else's no doubt mild annoyance, with the two-step process of unlocking Emotional Baggage, the lore-imparting Mind Vaults, the health-boosting Half-a-Minds, and the ubiquitous Figments. New to Psychonauts 2 is your own intern rank, which increases after enough collectibles are found or story progress is made and confers building points to upgrade your powers as well as open up new inventory at the vendor including healing consumables (recommended, as the difficulty is moderately high owing to its status as a sequel) and pins that confer passive benefits.

Due to the narrative's free-flowing chaotic energy it's never quite clear where the story might be heading next, or which head might be the next to visit. While I've yet to encounter a mental world as cool as that black velvet painting one from the first game, there's still the series trademark of some visually bizarre and striking level design that tends to break up its platforming and combat with the occasional environmental puzzle distinct to its setting. The last world I visited involved having to prepare (sapient) ingredients for a cheap-looking cookery show, with each round carrying an optional time limit that (if met) lead to some goodies: it was a relatively short and honestly annoying level that relied on repetition a little too much, but I'll give it credit for being distinctive and offering a challenge beyond the standard gameplay loops found elsewhere. Speaking of which, I've always given the original Psychonauts a pass for its slightly inaccurate platforming and some frustrating combat that seems a little too liberal with enemy hitbox ranges, so it's a little disappointing that those problems still persist some sixteen years later (which is a wild amount of time between franchise installments, and one the game hangs a lampshade on).

On the whole, though, the mix of powers to exploit various enemy weaknesses does make the combat a little more varied even if it tends to invoke that issue of having to keep swapping your powers around, and platforming-related deaths are rare due to how little health they strip from you. One extremely irksome inclusion, and one that belies how antiquated the game design philosophy behind the game can be, is how dying for real causes you to lose all the collectibles you picked up in that level so far: it's why I'd recommend grabbing a few of those healing consumables, simply to avoid having to collect all those figments and other whoosits a second time. I'd have to check, but it might be the first 3D platformer made this century to penalize the player in such an archaic fashion.

Gameplay irritations aside, Psychonauts 2 is every bit the worthy sequel fans of the original should want. It's simply more of everything, including Double Fine's keen ear for comedic writing honed from Schafer's background with the LucasFilm adventure games, and looks gorgeous to boot. Its cast can be abrasive in a manner that doesn't always engender affection—your fellow kids are all antagonistic brats, while most of the adults are indifferent and condescending—but suits the sort of universe of superpowered jerks that Psychonauts thrives in, with the idealistic and naïve Raz often caught up in someone's scheme or as the butt of a practical joke. The Motherlobe is a frequent joy to explore, especially once you get outside and find little platforming challenges everywhere you turn, and the way everything contributes to the new rank system means that collectibles don't just exist for collecting's sake. While it could always be better—and hopefully more will be on their way at some point in the future—I'm just glad we're still getting these big-budget 3D platformers from all corners and especially from franchises I've enjoyed in the past. This genre might only exist now in some weird throwback sense, but as long as they keep coming I won't complain. (Complain about other stuff though, for sure. What kind of game made in the 2020s wipes collectible progress? Really?)

Rating: 4 out of 5. (So far.)

I wish I liked Psychonauts 2 more. Love the characters, the world-building, the gentle approach to its take on mental illness and the fact that Raz makes horrible mistakes, but my God, that game is a chore to actually play. And it comes so close to being great. You can feel a better-playing game right there under the surface, but things don't quite magnetize right, or combat takes too frigging long, or the abilities feel sticky, or trying to control a bowling ball is a flipping pain... it's all a mishmash of enoughniggling little things that I just didn't have a lot of fun.

It's funny that you ask who the psychedelic level was for, and the answer, is ME! Not because I'm old enough to have been there or experienced any of it, but it's what I wanted desperately from this game but really only got a little bit?

I just finished the game as well. I loved the original psychonauts. I played the game late 2000's maybe 2010. Bought a used xbox from a pawn shop across the street from my job, blockbuster(yeah), and rented the game from work.

The levels in the original psychonauts are just...even more so than they could be today because of how much more rare it was then, fucking weird. They're great. The milkman conspiracy? The idea of the meat circus? Cause holy shit that gameplay of it was bad. The theatre? Playing against napoleon on a board game? BLACK VELVETOPIA?! Becoming a kaiju in the lungfish city?

And that's where my biggest disappointments lie with psychonauts 2. To be clear, I really really liked this game. The way they tied the weird eccentricities from the first game, your water curse, Ford Cruller just being a mess, your family that hates psychics is very good. I can't believe they were able to tie up these what seem like and probably is random weird fun things they decided to do in the first game into a cohesive whole. It worked for me, a lot.

The getting the band back together of the old psychonauts that are all a little broken by what happened to them and what they had to endure felt incredible. It goes back to 2021 GOTY arguments when Vinny had so much to say about them, Alex too I think?

And then the game plays a little better and looks how you think the original looked like on modern consoles. That's cool and expected, but I was kind of let down by the levels as a whole. The gambling hospital was really great and reminds me of persona 5 and how great a casino is for a game, with the sounds and colors and slots/wheels/horse races etc I guess.

I also LOVED Helmut Fullbear's level. It's my favorite level in the whole game. I thought I was going to be in for a majestic visual and audio production beyond what I could have imagined. It turns out, I wasn't. "Nick's" level is really funny, his demented little twisted royal mind. Bob's level is funny and was a good time. Cassie's library and books was really solid and clever. Ford's different shards are fairly solid. Compton boole is atleast very unique like the theatre from the first game but felt very small and just ok to play. Loboto is, you know, toothy and again a demented mind that really plays up his trope but didn't do a whole lot game wise since it's the first thing you do. And the flea circus and subsequent scenes are also clever!

I thought I would only get more unique gameplay and visuals and perspectives compared to the first game. I know the crowdfunding development maybe didn't go super well, but with extra time and microsoft money and just it being the second game, I wished for and wanted more. That said, I enjoyed it a lot and I can't believe how much it had to say about these characters when the first game really only relishes in how KOOKY almost everyone is without much else to them. I'm glad I got around to it finally because double fine and schafer are pretty incredible in what they do, even if it doesn't win all the awards or sell ten million copies.

Also, and I can't believe this, I didn't know Jack Black was in this game until his entire level was over and I was just randomly looking up a different voice actor and saw him listed. He's not hiding, I just didn't put it together.

@sparky_buzzsaw: I definitely had that feeling while playing, wishing I liked playing it more because everything about the presentation is so solid and I instinctively want any big 3D collectathon platformer to be good so more of them get made. That's always been the curse of Double Fine though: excellent premises, excellent style, so-so gameplay.

@vortextk: Yeah, I somehow missed that Helmut was Jack Black (and that Nick/Gristol was Elijah Wood) until I checked the cast list afterwards. For such a flamboyant role he managed to rein it in a lot, I guess because there was a lot of tragedy around that character too.

I'm with you on the mind levels, I generally found their inventiveness the game's highlight but the combat and platforming necessary to get around them was a little weaker. I feel like the mechanical nuances of the gameplay is the sort of thing that can improve with sequels (even if it didn't with this one so much) but working up to that level of creativity wouldn't be as easy to pull off. (Not that game design is ever easy, mind, but relatively speaking at least. Don't see many games with this amount of imagination.)

The Woodstock/Yellow Submarine vibe of that level just made me realize the '60s was 60 years ago. Just odd to see in a game that has the sort of youthful chaotic energy where I wouldn't be surprised to see an adaptation on Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network someday.

It triggers me when people say this is an indie game in any way shape or form.

It was not a game "helped into existence" by Microsoft Games Studios, it is a game made by Double Fine, a subsidiary of the Microsoft Corporation, the 3rd largest company in the world. It was started when Double Fine was an independent publisher (still not an indie studio because it was itself a publisher of other studios; otherwise Capcom games are indie games) but Double Fine was purchased by Microsoft 2 years before the game was released, meaning that during full production it had access to Microsoft's resources, which Tim Schafer said that they used lots of.

If Psychonauts 2 is an indie game then every game is an indie game except like Fortnite. It was clearly a big production with lots of money behind it (Jack Black has a whole musical number, there are a ton of heavily polished assets.)

@mento: Yes I saw Elijah Wood as I was letting the credits scroll and kind of doom scrolling on my phone, letting the music do it's thing for a while. Crazy, never noticed at all in game.

@bigsocrates: I remember us butting heads over the definition of Indie for another one of these (maybe an Ori?) but in this case I'm going to 100% concede that I'm really stretching the definition of the term well beyond breaking point. I just wanted an excuse to play it during this stupidly packed GOTY feature I've landed myself with. Maybe I should just rename this feature "A Game I Played This Week".

This game is very good. It sure feels like it was ripped right out of 2006 or so, like it was started development immediately after the first. I kinda feel like the "real world" should have been more realistic to contrast with the minds. The characters are so weird that they don't feel particularly relatable. I want to be able to see the world as it exists in the characters' minds, through a "funhouse mirror" as they say. But when the whole world already is a funhouse, it doesn't feel like there's as much contrast and there's not much new to be learned other than "yup, this guy is crazy." Still, this game is a lot of fun and a worthy followup.

@mento: Honestly do whatever you want. You could also call it Indie Game of the Week Gaiden for games that aren't indie. You wanted to play this game for your write up it's fine. It's not like you're making a regulatory filing.

But it's also not just you. I complained previously that Sony put this in an Indie Games Sale and I just personally feel like the term indie has lost a lot of meaning in the gaming space. But mine is a losing battle.

I still need to finish this but I bounced off of it pretty hard. Some of the control schemes just felt like they were designed by someone who hadn't seen a video game in a decade.

@rorie: I don't really feel like anything seemed that out of place but maybe it's a hold over from the first psychonauts for me. Now it doesn't feel "great", but as soon as I got levitation back my muscle memory was hard at work moving that little rolling ball exactly as it did in the first game.

I feel like a lot was said about the combat and platforming being or feeling better than the first game and while that could be true, combat was mostly me just getting nailed by annoying enemies that track to you as soon as you get near them but just keeping pyro aoe on stuff, eventually using time slows and psi blasts to whittle shit down. I felt like the ideas and originality of the new enemies were cool but the actual fights were still flailing around with powers getting hit a lot but there always being enough healing around.

Platforming is a little slippery and imprecise but was ok. As long as we can avoid the meat circus from the first game which has to be like the worst 3d platforming in any major game.

yeah I thought it controlled fine for the most part, but as the OP pointed out, having to constantly swap out powers was annoying as heck.